The Three-Body Problem

I wasn't sure whether this book would resonate with me, but once I got to listening, I got hooked. This book is heavy on physics talk that I don't have a deep learning or understanding of. I found it fascinating, but I can see how some would find it boring.

I listened to the audiobook, which I think helped me. The narrator was fantastic in reading the different characters which helped me keep them straight, more of a challenge with Chinese names that are not as familiar to me.

I found the story illustrates well our natural fears and prejudices. Some of our instincts prove true and some we find are not bound in truth. Will I read this again? I don't think so, but this was a fun, mind bending run.

Me gustó, simple.

Un libro lleno de referencias históricas que en más de alguna ocasión me hicieron consultar otros libros para llenar contextos.

La historia corre desde el inicio rápidamente, no se queda empantanada mucho tiempo y los constantes saltos de atrás para adelante no llegan a ser molestos como en otros libros ya que están bien justificados.

Respecto a la historia (lo más importante) me resultó muy interesante, me gustó el estilo simple no muy adornado del autor. Me recordó los mejores tiempos de Asimov, sin parafernalia. Me confundieron sin embargo los nombres chinos, muchas veces me costó discernir qué personaje era el que estaba hablando o haciendo algo. El misterio inicial me pareció muy entretenido, aunque durante el segundo tercio me anduve aburriendo un poco al punto en que dejé el libro botado varios días. En el tercer tercio el libro agarra nuevamente una velocidad y todo se desarrolla al punto de que es difícil soltarlo (tal vez muy rápido).

¿Qué no me gustó? El sofón. Y no puedo decir más porque no quiero arruinarle la historia a nadie. Pero algo tan ingenioso pudo haber tenido un mejor uso por parte de sus creadores, creo yo.

Algunas personas en varias revisiones que leí por aquí se quejan de lo plano de algunos personajes. Puede ser, pero la verdad es que las ideas que plantea Liu Cixin son súper interesantes como para quedarse pegado en la psicología de los personajes. Aquí no hay Susan Calvin's. Si fuera una novela de dramas personales, Ok! Pero no lo es.

En fin, el primer libro de un autor chino que leo y me gustó mucho. ¡Vamos por la segunda parte!

I got 80% of the way through this book & gave up. Too slow for my tastes. Enjoyed the creativity of his approach in presenting a “hard sci-fi” story but moved too slowly to keep me engaged.

This book has all the grand visions of science and philosophy that the best classic sci-fi stories had, but with a far grimmer and more brutal perspective, making this a very unique and cool read. The science in this book is cutting-edge and complex, but applied to the story in an undeniably cool way. Another telling old-school trait is the focus on concepts over characters; all the characters are uber-competent professionals lacking any notable personalities . I have mixed feelings over the author's choice not to make the characters relatable, because though I respect the focus on the grander ideas within the book, I don't think giving the characters a bit more depth would have hurt the story.

Speaking of scale, I absolutely love the way the author integrated the work of philosophers and scholars from Eastern and Western history. I gushed at the way some of my favourite historical figures came to life, and became very curious about the ones I didn't know. Using these characters in the “game” portions of the book, in combination with the cutting edge science of the modern era, this book covers old science in unique and fun ways, and at the same time, comes up with incredibly unique ideas for how current theoretical science in applied ways, all while not feeling overwhelming or overly academic.

Finally, there is the cultural colouring of having the story take place around revolutionary and post-revolutionary China. This definitely created a dark and somewhat nihilistic tone over what could easily have been a story of triumph and hope. While an impending apocalypse is typically met with resistance, many characters in this story welcome it with open arms. My instinct was to think that as an unrealistic reaction, but when you think back to the brutality of the revolution portrayed in the opening chapters and scattered throughout, it starts to make more sense than I would like it to.

UPDATE: I originally omitted mentioning another less than admirable old school trait in this book: his female characters are notoriously shallow and in the case of the main character's wife, straight up cringe-worthy. I thought that since there was at least a respectable spread of smart female characters, harping on this when really all his characters are somewhat two dimensional was overkill.
But this problem gets much worse in the sequel, as does his more odd sociological ideas.
Consider this a warning. If, like me, you loved the scientific theories, and cool takes on history and historical figures, then leave the series now, because the sequels had none of that as far as I read. It's all about tricking the aliens and their sophons. So if you like the author's odder philosophies and the concept of sophons, read on, otherwise, stop now!

Did not get this at all. Was constantly waiting to get drawn into it in some way, but it never happened. I realise that the translator aimed deliberately to convey the voice of the author even if it did not render in a traditional American style (grammatically and narratively) so no doubt there was some difficulty introduced on that front. However, I found it lurching and simplistic and plodding, and I can't put any of that down to cultural differences, just bad writing. Some positive reviews have dismissed criticism saying that this is just “Hard SciFi” as if naysayers just can't handle the fact that the book contains swathes of discussion about physics and mathematics. That didn't bother me - in fact, they were probably the most compelling parts. At least I was learning something! Ditto the historical sections that provided information about the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Everything else was just too straightforward, there was no nuance. Characters were one-dimensional, plot devices were introduced and dismissed without any depth, and the science itself just didn't hold together. There were so many bad explanations and contradictions that I got more and more frustrated:
* Communication with the aliens seemed suspiciously easy - the difficulties of language and translation were dismissed with a sentence claiming that the message contained a 'self-deciphering' system* The Trisolarian pacifist who responds to the first Earth message complains: "I am tired of Trisolaris... We have no art, no literature..." - so how is it that he knows what these things are?* When explaining about the three-dimensional proton unfolding resulting in shapes that looked like eyes, the author pops in a note explaining that of course we don't know what they look like... And then goes on to describe them having an iris, a pupil, and being an eyeball that loses the shape of the eye to become a circle. So, it sounds like we do know what the Trisolarian eye looks like, and it sounds very much like a human one.

Not to mention that the whole three-body 'game' involved almost zero interaction. Where was the gameplay? It was more like an interactive movie. (Although that may well be what video games are like these days.) And how do you fall in love with an alien species you know nothing about, other than the fact that they live in a planetary system with three stars? And how is it that a civilisation that spends a long proportion of its time dessicated and inert can somehow become more technologically advanced than Earth, which has a temperate climate?

Other reviewers have pointed out that the third book in the series is clearly the best, and is brilliant, and whatever. I'm intrigued to see what that might look like, but not so much that I want to wade through a second terrible jumbled turgid mess before I get there. This was a one-book problem for me, and thankfully my game is over.

“De vez en cuando, al terminar el turno de noche, contemplaba el cielo estrellado y me parecía ver un desierto luminoso. Entonces me sentía tan desamparada como una pobre niña a la que hubieran abandonado en mitad del desierto y pensaba en lo que hemos dicho antes: que la vida en la Tierra no es más que una casualidad entre casualidades, que el universo es un palacio vacío y la humanidad la única, minúscula hormiga que lo habita.”

Quise leer algo de Cixin antes de empezar con esta trilogía así que me decidí por The Weight of Memories, un relato corto bastante interesante. Ahora llego a la conclusión que es un autor con ideas bastante originales.

Entiendo todo el hype. ¿Qué significaría para la raza humana entrar en contacto con una civilización extraterrestre? Veamos, no me sentí hostigado con la parte científica como me ha pasado con otros libros. Disfruté mucho conociendo parte de la cultura china. Tal vez algo que no me cuadró mucho fue lo del sofón, me pareció un poco jalado de los pelos aunque creo que hay muchas cosas buenas en el libro que hicieron que finalmente me decidiera por un 4.

No culpo a los trisolarianos, me imagino el paraíso que debe ser vivir en un planeta que orbita una única estrella y que no conoce las eras caóticas. ¡Insectos terrícolas! Lo que les espera.

The first installment of the acclaimed trilogy. This set the tone of the upcoming books, but the scale here is much less.

This is not the most strict Hard Science Fiction by all means, but the author tries his best in doing everything possible with the modern understanding of the laws of Physics....... more or less.

The title of the book and focal point is about the problem described in physics and orbital mechanics about finding the subsequent motions of three celestial bodies using Newtons Law of Motion.

There is a bunch of surprises here as we get to look over some very well known historical figures and an alien culture trying to survive to the catalyst effects of their start system

With its flat but ok characters, the Chinese setting makes the story even more engaging.

3.5. Some interesting ideas, some good cultural parallels, but writing and forgettable characters hold it back.

I understand this book is award winning and very important in the science-fiction genre. I tried to appreciate it for that and think I succeeded. But this was not my cup of tea. I enjoyed the characters and appreciated the broader story but confess I got lost in the physics, nano-science, and astronomy discussions. My brain doesn't work that way. The spatial logic required to reposition the living room furniture taxes me. Unfolding protons in 11 dimensions was light years beyond my ability to imagine.

Fascinating and very elegantly executed literary scifi with a touch of Cultural Revolution, lots of science, a long-standing math problem and first alien communication. The Trisolarian game world with dehydration and rehydration reminded me of the abstract mind twisting of [b:The Inverted World 142181 The Inverted World Christopher Priest https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1245646253l/142181.SY75.jpg 2226603]. The idea that alien civilisations would mess with our scientific research in order to stop our progress, feels entirely possible

First part of the book is great (really great). The historical setting of Cultural Revolution was a refresher for a “Westernised” reader as me. Science and maths topics were also fair (with one exception, but I'll leave it out. Spoilers...).
Second half of this book is a bit of a let down (4 stars instead of 5) since the author tells too much instead of showing.
I'd recommend it to people who enjoy Neal Stephenson; they are similar in epicness and science themes.

This is the second read of this book for me, both times I struggled to complete it. The first time I stalled in the several iterations of the alien civilization, the second time when the storyline side-tracked into a long, historical catch-up, and again into scientific explanations. Granted, the writing came back to the story line, both times, but ultimately these are characters and a story line that I can't get interested in.

recenzie pe larg aici: https://recomandarisffh.wordpress.com/2018/06/20/problema-celor-trei-corpuri-liu-cixin/

Holy crap.

That was an extremely good read. I cannot even begin to describe how much of a ride that was. There was a bit there at the beginning that started slow but I think it ramps up quickly and doesn't let that tension go for a second.

The hard science here, to a layperson, seems so believable that it really sells the premise. I don't want to go into too many details but, please read this book if you enjoy science fiction.

2 stars for enjoyment, 5 stars for plot complexity, 4 stars for writing, 1 star for pacing. A fascinating premise; it wasn't my preferred type of SF, but it was well-done and intriguing.

Interesting concept and briskly plotted. Character development seems fairly thin to me and too many info dumps. Entertaining but lets itself down.

So I did something I never thought I'd do: I joined a book club. It's a science book club, but for one reason or another the first book chosen is science fiction with some “hard sci-fi” within it. This book was very popular in China and a 2015 Hugo Award winner. It's starts off interestingly enough with characters dealing with the Cultural Revolution of the late 60s, a tumultuous time in Chinese history. And then it jumps to the present and our protagonist is a nanotechnology developer named Wang. As I read along, I knew that at its heart, this was a first-contact story, so I was interested to get to when that actually happened. But my interest began to fade for several reasons:

> One-dimensional characters – Wang, himself, is a bit of a cipher. And the flamboyant cop “Da Shi” was a laughable cliché.
> Wang spends several chapters immersed in an online video game called Three Body that spans eons and is supremely boring.
> Character motivations were either unbelievable, undiscernable, or too Chinese for me to grasp.
> It's not an exciting story. Very little seems to actually happen. And, through no fault of the translation, this book reads like an outline, written by a high school physics geek – dry, amateurish, and dull.
> And it ends abruptly and unsatisfyingly – it's the first of a trilogy, but that doesn't excuse this ending.
> Near the end of the book, I had to skim a bit, something I rarely do. That's never a good sign.

This wins a Hugo?!

The Three Body Problem is such a hard book to describe and if you did it would sound terrible but it was one of the most original and surprising books I've read in a long time. The fact the author is Chinese and that part of it is set during the Cultural Revolution also meant that I learnt about a part of history I've never come across in fiction before.

Maybe not the most enchanting phrasing but it is also a real (hard) science fiction piece of work, and it suits it. I travelled to work only with the bus until I finished the book just because of that, not going with the bike on these rare clear and nice days of summer, not with the car that will save half the time... A few times per year I am happy thinking, at the end of the day, that I have to go to work next day :), and this was definitely happening now knowing I will continue reading this book.

Fascinating read. Not for everyone, and parts were somewhat confusing and/or implausible to me (oddly enough, not the Alien parts, but the Human reaction parts).

But very very good, very original and fascinating aliens and societies.

Everyone read this book.

I want whatever Liu was smoking when he wrote this book. He draws a fascinating plot that makes you question science and humanity as a whole. While I did not fall in love with any of the characters (with the exception of Da Shi), the books strong and captivating plot easily holds the narrative together.

My least favorite kind of SF. Cardboard characters and data dumps.

An intriguing if, for me, a rather inconsistently written book.

I heard great things about this book, and was excited to see the final book released in English so I thought I would finally read it.

Overall I found it to be a frustrating read. The dialog between characters felt very unnatural, with long paragraphs of pseudo scientific exposition. The overall premise is great, with a rogue scientist inviting an unknown alien civilization to colonize our planet, in the naive hope that they will curb humanity's destructive tendencies. But the increasingly bizarre, practically magical explanations for the alien's scientific discoveries really lost me. Near the end they describe making some sort of artificial intelligent, impossibly small supercomputer, by unfolding a photon, and then launching it to Earth to wreck havok. “Oh no, we accidentally unfolded it into 4D space, oh no, if we unfold it into nondimensional space we will create a black hole and could destroy our planet.” I was fast forwarding my audiobook at this point desperate to get to the end.

I did really the description of the Three Body VR video game that Wang briefly play, it was a wonderful way to explain the alien culture to the characters, and to the reader. I was disappointed that it played such a small role in the book. There's also a throw away comment about how Wang is surprised that a grown woman, his colleague, owns her own video game set up, which was such a weird and outdated mindset.