Comment by metroholografix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by metroholografix | Hacker News Reader

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metroholografix

I found all 3 books to be vastly overrated and mediocre at best. I would bet money that in 10 years, few will even remember them.

The translation doesn't help, but the issues with the books go beyond it. It's obvious that Cixin Liu is not a good writer. The characters in TBP are cardboard cutouts and his pacing and framing of ideas awful. I feel that there is merit in his imagination but it'd be better presented in a different format than science fiction.

To truly see how bad he is as a writer, compare him to the greats:

Stanislaw Lem, Gene Wolfe, Iain Banks (Culture Series), Strugatsky brothers, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Heinlein, J.G. Ballard, Ursula Le Guin, William Gibson ...

Since Dune was mentioned in this thread, I find the first two books to be absolutely in a different league than TBP as they're complex socio-political SciFi masterpieces that have stood the test of time. I've read Dune more than 9-10 times already (as I've read and re-read most of the books by the greats I previously mentioned). Can you imagine doing that with any of the TBP books?

Oh my god, Stanisław Lem.

I have read Summa Technologiae and everything is in there. And I mean everything. I have yet to see any new horizons for humanity he hasn't covered back in the sixties.

For me the single most distressing idea is that we might want to limit the speed of research in order to be able to integrate it, because the exponential growth would otherwise beat humanity's ability to adapt, leading to very turbulent situations.

May I recommend Futurological Congress? Everything is in there, too.

> The characters in TBP are cardboard cutouts

Try to read this as Chinese literature and not apply Western standards. TBP is not about individual people but civilizations. Similarly, if you read Tale of Genji expecting a plot, you will be disappointed. But that doesn't mean it will be forgotten in 10 years.

Yep. Individual character development isn't Liu's strongest suit. His characters are mostly just allegories to prove a point. (Wenje - bitterness, Luo Ji - logic, etc.) But Liu is brilliant in his deception of mass psychology--the various ways in which large groups react to hopelessness.

Interestingly, I see a lot of parallels between Liu and Thomas Hardy. They both wrote sweeping tales that use individuals to represent abstract ideas. So, it's not just an Eastern thing.

This perspective helps a bit with the Foundation trilogy too, honestly. Asimov was not a good character writer.

Counterpoint: I can absolutely imagine myself re-reading TBP series multiple times; I've already re-read it once since reading it a year and a bit ago.

Read some better fiction and you'll lose that urge quickly enough.

I read and reread a lot of books, largely scifi. My favorite is probably Dune, and I've reread it maybe 6 times. Thing is, I also really like TBP, and am actually reading it for the 4th or so time right now.

Dune is soft sci fi. TBP is hard sci fi. They're very different formats of stories. Good hard SF generally doesn't have character development. In fact character development is a kind of subgenre called bildungsroman. I don't know why ppl these days expect characters to change as though it's some inherent part of a book. Some books are thought experiments or about world building. Part of reading for me is to try experiencing something novel. But on your hate for TBP, I'd say the huge fanbase, the Hugo committee and Obama would disagree with you on that one.

I don't "hate" TBP, so not sure why you chose this characterization. I just find it overrated. When I finished the trilogy, I wished I'd have gotten back the hours I spent reading it. That's neither the mark of a good book nor a good writer. And let's not pretend that the Hugo committee is some sort of arbiter of truth. Plenty of real stinkers (N. K. Jemisin anyone?) have won it.

Also, If I'm in the mood for hard sci-fi, I'll read Peter Watts who is (again) on a different league. Blindsight and Echopraxia navigate similar (but not only!) themes to TBP in a much more intelligent, thought-provoking and cohesive way.

I'm considering start reading TBP. So my question to you is why did you progress through the trilogy if you find it kind of substandard? Meaning, once you are done with first or even the second book what made you consider reading the next books in the trilogy?

This is an honest question as someone who is seriously considering reading TBP in near future.

Because enough people I know were raving and kept telling me it starts slow / payoff comes later. Well, I won't be listening to these folks again re: books that's for sure!

If you're dead-set on reading it, read the first book and if you don't like it cut your losses short right there. I say skip the whole mess and read Watts instead.

I'm glad to know I'm not alone. I genuinely can't figure out the enthusiasm for TBP.

I didn’t like the three body problem either, but I also didn’t like the culture series and found it disappointing in a similar type of way.

I really don't see anything special about Iain M. Banks' Cultute books. Consider Phlebas was the more interesting to me, but not great.

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