large print, 530 pages
English language
Published Nov. 1, 2016 by W F Howes Ltd.
Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilisation on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them, or fight against the invasion.
I liked the plot and the unusual idea for the story, but the characters are somehow not so well detailed and it was hard to immerse myself into the book. Nevertheless, I'm going to read the second one in this series.
Set my imagination off, but felt like a stream of ideas.
This was a little too weird for me and I can’t say I really bought the premise of the story fully…
Content warning This book is intensely political.
Everyone loves this, but I can't understand why nobody seems to be put off, or at least puzzled, but the way that every human individual or organization in the book is just relentlessly awful, ranging from suicidal to genocidal, and everything in-between, without respite.
Most of them, given any chance at all, are trying hard to selfishly save their own skins, with not a moment's regard for the fact that their plans will immediately doom the rest of the human race. Those not intent on self preservation at any cost are instead committed to bitter nihilism, such as the ultimate eco-terrorists, who feel that to save the Earth's biosphere they must collaborate with alien forces to bring about humanity's defeat, and likely annihilation.
These characters and groups are not depicted as outliers. They represent the human race in its entirety. The only thing that holds back this tide of destructive behavior is the government, who keeps everyone in line.
I can't tell how much of this bizarrely one-sided depiction of humanity is a deliberate choice by the author, versus simply being an unplanned exposure of their worldview, shaped as it is by their native Chinese immersion in authoritarianism. Does that form a subconscious backdrop to everything they wrote here, or are they consciously making a deliberate point that strong government is absolutely necessary?
The author Liu Cixin has since gone on record in support of the Chinese government's internment of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang. There, people have been rounded up, because of their ethnicity, into over 400 internment camps. The camps administer cultural and religious re-education, forced labor, involuntary sterilization and abortion. This is something Liu Cixin is openly in favor of.
It makes my skin crawl to read that, and then carry on blithely with this story book of theirs, which seems to be an unapologetic justification for an authoritarian government's impositions on its populate. I did finish it, but have no desire to read the sequels - and not just because I don't agree with the politics. I genuinely found the behavior of all the characters to be intrusively bewildering, demented and incessantly frustrating.
Spannend aufgebaut mit verschiedenen Handlungssträngen, die sich irgendwann zusammenfügen. Technische / physikalische Grundprinzipien auch für mich als Laien verständlich dargestellt. Und die Frage nach dem "First Contact" mit all ihren Implikationen wurde toll beackert. Zusätzlich erfährt von noch etwas über die jüngere chinesische Geschichte.
Una pasada de libro. No soy lector habitual de ciencia ficción, pero este me enganchó. Me tuve que leer la segunda mitad del libro en dos días porque el misterio me atrapaba.
La tensión evoluciona siempre hacia arriba y es un no parar. No sé si hay que tener conocimientos básicos de ciencia para entenderlo o seguirlo, yo lo pude disfrutar, como ingeniero. Además, hace que reflexiones y te cuestiones sobre el acelerado progreso tecnológico.
Es el primero de una trilogía. Me ha gustado, aunque hay algunas cosas "científicas" que me han parecido muy simplonas. De cualquier forma, estoy leyendo el segundo, y creo que también leeré el tercero. Lo recomiendo.
hhhkkh
...then it went weird. And I mean weird as in "I know that stuff, and that's not how it works".
But the beginning was pure poetry.
A good hard fiction novel that explores the question of making first contact. It's a quick read that has decent character development, a smooth flowing plot, and asks deep philosophical science questions.
I can't say this book wasn't well written, but at the same time the writing sometimes felt awkward. Pretty imaginative, large scope, and refreshingly plausible treatment of science. All in all enjoyable, but I'm not sure I'll read the next ones in the series.
Much of the novel assumes a tone of gossamer fantasy, still with the heft of a folktale. Think of fabric draping a central space into being, over a solid floor.
There is video gaming (along with rally and militarism) as theatre, perhaps most overtly, but the whole story is almost palpably sited within in staging containers — which mostly stretch or are transcended rather gently, in contrast to the claustrophobic violence possessing and constricting the gap in the crowd, the logged woods, the cramped room, the retina, the battered biosphere, the rigid formation, the traumatic shared memory, the laden canal, the proton.
For its themes, The Three-Body Problem is a very comfortable read. The “hard sci‐fi” elements are good fun, silly (or playful and open) without committing to ridiculous abandon. Although, on occasion, explanatory dialogue felt condescendingly conspicuous, on the whole, Liu’s devices moved smoothly enough. There are some beautiful …
Much of the novel assumes a tone of gossamer fantasy, still with the heft of a folktale. Think of fabric draping a central space into being, over a solid floor.
There is video gaming (along with rally and militarism) as theatre, perhaps most overtly, but the whole story is almost palpably sited within in staging containers — which mostly stretch or are transcended rather gently, in contrast to the claustrophobic violence possessing and constricting the gap in the crowd, the logged woods, the cramped room, the retina, the battered biosphere, the rigid formation, the traumatic shared memory, the laden canal, the proton.
For its themes, The Three-Body Problem is a very comfortable read. The “hard sci‐fi” elements are good fun, silly (or playful and open) without committing to ridiculous abandon. Although, on occasion, explanatory dialogue felt condescendingly conspicuous, on the whole, Liu’s devices moved smoothly enough. There are some beautiful scenes. The storytelling is both generous and measured; hospitable.
This was an excellent book. I can count it among the masterpieces of modern science fiction. The story has elements similar to that of other science fiction stories, such as Nightfall and Other Stories by Isaac Asimov, Childhood's End and Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, and Anathem by Neal Stephenson. It is important to stress that this is a hard science fiction novel. Generally, hard sci-fi stories focus strongly on the premise of the story (the idea) rather than characters or plot, so approach the story with that in mind. While it is technically part of a trilogy, the story stands extremely well on it's own. Of course, I'll be paying attention for more translated works of Liu Cixin.
For my full review, see my blog at strakul.blogspot.com/2015/07/book-review-three-body-problem-by-liu.html
Lo que más me ha gustado del libro es que aunque simple hace un buen repaso del camino que ha llevado la ciencia a través de las eras de la humanidad y la importancia que tiene ésta en nuestro desarrollo y posible solución a la inminente extinción que nos espera. Además, el hecho de ser un autor chino hace que plantee las cosas de una forma algo distinta que los típicos clichés occidentales y además me ha permitido saber más cosas de la historia de China tal como fue el impacto y recuperación de la Revolución Cultural.
One piece of science master class and sci-fi
