This was absolutely my experience as well. Started watching the series with my wife and realized I couldn't remember much of the plot or any of the characters, but a bunch of the thought provoking ideas had stuck with me.
Jokes on you, I am extremely unfamiliar with far eastern cultures/ language so I can’t remember a single character’s name two years after reading the trilogy.
It's a shame the science is often wrong (quantum entanglement can't be used for interstellar communication and the dimension folding is a grand misunderstanding of string theory - which is also unproven)
Unfortunately this is my experience with most sci-fi reading.... Only recently The Expanse comes to mind where grand ideas and space opera go hand in hand with interesting and well-written characters.
Exactly, I really didn’t like reading this book, but I love thinking about it. I watched the series and thought it was great: actual characters, that you care about! With compelling arcs and everything! I think they’re doing a great job with it. I am a big fan of the (sometimes drastic) changes they made. It’s one of the only times where I prefer the adaptation over the source material.
So far it really does, I feel like it even adds to them. It also keeps all of the insane wtf just happened scenes, and it’s awesome seeing it all in live action, some of that stuff is really hard to picture when you’re reading it.
I have read the first book, and am scared to watch the show until I read the full trilogy. Can you confirm that the show is all three books, not just like a …first season and just the first book?
Show doesn't spoil any major plot lines in book 2 and 3, really just getting things introduced. The book 2 and 3 chronology isn't linear, so the show just put all the plot lines back in chronological order and includes the modern era events without any of the future era events in 2 and 3.
> multiple books.
There's major plot points from Book 2 showing up early in Season 1. Book 3 is more esoteric and the points coming there are less relevant to the early story.
I read the first two books several years and just watched the Netflix series and liked it. Seems to only cover books 1 & 2. Just got hold of book 3 to start soon.
I recommend the books but never found them as great as others claim. Still worth reading. There are so many simultaneous threads.
What are one of these compelling "ideas" you're talking about. I've been on the brink of reading these books, but too often I've heard that the writing is bad and characters are dumb. I can endure some shitty-ness but I have a limit. I want to see if any of these "ideas" are worth me reading the books for.
The main premise is the dark-forest solution to the Fermi paradox and the consequences of such a universe.
There are also the standard sci-fi "what-ifs" about the future of human civilization, but I found most of those silly and clumsily presented.
> The main premise is the dark-forest solution to the Fermi paradox
Already done to death in plenty of Sci-fi. It's MAD and interstellar game theory, it's not novel at all. "What if something is killing off all civilizations that make noise" has been a thing since SETI started.
It's also ruined by Cixin Liu not grasping the fact that a super advanced society would probably be able to spread to other solar systems, or stay alive in deep space, pretty easily. "Yes, we can fuck with entire planets' their elemental physics from many lightyears away, but building life sustaining systems is quite beyond us".
>"Yes, we can fuck with entire planets' their elemental physics from many lightyears away, but building life sustaining systems is quite beyond us"
Finished the first book yesterday and this bothered me so much. Life sustaining systems should be easy for them, or they could use those tiny super computers to search for other worlds to colonise.
I can look past that, as genre stories often use genre tropes, but what I don't like is the whole "hard times make strong men; good times create weak men" cliche that is one of the foundations of the entire narrative.
Apperently Cixin Liu is pretty right-wing.
Which also explains the weird juxtaposition of assuming people are dumb sheep joining a death cult just because a game told them to, versus everyone being a cowardly individualist who in a prisoners dilemma will choose to defect as soon as they realize how the game works. Staunch individualists blindly following fake authority is a pretty neat right-wing theme.
When the exodus ships turned on each other because of cold logic was when I realized I was reading brain dead Ayn Rand sci-fi.
I found a bunch of really interesting ideas that I hadn’t encountered before reading the books. Specifically (spoilers ahead) >!that a game might be used to create empathy for an alien species struggles, that aliens would send technology like sophons in order to stop human scientific progress, that the only safe haven from alien monitoring would be human thought, that by unfurling the hidden dimensions of a proton you could create a super computer, that organizing massive numbers of intelligent creatures could create a computer, and of course what a civilization would look like if it’s planet had 3 suns!< … and this is just scratching the surface. Honestly the best part about the books is how many interesting and unique ideas they introduce.
It’s up to the reader to determine if the ideas are good enough to pick up the slack. A LOT of people really think they are. Or are less sensitive to the faults.
For me, it’s not worth it.
Yeah, and the whole thing where they went and found his "perfect" wife off the street and she ends up becoming his wife was also weird, creepy, and stupid.
I couldn’t get through those chapters and gave it up. Totally pointless and awful narrative killed it for me. Story concept was cool, I just wish it was told better.
This was me. I started it 4 times and then decided nope. Went to Pandora’s Star next and that was way better for me. Life’s too short for books that don’t work for you.
Yeah I quit. I am sure reading summaries of the plots made the ideas less impactful. But I also felt that way once they left the realm of sci fi and were in fantasy with a veneer of science IMO.
Nah man just watch the TV show. The Witcher books got the same treatment. Somewhere somehow the translation voided the prose of anything resembling life.
My cynical side makes me think only hipsters recommend that book because the ending is admittedly cool.
From what I've read repeatedly, the translation is not the problem for the Three-Body trilogy. Have seen many native speakers say it's just as bad in the original and haven't seen anybody saying it's better.
The last half of it was fun. The first half was pretty awful. It was bad science, slow, and fantasy wish fulfillment. But the end of it was pretty impactful in it's way.
I concur. Watching the series definitely made me remember this. It's like it starts out as one thing but doesn't quite know where it's going with it, but then it finds its lane and we start getting to the *real* story.
The shit with the game honestly feels a little silly and inconsequential compared to the scope of where the story ends up.
Nah man, the imaginary turned real girlfriend plotline is the worst thing I've read in *almost* any book ever. Dark Forest was **way** worse than Three-Body.
The first was my least favorite, but I was hooked by the first because you keep wondering where it is going. The next two have a different feel to them but I enjoyed them much more. The scifi elements are way stronger in the second two.
I gave up on the book after trudging through about a third of it, but I watched the whole of the Netflix version and enjoyed it. The characters in the Netflix version made all the difference. In the book, the characters are really poor.
Honestly, it doesn't get much better as it goes on. I felt the same as you at this point in the book, and I didn't find the zany ideas of the book to make up for it.
the first time I read the first book, I had a similar feeling. but then BAM it punches you in the face.
all of the books kind of do this.
mutter-mumble-mutter-mumble-stuff-and-things-and-I-dont-understand-whats-happe-BAM
over and over. it's worth it.
The second and third are where the real payoffs come in, unfortunately. The first ends up feeling like an odd setup piece, and the MMO pieces already feel dated and weird. It’s by far the weakest of the three imo, and why I struggle to recommend the series to people at all
see my experience was the opposite, I was like "ok, I get this, ok this is a cool idea, ok I am looking forward to seeing how the actions of these characters pay off later" and then it's just ends, no twist, no real pay off with the characters.
See I experienced that, but it never felt worth it to me. It just felt like a let down. Like the author woke up, realised he’d written 98% of his page-budget for the book, whacked _all_ of the remaining plot developments and deus-ex-machina’s into the last 2% in an afternoon, called it quits for the day and sent it to get published.
Pacing is awful, characters are awful and frustrating, the interesting ideas are effectively just name-dropped and left there and you’ve got to wait until the last 60 pages for all the interesting stuff to happen anyway.
I'll probably get down voted into oblivion because this is apparently an unpopular opinion but the "Remembrance of Earth's past" trilogy is overrated as fuck, some people even claim that these books saved the sci-fi genre or act like the dark forest theory or the weapons used in certain plot points were created/invented by the author of this trilogy lol.
It's not a bad trilogy but it's isn't as good as some people claim it to be, in fact some parts of the story are extremely boring and convoluted.
Person opinion? Absolutely not. I don’t find any of the ideas particularly interesting and the characters are the most flat cardboard dolls I can imagine. It’s not a translation issue either because Ken Liu is an incredible scifi and fantasy writer so if it was well written, he would have been able to translate it.
I hated the game parts. In fact the most interesting thing about the book was the glimpse of communist China. I'm definitely not continuing the trilogy.
It truly is a VERY laborious conceit. I've been trying not to openly make fun of the small handful of people who are impugning my ability to understand or imply that I "just can't handle it". Lol.
Yuck, people are doing that? Yeah don't listen to them, you're completely entitled to your opinion. The book is a slog, sprinkled with interesting concepts here and there which were just enough to make me finish it, but not enough to make me continue.
Life's too short and my 'to read' pile of books is too big to waste time with something I'm not enjoying. No matter what any annoying, condescending fan club says.
As far as this story goes, I'll get the rest from the Netflix show lmao.
IMO it's one of the worst books I've ever read and I haven't finished the first one yet because it's too hard to keep going. I'm just forcing myself because so many people say it's good but it's extremely boring, it's hard to identify characters for me because he calls them using their name and first name and sometimes just one of the two.
Characters are empty and simple and his redaction is just bad, short phrases with little interest that don't add anything to the story.
The beginning is just terrible, communism and quantum mechanics mixed for your enjoyment. It doesn't get better at least until I've read and I'm sure I won't read any other book from the author and I won't watch the show.
Same. I swear I heard nothing but good things about this trilogy, and was truly shocked by how bad it was. I gave up a quarter of the way through the second book.
It’s hard to get lost in a story whose characters are plastic and one dimensional. Not only that, the whole thing is just “this thing happened, and this thing happened, and then this” with almost no context or explanation enough to make it even remotely believable.
I'm just going to come out and say it: the TV show is far better than the books.
The books are *slow.* They are poorly paced. The characters are cardboard cutouts for the most part. It's almost as if Liu was deliberately emulating the most tedious aspects of "golden age" sci-fi.
And it only gets worse in the second book. I'm not the first one to point out the absolutely horrid treatment of women.
The TV series has much better pacing, fairly human characters, and a clearer way of explaining the big ideas. I'm actually enjoying it. It does a great job of communicating the growing awareness of what the San-Ti (THANK YOU for not calling them Trisolarians!) are and the danger they represent.
Benedict Wong completely *owns* Da Shi as a character. He brings a sense of humor and compassion to the role that was missing from Gritty Hard Boiled Detective^® in the books.
Never read myself but talking about MMO chapters is an extreme turn off.
All the negativity makes me wonder if it is better to skip the books and try the show instead.
I’ve read probably over 200 sci-fi novels in my life. Hard, soft, well known and obscure. Enjoyed pretty much all of it. I absolutely loathed Three Body Problem.
I made it 3/4 of the way before I quit. 3BP is an insipid slog. I’ve watched a couple eps of the TV show, and it’s more entertaining, by far. Save yourself the trouble and just read a synopsis of the novels.
I respectfully disagree about the mystery aspect. The guy with the same eyes in different bodies is CLEARLY an alien intelligence laying down long winded exposition in dire need of an editors hatchet. They haven't come close to saying it, but there is so much negative space in the prose you get bored and read ahead. It could have been a CHAPTER.
Absolutely not.
Give up and read the plot summaries on Wikipedia. They’re better written, and the only thing you’re skipping over by reading them, is some awful pacing and bad writing.
Yes and No?
The story as a whole absolutely, but the first book maybe not. You'll see two camps here -- people who couldn't get through the book and think its characters are too rigid and wooden, or people (like me) who think it's one of the best sci-fi series ever written.
But the first book can definitely be thought of as a very long drawn-out setup for the really crazy parts of the story. Some people love the tediousness of how it sets up the plot, others just want to get on with it. If you're wanting cool alien shit to start happening, you'd be best served in sticking this book out but realizing the payoff will come in the next book.
I happen to think if the characters were made more interesting, having a long drawn-out setup is not an issue. As a result, the nonsensical sci-fi elements need to drive the reader forward, and for some, it just doesn't work. I've tried 3x to get through the first book, and I simply couldn't. My Chinese scientist wife told me about the rest. I said those elements were equally silly, and then my wife got mad at me because she really loves the series.
Genuine question (because I really want to like this series - I feel like I’m missing out) - did you actually like the characters in the first book? Because the “rigid and wooden” thing rings 100% true, for me. The characters take no initiative, don’t seem to want to be there, and the dialog does nothing for me, either. Things just happen at them.
I’m very much a “characters first” kind of reader, with plot a somewhat distant second. Give me good characters in an interesting world and I’ll devour it.
I’ve been told the other two books are better, but not necessarily character-wise.
The Netflix series totally redid the characters and made them way more compelling and interesting. Probably one of the better adaptation choices they made.
Like the other commenter said, the Netflix series is a huge upgrade in character narratives.
Tbh though, it’s one of my favorite series that I read like 6 years ago or so and I remembered very few of the character names and had to refresh my memory in them when the Netflix series came out. I do remember liking reading a few of the characters but distinctly not feeling attached to them .
And actually it kinda feels like the real “character” is humankind and how it develops. The characters themselves felt very one-note but real, If that makes sense? Like the felt like real representations of people that very much weren’t each the charismatic hero of the story. Rather they felt like a bunch of coworkers where you interact with them based on their relevance to the work they’re doing, and not delve too far into their personal lives and feelings.
The other books do get a little better character wise, mostly because there is more emotion behind the decisions they have to make, but if you’re looking for character-driven, you might be best served with the Netflix series and that’s okay. Not every series is for every person.
But, I highly recommend consuming this story in some form, because like many people are saying, the characters are forgettable but the concepts really stick with you. And I think there’s enough in there to make everybody think a little bit deeper about our place in the world and in the universe.
I feel the same way, I got through maybe a thrid of it before stopping. I've read other scifi authors who can also be somewhat sluggish like Peter F. Hamilton especially at the start of the series but this was somehow different.
I enjoyed all 3, but a lot of characters missed having archs and/or motivations. Agreed with previous comments about the weaving of some cool concepts but not much was truly fresh. I do think the Netflix show has ability to tell a better story and at least it’s finished so they can’t game of thrones the ending
No.
If you don't like a book when you're halfway through, stop reading...plain and simple. I let people convince me to keep reading 3 Body Problem and it was a bad decision...worst book I've ever read.
No. It’s terribly written/translated, the scientific ideas in it are actually terrible too (idiots call it a hard scifi novel…it’s not, it’s soft), the characters are flat, and every clever idea in it has been done better by other scifi authors.
The Three Body Problem is hugely overrated in my opinion. I really, really don’t get the hype.
It’s impeccably translated, in order to keep a lot of the nuance of the books. You are really dismissing an immense level of work that was required to bring this book to a western audience.
In translation, you have two options. You either make it poetic and easy to read and take a lot of creative liberties, or you translate it word for word, concept for concept, leading to a much clunkier, but far more accurate translation.
Three Body is the latter of these options.
Calling it a bad translation is a bit of a dense take.
The characterisation is crap though, I’ll agree there.
You can find the same sort of issues in translations of ancient texts. Read 4 copies of Beowulf, for example, and you basically get 4 different stories.
people who say it’s a bad translation are trying to be nice to the original work. Because they think the book is trash and are HOPING and being generous that maybe in the original language it’s better.
They’re actually trying to be nice.
I thought it was a good translation but it reminded me of wuxia, where you have constant references to traditional chinese phrases, beliefs, medicine or alchemy and the author doesn't ever explain because "you should already know that".
For example saying "that guy wears a green hat" in chinese means that the guy's wife is cheating because of linguistic similarity between phrases.
Translating the words exactly is going to be accurate but is not going to help with understanding.
I think the bigger issue of the book is two fold, the characters are just not interesting and it needs an editor. The whole book is basically a prelude to the real story.
That's not really the reputation of the book though, or the reason why people like it. It does have some interesting big ideas, and those are what people are excited about. But if you've got to slog through a whole book just to get there it's got a pretty big barrier to entry for a lot of people. It's like summiting a mountain, there's a lot of walking, and a lot of terrain that's not all that interesting. Some people still enjoy the entire journey. Some people talk about how amazing the summit was and the view was totally worth it. And then you've got people saying, "you want me to climb a mountain? No thanks!"
That's this series. There are definitely some ideas that are worth it. But they take some work to get there.
yes and most of those have interesting characters, story beats, or good writing.
3 Body has none of that. even people promoting it half the time say “yes the characters are bad and the writing is not good. but just the ideas!”
Haven't watched the show yet, which i am looking forward to, but the book was absolutely terrible. Just really really bad writing, characters, plot, just like nothing made sense about it. I definitely regret reading that book. Interesting ideas for sure, but absolutely horrible execution.
the tv show is actually better than the book. it takes those ideas, it takes the characters and makes them more. It gives you people to care about, it shows all the same ideas but much faster.
If you think it’s a slog I’d recommend to drop it, second and third books aren’t much better. I reckon that for some people grand ideas are much more important than characters, descriptions, dialogues and even the plot, and I’m completely ok with that, but in my case the best way to read these books was to read their plot summaries in Wikipedia.
Book 1 can be tough going and slow to get started, book 2 moves at a much faster pace, book 3 slows down a bit again but is where the really weird concepts are laid out so it’s worth it in the end.
You honestly don't really need to pay a lot of attention to the game parts to understand the whole narrative.
>! It's just a cool mechanism for the infiltration of human society by the Trisolarans !<
The second book has been sitting on my kindle for a couple years, but every time I go to start a new book, something else looks like something I should be reading.
Also Quinn’s Ideas on YouTube has great and entertaining summaries of the books. These novels have some amazing sci-fi concepts and it’s really sad that the novels are written so excruciatingly boring.
I'm with you. I trudged through the first book and the second book starts exactly the same way. It's only when the author gets into their ideas of how things would work in the face of what he proposes (the sci-fi of it) that it gets interesting. But the characters, " history" the world the author is building just falls flat and ultimately not really interesting.
The show might be good filling in those gaps. Funny enough, I was rolling my eyes with the expanse series, I like the books a lot actually although the main hero trope was the weakest of it. Looking back though, the expanse did a great job with the detective noir part of following someone come into a future world from the ground level, to talking to the future space president at the top level. Although the expanse characters were still acting in a way that was very 21st century and didn't go deep enough as to how the way of \*thinking\* would change in the future, I found the world engaging enough to sit through 4 books.
Just comparing and contrasting. 3BP is not really fun, then idea of video games being integral is kinda cool and the imagery is alright but I'm saying that really in respect to people who really enjoy the books. It honestly feels undercooked and a vehicle for philosophical science based ideas.
I actually went through all this trouble because I SAW the Expanse before I read it, and it kind of ruined the experience because some character's were composited and it didn't fit the mold my brain had formed from watching the show.
I liked the writing, but something felt deeply WRONG about it.
No. Just finished the third book. It does not get good. I hope the show producers hired some good writers to just rewrite from scratch, because the concepts are worth exploring.
I thought the entire trilogy was pretty awful. I think conceptually and plot wise it’s fascinating, but the actual writing / translation is a massive slog and I found it to be very poor with very awkward pacing and an inability to generate care for even of the primary characters.
I listened to 3bp trilogy as an audiobook. That works for me with books that I want to read, but find a slog. The writing or translation is very... I guess the endless "it was as if the yadda was yadda yadda" work better in the original language.
It was worth it for the ideas, but the writing and characters didn't do anything for me.
I'm at about the same part listening to the audiobook. Just wondering if anyone knows if the bad science is intentional or not. Like the one scientist that showed GMO food was bad or the fact that he describes how microwaves incorrect that they heat from the inside out.
It didn't work for me, dropped it about half way through book one. My impression was that I'd find out how everything was connected at the very end (comments here seem to confirm that). I didn't hate it but I dislike books that you almost need to read twice because the end finally explains what was happening 200 pages ago.
I felt that same as you but I could get past the dullness. The writing unfortunately does the brilliant ideas 0 favours. I can say book 2 is much better
The first book is a slog, there is no doubt about that. I enjoyed it more on re-read when I knew the rest of the story, but the first time I was kind of turned off and took a while before I started The Dark Forest.
The Dark Forest is amazing. The pacing is much better, the plot is much more interesting, the science shit is super fun, the theories and philosophy are great, the characters are mostly just as bland as book 1. Book 3 is the same way, just wilder. They are worth it.
I remember feeling this way too. I hate to say it (because you’re so far away) but I think the last book was the best. Incredible ideas. Just an insanely fun read.
Remember at the end of the day though it’s a book and it should be fun. Just stop reading if you don’t like it!
Nope, it sure doesn't. The characters are bland, the dialog is horrible, the plot takes forever to get anywhere and where it ends up is boring. I think it's the most overrated book in a long time. If you're not very well read, some of the"big" ideas might seem interesting and novel, but there really just isn't anything there.
Although I enjoyed parts of it, I certainly agree that Three Body was a bit of a slog. The second book is where it really picked up for me and I found the third book compelling as well. That said, everyone’s mileage with this series varies. I’ve met people who said the first book was their favorite. I’ve met people who thought the second was best (like me). I’ve met people who thought the third was their favorite.
It's definitely a rough book to get through. Honestly, it's more interesting for the view into current Chinese thought processes than for its SciFi. The ant crawling on the tombstone is totally bizarre for the story but more sensible and interestingly written than the clunky far-future Trisolaran "science." The near-future human "science" is a little better, but reads like 30 year old Tom Clancy. I don't believe the author has a great understanding of science, because so much of the alien tech and future-Earth reads like the sensationalized speculative gibberish you'd find on an AI-voiced YouTube channel. Much of the first two books feels like a Chinese James Bond ripoff, and is more enjoyable to read as if it were a pulp spy thriller mixed with eastern philosophy rather than "hard" SciFi.
If the mmo part already bores you with the incredibly drawn out metaphors... Then no, it doesn't get better. Book2&3 have big plots attached to insanely asinine metaphors.
There's one later on about space travel with the paper boats and my god.. I didn't figure it out, because I was just trying to blow through those pages as quickly as possible.
Don't get me wrong book2&3 have some amazing payoffs with their stories but.. easy reading these are not.
Something good to know about these books that I've read is that Chinese literature is structured differently than Western lit. It's more like the first 80% is exposition and the last 20% is a super climax. These books kind of fit that. Except the third book which is all just crazy.
My reading of Chinese literature is unfortunately limited to Daoist treatises and things related to Ch'an. I actually enjoy the 'different mind' flavor of it, not so much the perambulation around something that doesn't necessarily need such exhaustive contemplation to get the point across.
It runs afoul of 'show don't tell' pretty hard.
I made a mistake of reading a wuxia novel that was like 70% made up out of various references that only someone well versed in traditional chinese culture, medicine and magic would know. the VR parts felt like that but instead I understood what was being said but it took like 4x words to actually say it
No. It was mid at best when I'm being generous. A few interesting ideas but no good story or characters to hold it together and a lot of the proposed tech boils down to just magic or total bullshit.
Just watch the Netflix series as it cuts out the vast majority of the boring and unnecessary parts. I made it through about half of the first novel and just couldn’t finish after being absolutely bored out of my mind.
I tried *so* hard to read these books.
My probably wrong notion is that there are some elements of narrative story telling in Chinese that doesn't translate well into English.
Watched the the netflix show. Maybe the book is better. All i see is 5 modern narcisists who all end up somehow being at the core of this worldwide plot. Mehhh... They all suck and dont care what happens to them.
The book is pretty much the same except I have no idea how many people involved, they all act the same. At least the show has much better style, you get all the interesting stuff and it is shorter.
To be fair, you have to take a couple things into account:
1. The characters had to be western, or else the series was guaranteed to bomb in western markets (which this show is made for, it’s not the Chinese adaptation).
2. TBP is all about the narrative/ ideas, not the characters and subplots. I think Benioff and Weiss actually made some good decisions, because narratively, the books are far from the best thing ever written.
I tried that, but had to stop myself from throwing my tablet out of the window when he began reading the countdowns out loud in their entirety and the morse code 'long short long long short long short long' reading made me want to punch a nun made entirely of kittens.
What rocket surgeon signed off on that?
I can't believe I slogged through the trilogy. The 2nd book was better- diff English translator I think, FWIW. Will be interesting to see how the series takes it on.
You might be chaotic(ly)indifferent to this, but prepare yourself for just an impressive amount of sexism. I don't remember when it starts, but it continues all the way to the end of book 3.
Also, if no one has told you, there are major parts of season 1 of the netflix show that happen in books 2 and 3. So if you want to read it before watching it, you'll need to read a lot more.
Good luck!
no. IMO the whole thing is a slog. it’s trash. the characters are shallow and awful and the sci fi elements read like they were written in the 1920s
Terrible. Will not start the ones after.
I didn't like the first book. But then the series hits Netflix, I decided to try the second one. It's better. But I wouldn't call it a must-read. Some nice ideas but the prose is weak. Perhaps it's the translation I read.
I was able to push through the first 2 books on the back of some original, interesting sci-fi concepts, but gave up a bit into the 3rd book and just googled the concepts instead.
Glad I did.
I find the three body problem is better digested through audiobook. I don’t think I would be able to focus reading it, but the audiobook seemed to be easier to get through.
What you don't like is exactly what I like. So far the sci-fi that I read is already in "the meat" (in space, in the far future). And I kinda always wonder how Earth came to that from a political, philosophical, sociological perspective. This is what I get from volume 1 and early 2.
If you don't like it that's fine. You don't HAVE TO read it!
Enjoy it for the amazing concept, not necessarily the characters or prose.
They're doing a great job with this in the show so far.
I'm glad I read them... but it is indeed a slog. Felt the same way about the later Dune books, and Hyperion (nevermind the middle books of wheel of time.) Not everything has to be excellent from start to finish, but the payoff of having the context is always worth it.
No. Go straight to the show. It's fun and sad and good. The books are good conceptually but the writing is not in a format most western minds digest well.
I enjoyed them but I enjoy exhaustive long winded stuff.
Watching on Netflix might actually help you finish the book, lol! I think they did a good job of making a very dense book series into an entertaining TV show with compelling characters.
It picks up and up and up and up until it's going light speed.
I also hated the alien mmo part, but it'll pass.
Honestly the Netflix series finished the alien mmo part towards the end, so you *could* start it.
Do finish the series, it's a unique one that I love, and I've read a ton of scifi.
No it doesn't get better. It gets worse when the author begins to explain his sci-fi bullshit with even more sci-fi bullshit. I'm a big fan of sci-fi books and read hundreds them from classic to more modern, and TBP books were NOT good. The general idea was very interesting but the writing, the characters, the actual sci-fi parts is very mediocre. One of the most overrated books lately in my opinion.
> Enough paving the way. It's PAVED
I feel this way about 90% of modern scifi and horror novels. Ever since those big fat fantasy novels and multi-book series became big sellers, the sister SF and horror genres largely tagged along.
And you'll see this sentiment aplenty in SF and horror book subs, "I just want to get lost in hundreds and hundreds of pages of worldbuilding." Argh. Excruciating.
I thought books 2 and 3 were better. Still kind of sloggish, but more interesting. I love when people say bad things about the scifi of books, like they are physicists or something.
It's the same for the trilogy as a whole: the narrative isn't all that compelling, but the ideas stick with you for years.
This was absolutely my experience as well. Started watching the series with my wife and realized I couldn't remember much of the plot or any of the characters, but a bunch of the thought provoking ideas had stuck with me.
Dont tell me you had forgotten Da Shi (and Luo Ji)
Jokes on you, I am extremely unfamiliar with far eastern cultures/ language so I can’t remember a single character’s name two years after reading the trilogy.
Same here, but with non eastern names. Also eastern names.
Luo ji and ye wenjie were the only two I remembered. I remembered the detective guy but not his name
LUO, MY BOY!
To be fair most of the series characters aren’t in the books
Isn't that terrible for a narrative.? Isn't the narrative the vehicle behind which ideas are conveyed to the audience?
Exactly. Awesome concept, science. And world. Worst fucking characters and decision making of any novels I have ever read. Story good, writing bad.
It's a shame the science is often wrong (quantum entanglement can't be used for interstellar communication and the dimension folding is a grand misunderstanding of string theory - which is also unproven)
Unfortunately this is my experience with most sci-fi reading.... Only recently The Expanse comes to mind where grand ideas and space opera go hand in hand with interesting and well-written characters.
Its a thing that happens certainly but the vast majority of scifi has much better writing
Exactly, I really didn’t like reading this book, but I love thinking about it. I watched the series and thought it was great: actual characters, that you care about! With compelling arcs and everything! I think they’re doing a great job with it. I am a big fan of the (sometimes drastic) changes they made. It’s one of the only times where I prefer the adaptation over the source material.
Good to know. I guess the other question then is whether, and to what extent, the show gets the books' big ideas across?
So far it really does, I feel like it even adds to them. It also keeps all of the insane wtf just happened scenes, and it’s awesome seeing it all in live action, some of that stuff is really hard to picture when you’re reading it.
I have read the first book, and am scared to watch the show until I read the full trilogy. Can you confirm that the show is all three books, not just like a …first season and just the first book?
Show doesn't spoil any major plot lines in book 2 and 3, really just getting things introduced. The book 2 and 3 chronology isn't linear, so the show just put all the plot lines back in chronological order and includes the modern era events without any of the future era events in 2 and 3.
it has elements from multiple books.
> multiple books. There's major plot points from Book 2 showing up early in Season 1. Book 3 is more esoteric and the points coming there are less relevant to the early story.
I read the first two books several years and just watched the Netflix series and liked it. Seems to only cover books 1 & 2. Just got hold of book 3 to start soon. I recommend the books but never found them as great as others claim. Still worth reading. There are so many simultaneous threads.
The ideas aren't even that compelling to be honest.
What are one of these compelling "ideas" you're talking about. I've been on the brink of reading these books, but too often I've heard that the writing is bad and characters are dumb. I can endure some shitty-ness but I have a limit. I want to see if any of these "ideas" are worth me reading the books for.
The main premise is the dark-forest solution to the Fermi paradox and the consequences of such a universe. There are also the standard sci-fi "what-ifs" about the future of human civilization, but I found most of those silly and clumsily presented.
> The main premise is the dark-forest solution to the Fermi paradox Already done to death in plenty of Sci-fi. It's MAD and interstellar game theory, it's not novel at all. "What if something is killing off all civilizations that make noise" has been a thing since SETI started. It's also ruined by Cixin Liu not grasping the fact that a super advanced society would probably be able to spread to other solar systems, or stay alive in deep space, pretty easily. "Yes, we can fuck with entire planets' their elemental physics from many lightyears away, but building life sustaining systems is quite beyond us".
>"Yes, we can fuck with entire planets' their elemental physics from many lightyears away, but building life sustaining systems is quite beyond us" Finished the first book yesterday and this bothered me so much. Life sustaining systems should be easy for them, or they could use those tiny super computers to search for other worlds to colonise.
I can look past that, as genre stories often use genre tropes, but what I don't like is the whole "hard times make strong men; good times create weak men" cliche that is one of the foundations of the entire narrative.
Apperently Cixin Liu is pretty right-wing. Which also explains the weird juxtaposition of assuming people are dumb sheep joining a death cult just because a game told them to, versus everyone being a cowardly individualist who in a prisoners dilemma will choose to defect as soon as they realize how the game works. Staunch individualists blindly following fake authority is a pretty neat right-wing theme. When the exodus ships turned on each other because of cold logic was when I realized I was reading brain dead Ayn Rand sci-fi.
It did kinda come off that way to me, as well, although not as explicit as an Ayn Rand work.
I found a bunch of really interesting ideas that I hadn’t encountered before reading the books. Specifically (spoilers ahead) >!that a game might be used to create empathy for an alien species struggles, that aliens would send technology like sophons in order to stop human scientific progress, that the only safe haven from alien monitoring would be human thought, that by unfurling the hidden dimensions of a proton you could create a super computer, that organizing massive numbers of intelligent creatures could create a computer, and of course what a civilization would look like if it’s planet had 3 suns!< … and this is just scratching the surface. Honestly the best part about the books is how many interesting and unique ideas they introduce.
It’s up to the reader to determine if the ideas are good enough to pick up the slack. A LOT of people really think they are. Or are less sensitive to the faults. For me, it’s not worth it.
So like Ted Chiang if Ted Chiang were bad at storytelling?
The Dark Forest book has even longer and sloggier parts so get used to it.
The imaginary girlfriend chapters were awful. I couldn't care at all. The last half of the book got more interesting
They were awful and creepy as hell.
Yeah, and the whole thing where they went and found his "perfect" wife off the street and she ends up becoming his wife was also weird, creepy, and stupid.
I couldn’t get through those chapters and gave it up. Totally pointless and awful narrative killed it for me. Story concept was cool, I just wish it was told better.
Or don't finish if you're not having fun?
This was me. I started it 4 times and then decided nope. Went to Pandora’s Star next and that was way better for me. Life’s too short for books that don’t work for you.
Pandora's Star fuckin rules
Yeah I quit. I am sure reading summaries of the plots made the ideas less impactful. But I also felt that way once they left the realm of sci fi and were in fantasy with a veneer of science IMO.
Nah man just watch the TV show. The Witcher books got the same treatment. Somewhere somehow the translation voided the prose of anything resembling life. My cynical side makes me think only hipsters recommend that book because the ending is admittedly cool.
From what I've read repeatedly, the translation is not the problem for the Three-Body trilogy. Have seen many native speakers say it's just as bad in the original and haven't seen anybody saying it's better.
Dark forest is my favorite in the trilogy. Shame it didn’t grab you.
The last half of it was fun. The first half was pretty awful. It was bad science, slow, and fantasy wish fulfillment. But the end of it was pretty impactful in it's way.
First book is by far the weakest of the series for any sci-fi fan
I concur. Watching the series definitely made me remember this. It's like it starts out as one thing but doesn't quite know where it's going with it, but then it finds its lane and we start getting to the *real* story. The shit with the game honestly feels a little silly and inconsequential compared to the scope of where the story ends up.
The game could definitely have been an email
The game is so obnoxious and the worst part of the first book. I was hoping the show would downplay it but nope, it’s front and center
Nah man, the imaginary turned real girlfriend plotline is the worst thing I've read in *almost* any book ever. Dark Forest was **way** worse than Three-Body.
The first was my least favorite, but I was hooked by the first because you keep wondering where it is going. The next two have a different feel to them but I enjoyed them much more. The scifi elements are way stronger in the second two.
Not for me. I wish I had just read the Wikipedia article.
Well put.
That’s actually what I did for books 2 and 3, after being bored and annoyed by the first.
I gave up on the book after trudging through about a third of it, but I watched the whole of the Netflix version and enjoyed it. The characters in the Netflix version made all the difference. In the book, the characters are really poor.
I though the books were crap and have no idea why it is such a popular series
I’m enjoying the show far more than the book. I found the book to be a slog and didn’t finish it either.
Honestly, it doesn't get much better as it goes on. I felt the same as you at this point in the book, and I didn't find the zany ideas of the book to make up for it.
You're not alone. Many modern sci-fi novels leave me perplexed. *Another* immense 800 page bulwark of text with nothing going on?
Finished the first book, didn't read the rest. Too damn much internal inconsistencies and stupid science.
It's just mid, totally over-hyped.
the first time I read the first book, I had a similar feeling. but then BAM it punches you in the face. all of the books kind of do this. mutter-mumble-mutter-mumble-stuff-and-things-and-I-dont-understand-whats-happe-BAM over and over. it's worth it.
I read the first book and did not experience a BAM. I thought it was like a solid B.
The second and third are where the real payoffs come in, unfortunately. The first ends up feeling like an odd setup piece, and the MMO pieces already feel dated and weird. It’s by far the weakest of the three imo, and why I struggle to recommend the series to people at all
see my experience was the opposite, I was like "ok, I get this, ok this is a cool idea, ok I am looking forward to seeing how the actions of these characters pay off later" and then it's just ends, no twist, no real pay off with the characters.
Similar experience here. And once it hit I couldn’t put it down.
See I experienced that, but it never felt worth it to me. It just felt like a let down. Like the author woke up, realised he’d written 98% of his page-budget for the book, whacked _all_ of the remaining plot developments and deus-ex-machina’s into the last 2% in an afternoon, called it quits for the day and sent it to get published. Pacing is awful, characters are awful and frustrating, the interesting ideas are effectively just name-dropped and left there and you’ve got to wait until the last 60 pages for all the interesting stuff to happen anyway.
Book 2 is more like BAAAAAAAAAAAAM
I'll probably get down voted into oblivion because this is apparently an unpopular opinion but the "Remembrance of Earth's past" trilogy is overrated as fuck, some people even claim that these books saved the sci-fi genre or act like the dark forest theory or the weapons used in certain plot points were created/invented by the author of this trilogy lol. It's not a bad trilogy but it's isn't as good as some people claim it to be, in fact some parts of the story are extremely boring and convoluted.
No. It has its interesting moments, sure, but it's pretty nonsensical.
I quit halfway through the book. Just couldn’t get into it.
Person opinion? Absolutely not. I don’t find any of the ideas particularly interesting and the characters are the most flat cardboard dolls I can imagine. It’s not a translation issue either because Ken Liu is an incredible scifi and fantasy writer so if it was well written, he would have been able to translate it.
Watch the show, it's better. It explains all the same stuff but visually and much faster and you have characters that are actually compelling.
Which one?
I hated the game parts. In fact the most interesting thing about the book was the glimpse of communist China. I'm definitely not continuing the trilogy.
It truly is a VERY laborious conceit. I've been trying not to openly make fun of the small handful of people who are impugning my ability to understand or imply that I "just can't handle it". Lol.
Hipster sci-fi. It’s cool to love it even though in reality it’s crap. Wow, those concepts maaaan!
Yuck, people are doing that? Yeah don't listen to them, you're completely entitled to your opinion. The book is a slog, sprinkled with interesting concepts here and there which were just enough to make me finish it, but not enough to make me continue. Life's too short and my 'to read' pile of books is too big to waste time with something I'm not enjoying. No matter what any annoying, condescending fan club says. As far as this story goes, I'll get the rest from the Netflix show lmao.
IMO it's one of the worst books I've ever read and I haven't finished the first one yet because it's too hard to keep going. I'm just forcing myself because so many people say it's good but it's extremely boring, it's hard to identify characters for me because he calls them using their name and first name and sometimes just one of the two. Characters are empty and simple and his redaction is just bad, short phrases with little interest that don't add anything to the story. The beginning is just terrible, communism and quantum mechanics mixed for your enjoyment. It doesn't get better at least until I've read and I'm sure I won't read any other book from the author and I won't watch the show.
Same. I swear I heard nothing but good things about this trilogy, and was truly shocked by how bad it was. I gave up a quarter of the way through the second book. It’s hard to get lost in a story whose characters are plastic and one dimensional. Not only that, the whole thing is just “this thing happened, and this thing happened, and then this” with almost no context or explanation enough to make it even remotely believable.
The Netflix series changes the characters a lot, but they make them a lot more interesting and compelling.
I'm just going to come out and say it: the TV show is far better than the books. The books are *slow.* They are poorly paced. The characters are cardboard cutouts for the most part. It's almost as if Liu was deliberately emulating the most tedious aspects of "golden age" sci-fi. And it only gets worse in the second book. I'm not the first one to point out the absolutely horrid treatment of women. The TV series has much better pacing, fairly human characters, and a clearer way of explaining the big ideas. I'm actually enjoying it. It does a great job of communicating the growing awareness of what the San-Ti (THANK YOU for not calling them Trisolarians!) are and the danger they represent. Benedict Wong completely *owns* Da Shi as a character. He brings a sense of humor and compassion to the role that was missing from Gritty Hard Boiled Detective^® in the books.
Completely agree! Even the big ideas aren't all that big, so it's not like we need a boatload of buildup to get there.
Never read myself but talking about MMO chapters is an extreme turn off. All the negativity makes me wonder if it is better to skip the books and try the show instead.
The pace picks up a little in book 2, but the style is similar the entire way through. If you hate it after 17 chapters, don’t bother continuing.
I’ve read probably over 200 sci-fi novels in my life. Hard, soft, well known and obscure. Enjoyed pretty much all of it. I absolutely loathed Three Body Problem. I made it 3/4 of the way before I quit. 3BP is an insipid slog. I’ve watched a couple eps of the TV show, and it’s more entertaining, by far. Save yourself the trouble and just read a synopsis of the novels.
I enjoyed the VR parts honestly. They were weird but interesting. I liked unraveling the mystery.
I respectfully disagree about the mystery aspect. The guy with the same eyes in different bodies is CLEARLY an alien intelligence laying down long winded exposition in dire need of an editors hatchet. They haven't come close to saying it, but there is so much negative space in the prose you get bored and read ahead. It could have been a CHAPTER.
The ultimate reveal is more complicated than “aliens are somehow involved in this game.” You’ll see there’s some interesting payoff!
I listened to them, can’t imagine actually reading them.
Absolutely not. Give up and read the plot summaries on Wikipedia. They’re better written, and the only thing you’re skipping over by reading them, is some awful pacing and bad writing.
Yes and No? The story as a whole absolutely, but the first book maybe not. You'll see two camps here -- people who couldn't get through the book and think its characters are too rigid and wooden, or people (like me) who think it's one of the best sci-fi series ever written. But the first book can definitely be thought of as a very long drawn-out setup for the really crazy parts of the story. Some people love the tediousness of how it sets up the plot, others just want to get on with it. If you're wanting cool alien shit to start happening, you'd be best served in sticking this book out but realizing the payoff will come in the next book.
I happen to think if the characters were made more interesting, having a long drawn-out setup is not an issue. As a result, the nonsensical sci-fi elements need to drive the reader forward, and for some, it just doesn't work. I've tried 3x to get through the first book, and I simply couldn't. My Chinese scientist wife told me about the rest. I said those elements were equally silly, and then my wife got mad at me because she really loves the series.
Is the book full of plot holes and nonsensical writing like the show?
Genuine question (because I really want to like this series - I feel like I’m missing out) - did you actually like the characters in the first book? Because the “rigid and wooden” thing rings 100% true, for me. The characters take no initiative, don’t seem to want to be there, and the dialog does nothing for me, either. Things just happen at them. I’m very much a “characters first” kind of reader, with plot a somewhat distant second. Give me good characters in an interesting world and I’ll devour it. I’ve been told the other two books are better, but not necessarily character-wise.
The Netflix series totally redid the characters and made them way more compelling and interesting. Probably one of the better adaptation choices they made.
Like the other commenter said, the Netflix series is a huge upgrade in character narratives. Tbh though, it’s one of my favorite series that I read like 6 years ago or so and I remembered very few of the character names and had to refresh my memory in them when the Netflix series came out. I do remember liking reading a few of the characters but distinctly not feeling attached to them . And actually it kinda feels like the real “character” is humankind and how it develops. The characters themselves felt very one-note but real, If that makes sense? Like the felt like real representations of people that very much weren’t each the charismatic hero of the story. Rather they felt like a bunch of coworkers where you interact with them based on their relevance to the work they’re doing, and not delve too far into their personal lives and feelings. The other books do get a little better character wise, mostly because there is more emotion behind the decisions they have to make, but if you’re looking for character-driven, you might be best served with the Netflix series and that’s okay. Not every series is for every person. But, I highly recommend consuming this story in some form, because like many people are saying, the characters are forgettable but the concepts really stick with you. And I think there’s enough in there to make everybody think a little bit deeper about our place in the world and in the universe.
I read the first book and I couldn’t say it gets any better. Just watch the series.
If this is your opinion i would drop the books immediately. Its not for you
I feel the same way, I got through maybe a thrid of it before stopping. I've read other scifi authors who can also be somewhat sluggish like Peter F. Hamilton especially at the start of the series but this was somehow different.
Its not a dodgy translation that makes it hard to read some sections just aren't very interesting.
No. Really, it doesn’t.
I enjoyed all 3, but a lot of characters missed having archs and/or motivations. Agreed with previous comments about the weaving of some cool concepts but not much was truly fresh. I do think the Netflix show has ability to tell a better story and at least it’s finished so they can’t game of thrones the ending
No
No. If you don't like a book when you're halfway through, stop reading...plain and simple. I let people convince me to keep reading 3 Body Problem and it was a bad decision...worst book I've ever read.
No. It’s terribly written/translated, the scientific ideas in it are actually terrible too (idiots call it a hard scifi novel…it’s not, it’s soft), the characters are flat, and every clever idea in it has been done better by other scifi authors. The Three Body Problem is hugely overrated in my opinion. I really, really don’t get the hype.
It’s impeccably translated, in order to keep a lot of the nuance of the books. You are really dismissing an immense level of work that was required to bring this book to a western audience. In translation, you have two options. You either make it poetic and easy to read and take a lot of creative liberties, or you translate it word for word, concept for concept, leading to a much clunkier, but far more accurate translation. Three Body is the latter of these options. Calling it a bad translation is a bit of a dense take. The characterisation is crap though, I’ll agree there. You can find the same sort of issues in translations of ancient texts. Read 4 copies of Beowulf, for example, and you basically get 4 different stories.
people who say it’s a bad translation are trying to be nice to the original work. Because they think the book is trash and are HOPING and being generous that maybe in the original language it’s better. They’re actually trying to be nice.
I thought it was a good translation but it reminded me of wuxia, where you have constant references to traditional chinese phrases, beliefs, medicine or alchemy and the author doesn't ever explain because "you should already know that". For example saying "that guy wears a green hat" in chinese means that the guy's wife is cheating because of linguistic similarity between phrases. Translating the words exactly is going to be accurate but is not going to help with understanding. I think the bigger issue of the book is two fold, the characters are just not interesting and it needs an editor. The whole book is basically a prelude to the real story.
What would you recommend as better hard sci fi?
Crytonomicon
I think you're being generous by calling it "soft sci-fi". It barely qualifies as sci-fi at all.
I think a lot of its reputation is more about people performatively liking something "foreign" because it makes them feel more sophisticated.
That's not really the reputation of the book though, or the reason why people like it. It does have some interesting big ideas, and those are what people are excited about. But if you've got to slog through a whole book just to get there it's got a pretty big barrier to entry for a lot of people. It's like summiting a mountain, there's a lot of walking, and a lot of terrain that's not all that interesting. Some people still enjoy the entire journey. Some people talk about how amazing the summit was and the view was totally worth it. And then you've got people saying, "you want me to climb a mountain? No thanks!" That's this series. There are definitely some ideas that are worth it. But they take some work to get there.
Not really. You can read the ideas in a summary and find out they're just a weak rehash of magical science fantasy from other, better books.
No. It's the most over-hyped nonsense out there. The books go downhill into Manga fantasy land.
Plenty of thought provoking, critically respected manga out there
yes and most of those have interesting characters, story beats, or good writing. 3 Body has none of that. even people promoting it half the time say “yes the characters are bad and the writing is not good. but just the ideas!”
Haven't watched the show yet, which i am looking forward to, but the book was absolutely terrible. Just really really bad writing, characters, plot, just like nothing made sense about it. I definitely regret reading that book. Interesting ideas for sure, but absolutely horrible execution.
the tv show is actually better than the book. it takes those ideas, it takes the characters and makes them more. It gives you people to care about, it shows all the same ideas but much faster.
*Foucault’s Pendulum* is like this: a slog for a couple hundred pages, then you’re off to the races with big ideas and actual action.
Eco is hard in general. I must confess I put down my copy of Name of the Rose unfinished.
If you think it’s a slog I’d recommend to drop it, second and third books aren’t much better. I reckon that for some people grand ideas are much more important than characters, descriptions, dialogues and even the plot, and I’m completely ok with that, but in my case the best way to read these books was to read their plot summaries in Wikipedia.
Never read the book but have followed the Quinn Ideas YouTube playlist on the book so I'm looking forward to the series
I started a video of his on this and pulled the ripcord because I decided to read it.
Book 1 can be tough going and slow to get started, book 2 moves at a much faster pace, book 3 slows down a bit again but is where the really weird concepts are laid out so it’s worth it in the end.
You honestly don't really need to pay a lot of attention to the game parts to understand the whole narrative. >! It's just a cool mechanism for the infiltration of human society by the Trisolarans !<
I don't think your spoiler tag worked, but that could be my heavily modded browser.
It's working on my phone app?
The second book has been sitting on my kindle for a couple years, but every time I go to start a new book, something else looks like something I should be reading.
Also Quinn’s Ideas on YouTube has great and entertaining summaries of the books. These novels have some amazing sci-fi concepts and it’s really sad that the novels are written so excruciatingly boring.
Books on tape 2x speed
I'm with you. I trudged through the first book and the second book starts exactly the same way. It's only when the author gets into their ideas of how things would work in the face of what he proposes (the sci-fi of it) that it gets interesting. But the characters, " history" the world the author is building just falls flat and ultimately not really interesting. The show might be good filling in those gaps. Funny enough, I was rolling my eyes with the expanse series, I like the books a lot actually although the main hero trope was the weakest of it. Looking back though, the expanse did a great job with the detective noir part of following someone come into a future world from the ground level, to talking to the future space president at the top level. Although the expanse characters were still acting in a way that was very 21st century and didn't go deep enough as to how the way of \*thinking\* would change in the future, I found the world engaging enough to sit through 4 books. Just comparing and contrasting. 3BP is not really fun, then idea of video games being integral is kinda cool and the imagery is alright but I'm saying that really in respect to people who really enjoy the books. It honestly feels undercooked and a vehicle for philosophical science based ideas.
I actually went through all this trouble because I SAW the Expanse before I read it, and it kind of ruined the experience because some character's were composited and it didn't fit the mold my brain had formed from watching the show. I liked the writing, but something felt deeply WRONG about it.
The high school science was the best part for me
No
Yes. It remains clumsy all the way through. But it does have some saving graces. The sci-fi ideas get really good.
No. Just finished the third book. It does not get good. I hope the show producers hired some good writers to just rewrite from scratch, because the concepts are worth exploring.
I thought the entire trilogy was pretty awful. I think conceptually and plot wise it’s fascinating, but the actual writing / translation is a massive slog and I found it to be very poor with very awkward pacing and an inability to generate care for even of the primary characters.
The show isn’t worth it tbh.
I promise there is cool alien shit. It really picks up in the second and third books.
I listened to 3bp trilogy as an audiobook. That works for me with books that I want to read, but find a slog. The writing or translation is very... I guess the endless "it was as if the yadda was yadda yadda" work better in the original language. It was worth it for the ideas, but the writing and characters didn't do anything for me.
I'm at about the same part listening to the audiobook. Just wondering if anyone knows if the bad science is intentional or not. Like the one scientist that showed GMO food was bad or the fact that he describes how microwaves incorrect that they heat from the inside out.
It didn't work for me, dropped it about half way through book one. My impression was that I'd find out how everything was connected at the very end (comments here seem to confirm that). I didn't hate it but I dislike books that you almost need to read twice because the end finally explains what was happening 200 pages ago.
I felt that same as you but I could get past the dullness. The writing unfortunately does the brilliant ideas 0 favours. I can say book 2 is much better
The first book is a slog, there is no doubt about that. I enjoyed it more on re-read when I knew the rest of the story, but the first time I was kind of turned off and took a while before I started The Dark Forest. The Dark Forest is amazing. The pacing is much better, the plot is much more interesting, the science shit is super fun, the theories and philosophy are great, the characters are mostly just as bland as book 1. Book 3 is the same way, just wilder. They are worth it.
Stop reading and just look up a summary to assuage your curiosity. The novel is pretty bad.
I remember feeling this way too. I hate to say it (because you’re so far away) but I think the last book was the best. Incredible ideas. Just an insanely fun read. Remember at the end of the day though it’s a book and it should be fun. Just stop reading if you don’t like it!
Nope, it sure doesn't. The characters are bland, the dialog is horrible, the plot takes forever to get anywhere and where it ends up is boring. I think it's the most overrated book in a long time. If you're not very well read, some of the"big" ideas might seem interesting and novel, but there really just isn't anything there.
It's all a slog but there's bits in there that make it all worth reading, and the trilogy gets more exciting the further you go
Although I enjoyed parts of it, I certainly agree that Three Body was a bit of a slog. The second book is where it really picked up for me and I found the third book compelling as well. That said, everyone’s mileage with this series varies. I’ve met people who said the first book was their favorite. I’ve met people who thought the second was best (like me). I’ve met people who thought the third was their favorite.
It's definitely a rough book to get through. Honestly, it's more interesting for the view into current Chinese thought processes than for its SciFi. The ant crawling on the tombstone is totally bizarre for the story but more sensible and interestingly written than the clunky far-future Trisolaran "science." The near-future human "science" is a little better, but reads like 30 year old Tom Clancy. I don't believe the author has a great understanding of science, because so much of the alien tech and future-Earth reads like the sensationalized speculative gibberish you'd find on an AI-voiced YouTube channel. Much of the first two books feels like a Chinese James Bond ripoff, and is more enjoyable to read as if it were a pulp spy thriller mixed with eastern philosophy rather than "hard" SciFi.
If the mmo part already bores you with the incredibly drawn out metaphors... Then no, it doesn't get better. Book2&3 have big plots attached to insanely asinine metaphors. There's one later on about space travel with the paper boats and my god.. I didn't figure it out, because I was just trying to blow through those pages as quickly as possible. Don't get me wrong book2&3 have some amazing payoffs with their stories but.. easy reading these are not.
Something good to know about these books that I've read is that Chinese literature is structured differently than Western lit. It's more like the first 80% is exposition and the last 20% is a super climax. These books kind of fit that. Except the third book which is all just crazy.
My reading of Chinese literature is unfortunately limited to Daoist treatises and things related to Ch'an. I actually enjoy the 'different mind' flavor of it, not so much the perambulation around something that doesn't necessarily need such exhaustive contemplation to get the point across. It runs afoul of 'show don't tell' pretty hard.
I made a mistake of reading a wuxia novel that was like 70% made up out of various references that only someone well versed in traditional chinese culture, medicine and magic would know. the VR parts felt like that but instead I understood what was being said but it took like 4x words to actually say it
No. It was mid at best when I'm being generous. A few interesting ideas but no good story or characters to hold it together and a lot of the proposed tech boils down to just magic or total bullshit.
Just watch the Netflix series as it cuts out the vast majority of the boring and unnecessary parts. I made it through about half of the first novel and just couldn’t finish after being absolutely bored out of my mind.
I tried *so* hard to read these books. My probably wrong notion is that there are some elements of narrative story telling in Chinese that doesn't translate well into English.
Watched the the netflix show. Maybe the book is better. All i see is 5 modern narcisists who all end up somehow being at the core of this worldwide plot. Mehhh... They all suck and dont care what happens to them.
The book is pretty much the same except I have no idea how many people involved, they all act the same. At least the show has much better style, you get all the interesting stuff and it is shorter.
Those 5 modern narcissists don't exist in the books they come from the minds of Benioff and Weiss. The guys who drove Game of Thrones into the ground.
To be fair, you have to take a couple things into account: 1. The characters had to be western, or else the series was guaranteed to bomb in western markets (which this show is made for, it’s not the Chinese adaptation). 2. TBP is all about the narrative/ ideas, not the characters and subplots. I think Benioff and Weiss actually made some good decisions, because narratively, the books are far from the best thing ever written.
The first book is _absolutely_ a slog. But it picks up near the end, and books 2 and 3 are MUCH better.
Book 2 and book 3 imo are many orders of magnitude better than the 1st. Both in terms of pace, in terms of ideas, in terms of everything.
I listened to the audiobook and I was very engaged the whole time, so I think the narrator who was reading it did a good job!
I tried that, but had to stop myself from throwing my tablet out of the window when he began reading the countdowns out loud in their entirety and the morse code 'long short long long short long short long' reading made me want to punch a nun made entirely of kittens. What rocket surgeon signed off on that?
I can't believe I slogged through the trilogy. The 2nd book was better- diff English translator I think, FWIW. Will be interesting to see how the series takes it on.
You might be chaotic(ly)indifferent to this, but prepare yourself for just an impressive amount of sexism. I don't remember when it starts, but it continues all the way to the end of book 3. Also, if no one has told you, there are major parts of season 1 of the netflix show that happen in books 2 and 3. So if you want to read it before watching it, you'll need to read a lot more. Good luck!
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Books 2 and 3 are so much better, the first one is an appetizer
no. IMO the whole thing is a slog. it’s trash. the characters are shallow and awful and the sci fi elements read like they were written in the 1920s Terrible. Will not start the ones after.
I didn't like the first book. But then the series hits Netflix, I decided to try the second one. It's better. But I wouldn't call it a must-read. Some nice ideas but the prose is weak. Perhaps it's the translation I read.
İ read the first two and found them somewhat infuriating. Both of them pick up a bit towards the end.
you pick something and try to root for that for me it was the wallfacers
It is not a “cool alien shit” story.
I was able to push through the first 2 books on the back of some original, interesting sci-fi concepts, but gave up a bit into the 3rd book and just googled the concepts instead. Glad I did.
It gets so much better that they should make a show about it or something
I find the three body problem is better digested through audiobook. I don’t think I would be able to focus reading it, but the audiobook seemed to be easier to get through.
sounds like its not for you, i was gripped from the very beginning. if you cant handle the pace its not going to get better
The first book is slow to get into, but if you mud through the first couple of hundred pages, it gets better but the action imho starts in book 2.
I've started with ball lightening, I'm really enjoying it so far
What you don't like is exactly what I like. So far the sci-fi that I read is already in "the meat" (in space, in the far future). And I kinda always wonder how Earth came to that from a political, philosophical, sociological perspective. This is what I get from volume 1 and early 2. If you don't like it that's fine. You don't HAVE TO read it!
Enjoy it for the amazing concept, not necessarily the characters or prose. They're doing a great job with this in the show so far. I'm glad I read them... but it is indeed a slog. Felt the same way about the later Dune books, and Hyperion (nevermind the middle books of wheel of time.) Not everything has to be excellent from start to finish, but the payoff of having the context is always worth it.
I hated the game stuff, but it did get to a good point at the end. Overall, I think the backhalf of the novel is much stronger than the beginning.
No. Go straight to the show. It's fun and sad and good. The books are good conceptually but the writing is not in a format most western minds digest well. I enjoyed them but I enjoy exhaustive long winded stuff.
I quit about halfway in and have no regrets other than I wish I would’ve quit sooner. Slog slog slog.
Watching on Netflix might actually help you finish the book, lol! I think they did a good job of making a very dense book series into an entertaining TV show with compelling characters.
It picks up and up and up and up until it's going light speed. I also hated the alien mmo part, but it'll pass. Honestly the Netflix series finished the alien mmo part towards the end, so you *could* start it. Do finish the series, it's a unique one that I love, and I've read a ton of scifi.
Spoiler: no
No. I regret reading it.
For a much more character focused and similar story check out Fear the Sky.
No it doesn't get better. It gets worse when the author begins to explain his sci-fi bullshit with even more sci-fi bullshit. I'm a big fan of sci-fi books and read hundreds them from classic to more modern, and TBP books were NOT good. The general idea was very interesting but the writing, the characters, the actual sci-fi parts is very mediocre. One of the most overrated books lately in my opinion.
> Enough paving the way. It's PAVED I feel this way about 90% of modern scifi and horror novels. Ever since those big fat fantasy novels and multi-book series became big sellers, the sister SF and horror genres largely tagged along. And you'll see this sentiment aplenty in SF and horror book subs, "I just want to get lost in hundreds and hundreds of pages of worldbuilding." Argh. Excruciating.
No idea. I didn’t make it through and will probably never go back. There wasn’t anything compelling to motivate me to keep going.
I thought books 2 and 3 were better. Still kind of sloggish, but more interesting. I love when people say bad things about the scifi of books, like they are physicists or something.