I enjoyed it and have recommended it, but then I reread it and yea, it's not great. But it had some interesting new concepts, for which I'm still grateful I read the books, like the dark forest theory.
The fictional science of the sophons was also bad.
The book author thought that protons were fundamental particles. Protons are made up of quarks. So the idea of unfolding a proton when it's made up of 3 quarks doesn't make sense. Put 3 marbles next to each other. Label the 3 marbles a proton. Unfold it. ???
Quantum teleportation doesn't allow for FTL communication.
Wouldn't argue with point 1, but point 2 may be a misunderstanding of Einstein's spooky action at a distance, or particle entanglement, which may enable ftl comms.
That's because it's great!
OK maybe it's not like objectively great, like in a literary sense, but me and my friends really enjoyed it for its unique voice and fun mystery.
It also spawned so many great conversations between the other programmers I know.
Haven't read it, but the show was interesting enough for me to watch the entire season.
Yeah I thought it sucked ass too. Supposedly the second and third books are better.
Now that you mention it, yes. The characters are quite 2 dimensional and unlikeable (not all, but definitely important to mention).
That being said I thoroughly enjoyed the books and didn't stop too much on the characters. Under unlikeable, flat, awkward characters there was an interesting premise and good thinking to be had: living in a society that has no private thoughts; dark forest theory, life in a society after the end.
So what I did was take a big sip of suspension of disbelief and enjoyed the ride. The interest to see the conclusion of the story was enough to coast through all three of the books.
Also, I read those just before the hype. I first heard of the first book a few years before from an Adam Savage podcast and the premise stuck to me. So after reading the Witcher I wanted something sci-fi'ish and this hit the spot.
I agree that the underlying ideas were interesting, but the books had so much padding. So much of the story was just "but wait, it gets worse" that I found it hard to get through at times. I feel like the books could have been half as long and still conveyed the same interesting concepts without losing much.
I think there's a real struggle in translating Chinese literature into English.
For what it's worth, the second book - The Dark Forest - starts off much stronger and builds from there, making the first book feel more like it was just introducing the story.
This is a failure of the reader, not the literature. It's science fiction space opera written from the cultural perspective completely alien to most western sci-fi literature. It's absolutely nothing like H.G. Wells, Asimov, Clarke, Vinge, Herbert, Heinlein, or Niven. The Three Body Problem is almost the antithesis of all of those manifest destiny individual heroes. All of those authors have much more alike amongst themselves than they do with the narrative history we read through The Three Body Problem. Of course a lot of western readers don't like it, it wasn't written for their perspective. I don't even think I could really get into it enough to REALLY enjoy it as much as my "comfort food" sci-fi. But, I could tell their was something there, and it was my own limitation of understanding, not a failure of the literature or the translation.
not all cultures write soap operas... this is a hard sci-fi trilogy, the lovable characters, comic relief and product placement you are used to are not to be found here
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