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Comment by AznHisoka | Hacker News Reader

Can you summarize what would make these books so sensitive/controversial?

It's about the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution . Any kind of history outside the Party in China is inevitably going to be a bit dangerous.

While there are direct references to the CR in the first few chapters, the real cleverness is the indirect approach and the (traditional) use of SF to critique the present society. In the book, advanced higher-dimensional aliens have invaded earth .. with a pair of subatomic particles. Since these are under their full control, they are able to warp reality in higher-order physics experiments to prevent humans ever learning certain things.

The parallel with the CR and Maoism (or indeed post-Bernays propaganda states) in general is obvious - the ability to finely control what information someone receives, especially at critical moments, is the ability to control what they think and know.

Wasn't Xi's family attacked during the CR? I would think that makes it a safer topic than most.

No, this is not how you think.

Xi puts the blame for his misfortunes on "wrong kind of dilettante communists," and being wronged, not that CR was wrong, it's just some poor pissants perpetrating it were wrong for taking on grand "true communist" personas who his family were.

So, the only wrong thing about it he sees is that the he wasn't at the helm back then, and not acknowledged as being worthy to join the purgers.

You're absolutely wrong. The book uses the cultural revolution to contrast with the progress of the modern era.

A legitimate Chinese perspective on early Maoist China onward. It doesn't cover up the horror that took place. The first few chapters are especially difficult - with lynchings of academics (e.g. cultural revolution). It also covers how modern chinese people deal with that.

Odd. I remember some of that from the first book but Liu Cixin lives in China and doesn’t seem to suffer for it. He also wrote the source material for Wandering Earth which did very well in Chinese theatres and is pretty pro-China.

I mean the book literally shows a democratic "optimistic" society doesn't work and an authoritarian "pessimistic" one is the only workable outcome, I don't see why the PRC would have anything to object to that.

I'm glad a big-budget production is shining a light on that part of history. Extremely under-depicted and necessary to review and reflect on, especially right now

It has a strong chinese perspective, there are themes in the book which are sexist (weak willed females/effiminate men are at fault for dooming humanity...) and you could read a lot more into it if you wanted.

>there are themes in the book which are sexist (weak willed females/effiminate men are at fault for dooming humanity...)

Huh, that wasn't what I took away from it while reading, might be lack of awareness on my part but I feel like saying that is a theme of the book which is sexist seems a bit much to me. could be interpreted as maybe, if you could name examples?

Maybe "are" was too harshly worded. I don't share that viewpoint myself but that's what the most complaints were about that I'm aware of.

I probably should have written "can be interpreted as"

The detailed commentary on the noticeably androgynous physical and “mental” characteristics of the future males in a society that has decided the trisolaran issue doesn’t exist anymore and has fully accepted defeatism (through non natural means, but still).

IIRC, this society then attempts to pursue diplomacy only to get massacred before the archaic male heroically sets up a MAD situation.

The archaic male then controversially hands over control of the MAD response to a weak willed/nuance entertaining female, and the trisolarans immediately attack.

Apologies if I’ve mixed the timeline, it’s been a while and the human story draped over the skeleton of an interstellar war was a bit thin.

Huh, I guess I have to do a reread then I never connected those dots.

I think the message of the book is more complex than that. The character who sets up the MAD situation spends half of the book having already given up, before discovering the MAD solution. At the same time, Earth pursues a straightforward military strategy of building a large space fleet to stop the Trisolarians, but are unable to anticipate the aliens' superior technology makes their efforts futile.

Ultimately, Earth sends the MAD signal, and ends up destroyed. The goal of the artificially installed defeatism was to make humanity flee the Earth, and it's only the those who fled the Earth who survive its destruction.

I read them a few years ago and I remember them being pretty critical of chinese policy and the cultural revolution. The second contact with the trisolarans basically being a big FU from the scientist that was exploited her whole life by the government.

Well, I've read many interpreted it as critique on the petty small-mindedness of individualism.

Chinese Viewpoints are fascinating in some respects.

I think the main character in the third book is supposed to be ambiguous, because she is heroic in her own way. The novels clearly set up a universe where the logic of the Dark Forest implies that the universe itself is doomed to destruction, and this doom will come irrespective of the conflict between Earth and the Trisolarians. She is the one character who always rejects the logic of the Dark Forest, and is willing to hope for the best from aliens. This doesn't particularly work out, but neither does the alternative.

There’s a long section on the excesses of the cultural revolution. The Chinese originals reordered the plot (and its reverted in the English translations) to diminish that aspect of it a bit.

It's not taboo to criticize the cultural revolution in China.

The Wikipedia entry that says that’s the reason the two languages present the book in different orders needs updating then.

But movies about don't get released. Even the biggest ones.

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