Death's End (The Three-Body Problem)

Well I see what all the fuss is about now. This is hard science fiction in the vein of the golden era, where big ideas trump characterisation or intricate plotting which is somewhat out of fashion these days. The translation seems to lean into this, and it reminds me of Kafka, especially early on where we have a protagonist that is completely baffled by the events happening to him. I happened to watch Adam Curtis' "Can't get you out of my head" while I was reading this (which also focuses on China as one of its themes) and found that his flat narration fits this book quite well.
What the book does very well is explore big cosmic ideas and to mash concepts and technologies from disparate field together to tell an interesting variation on the alien invasion trope. It has a religious devotion to the role of science which may well be the appeal for some readers. I found few of the characters seemed particularly humane even given their circumstances: Wang abandons his wife and child for days, Shi is a brutal maverick and Ye dooms humanity out of spite. This might support the tone of the book but the lack of any significant counterpoint makes it a bit of a drag.
I'm interested enough to see where he takes the rest of the series but if this is the only recent Sci-Fi you've read your missing out on a real renaissance that this book does not reflect.

Jako celek je kniha děsivě nudná; každou chvíli jsem čekal, jakou fantasmagorii autor vymyslí, aby děj posunul dal.

Pro pozorného čtenáře se ovšem pár perel najde : postava bývalého policajta Da Sh by vydala na vlastní (a mnohem zábavnější) knihu; komentář k čínské kulturní revoluci je schovaný tak trochu mezi řádky a scéna kdy bývalé rudé gardistky reflektují svou kariéru je za mne asi nejvydarenější pasáž knihy ; a nakonec úvahy o lidstvu a jeho místě ve vesmíru nejdou sice nějak do hloubky, ale jsou alespoň autentické...

...což se ale nedá říct o zbytku, který se snaží na učivu prvního ročníku technické vysoké školy vystavět jakýsi příběh. Nerda v pubertálním věku to asi bavit bude, někdo pro koho budou vědecké koncepty diskutované v knize úplná novinka a bude se dovzdělávat na wikipedii možná taky. Jinak bohužel, je plno lepších sci-fi a klasiky jako Duna nebo Nadace jsou ve srovnání s tímhle pořád úplně jiná liga.

It has a good moment or two, but commits two of the usual terrible sins of sci-fi:

1. Lots of exposition in the form of unrealistic dialog... including the antagonist cackling gratuitously for several pages to the victim over how and why they are going to be destroyed, and how this evil plot will fool them all and they'll never see it coming.

2. Deus ex machina resolutions of plot mysteries and conflicts via suddenly-introduced, implausible quasiscientific machines or mechanisms.

To this you can add:

Officer Cliché: a tough-talking cop who bends the rules and doesn't have respect for the brass.

The book being largely a set-up for its sequels.

Lots of chapters describing a VR video game that's supposed to be hard to tear yourself away from, but in its description seems about as exciting as watching paint dry,

An alien race with superior technology and wisdom who choose to use the most back-assward Rube Goldberg machine of a strategy to attack Earth instead.

I'd call this maybe 2.5 stars.

Oh boy this book did not work for me. I really dug the first book in the series, I found the second disappointing (I think the change in translator was not helpful), and this third book we're back to the original translator and I was left cold for almost the entire book. It's got some great hard scifi ideas and scale that I've never thought of before - but especially in the last third of the book I was starting to skim paragraphs of descriptions that I wasn't interested in; I didn't have the characters to follow to keep me engaged maybe? It seemed like the author wanted to cram in so many different times and locations and situations that we were jerked around from one to another in rapid succession -- we'd be approaching a critical juncture and then, No, nevermind, critical juncture averted, we're on to another critical juncture, and so on.

In my heart I'm a bitter-ender with books and especially series, but I was starting to want to bail on this book about half way through and I'd probably have been happier for having done so.

Picked up the audiobook of this translation from the Chinese, mainly because it was a 2015 Hugo best novel nominee and was supposed to be good. Wasn't disappointed, although this is definitely a very dense science-heavy book so if you don't like science in your fiction, maybe give this one a pass. If you do however it's a thought-provoking novel told from several points of view that don't fully unify into a complete picture of the story until quite near the end. (Given the density of some of the subject matter I'm not sure whether to recommend the audio book or not; it probably did help get through some of the more dry parts, but on the other hand I had to re-listen to several parts of it several times just to understand what was going on, and they might have been easier to absorb in text form. Be warned based on your own preferences.)

The book has two main characters, Ye Wenjie, a female scientist who loses pretty much everything in the cultural revolution, becomes somewhat embittered about humanity, and makes some decisions as a result that literally change the course of human destiny; and Wang Miao, a male scientist from the generation after Ye Wenjie who is studying nanotechnology and who is asked to help investigate the mysterious suicides of large numbers of leading scientists who have apparently decided their work is meaningless and science is wrong. Wang also becomes involved in a computer game called Three Body which models an alien world and challenges its players to find the secret of the chaotic laws of nature that govern it (this is the only point in the book that disappointed me - given the title of the game, Wang's eventual conclusion that it's a three body system was a gigantic DUH rather than the big achievement it somehow seems to be within the game; that was obvious almost from the start so it stretches credulity that a highly educated scientist like Wang would have taken so long.)

Anyway, avoiding spoilers as much as possible I'll just conclude that Ye Wenjie and Wang Miao's stories meet and combine with the game's story also to reach a conclusion involving conspiracies, a shrewd old policeman, the attempted destruction of humanity, aliens, and multi-dimensional physics, and more. There are apparently two more books in the trilogy and I'll be picking up the next soon.