The Three Body Problem - Or why communists bullying astrophysicists might be a bad idea

[2mm and 99 others]

Watched the Chinese version recently. I ...liked (how could I like it? It's bad and horrible etc.) , that the man who had unintentionally invented the most horryfiing non-nuclear weapon there is, thinking that his invention is gonna be used for construction of some orbital elevator (and naming it Flying Blade), is ''forced'' to watch the ship being cut up, as his magic fiber is used as a literal wire across the road, and the military guys are patting his back and be like, ''good job, man, we are looking forward to see further use of it''.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Finished the first book. It's not bad but very clinical writing and it's guilty of the literary sin of having a ton of technobabble for something that is psuedo-science magic.

It's kind of weird messaging that the whole plot is entirely Kickstarted by a woman moment, with the application that the Chinese Revolution was right all along in killing intellectuals and economic elites. With the woman in question need to be told the basic bitch fact that having high education doesn't make you a more moral person, and that an alien civilization integrating itself on a planet will cause more death and environmental damage than anything we can imagine (I would even argue that to have high technology you HAVE to be an exploitative species). Sadly we have too many people in the real world who would have probably signed in with the aliens.

Best parts of the book are the VR game which was a nice dive into an alien world with a mystery in and around it (as long as you don't google the term since that's literally the solution). I really groaned into the environmentalist aspects and I'm not sure if the reader is even supposed to sympathize with those.

I don't really get the whole invasion plan since humans will absolutely detonate the planet if they see loss as inevitable. You'd thinking having thousands of magical matter altering supercomputers on earth would just have them create super AIDS to kill all humans without telling anyone on the plan. Like can't humans just construct shit on the moon?

Finally I'll add that a lot of time during reading the book I had the feeling of petty passive aggressivess on the west, and physicians touting their own horn on how they are the ones doing all the super cool advancements.

 

[Vecr]

It's kind of weird messaging that the whole plot is entirely Kickstarted by a woman moment, with the application that the Chinese Revolution was right all along in killing intellectuals and economic elites. With the woman in question need to be told the basic bitch fact that having high education doesn't make you a more moral person

Everything bad that happens in the entire series is caused by woman moments. I assume you're reading the English translation, but I talked to a guy who read the original Chinese and he said it's more explicit about the message.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Everything bad that happens in the entire series is caused by woman moments. I assume you're reading the English translation, but I talked to a guy who read the original Chinese and he said it's more explicit about the message.

Doesn't really surprise me that we get a sanitized product. I remember hearing the book was anti Chinese for not showing the Cultural Revolution as purely good act, but it's like arguing that an American media that shows slavery as wrong is breaking new ground, and like I said in the end it was justified since there is a literal cabal of intellectuals who want to destroy the world out of pettiness. I wish the book went deeper into the hypocrisy of the ultra rich and intellectuals both thinking themselves ubermensch for being smarter, and fetishizing "return to monke" exotic savagery which they never engage in.

The old science woman meeting the girls that killed her father really fell flat for me and I don't know if it's intentional. You had multiple moments of people being good for her without requesting anything, but meeting the girls who were way too young to realize what they were doing who basically say to her "tough shit, we also were abused by this regime even worse than you" made her decide mankind deserves annihilation.

 

[Cemetery Support]

Haven't read the thread so rate me late if I am. My thoughts aren't original nor have they even been.

I finished the first book in the series and couldn't bother to finish the second. I simply couldn't amend in my head the gaping plothole of FTL reality manipulation on the part of the alien species. It's too OP to work.

I liked the writing and cultural otherness of it. The tone didn't treat a layman like a retard. Also, it's always a positive to see a book that sends the message that hating mankind is stupid and academics and the elite are so distanced from reality that their distance becomes a threat to civilization.

 

[Pentex]

I bit the bullet and read Three-Body Problem this weekend.

Pretty good book generally. It's a little techno-babbley in places, but it ties up its plot points well by the end.

The Cultural Revolution kicked everything off. In China, you can criticize the Cultural Revolution, but not Mao. The Chinese are so good at weaponized alienation/ostracism that Ye Wenjie decides to sell out the human race to the Trisolarians. Human contact makes her a little bit better but the damage is already done. Funnily enough, the Trisolarian monitor tries to do the same thing, but gets caught.

Wang Miao is not a protagonist so much as he is a person the plot of the story just kind of happens around, or rather, he's the window the author built to allow us to see the plot happen.

The ETO was hilarious as it was identifiable to the real world. Most of them are drawn from economic and social 'elites' who, in the secret tribunal of their own hearts, proclaimed a death sentence on the human race. It just so happened that the Trisolarians exist and are willing to be the guillotine because our planet is better than theirs. They are more technologically advanced, but humans are more culturally advanced. Between Mike Evans' tirade about Pan-species communism, and unlawful possession of Silent Spring being Ye Wenjie's second 'crime' against the PRC, the book has a pretty low opinion of environmentalists and the well-to-do activist class who want to break the world or play revolution just to alleviate their own boredom.