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Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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!

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