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Comment by ryandvm | Hacker News Reader

I read the first one and, while it's definitely epic, I couldn't get past the terrible dialog and cardboard characters. I get the nerd appeal, but just because you're mainlining hard sci-fi doesn't mean you should have to put up with awful writing. Reminded me of Ready Player One.

I dunno - I guess if the concept is grand enough, maybe it's worth putting on the waders and slogging through the rest of the series.

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My main issue with The Three-Body Problem is that the average people involved are implausibly hyperintuitive, like:

“What can we infer from this picture of a footprint?”

“Well, obviously the wearer enjoys rhyming couplets and has a child who is in the process of moving to Chile.”

“Look closer.”

“A-ha! I am embarrassed. Of course, they also sit in the window seat in airplanes.”

“And from that we can infer?”

“They would have solved this physics question already.”

“Indeed!”

Oh, sure, obviously.

spoiler

Also, "The Dark Forest" could've been shortened to a chapter if Ye Wenjie could have been bothered to just tell Luo Ji what she meant, saving a couple hundred years, hundreds of trillions of dollars, and untold human suffering in wasted efforts.

I wonder if she understood the solution though? Understanding the principles she explained and being able to leverage them in a meaningful way to solve the present problem are two different things. It felt to me like she just framed the problem and Luo Ji solved it but I guess we'll never know how much she didn't say

I inferred that she understood the conclusion of the axioms she handed down. Once Luo came to the same conclusion, he came up with a solution relatively quickly, and I’m not sure that the years he spent pondering the problem helped with that.

By analogy, it seemed as though Einstein came up with the general theory of relativity, and instead of publishing it, just gave his colleagues strong hints about which direction to look in. Thanks, I guess, but it would’ve been nice if you’d passed along “E=mc**2” so we could’ve started applying it in the mean time.

TBF most of the characters are not average, they're mostly super scientists, or super detectives or super whatevers selected for their intuition and problem solving. It's a series of fun scifi concepts (almost autistically) communicated by a bunch of cardboard scifi sherlock holmes. Which is fine by me since I don't care much for characterization.

That's a fair point, and that line of thinking made it readable for me.

But I doubt there's anyone on Earth that hyperintelligent.

Da Shi is pretty much a gun-ho version of Sherlock. Love him so much xD

He’s probably my favorite character.

i think you're missing the humor. i felt that the book is filled with a touch of humor about how we come to the conclusion that we actually know something.

I must be, because I don't recall any such parts being played for laughs.

When the solarians, who have a totalitarian society of necessity, devote 100% of several decades their planet's energy and creativity to creating a subatomic weapon, and in the first demonstration it doesn't work and the president turns to to glare at the lead scientist, who says something like "oops", I thought that was written to be funny. To me the book is basically about the folly of human affairs, especially placing too much trust in science and scientists.

Huh, interesting. I confess I didn't get that at all, but perhaps it just bounced off me. It wouldn't be the first time.

A lot of writing that is very funny on stage or screen doesn't work on the page. This is because delivery matters in dialogue, and actors study the scene to prepare their delivery, but a reader only gets one chance sight read it with no prep.

yes, possible in my case here as i listened to the audiobook for book 1.

I think it's worth noting that the 3 body series were originally written in Chinese and translated to other languages. Some of the issue with characters and dialog can be attributed to Chinese culture where people cannot or will not speak their mind in public or to their superiors for example. I think in some cases where a character in the books makes outright puzzling decisions from a western perspective probably makes perfect sense from a Chinese perspective. Some of these issues can probably also be attributed to the translation as well. Personally I really enjoyed not only the hard sci-fi aspect of the books but the predominately Chinese perspective you get from the books. I loved the way he tied the story historically back to the Cultural Revolution in China for example.

I have read the creators of the Netflix series have adapted the story to make it more of a global epic, changing some of the characters from Chinese to other nationalities and you see that in the trailers as well. I think this probably makes a lot of sense for Netflix given their target audiences but I hope they still keep a lot of the Chinese aspect of the books and some of the characters as I do think it's important for the story.

The third book is incredible. I actually started with that one accidentally but don't regret it at all; it gets more interesting much more quickly than the first book.

It's definitely the case that the characters are just a vehicle for exploring these science fiction concepts, but the ideas are so clever and imaginative that I can forgive it most of the time.

I agree, The story in a story in an attempt to talk over the heads of the Trisolarans is hilarious. Too bad they never learned to paint in non western perspective.

I agree - I read all three in sequence and each was better than the last.

The last was a very different book than the first.

Hmm, I agree that the characters were mostly two-dimensional (esp. in book 2 and 3) and the story gets weirder and weirder, but I think it was still pretty good, especially book 1. In terms of terrible dialog and characters, the book will feel itself right at home among such luminaries as Asimov and Clarke.

I loved asimovs charachters and dialogue, what didnt you like? Dialogues in asimov are especially great, its how battles happen in the books.

Early Foundation books are literally just dudes smoking and mansplaining galactic events to one another. You don’t need a CGI budget to actually film foundation - you only need a room and few good actors who can carry dialogue for hours.

From my part I find the narrative device of smoking&mansplaining a … curious … choice. But never the less the books are surprisingly good!

> you only need a room and few good actors who can carry dialogue for hours.

cf the BBC Radio production of Foundation which was pretty good given it was largely just people talking and some Radiophonic Workshop sound effects.

(It was available on archive.org a couple of years back, may still be.)

I know this is not Asimov's best, but off the top of my head (it's bean years since I read any Asimov), there was a scene in the later Foundation series where a character was about to go on a space trip for the first time and start talking about how great the space travel technology is, blah blah...

The problem is, in a society where space travel is commonplace, nobody will talk like that.

Imagine someone in our world buying an iPhone, and walking out, saying "Oh how great that we have a technology to instantly talk to anyone else in the world! I have the technology right here on my hand, isn't it mind blowing?"

I do that somewhat often but I started mainlining gratitude a few years ago so I might be an edge case.

I said this earlier today about my phone :(

Perhaps controversial take but Asimov is much stronger in his short stories. I never cared too much about Foundation, too pompous.

I have to agree that most if not all all the characters by the end of the series became two-dimensional. But in this particular case I think it was a good thing.

I thought the whole premise was utterly absurd. My recollection is a bit fuzzy, but something 2D cannot stop waves or matter. And the nano-rope thing that cuts a ship without cutting the poles it's attached to or slicing through the hands of the people that handle it is also too far-fetched, while being crucial to the story. Needless to add, I didn't like the book, at all.

It does improve, there's a little more characterization further on but you're not wrong... part of the issue is that the timescale gets massive so there's a lot of world to build. It's definitely more universe-building than character-building. FWIW it being less juvenile than Ready Player One kept me interested enough.

The second book is substantially better (dare I say, amazing), with a very interesting main character.

The third book has a horrible main character, the antagonist is more appealing, but the plot resolution brings you forward.

How does the writing compare to The Martian, if you have read it? Objectively, The Martian (and Artemis, and perhaps to a lesser extent Project Hail Mary) are not particularly great prose, but I felt this was more than made up for in story content. I'm similarly concerned about this with 3BP though because of what I've heard of it, the translation, and the tendency of media from that part of the world to have significantly different values to me that I find hard to connect to.

The Martian has a charm to it. It's not a massive literary achievement, but it has a character with charisma and actual feelings. The Three Body Problem is entirely cardboard cutouts with at best laughable motivations and at worst, none whatsoever. And the sequel, my god, it has some of the most sexist, insultingly bad writing.

What was sexist about it?

The Martian does indeed have charm. I wonder if things like charm get lost in translation a little though.

Thanks for the thoughts. I hate to generalise, but I have noticed that media from some other areas just isn't up to what I consider to be modern standards of views on gender, roles in society, and the role of authority. I say "modern" not because I feel some places are stuck in the past, but because I've seen these change over my lifetime where I grew up. It's one of the reasons I don't particularly like older media, The Andromeda Strain was a hard read/watch for this exact reason.

I expect Netflix may have a better take on it, so I might skip straight to watching it instead of reading it, based on these thoughts. Thanks!

I’d call those books competent. They didn’t advance the art form but the prose supported a fun story and was never distracting.

Thanks, I'd broadly agree. They are definitely "good enough" and Wier's writing has improved noticeably, but The Martian was a little shaky at times!

The Martian is a good example of transparent writing, where the prose gets the job done and doesn't call attention to itself in either a negative or overly positive way.

The Martian might not win any literary awards but writing like this is a much overlooked skill in authors.

I read The Martian and loved it. It has a utilitarian sort of prose that won't amaze you but also doesn't get in the way. It's a plausible story with relatable characters. Perfect hard sci-fi in my opinion.

I also enjoyed Project Hail Mary, but I think the sci-fi carries it. The dialogue gets pretty tropey, but I was geeking out so I didn't let it bother me.

IMO, dialog is always hard. I've read a bunch of random sci-fi and it feels like there is always awkward dialog at some point. Then I've tried writing short stories, and dialog is where I struggle. But a good story and actual science will keep me around for the most part. Something like the Lost Fleet series, while a bit repetitive, I still enjoyed.

The analogy with Ready Player One is apt. Both are things that my nerd friends raved about but I hated. Three-Body Problem had the excuse of being read (by me) in translation, though.

Another nerd disconnect was all the people who told me I just had to watch "For All Mankind", a hideous alt-future soap opera that nobody should waste their time watching.

FWIW I consider myself a bit of a classic scifi nerd, but couldn't understand what's all the fuzz about both Ready Player One (stopped reading after 50 pages or so, since it didn't get any better) and the Three Body Problem (worked myself through the first book but there was absolutely nothing that would have stuck in my brain), and yes, in case of the latter it could just be a bad translation (I was reading the English version).

I’ve found sci-fi recommendations, in particular, to be totally useless unless I have a very good sense of the taste of the recommender.

I think three factors are at play (though not necessarily all three in every case):

1 - Some sci fi fans care very little about some things I care about a great deal (quality of prose or dialog, characters, that sort of thing) so will judge “great” a book, movie, or show that’s not just mediocre, but terrible at those things, because those readers/viewers aren’t tuned-in to those qualities.

2 - Many sci fi fans tend to over-praise works that aren’t bad, but also aren’t very impressive. I dunno if this is due to a low rate of really good sci fi creation, or what.

3 - Some genre fans don’t seem to read much outside their preferred genre, and may even hold one or another kind (I’ve seen multiple causes) of grudge against e.g. capital-L Literature, all with predictable results when they judge and communicate about works of their preferred genre.

(Clearly there may be some causal overlap between these, but I do think each likely occurs on its own, at least sometimes)

Fantasy can also be rough when it comes to separating wheat from chaff based on fan “takes”, but sci fi seems to have it the worst, for whatever reason.

I agree. My reading journey has been from fantasy to sci fi and then to books that tip more towards literary fiction and interesting writing styles.

With sci fi, once you've read a lot of it there are tropes that so often get repeated it can be very predictable. The type of books I used to enjoy I now find boring, but that doesn't mean they are bad or not worthwhile.

I do not dismiss the writing styles that I no longer enjoy, and still recommend those books. By the same token I hope people who prefer the plainer style wouldn't dismiss books with more literary prose.

Had this thought too, but I wonder if it worked better in the original language. Anyway, loved it regardless because the larger story is enthralling, even if the characters are subpar.

The bit that annoyed me was just how completely inept the protagonist was in the 3rd book. If there was a decision to be made, the wrong option was chosen every time.

Without claiming these issues are solved, I thought the translation and editing improved over the course of the books so it’s less of a slog than you anticipate.

I have up one 3rd of the way thru the first book. I loved all of Weir’s books and Vonnegut’s Sirens, but this 3BP was dragging too much…

There is some culture shock in the writing of the characters. That's basically what you're experiencing.

It's unfair to blame dialog on the author instead of the translator. Your other criticisms are valid.

== Spoilers for the first book ==

I tell everyone to skip the first one. The problem is that when you hear of the series, it sounds so cool. "What if humanity knew aliens were arriving in ~X hundred years?" But it takes until the end of the first book for that to premise to even arrive.

You can read a summary of the first book, and go directly to the second, which has a different set of characters on a different timeline.

All the cool stuff in the first book:

1. The alien planet is at the mercy of 2 suns, so it deals with extreme heat and cold. Predicting the trajectory of their planet (the "three-body problem" in question) is a life-or-death problem.

2. To solve this, the aliens set up computers using a lot of alien-people, each acting as a logic gate - each person passes information to the next.

3. A pro-alien group uses lasers to cut up ships at the Panama canal or whatever.

Pretty much the rest of the book is quite boring. The pro-alien society that meets in a video game is laughable.

The second book has a propulsive cadence that's super fun to read, and the third has a series of amazing conceptually-creative micro-worlds - so captivating!

Why are you spoiling the book like this?

Sorry added a spoiler alert.

-- SPOILER ALERT (at parent comment, not mine) --

The first book is more akin to universal literature than strictly sci-fi. It literally opens with scenes from the Cultural Revolution. It's a slow burn that gradually touches on science subjects to eventually throw all the fiction into the reader's face. It has one of the best endings you'll find in sci-fi.

It's a great book especially for begginers of the genre.

Thank you, I read the first book but didn't come away with even half of that. I don't know why, but I couldn't follow the book at all.

> 3. A pro-alien group uses lasers to cut up ships at the Panama canal or whatever.

So much for an accurate summary.

It's not even close to all the cool stuff from the first book. Hopefully someone who has scrolled this far has seen spoiler warnings, but the explanation of the Sophons is one of the more stunning and imaginative ideas in the book, and foundational to its premise.

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