Frances Buontempo reviewed The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
Lots of ideas
3 stars
Set my imagination off, but felt like a stream of ideas.
Paperback, 434 pages
English language
Published Sept. 13, 2016 by Head of Zeus.
3 stars
(5 reviews)
1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.
Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang's investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns.
This is the Three-Body Problem and it is the key to everything: the key to the scientists' deaths, the key to a conspiracy that spans light-years and the key to the extinction-level threat humanity now faces.
Jan reviewed the three-body problem by Liu Cixin
Die drei Sonnen - chinesische Science Fiction
4 stars
"Die drei Sonnen" ist der erste Teil der Trisolaris-Trilogie und hat 2015 den Hugo-Award gewonnen. Anspruchsvoll und stellenweise langatmig, aber es war für mich total spannend, chinesische Science Fiction zu lesen, gerade mit diesen philosophischen Ausführungen.
Jonathan Hartley reviewed The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
Not just bizarrely nihilistic and cynical, but also pro-authoritarian propaganda
1 star
Content warning This book is intensely political.
Everyone loves this, but I can't understand why nobody seems to be put off, or at least puzzled, but the way that every human individual or organization in the book is just relentlessly awful, ranging from suicidal to genocidal, and everything in-between, without respite.
Most of them, given any chance at all, are trying hard to selfishly save their own skins, with not a moment's regard for the fact that their plans will immediately doom the rest of the human race. Those not intent on self preservation at any cost are instead committed to bitter nihilism, such as the ultimate eco terrorists, who feel that to save the Earth's biosphere they must collaborate with alien forces to bring about humanity's defeat, and likely annhialation.
These characters and groups are not intended as outliers. They simply represent the world, as it is, in its entirety. The only thing that holds back this tide of destructive behavior is the government, who keeps everyone in line.
I can't tell how much of this bizarrely one-sided depiction of humanity is a deliberate choice by the author Liu Cixin, versus simply being an unplanned exposure of the author's worldview. Does his native Chinese immersion in authoritarianism form a subconscious backdrop to everything he wrote here, or is he making the deliberate point that strong government is absolutely necessary?
Liu Cixin has since gone on record in support of the Chinese government's internment of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang. There, people have been rounded up, because of their ethnicity, into over 400 internment camps. The camps administer cultural and religious re-education, forced labor, involuntary sterilization and abortion. This is something Liu Cixin is openly in favor of.
It makes my skin crawl to read that, and then carry on blithely with this book, which seems to be an unapologetic justification for authoritarian government imposing its will on an unwilling people. I did finish it, but have no desire to read the sequels - and not just because I don't agree with its politics. I genuinely found the behavior of all the characters to be demented and incessantly frustrating.
Kian Ryan reviewed The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
Good, but watch out - sets up trilogy
5 stars
The first few chapters had me darting to and from Wikipedia to help add some context to a story that is deeply set in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It',s a triviality to call the story complex, a mystery than unfolds through the book. Be warned this is the first in a trilogy and a very much sets itself up this way, which was a little frustrating in the last few chapters.
Está bien.
No rating
Es el primero de una trilogía. Me ha gustado, aunque hay algunas cosas "científicas" que me han parecido muy simplonas. De cualquier forma, estoy leyendo el segundo, y creo que también leeré el tercero. Lo recomiendo.
Subjects
- Fiction, science fiction, general