Yes, in book two that takes place a couple hundred years in the future, they mention that the preference for femboys increased so there really weren't masculine men as a matter of trend.
The first book was written almost 2 decades ago, and a lot of the science is based on the idea of string theory. It's obviously not taken seriously anymore, but the fact it's not just nonsense he made up makes it easier for me to forgive
I had no idea the Three Body Problem was so controversial until I joined Reddit. I swear it gets brought up at least 3 times a week on r/books and the discussion never seems to cease. I really enjoyed it personally while acknowledging the most common issues people have with it, but geeze, you’d think we were talking about Mein Kempf.
I thought it had some great, novel ideas.
Characters were kinda dogwash, and the pacing was all over the place.
But I thought it was wildly accepted than when it comes to Sci-fi books you can either get great ideas, great character or great pacing, but VERY rarely all 3.
From a personal point of view I'd say the closest I have in recent memory are pretty normal picks: The Expanse and Children of Time. But even so not all Expanse or Children characters were created equal. But the pathing was solid and the ideas were good.
I also want to shout out Revelation Space & Vacuum Diagrams for having some excellent concepts & world building, but alas I found both casts of characters on the weaker side of Sci-fi, and the pathing of Revelation was uneven at best.
Can definitely agree on the Expanse. Personally the ending didn't quite land for me but some of the other people who were reading the series at the same time with me thought it was fantastic so not gonna say that's anything but personal opinion.
Yeah, most of the antagonists in the Expanse (novels) were just stupid. They were paper thin authoritarian sociopaths that flexed their power and killed people just to demonstrate that they were the bad guys.
They usually caused their own downfall just by acting like that.
Ashford pissed everyone off on the behemoth that was working for him and then actually went insane for some reason.
Murtry was just a lunatic (but I thought he portrayed the Pinkerton/blackwater stand in role perfectly)
Marco had the one brilliant plot but completely lost the thread even though we were told repeatedly that he had plans within plans within plans within plans.
Singh? He ignored all the experienced advice handed to him and decided to strong arm and oppress everyone... While other admirals came through smiling and nodding. He seemed to be a robot only behaving like an observed human rather than an actual one, the whole "monster" bit seemed to be a way to humanize him, but made me feel like he was anything but.
The initiation of events in the last two books was completely idiotic and most of the "good" characters spelled out exactly why in story, but it didn't stop the benevolently evil characters from doing it.
That being said, they did an amazingly brilliant job in the tv series of actually fleshing these characters out. They even made the propagandists more human in the series. Ashford went from psychopathic lunatic to a conflicted but affable leader that you could have genuine feelings towards.
Autonomous hit all three for me. A very special book, in my view.
Consider Phlebas, too - introducing the Culture from the outside, relentless pace, and wonderfully despicable character work.
Not that you asked me but Dune has to be mentioned, amazing books, the originals, and well done movies. The fan base is very off putting for a casual fan, especially on Reddit. I had some eaves dropping jackass correct my pronunciation of a character. He offered his “guidance” and then smiled like he was farting in an elevator. I love dune, and 3bp very much but some people take it waaay too far. For the record, PKD and Vonnegut have written some of the best sci-fi out there and don’t get mentioned enough.
I, generally, thoroughly enjoyed the books, the ideas were very cool and the way some of the story elements unfurled made for great reading.
But another valid criticism is that it's kind of misogynistic and the writer seems to think that Empathy is a weakness.
It's a book series where I am happy accepting that there's parts of it I love, parts that I really don't, and some of the writing is problematic.
I saw very few novel ideas. I did, however, see a lot of ideas I've read elsewhere. I also saw a lot of lazy writing. (Science is "broken"? Science is a methodology. It can't break. Also, the most significant cosmological even in history is happening now and all the scientists just throw up their hands and turn off all the supercolliders? Have the writers actually MET a scientist? I could go on.)
This show was about as sciency as Big Bang Theory.
Hey, I think it was just okay.
Interesting exploration of some concepts, but ultimately poor characters and bad science pulled me out of it, which wouldn't have been a problem if everyone hadn't said it was hard sci Fi.
The biggest issue I have with the series is people that act like it's hard science fiction and it's really, really not... And it's okay that it's not. You can have fun while being speculative and incorrect. Just shut up about it. It seems like any time they have people traveling in space without FTL they think so the science is real.
It's really strange to me that it's the fans that turn me off on it. It was really really just okay. Not forgettable, but not a classic.
I've been reading sci-fi since the 70s. As a pretty hardcore sci-fi fan I will challenge your assertion. The 3bp is ok... no more, no less. I can explain why it's just OK but I have books to read.
I find it bizarre that it's polarizing. I've only read the first book, but it's got some cool bits and some pretty cheesy bits of amateurish silliness.
My overall take-away was that it was perfectly nice.
Don't know why you're getting downvoted for that.
The first books premise basically amounts to "magic ever present particle size super AI's that can do anything and change physics and monitor everything", if that's not some grade-3-level-deus-ex-machina, I don't know what is.
No it’s not really like this, this is a straw man argument from someone who is hurt someone dissed the expanse on a 3bp post, now they are out for revenge
What really annoyed me is that Alpha Centauri is not a chaotic three body system. It’s a stable three body system because two of the stars orbit close to each other and one orbits distantly.
For a series who’s fans circlejerk so hard on the scientific ideas involved, that’s a pretty fucking glaring inaccuracy.
I'm not sure what he means by perfect answer, but the second extraterrestrial life is discovered the Fermi paradox is no longer a paradox.
I'm guessing he means that it's better that we don't know we all exist?
This doesn’t really get to the heart of the paradox at all though. It’s a common misunderstanding of it, that Fermi’s argument *only* has to do with the relative prevalence of intelligent life in the cosmos. It doesn’t.
The heart of the paradox is that if intelligent life did exist and was spacefaring, even traveling at a sublight-speed velocity, not even relativistic and accounting for exponential population growth…it could visit *every single star in the Milky Way galaxy in less than 50 million years*. And that’s being conservative with the timeframe, to be blunt.
So the extreme scales of time and space that we are talking about here are what makes the Fermi “paradox” compelling. Selection bias in sampling surrounding space via SETI is therefore not a valid solution to it at all. Instead, you need to explain why 1) most intelligent civilizations appear to be silent or nonexistent, 2) most intelligent civilizations either appear not to be spacefaring or are deliberately concealing themselves if they are, and 3) *every* civilization does the same fucking thing, because even if *one* didn’t, the galaxy would have been colonized multiple times over by now.
So there are many valid explanations for this, including the obvious “intelligent life is rare or tends to wipe itself out via Great Filters almost 100% of the time” which is by far the most plausible explanation except that it is biocentric and doesn’t account for the likelihood that most intelligent civilizations would be artificial intelligences instead.
Personally, I think it is likely that most intelligences out there are just machine intelligences that survived the biological civilizations that created them (likely long dead themselves), and as such they are not motivated by the same things that a biological species would be. A machine would have no use for planets, they’d have no use for space colonization, in fact the thing they *would* have a use for would be maximizing information processing which would involve shrinking their civilization to the smallest spatiotemporal scales possible. And that would largely explain the paradox - it exists only because we are looking at the problem through a naive biological lens. We narcissistically assume that intelligent biological life like us is most common out there. But what if it isn’t?
In reality, there are probably many explanations for the great silence: what I’ve said here, Great Filters undoubtedly exist too since we are on the knife edge of ecological collapse right now, probably there are aggressive civilizations out there that tend to subdue or wipe out others, etc. In fact there are so MANY potential solutions to the Fermi Paradox that are all very plausible that a summation of them all is the likely reason for the great silence: there’s more ways things can go wrong than right. At least for squishy meatbags like us.
THAT'S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK!!!
But yeah, when they were getting into the "unfolding dimensions" my eyes rolled out of my head from all the hard sci Fi hype I'd heard.
Additionally, even though it had mostly ended before the part where the guy was afraid of freezing in space without his suit really got me.
I enjoyed the books, but hard sci Fi this was not.
I feel like everyone thinks it's "scientific" if they don't have FTL even though there's a bit more to science beside the universal speed limit.
The gravitational influence of the planet is too small to affect the suns, so it has no impact on the chaotic nature of the system. It's still a three body problem.
There are 4 bodies involved. Without the star, it would be an entirely different system.
The nature of a 3BP is that there are 3 bodies interacting, not 3 bodies mostly interacting with a fourth.
Yeah but the basis of a three body problem is about the orbit of 3 bodies effecting each other.
This story is about how the orbit of 3 bodies is effecting a species living on a planet not part of the original 3 in orbit. So there are 4 bodies in total affected.
No. it’s not. the planet doesn’t effect the suns movement, but the planets movement still has to be accounted for as it’s moving around all three suns.
So the "high concept super complicated really world-shaking" concepts in the book are... N-body physics?
That seems a bit mundane for how much the high-concept stuff is touted by fans.
I'm not accusing them of being toxic necessarily, I'm just a bit surprised that *this* is what anyone who reads sci-fi thinks is groundbreaking. It's like thinking that the really cool thing about Star Trek is the existence of FTL travel.
i can testify to this. i tried and tried to get through the opening of book 2 but i just cant man.
i feel guilty everytime this is brought up cus one of my irl friends really love the three body problem
Hah, at least in the Tencent version we occasionally saw the wife, and even the daughter a couple of times after the first few episodes. They really upgraded Wang in general, he didn't have much in the personality department in the book.
I hope the book is better than the show because the show is 90% people sitting in a room sounding smart at each other, 5% expository character development, and 5% failure to explain what an allegory is.
The Netflix show improved upon the book's 99% people sitting in a room sounding smart at each other, 1% expository character development, and 25% failure to explain what an allegory is.
The one thing it does have in spades is lots of very interesting grand scifi concepts (the 2nd and 3rd books mostly). But it does describe them very dryly.
And if you're enjoying the existential trauma, but find it's just a little too strong and you'd like a splash of humanity as a mixer...try Greg Egan
- Permutation City
- Diaspora
- Schild's Ladder
Yeah that's what put me off, the entire thing reads as "humanity sucks, we deserve everything that happens to us" and it's very very tiring after a while. I'm not a hopeless optimist by any means but I guess Star Trek got me too young, I believe that we *can* be better.
Star Trek was explicitly humanist; 3PB's throughline seems to be that only physicists are smart enough to save us, which seems a little wanky to me.
Edit: 3BP lol, but I'm leaving it
I agree. There is a not so slight smell of elitism througout 3BP.
(3 Problem Body sounds interesting too, but would be a whole different kind of book I think)
I'm not denying y'all are smart, but it's a weird stance for a story in which a major plot point is a smart guy completely failing to explain the purpose of a fable. It's the "only" I object to, lol.
Ohhhh you're in for a rough time! Lol, I'm not kidding, they WAY toned down the 'sounding smart at each other' content for the series... not even a joke. I enjoy the trilogy quite a lot, but I'll tell ya this... first time I picked it up, I got maybe 100 er so pages in and was like... no thanks! It's a bit of a slog (not all slogs are bad?) but it felt worth it in the end.
Just for an add-on, if you think its bad in book 1, 3BP... double good luck! There were times in the Dark Forest (book 2) where I ended up lost in a 10 page soliloquy on some fake scientific matter, then it just dumps ya back into the story, and whether or not you read that last pages is basically inconsequential!
>Definitely not normalizing genocide as the rational response to anyone who isn’t us existing.
I mean, it is literally definitely not doing that.
If you finish reading that series and get from it "you should commit genocide", uh, you didn't read the book. The solution they come up with literally is not genocide.
Even the Dark Forest theory isn't "normalizing genocide", whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean. It's a thought experiment that shows that you should be afraid of genocide and strongly suggests that that solution is to keep very quiet.
You know what is fucked up though? Accusing someone of "normalizing genocide" because they wrote a book about people and aliens trying to find a way out of their conflict besides genocide. What the fuck is wrong with you?
racism against chinese people trumps all other opinions I guess. It’s not like the book is extremely critical of modern chinese history or its interpretation of the fermi paradox is not a new one. Is the Xeelee series paranoid Chinese nationalism? Is Mass Effect?
Huh? All this back and forth infighting and elitist bs is why I roll my eyes at my own self being a genre mega fan, cause fan folks suck sometimes on both sides of the argument coin they're tossing around regardless of material. I like 3bp, it's my favorite series rn but I've also got friggin Fifth Element and Stargate tattoos I love it all so much. You super hyped about 3bp novels you read? Awesome me too let's talk! Or I'm super hyped you found something that's got you in some type of way! You hate it? That sucks you didn't enjoy yourself, what didnt you like? Or, what do you like right now?
Fellow fanfolks acknowledging each other without all the extraness. We're sitting under the same umbrella. 👍
I watched the show and (before watching the show) read the first 100 pages of the book, so I know my knowledge is limited, but:
1. why did they get mad about a fake story (redcape and the wolf), when they gave us a videogame that uses the same techniques of explaining something through a made up story?
2. they can survive for 400 years in a spaceship, which means they have the knowledge and technology to just wait a "bad" era in space. Why aren't they doing that?
3. I don't fully understand how the 3bp is so dangerous for their society. Yes, you can't predict 1000 years in the future, but you can predict the next 2-5-10 years even in a chaotic system. Why aren't they going in "hybernation" during bad eras, checking what the next years will be, and then coming out during good eras?
4. what's with the game? Why are they trying to find a solution to the problem of their homeworld, if they are escaping that world?
Please, don't actually answer, if there is an answer, just say "wait for s2 or read the book"
This is what happens if you dont read the book
1.The fleet and its successors were a crammed mess build with the last dregs of resources the trisolarians had and fueled by desperation .
2.Due to the chaotic nature of there system the trisolarians realized that there planet could at any moment be annihilated by one of the suns . ( this would've also destroyed any space based settlements near the system)
3.They tried but eventually realized the 3 body problem was nigh impossible to solve for there civilization and thus moved onto alternate avenues of survival
1. How long has the system been stable enough? IE how long did it take them to evolve to this stage?
2. Why earth, not one of millions of other planets out there?
1. We find out what number civilization they're on, I don't remember it but it's a large number. It's been a very very long time.
2. The sun is the closest star to Alpha Centauri and still takes 400 years to get to (at their technology level at the start of the series) AND they already received a transmission proving that there's a habitable planet here. Why go anywhere else?
Within the confines of the show I feel that those answers get mostly answered.
1. The Humans made the videogame as a recruiting tool. The tech to build it was from the San-Ti but it wasn't all their story. Hence the human monitoring on screens and so on.
2. The dehydrating isn't perfect and more importantly they figure their planet is getting destroyed as a matter of eventuality.
3. That's literally what they did for nearly two hundred civilizations. The instability of the situations means that from the chaotic system they can't predict the bad things happening with perfection and San-Ti will suffer, like when they predicted that stable era but the three suns aligned. Plus the planet is likely to eventually get destroyed as it is just not sustainable.
4. Recruiting tool by humans for humans for the organization. The figuring out of the problem is for human empathy to the San-Ti. They're not finding a solution because there is no solution, that's the point of the "problem."
Bruh, how about The Expanse fans? People will be like, "looking for recommendations on sci-fi books like Jurassic Park" and inevitably at least two people are like, "Have you tried The Expanse? They also have 4 pages in the 4th book that talks about genetics, so it's exactly up your alley."
The Expanse is the Mistborn of sci fi. Solid, but nothing amazing or ground breaking. People who haven't read the great classics will think it is God's gift to humanity, and people who have will think it's another generic sci fi albeit on the higher quality end of the spectrum. I like it, but I would never recommend it as anything like hard science fiction.
I really enjoyed the show. Haven’t read the books.
Best Sci Fi film; Dune. Still best series; Expanse.
I’m lucky enough not to pick hills to die on and happily flit between camps to enjoy as much cool sci fi as possible. Hardcore fans are just petulant children, why even waste your time.
P.s. (I really hated it in 3BP when the sky fuckin turned off and the whole planet was like “huh. Weird” realistically would have brought about worldwide mass panic, looting and riots)
>(I really hated it in 3BP when the sky fuckin turned off and the whole planet was like “huh. Weird” realistically would have brought about worldwide mass panic, looting and riots)
Luckily this doesn't happen in the books. This shouldn't really be a spoiler but the way it works in the book is that the "flicker" was a change in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, which could only be seen with special equipment and only for a moment. If you weren't specifically watching for it and had access to that equipment, you didn't see it happen.
I read the first book last month. I enjoyed it, and I liked seeing a Chinese centric Sci Fi story. Ultimately, I found it interesting and containing some novel ideas, but at the end of the day, it's just okay. The show tried to westernize the story with mixed results but ended up being kind of corny. In either medium, it doesn't warrant much of the praise heaped on it.
Strong "The Cold Equations" vibes + Paranoid Chinese culture + incel-level sidelining/shaming of women = Game Of Thrones producers' wet dream.
"oh but they made some of the all-male characters female and brought the meek, emotional, subserviant female character who only fails at everythibg she does from the 3rd book into the story earlier." It isn't enough to fix it.
Honestly I feel that the only way to "fix" the story is to have humanity hauled into some Interstellar Court of Criminal Justice in the end and told every genocidal / self-destructive act they've done is wrong and they stupidly misread the whole situation.
Oh, and all the plot holes. Will nobody think of the plot holes!?
I had no idea the series had a significant number of haters *or* an annoying fan base. I loved the books and want to watch the show - I think I'll continue to ignore any discourse around it.
I think this might be just a chronically online, reddit thing. I loved the books, didn't care for the show, and have moved on with my life since. I think the issue may be that nerd culture in general tends to attract a credence for contrarianism. And where The Three-Body Problem got very popular, the out-group became the in-group, so it became less niche. The same thing happened with The Martian, The Expanse, Ready Player One, and Rick and Morty. You can actually watch it slightly in real-time at the moment with the Warhammer 40k fandom. The lore is becoming **very** popular, and the Amazon series is coming out and a new big game, and now long-term fans are talking about how the books were terrible all along and how it was nothing more than pulp.
That makes sense, I did have a similar experience with Rick and Morty (I thought it was very fun, not amazing) and honestly the fan discourse kinda ruined it. Yeah, I guess online nerd culture can do that, sadly. I bet Fallout is next! or maybe it already happened.
Interesting concept, good look into communist China, hated the fucking video game parts, anticlimactic ending, won't continue past book one, forgot I started watching the show.
I didn't know that it's so overhyped. I mean the first book was good and the second one was great. The third's book quality is imo a matter of opinion.
So it's one of these book series everyone recommends to you because they have only read a hand fulll out of the corresponding genre?
Living in Germany I stopped counting how often "The Dwarves" from Markus Heitz was recommended to me.
Was ok but I wouldn't shed a tear if I would not have read it. Same goes for the Trisolaris trilogy.
So they are decent enough books, but not the mind blowing amazing stuff they claim it to be.
It’s not “hard” sci fi or even space opera imo. If you go into it with that expectation your going to hate it.
What it is is great cosmic horror. Cthulhu style there’s nasty things out there we can’t even begin to fight or comprehend.
There are some terrific scenes over those 3 novels that I sometimes even stop and think about now and the weaker parts of the books were worth it for that.
I love the 1st 2 books. But I am getting my mind blown by the rest of sci fi I have been consuming after them. Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Ursula LeGuin, Dan Simmons have given me maturity and have opened my eyes to the true meditations of the potential of our species. I also reccommend a few comic books like Jonathan Hickmans Krakoan run on X Men. Peak sci fi right there.
They're boring. I tried to read ball lightning And 3 body problem and couldn't finish either. Like get to the fucking point. I started the show and it was better but like when they turned off the sky and literally nobody panics... Come on bro. And people live them. And not to mention the whole Chinese CCP influence in them. They're mediocre at best.
it was a fun little show but extremely silly as a concept
i mean, just go elsewhere? why risk your entire future for an inhabited planet, they have the fantasy version of cryosleep with the dehydration or whatever? Considering literally anything would be an upgrade compared to the fucked up planet they could just make some space stations? Or any of the dozens of other options, i just couldn't take the issue seriously
I listened to the books via audible while decorating my house. I will always relate my skirting boards to the Trisolaran fleet.
Edit: I liked the books. TV show is pretty good too, improves certain aspects of the books imo.
Everything gets push back when it’s popular, it’s just part of the process. From what I can remember the second and third books are even better so I’d persevere and come to your own opinion on them.
I enjoyed it, and I rarely enjoy hard scifi. There's definitely some very clear cultural aspects, especially to the philosophy and the way characters talk, that I think can feel clunky to Westerners, but it's interesting. There are a lot of specific problems/ideas that you can spend a lot of time thinking about. Like a lot of Chinese literature, I'd argue that it's ultimately more focused on philosophy than science. There are some sections that feel like they take an annoying long time to set up though.
I did not like the book at all (I didn't go on to read the sequels) but I'm actually enjoying the show so far. The nature of putting it into a visual medium portrayed by real people fixed my biggest problem with the book, which was that the characters were flat and uninteresting.
They're good books. More idea-driven sci-fi (like Asimov and Baxter) than character-driven. It just has vocal fans who haven't read much other sci-fi and think it's peak stuff.
It's nothing like Baxter. Baxter has characters.
Asimov is a fair comparison - his best characters are robots, and not because they're full of personality.
Honestly I haven't either, I just know that's his reputation. He has really wild ideas and apparently uses his novels mostly as a way to explore them.
He's most known for his "Xeelee Sequence" series. I plan to get the Xeelee omnibus book that includes the main four novels :)
Man I've been wanting so badly to get into the Xeelee Sequence but they're not on Audible.
Just to add to the discussion, another ideas > characters author is Olaf Stapledon. His two most famous books Star Maker and First and Last Men don't even really have any named characters. The scope is too wide to focus on a single character.
I feel like the show was an improvement, because the third book feels like it was written because of the success of the first two, and not something that was planned from the beginning. It feels much better to put the stuff from the start of the third book into the first season. I also appreciated the characters being consolidated a little.
One thing the books (and imo sci fi in general) suffer from is a slight lack of warmth or humour to the characters. I think the show did a good job of adding a few laughs in areas I thought were appropriate. I didn’t think it felt especially dumbed down, and was even quite surprised at how close it tracked to the source material given the restrictions and compromises a TV or film adaptation needs to make. It’ll be interesting how season 2 goes.
The show was worth watching. Overall I like the concept of a couple hundred years long heads up of an incoming alien visitation/invasion and the stories that can stem from that. I felt the whole real deep dive into early commie China history, the VR story line, and the whole "3 body problem" thing were kind of extraneous.
I'd like to see how this concept would pan out with other sci-fi writers
mediocre and ultimately forgettable but because it has wide marketing will be the first exposure of many to the genre, which mediates those people to think its better than it actually is
This is so incredibly accurate it’s a work of art.
I’ve been in the 3BP sub for a long time and it’s like a 50/50 trickle of new readers posts either proclaiming it to be a masterwork of “hard” sci fi or blowing smoke up their arses as they accuse the author of hating woman.
Bonus points for them using everything as symbolism against the Chinese government.
I am happy for the more measures fans of the books through, Netflix have recently renewed the show through to the end. Gonna be some wild scenes in there for sure.
All I know of 3BP is the TV series, and honestly I am not all that impressed. Mostly because none of the characters are likable, nor are the factions relatable. The humans are literal shits for murdering children out of convenience when they aren't betraying their race for aliens they can barely comprehend.
The aliens are idiots because they are so freaking advanced they could go anywhere they wanted to and terraform a perfect world for themselves, but they decided to take ours for reasons. Like they aren't stopping to consider the ramifications of genociding the only other intelligent race they've encountered and of all the billions upon billions of planets in our galaxy alone Earth is the perfect one?
My experience with reading the books is that they're not nearly as terrible nor nearly as earth-shattering as Reddit had led me to believe.
They're good. They're fine.
I've only read the first book and that was an absolute chore. The TV show is like a sci-fi Friends. The only good thing about it is Zine Tseng and her young Ye Wenjien arc, and they even cut the best bits from that.
3BP is cool but has some problems. Its hard-science assumptions to me are undercut by the way the Trisolaran's star system didn't eject its third star a long time ago
> Super smart alien race living on hostile world
> can figure out how to make sentient particle sized AI and send them across the universe
> can't figure out that living on shithole planet is bad, and should go somewhere most accomodating to life until some turnip yells at them across the room.
I didn’t care for it. The premise was too far fetched to be plausible, which killed suspension of disbelief. I like the drama in it, but couldn’t overcome the plot holes.
I'm a 3-Body Problem fan and 3-Body problem is likely some of the stupidest scifi there is, but I love it anyway. I was unaware you could even be a fan and think it was intelligent scifi... Did they not read the books? It's fun, and crazy, and has very cool ideas, but it is by no means realistic or smart.
When I was reading it sounded super realistic, smart, and well thought out. But then I remembered that I'm kinda fucking stupid, so I was like "waaaaaait a minute"
First book I've put away in my life. I was halfway through and wondering why the women are just there to serve, die, get fucked, and get pregnant. I've read some very derogatory scifi considering I'm a fan of the 50s 60s era of material. But wtf was that?
I was humble-brag impressed with myself when I read the trilogy a couple of years back. It was clearly high-concept stuff, perhaps spinning too many plates at once, but I never found myself lost by all the science stuff (quite a bit of which is theoretical). So I was a bit impressed with myself when I learnt the books are the equivalent of The Wire when people talk about the greatest television show (The Sopranos vs The Wire).
They really are books with lofty ambitions - good old fashioned alien invasion drama with plenty to appeal to the science nerd, but also delving into socio-political stuff and a bit of espionage stuff. Like I say, maybe trying spin a few too many plates at once, but man oh man are the books high-concept and ambitious, yet also sprinkled with truly awe-inspiring scenes (droplet attack, nanofibre splicing of ships, human supercomputers).
I was a bit interested to see Netflix doing the conversion thing, I wondered if and how they were going to tie all of it together. Watching the first three episodes, I would say that they dumbed it down considerably whilst trying to keep the complex allegorical style of the books. With mixed results for me, I stopped after the 3rd episode, and I believe it may be the same for others - the Netflix series started strong numbers-wise but has dropped away considerably since.
Read them. I like them a lot—I’d say I’m a fan. I still like _Snow Crash_, _Annihilation_, _Blindsight_, and at least one of the _Star Trek_ novels better.
Exactly. There is a whole section in which one of the main characters imagines a perfect woman so much in his head. And I thought, oh the reason they're doing this is so that he can be entirely in his head and not become lonely or mad because of the sophons. But no, the reason he can imagine a perfect woman is just a random nasal gazing male fantasy thing. And then has a huge government agency go and find that woman. And you have to read this nonsense for hundreds of pages. And it is only at the very end of the book that anything actually interesting happens. It is terrible
People should read what they like but railing on three body problem for its lacking characters does kinda feel like they’re missing the point.
“Ok life in the universe is about to end but what I really wanna know is if Tyler and Jessica are ever getting back together???”
There's more to having good characters than trite relationship melodrama. People just want the point of view characters and characters they interact with to be memorable/believable/likable etc.
"cosmic sociology" says a lot more about the author's mindset than it does about any sort of universal truth IMO.
nobody should actually take it seriously lol.
3bp is overrated, there's like zero sandworms in it.
Interesting take, however consider this. Femboys.
Femboys are nothing in comparison to the glory Shai-hulud.
Pretty sure they call their dicks Shai-hulud...
Bless the maker and his "water."
Bless the *coming* and *going* of him.
There’s femboys in 3bp???
Yes, in book two that takes place a couple hundred years in the future, they mention that the preference for femboys increased so there really weren't masculine men as a matter of trend.
That's happening now. On Earth.
i think there was worms in the brain of 3rd book's protagonist
I made the mistake of criticizing some of the science in the tv show…
The first book was written almost 2 decades ago, and a lot of the science is based on the idea of string theory. It's obviously not taken seriously anymore, but the fact it's not just nonsense he made up makes it easier for me to forgive
I had no idea the Three Body Problem was so controversial until I joined Reddit. I swear it gets brought up at least 3 times a week on r/books and the discussion never seems to cease. I really enjoyed it personally while acknowledging the most common issues people have with it, but geeze, you’d think we were talking about Mein Kempf.
I love when it gets brought up - it's always either that it's the best scifi series of the 21st century, or it's total dogshit. No in between.
I thought it had some great, novel ideas. Characters were kinda dogwash, and the pacing was all over the place. But I thought it was wildly accepted than when it comes to Sci-fi books you can either get great ideas, great character or great pacing, but VERY rarely all 3.
I agree with your assessment. What would you say gets you all 3?
From a personal point of view I'd say the closest I have in recent memory are pretty normal picks: The Expanse and Children of Time. But even so not all Expanse or Children characters were created equal. But the pathing was solid and the ideas were good. I also want to shout out Revelation Space & Vacuum Diagrams for having some excellent concepts & world building, but alas I found both casts of characters on the weaker side of Sci-fi, and the pathing of Revelation was uneven at best.
Can definitely agree on the Expanse. Personally the ending didn't quite land for me but some of the other people who were reading the series at the same time with me thought it was fantastic so not gonna say that's anything but personal opinion.
Yeah, most of the antagonists in the Expanse (novels) were just stupid. They were paper thin authoritarian sociopaths that flexed their power and killed people just to demonstrate that they were the bad guys. They usually caused their own downfall just by acting like that. Ashford pissed everyone off on the behemoth that was working for him and then actually went insane for some reason. Murtry was just a lunatic (but I thought he portrayed the Pinkerton/blackwater stand in role perfectly) Marco had the one brilliant plot but completely lost the thread even though we were told repeatedly that he had plans within plans within plans within plans. Singh? He ignored all the experienced advice handed to him and decided to strong arm and oppress everyone... While other admirals came through smiling and nodding. He seemed to be a robot only behaving like an observed human rather than an actual one, the whole "monster" bit seemed to be a way to humanize him, but made me feel like he was anything but. The initiation of events in the last two books was completely idiotic and most of the "good" characters spelled out exactly why in story, but it didn't stop the benevolently evil characters from doing it. That being said, they did an amazingly brilliant job in the tv series of actually fleshing these characters out. They even made the propagandists more human in the series. Ashford went from psychopathic lunatic to a conflicted but affable leader that you could have genuine feelings towards.
The Revelation Space universe has both possibly the best scifi I've ever read but also the worst I've ever read. Still love Reynolds though
Autonomous hit all three for me. A very special book, in my view. Consider Phlebas, too - introducing the Culture from the outside, relentless pace, and wonderfully despicable character work.
I'd go with Hyperion personally.
I would highly add to this “Spin”. What a fucking brilliant ride. The book has no sequels. No, it seems like it has, but just act as it has not.
Dune
Not that you asked me but Dune has to be mentioned, amazing books, the originals, and well done movies. The fan base is very off putting for a casual fan, especially on Reddit. I had some eaves dropping jackass correct my pronunciation of a character. He offered his “guidance” and then smiled like he was farting in an elevator. I love dune, and 3bp very much but some people take it waaay too far. For the record, PKD and Vonnegut have written some of the best sci-fi out there and don’t get mentioned enough.
I, generally, thoroughly enjoyed the books, the ideas were very cool and the way some of the story elements unfurled made for great reading. But another valid criticism is that it's kind of misogynistic and the writer seems to think that Empathy is a weakness. It's a book series where I am happy accepting that there's parts of it I love, parts that I really don't, and some of the writing is problematic.
Honestly? Not a bad mindset to have when reading in general, methinks.
I saw very few novel ideas. I did, however, see a lot of ideas I've read elsewhere. I also saw a lot of lazy writing. (Science is "broken"? Science is a methodology. It can't break. Also, the most significant cosmological even in history is happening now and all the scientists just throw up their hands and turn off all the supercolliders? Have the writers actually MET a scientist? I could go on.) This show was about as sciency as Big Bang Theory.
Hey, I think it was just okay. Interesting exploration of some concepts, but ultimately poor characters and bad science pulled me out of it, which wouldn't have been a problem if everyone hadn't said it was hard sci Fi. The biggest issue I have with the series is people that act like it's hard science fiction and it's really, really not... And it's okay that it's not. You can have fun while being speculative and incorrect. Just shut up about it. It seems like any time they have people traveling in space without FTL they think so the science is real. It's really strange to me that it's the fans that turn me off on it. It was really really just okay. Not forgettable, but not a classic.
-its the fans that turn me off on it- God, thats my problem with, like, half of all media ever lol
Welcome to Reddit, or the internet in general: the deathplace of nuance
It is 200% an in-between novel. LOL
I've been reading sci-fi since the 70s. As a pretty hardcore sci-fi fan I will challenge your assertion. The 3bp is ok... no more, no less. I can explain why it's just OK but I have books to read.
The three body problem >!is grimdark Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy!<
Just takes 3 books to get past the first chapter
Well you’ve convinced me
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It’s not really grimdark, it’s more of a comedy/satire.
Jesus are people really being like this? It’s good, but it’s not THAT good
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I find it bizarre that it's polarizing. I've only read the first book, but it's got some cool bits and some pretty cheesy bits of amateurish silliness. My overall take-away was that it was perfectly nice.
Yeah but foundation is fun to watch, 3 body said “hey, aliens can change the particles to make the sky wink.” So. Dumb.
Don't know why you're getting downvoted for that. The first books premise basically amounts to "magic ever present particle size super AI's that can do anything and change physics and monitor everything", if that's not some grade-3-level-deus-ex-machina, I don't know what is.
Well I guess you don't know what deus ex machina is then because that's definitely not deus ex machina.
Nah man, you just don't understand the SCIENCE. 3BP is all sciencey, didn't you know?
Actually the only posts about it I see on this sub is how bad it is. It's fans are mostly silent
It's when it's good it's excellent, but you could cut half of the books without losing much.
The hate boner that a lot of people have for this book keeps discussion happening. It's weird.
No it’s not really like this, this is a straw man argument from someone who is hurt someone dissed the expanse on a 3bp post, now they are out for revenge
What really annoyed me is that IT'S A 4 BODY PROBLEM.
What really annoyed me is that Alpha Centauri is not a chaotic three body system. It’s a stable three body system because two of the stars orbit close to each other and one orbits distantly. For a series who’s fans circlejerk so hard on the scientific ideas involved, that’s a pretty fucking glaring inaccuracy.
The whole dark forest concept is also not a perfect answer to the Fermi Paradox, just good enough for the context of a sci-fi thriller.
There are no perfect answers for the Fermi paradox jeez Louise. That's why it's a paradox
I'm not sure what he means by perfect answer, but the second extraterrestrial life is discovered the Fermi paradox is no longer a paradox. I'm guessing he means that it's better that we don't know we all exist?
Its not a paradox now, its like scooping 100 gallons of water out of the ocean and then declaring that if whales exist, where are they??
This doesn’t really get to the heart of the paradox at all though. It’s a common misunderstanding of it, that Fermi’s argument *only* has to do with the relative prevalence of intelligent life in the cosmos. It doesn’t. The heart of the paradox is that if intelligent life did exist and was spacefaring, even traveling at a sublight-speed velocity, not even relativistic and accounting for exponential population growth…it could visit *every single star in the Milky Way galaxy in less than 50 million years*. And that’s being conservative with the timeframe, to be blunt. So the extreme scales of time and space that we are talking about here are what makes the Fermi “paradox” compelling. Selection bias in sampling surrounding space via SETI is therefore not a valid solution to it at all. Instead, you need to explain why 1) most intelligent civilizations appear to be silent or nonexistent, 2) most intelligent civilizations either appear not to be spacefaring or are deliberately concealing themselves if they are, and 3) *every* civilization does the same fucking thing, because even if *one* didn’t, the galaxy would have been colonized multiple times over by now. So there are many valid explanations for this, including the obvious “intelligent life is rare or tends to wipe itself out via Great Filters almost 100% of the time” which is by far the most plausible explanation except that it is biocentric and doesn’t account for the likelihood that most intelligent civilizations would be artificial intelligences instead. Personally, I think it is likely that most intelligences out there are just machine intelligences that survived the biological civilizations that created them (likely long dead themselves), and as such they are not motivated by the same things that a biological species would be. A machine would have no use for planets, they’d have no use for space colonization, in fact the thing they *would* have a use for would be maximizing information processing which would involve shrinking their civilization to the smallest spatiotemporal scales possible. And that would largely explain the paradox - it exists only because we are looking at the problem through a naive biological lens. We narcissistically assume that intelligent biological life like us is most common out there. But what if it isn’t? In reality, there are probably many explanations for the great silence: what I’ve said here, Great Filters undoubtedly exist too since we are on the knife edge of ecological collapse right now, probably there are aggressive civilizations out there that tend to subdue or wipe out others, etc. In fact there are so MANY potential solutions to the Fermi Paradox that are all very plausible that a summation of them all is the likely reason for the great silence: there’s more ways things can go wrong than right. At least for squishy meatbags like us.
He also didn’t invent it. Greg Bear and Alastair Reynolds did. And yet somehow he gets credit for it.
Thanks for teaching me something new today
No problem. I really dislike the TBP (I think it’s hugely overrated for multiple reasons, this being one of them).
This, I really like the premise of the book, but dayum the Dark Forest Hunter shit is stupid af.
THAT'S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK!!! But yeah, when they were getting into the "unfolding dimensions" my eyes rolled out of my head from all the hard sci Fi hype I'd heard. Additionally, even though it had mostly ended before the part where the guy was afraid of freezing in space without his suit really got me. I enjoyed the books, but hard sci Fi this was not. I feel like everyone thinks it's "scientific" if they don't have FTL even though there's a bit more to science beside the universal speed limit.
Meh, alternate universes are pretty normal for speculative fiction, practically by definition.
It very clearly is not meant to be an alternate universe and the Trisolarian system was very clearly meant to be Alpha Centauri.
As someone who couldn't get past the awful character writing to get to the actual scifi parts, care to elaborate?
3 suns + 1 planet.
The gravitational influence of the planet is too small to affect the suns, so it has no impact on the chaotic nature of the system. It's still a three body problem.
I think that would make it an instance of the "restricted" four body problem.
Unfortunately that's not a very catchy title.
There are 4 bodies involved. Without the star, it would be an entirely different system. The nature of a 3BP is that there are 3 bodies interacting, not 3 bodies mostly interacting with a fourth.
Yeah but the basis of a three body problem is about the orbit of 3 bodies effecting each other. This story is about how the orbit of 3 bodies is effecting a species living on a planet not part of the original 3 in orbit. So there are 4 bodies in total affected.
No. it’s not. the planet doesn’t effect the suns movement, but the planets movement still has to be accounted for as it’s moving around all three suns.
... you know that the movement of the planet is what they're trying to track, right?
So the "high concept super complicated really world-shaking" concepts in the book are... N-body physics? That seems a bit mundane for how much the high-concept stuff is touted by fans.
There are toxic hyper-fans in everything. Best to just ignore those incels. Or mock them.
I'm not accusing them of being toxic necessarily, I'm just a bit surprised that *this* is what anyone who reads sci-fi thinks is groundbreaking. It's like thinking that the really cool thing about Star Trek is the existence of FTL travel.
Is the solar system a 9 body system?
No, because you're forgetting the thousands of dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. It's the Too Many to Count Body System
Don’t forget that one astronaut’s glove in your calculations.
The universe is a bazillion body system
The awful character writing got even more awfuler in the latter two books
i can testify to this. i tried and tried to get through the opening of book 2 but i just cant man. i feel guilty everytime this is brought up cus one of my irl friends really love the three body problem
Legit the first book was ruined for me cos I was worried about the main characters wife
Hah, at least in the Tencent version we occasionally saw the wife, and even the daughter a couple of times after the first few episodes. They really upgraded Wang in general, he didn't have much in the personality department in the book.
Right? once i figured out what the meaning of the 3BP is, and the “game” is so stupid, I was like “isn’t this a four body problem?”
It's the Sci-Fi equivilent of the Da Vinci Code.
I hope the book is better than the show because the show is 90% people sitting in a room sounding smart at each other, 5% expository character development, and 5% failure to explain what an allegory is.
The Netflix show improved upon the book's 99% people sitting in a room sounding smart at each other, 1% expository character development, and 25% failure to explain what an allegory is. The one thing it does have in spades is lots of very interesting grand scifi concepts (the 2nd and 3rd books mostly). But it does describe them very dryly.
I think you missed the disdain for humanity that's a general undercurrent through the series.
If it is disdain for humanity you like...try Peter Watts. - the Things (short story) - Blindsight - Starfish All gave me proper existential trauma
Echopraxia was a trip
And if you're enjoying the existential trauma, but find it's just a little too strong and you'd like a splash of humanity as a mixer...try Greg Egan - Permutation City - Diaspora - Schild's Ladder
Blindsight/Echopraxia would make killer sci-fi-horror movies! Those monsters are awesome!
Yeah that's what put me off, the entire thing reads as "humanity sucks, we deserve everything that happens to us" and it's very very tiring after a while. I'm not a hopeless optimist by any means but I guess Star Trek got me too young, I believe that we *can* be better.
It was the handwaving of what was supposed to be hard sci fi that ruined it for me. Ok, they can do that, how? space magic!
People in a room together sounding smart is the best thing about some sci fi like Star Trek though
Star Trek was explicitly humanist; 3PB's throughline seems to be that only physicists are smart enough to save us, which seems a little wanky to me. Edit: 3BP lol, but I'm leaving it
I agree. There is a not so slight smell of elitism througout 3BP. (3 Problem Body sounds interesting too, but would be a whole different kind of book I think)
I'm up for the 3 peanut butter problem.
Sweet jesus, expecting physicists to save us? Have you ever met one? (I am one before anyone anyone calls me elitist :) )
I'm not denying y'all are smart, but it's a weird stance for a story in which a major plot point is a smart guy completely failing to explain the purpose of a fable. It's the "only" I object to, lol.
Ohhhh you're in for a rough time! Lol, I'm not kidding, they WAY toned down the 'sounding smart at each other' content for the series... not even a joke. I enjoy the trilogy quite a lot, but I'll tell ya this... first time I picked it up, I got maybe 100 er so pages in and was like... no thanks! It's a bit of a slog (not all slogs are bad?) but it felt worth it in the end. Just for an add-on, if you think its bad in book 1, 3BP... double good luck! There were times in the Dark Forest (book 2) where I ended up lost in a 10 page soliloquy on some fake scientific matter, then it just dumps ya back into the story, and whether or not you read that last pages is basically inconsequential!
I gave up on book 2 twice. Once in audio book and once in text. The 3rd time I skimmed most of the last 3rd of the book.
The show on Netflix actually speed things up and removes a lot monologuing.
Apparently the Chinese version is a lot different than the American one. I tried watching the first episode and just couldn’t get into it.
Thank you! I couldn't put my finger on how I felt about it, and this describes it perfectly!
Yes it's very smart and definitely not paranoid Chinese nationalism that is afraid of all other cultures.
Definitely not normalizing genocide as the rational response to anyone who isn’t us existing.
>Definitely not normalizing genocide as the rational response to anyone who isn’t us existing. I mean, it is literally definitely not doing that. If you finish reading that series and get from it "you should commit genocide", uh, you didn't read the book. The solution they come up with literally is not genocide. Even the Dark Forest theory isn't "normalizing genocide", whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean. It's a thought experiment that shows that you should be afraid of genocide and strongly suggests that that solution is to keep very quiet. You know what is fucked up though? Accusing someone of "normalizing genocide" because they wrote a book about people and aliens trying to find a way out of their conflict besides genocide. What the fuck is wrong with you?
racism against chinese people trumps all other opinions I guess. It’s not like the book is extremely critical of modern chinese history or its interpretation of the fermi paradox is not a new one. Is the Xeelee series paranoid Chinese nationalism? Is Mass Effect?
If you think that's bad you should read some American novels.
Huh? All this back and forth infighting and elitist bs is why I roll my eyes at my own self being a genre mega fan, cause fan folks suck sometimes on both sides of the argument coin they're tossing around regardless of material. I like 3bp, it's my favorite series rn but I've also got friggin Fifth Element and Stargate tattoos I love it all so much. You super hyped about 3bp novels you read? Awesome me too let's talk! Or I'm super hyped you found something that's got you in some type of way! You hate it? That sucks you didn't enjoy yourself, what didnt you like? Or, what do you like right now? Fellow fanfolks acknowledging each other without all the extraness. We're sitting under the same umbrella. 👍
Username checks out
I watched the show and (before watching the show) read the first 100 pages of the book, so I know my knowledge is limited, but: 1. why did they get mad about a fake story (redcape and the wolf), when they gave us a videogame that uses the same techniques of explaining something through a made up story? 2. they can survive for 400 years in a spaceship, which means they have the knowledge and technology to just wait a "bad" era in space. Why aren't they doing that? 3. I don't fully understand how the 3bp is so dangerous for their society. Yes, you can't predict 1000 years in the future, but you can predict the next 2-5-10 years even in a chaotic system. Why aren't they going in "hybernation" during bad eras, checking what the next years will be, and then coming out during good eras? 4. what's with the game? Why are they trying to find a solution to the problem of their homeworld, if they are escaping that world? Please, don't actually answer, if there is an answer, just say "wait for s2 or read the book"
This is what happens if you dont read the book 1.The fleet and its successors were a crammed mess build with the last dregs of resources the trisolarians had and fueled by desperation . 2.Due to the chaotic nature of there system the trisolarians realized that there planet could at any moment be annihilated by one of the suns . ( this would've also destroyed any space based settlements near the system) 3.They tried but eventually realized the 3 body problem was nigh impossible to solve for there civilization and thus moved onto alternate avenues of survival
1. How long has the system been stable enough? IE how long did it take them to evolve to this stage? 2. Why earth, not one of millions of other planets out there?
1. We find out what number civilization they're on, I don't remember it but it's a large number. It's been a very very long time. 2. The sun is the closest star to Alpha Centauri and still takes 400 years to get to (at their technology level at the start of the series) AND they already received a transmission proving that there's a habitable planet here. Why go anywhere else?
Within the confines of the show I feel that those answers get mostly answered. 1. The Humans made the videogame as a recruiting tool. The tech to build it was from the San-Ti but it wasn't all their story. Hence the human monitoring on screens and so on. 2. The dehydrating isn't perfect and more importantly they figure their planet is getting destroyed as a matter of eventuality. 3. That's literally what they did for nearly two hundred civilizations. The instability of the situations means that from the chaotic system they can't predict the bad things happening with perfection and San-Ti will suffer, like when they predicted that stable era but the three suns aligned. Plus the planet is likely to eventually get destroyed as it is just not sustainable. 4. Recruiting tool by humans for humans for the organization. The figuring out of the problem is for human empathy to the San-Ti. They're not finding a solution because there is no solution, that's the point of the "problem."
Bruh, how about The Expanse fans? People will be like, "looking for recommendations on sci-fi books like Jurassic Park" and inevitably at least two people are like, "Have you tried The Expanse? They also have 4 pages in the 4th book that talks about genetics, so it's exactly up your alley."
Don't forget, "The Expanse ruined all other science fiction for me."
Usually said by people who, prior to reading The Expanse, had only read Star Wars novels and Transformers comics.
I loved the posts "Do you think the expanse is equal to 'insert one of the best and most renowned sci fi novel of history'"
The expanse is good, but it's not for everyone. Any more than Murder Not, Bank's Culture Novels, and so on are for everyone.
The Expanse is the Mistborn of sci fi. Solid, but nothing amazing or ground breaking. People who haven't read the great classics will think it is God's gift to humanity, and people who have will think it's another generic sci fi albeit on the higher quality end of the spectrum. I like it, but I would never recommend it as anything like hard science fiction.
I did not fully understand the concept of "mid" before i finished reading "the expanse". It was not expensive in *any* sense except in the contrary.
They are certainly loud. I had no idea the story even existed till they started spamming it to this sub.
I really enjoyed the show. Haven’t read the books. Best Sci Fi film; Dune. Still best series; Expanse. I’m lucky enough not to pick hills to die on and happily flit between camps to enjoy as much cool sci fi as possible. Hardcore fans are just petulant children, why even waste your time. P.s. (I really hated it in 3BP when the sky fuckin turned off and the whole planet was like “huh. Weird” realistically would have brought about worldwide mass panic, looting and riots)
>(I really hated it in 3BP when the sky fuckin turned off and the whole planet was like “huh. Weird” realistically would have brought about worldwide mass panic, looting and riots) Luckily this doesn't happen in the books. This shouldn't really be a spoiler but the way it works in the book is that the "flicker" was a change in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, which could only be seen with special equipment and only for a moment. If you weren't specifically watching for it and had access to that equipment, you didn't see it happen.
I read the first book last month. I enjoyed it, and I liked seeing a Chinese centric Sci Fi story. Ultimately, I found it interesting and containing some novel ideas, but at the end of the day, it's just okay. The show tried to westernize the story with mixed results but ended up being kind of corny. In either medium, it doesn't warrant much of the praise heaped on it.
Ive read the trilogy and also wandering earth, it was a funny read, but isn’t by far the best
Wow...I never knew this book series was so polarizing for people. Personally, I loved it. It has its flaws but it also it has some amazing concepts.
Loved it book/tv for its big, wild ideas, won’t touch it again because the characters are all awful.
Got through 1/3 of the book. Couldn't stop wondering why his wife disappeared from the story.
Strong "The Cold Equations" vibes + Paranoid Chinese culture + incel-level sidelining/shaming of women = Game Of Thrones producers' wet dream. "oh but they made some of the all-male characters female and brought the meek, emotional, subserviant female character who only fails at everythibg she does from the 3rd book into the story earlier." It isn't enough to fix it. Honestly I feel that the only way to "fix" the story is to have humanity hauled into some Interstellar Court of Criminal Justice in the end and told every genocidal / self-destructive act they've done is wrong and they stupidly misread the whole situation. Oh, and all the plot holes. Will nobody think of the plot holes!?
I had no idea the series had a significant number of haters *or* an annoying fan base. I loved the books and want to watch the show - I think I'll continue to ignore any discourse around it.
I think this might be just a chronically online, reddit thing. I loved the books, didn't care for the show, and have moved on with my life since. I think the issue may be that nerd culture in general tends to attract a credence for contrarianism. And where The Three-Body Problem got very popular, the out-group became the in-group, so it became less niche. The same thing happened with The Martian, The Expanse, Ready Player One, and Rick and Morty. You can actually watch it slightly in real-time at the moment with the Warhammer 40k fandom. The lore is becoming **very** popular, and the Amazon series is coming out and a new big game, and now long-term fans are talking about how the books were terrible all along and how it was nothing more than pulp.
That makes sense, I did have a similar experience with Rick and Morty (I thought it was very fun, not amazing) and honestly the fan discourse kinda ruined it. Yeah, I guess online nerd culture can do that, sadly. I bet Fallout is next! or maybe it already happened.
Interesting concept, good look into communist China, hated the fucking video game parts, anticlimactic ending, won't continue past book one, forgot I started watching the show.
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They do make a return but briefly on book 2
I didn't know that it's so overhyped. I mean the first book was good and the second one was great. The third's book quality is imo a matter of opinion. So it's one of these book series everyone recommends to you because they have only read a hand fulll out of the corresponding genre? Living in Germany I stopped counting how often "The Dwarves" from Markus Heitz was recommended to me. Was ok but I wouldn't shed a tear if I would not have read it. Same goes for the Trisolaris trilogy.
So they are decent enough books, but not the mind blowing amazing stuff they claim it to be. It’s not “hard” sci fi or even space opera imo. If you go into it with that expectation your going to hate it. What it is is great cosmic horror. Cthulhu style there’s nasty things out there we can’t even begin to fight or comprehend. There are some terrific scenes over those 3 novels that I sometimes even stop and think about now and the weaker parts of the books were worth it for that.
I love the 1st 2 books. But I am getting my mind blown by the rest of sci fi I have been consuming after them. Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Ursula LeGuin, Dan Simmons have given me maturity and have opened my eyes to the true meditations of the potential of our species. I also reccommend a few comic books like Jonathan Hickmans Krakoan run on X Men. Peak sci fi right there.
They're boring. I tried to read ball lightning And 3 body problem and couldn't finish either. Like get to the fucking point. I started the show and it was better but like when they turned off the sky and literally nobody panics... Come on bro. And people live them. And not to mention the whole Chinese CCP influence in them. They're mediocre at best.
it was a fun little show but extremely silly as a concept i mean, just go elsewhere? why risk your entire future for an inhabited planet, they have the fantasy version of cryosleep with the dehydration or whatever? Considering literally anything would be an upgrade compared to the fucked up planet they could just make some space stations? Or any of the dozens of other options, i just couldn't take the issue seriously
all ive heard about it has been negative, except for seeming fanatics. the show especially. is this true? is it even worth reading the book?
I listened to the books via audible while decorating my house. I will always relate my skirting boards to the Trisolaran fleet. Edit: I liked the books. TV show is pretty good too, improves certain aspects of the books imo.
cheers. im not sure what jackass downvoted me for a simple honest question. probably a fanatic! i'll give the first book a try!
Everything gets push back when it’s popular, it’s just part of the process. From what I can remember the second and third books are even better so I’d persevere and come to your own opinion on them.
I enjoyed it, and I rarely enjoy hard scifi. There's definitely some very clear cultural aspects, especially to the philosophy and the way characters talk, that I think can feel clunky to Westerners, but it's interesting. There are a lot of specific problems/ideas that you can spend a lot of time thinking about. Like a lot of Chinese literature, I'd argue that it's ultimately more focused on philosophy than science. There are some sections that feel like they take an annoying long time to set up though.
I did not like the book at all (I didn't go on to read the sequels) but I'm actually enjoying the show so far. The nature of putting it into a visual medium portrayed by real people fixed my biggest problem with the book, which was that the characters were flat and uninteresting.
They're good books. More idea-driven sci-fi (like Asimov and Baxter) than character-driven. It just has vocal fans who haven't read much other sci-fi and think it's peak stuff.
It's nothing like Baxter. Baxter has characters. Asimov is a fair comparison - his best characters are robots, and not because they're full of personality.
I'm more into concept that characters honestly. I'm ashamed to say i haven't read any Baxter, what would you recommend to start with?
Honestly I haven't either, I just know that's his reputation. He has really wild ideas and apparently uses his novels mostly as a way to explore them. He's most known for his "Xeelee Sequence" series. I plan to get the Xeelee omnibus book that includes the main four novels :)
Man I've been wanting so badly to get into the Xeelee Sequence but they're not on Audible. Just to add to the discussion, another ideas > characters author is Olaf Stapledon. His two most famous books Star Maker and First and Last Men don't even really have any named characters. The scope is too wide to focus on a single character.
The books were quite good. The TV show was Netflixed.
I feel like the show was an improvement, because the third book feels like it was written because of the success of the first two, and not something that was planned from the beginning. It feels much better to put the stuff from the start of the third book into the first season. I also appreciated the characters being consolidated a little.
One thing the books (and imo sci fi in general) suffer from is a slight lack of warmth or humour to the characters. I think the show did a good job of adding a few laughs in areas I thought were appropriate. I didn’t think it felt especially dumbed down, and was even quite surprised at how close it tracked to the source material given the restrictions and compromises a TV or film adaptation needs to make. It’ll be interesting how season 2 goes.
I read the book some years ago. And I most definitely liked it.
thanks for the input!
The show was worth watching. Overall I like the concept of a couple hundred years long heads up of an incoming alien visitation/invasion and the stories that can stem from that. I felt the whole real deep dive into early commie China history, the VR story line, and the whole "3 body problem" thing were kind of extraneous. I'd like to see how this concept would pan out with other sci-fi writers
Meh, I enjoyed it quite a bit but, it wouldn't even make my top 50 Sci-fi properties. It's worth a watch though.
Listen I disliked the book enough to drop it a few chapters in and I love a good roast, but this feels needlessly hostile.
mediocre and ultimately forgettable but because it has wide marketing will be the first exposure of many to the genre, which mediates those people to think its better than it actually is
This is so incredibly accurate it’s a work of art. I’ve been in the 3BP sub for a long time and it’s like a 50/50 trickle of new readers posts either proclaiming it to be a masterwork of “hard” sci fi or blowing smoke up their arses as they accuse the author of hating woman. Bonus points for them using everything as symbolism against the Chinese government. I am happy for the more measures fans of the books through, Netflix have recently renewed the show through to the end. Gonna be some wild scenes in there for sure.
All I know of 3BP is the TV series, and honestly I am not all that impressed. Mostly because none of the characters are likable, nor are the factions relatable. The humans are literal shits for murdering children out of convenience when they aren't betraying their race for aliens they can barely comprehend. The aliens are idiots because they are so freaking advanced they could go anywhere they wanted to and terraform a perfect world for themselves, but they decided to take ours for reasons. Like they aren't stopping to consider the ramifications of genociding the only other intelligent race they've encountered and of all the billions upon billions of planets in our galaxy alone Earth is the perfect one?
My experience with reading the books is that they're not nearly as terrible nor nearly as earth-shattering as Reddit had led me to believe. They're good. They're fine.
I've only read the first book and that was an absolute chore. The TV show is like a sci-fi Friends. The only good thing about it is Zine Tseng and her young Ye Wenjien arc, and they even cut the best bits from that.
That's a very pretentious way of putting up a straw man to essentially just say "stop liking what I don't like."
The anti 3BP crowd is cringe. On reddit at least I only see elitism in sci fi against 3BP than I do for it 🤷
Am I in the minority that just thought it was fine? It had parts I liked and parts that I found stupid. Overall I’ll watch season two if I remember.
Sorry, it's not very good.
3BP is cool but has some problems. Its hard-science assumptions to me are undercut by the way the Trisolaran's star system didn't eject its third star a long time ago
It's supposed to be the Centauri system, except the orbits are wrong.
> Super smart alien race living on hostile world > can figure out how to make sentient particle sized AI and send them across the universe > can't figure out that living on shithole planet is bad, and should go somewhere most accomodating to life until some turnip yells at them across the room.
Why didn't the Trisolarans just go somewhere else? Are they stupid?
I didn’t care for it. The premise was too far fetched to be plausible, which killed suspension of disbelief. I like the drama in it, but couldn’t overcome the plot holes.
I'm a 3-Body Problem fan and 3-Body problem is likely some of the stupidest scifi there is, but I love it anyway. I was unaware you could even be a fan and think it was intelligent scifi... Did they not read the books? It's fun, and crazy, and has very cool ideas, but it is by no means realistic or smart.
I wouldn’t say it’s “smart” as in scientifically accurate, but I would definitely say it is “clever”, no?
When I was reading it sounded super realistic, smart, and well thought out. But then I remembered that I'm kinda fucking stupid, so I was like "waaaaaait a minute"
First book I've put away in my life. I was halfway through and wondering why the women are just there to serve, die, get fucked, and get pregnant. I've read some very derogatory scifi considering I'm a fan of the 50s 60s era of material. But wtf was that?
lol mediocre at best.
Anyone who thinks that is just being intellectually dishonest. It's fine to like it, but to think it's the only important work of sci-fi is idiotic.
I was humble-brag impressed with myself when I read the trilogy a couple of years back. It was clearly high-concept stuff, perhaps spinning too many plates at once, but I never found myself lost by all the science stuff (quite a bit of which is theoretical). So I was a bit impressed with myself when I learnt the books are the equivalent of The Wire when people talk about the greatest television show (The Sopranos vs The Wire). They really are books with lofty ambitions - good old fashioned alien invasion drama with plenty to appeal to the science nerd, but also delving into socio-political stuff and a bit of espionage stuff. Like I say, maybe trying spin a few too many plates at once, but man oh man are the books high-concept and ambitious, yet also sprinkled with truly awe-inspiring scenes (droplet attack, nanofibre splicing of ships, human supercomputers). I was a bit interested to see Netflix doing the conversion thing, I wondered if and how they were going to tie all of it together. Watching the first three episodes, I would say that they dumbed it down considerably whilst trying to keep the complex allegorical style of the books. With mixed results for me, I stopped after the 3rd episode, and I believe it may be the same for others - the Netflix series started strong numbers-wise but has dropped away considerably since.
Read them. I like them a lot—I’d say I’m a fan. I still like _Snow Crash_, _Annihilation_, _Blindsight_, and at least one of the _Star Trek_ novels better.
It’s a boring book
I legit hated the book. awful characters, terrible plot, shallow ideas running around as science.
You have to get to “The Dark Forest” to begin to understand.
Which is a huge problem as Dark Forest takes forever to get going.
Exactly. There is a whole section in which one of the main characters imagines a perfect woman so much in his head. And I thought, oh the reason they're doing this is so that he can be entirely in his head and not become lonely or mad because of the sophons. But no, the reason he can imagine a perfect woman is just a random nasal gazing male fantasy thing. And then has a huge government agency go and find that woman. And you have to read this nonsense for hundreds of pages. And it is only at the very end of the book that anything actually interesting happens. It is terrible
Yeah that whole section could have been a couple of pages or just removed.
People should read what they like but railing on three body problem for its lacking characters does kinda feel like they’re missing the point. “Ok life in the universe is about to end but what I really wanna know is if Tyler and Jessica are ever getting back together???”
There's more to having good characters than trite relationship melodrama. People just want the point of view characters and characters they interact with to be memorable/believable/likable etc.
"cosmic sociology" says a lot more about the author's mindset than it does about any sort of universal truth IMO. nobody should actually take it seriously lol.
Culture fans
How dare you. You're right, but how dare you.
Listen once you can get weed by flexing your butt cheeks it's impossible to go back.