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Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

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Re: Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

#51

Post by luyu_wu »

burnte wrote: post #42
jnovek wrote: post #6

I just finished Deaths End this morning so I'm experiencing that ponderous glow that you get after reading something thought provoking. Without going into spoilers, Death's End makes everything so... huge. It really made me feel tiny in our universe. These are good books with some flaws. You should read them.

> These are good books with some flaws. You should read them. Counter view-point: These are bad books with a few thought provoking ideas that are never explored, left behind to explore a ridiculous plot full of nonsensical actions taken by paper cutout characters chasing a political goals that also make no sense. Granted I didn't read the third book, but that's because I gave up not halfway through book 2. When I got…

I think some of this is definetly due to lacking translation. The general consensus among fans is also that the first book is the least interesting, while the second and third become far better. IMO this is because the only role of the first book is a general setup with few Sci-Fi elements, of which all are hard!

Re: Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

#52

Post by card_zero »

ein0p wrote: post #40
donatzsky wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simpler, and much more likely, explanation is that those countries don't want to upset China, since doing so tends to be bad for trade. Just ask Latvia (I think it was) what happens if you make it a point to recognise Taiwan.

I don’t see how it is more likely given that the US has spent several trillion dollars on wars against countries which posed no threat to it, the consent for which was entirely manufactured by mass media. I think it’s more likely that this is a psyop.

Uyghurs are Turkic, and Turkey makes only mildly disapproving comments on the situation because China is anti-american, and having solidarity with that is perhaps more important than having solidarity with Uyghurs. Meanwhile, China being douchebags to Uyghurs may indeed be exploited by America as an opportunity to say "look China are douchebags", sure, why not.

Re: Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

#53

Post by jnovek »

burnte wrote: post #42
jnovek wrote: post #6

I just finished Deaths End this morning so I'm experiencing that ponderous glow that you get after reading something thought provoking. Without going into spoilers, Death's End makes everything so... huge. It really made me feel tiny in our universe. These are good books with some flaws. You should read them.

> These are good books with some flaws. You should read them. Counter view-point: These are bad books with a few thought provoking ideas that are never explored, left behind to explore a ridiculous plot full of nonsensical actions taken by paper cutout characters chasing a political goals that also make no sense. Granted I didn't read the third book, but that's because I gave up not halfway through book 2. When I got…

I think your criticisms are legit. I think the books are love 'em or hate 'em.

Like you I never connected to any of the characters, but the direction of the story and its almost exponential growth in scale was what drew me in.

But c'mon, almost nothing is as bad as Atlus Shrugged (aside from maybe The Fountainhead). :-P

Re: Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

#55

Post by jmccarthy »

jnovek wrote: post #6

I just finished Deaths End this morning so I'm experiencing that ponderous glow that you get after reading something thought provoking. Without going into spoilers, Death's End makes everything so... huge. It really made me feel tiny in our universe. These are good books with some flaws. You should read them.

I also finished Death's End this morning and have a similar afterglow re: scale (energy, space, time)!

Re: Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

#56

Post by jnovek »

marcellus23 wrote: post #46
stcredzero wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I've noticed about Liu Cixin's books, is that for people who follow futurism and hard Sci-fi beyond the shallow level of a typical mainstream layperson, there are huge glaring plotholes. Here's perhaps the big one: Ask, what if instead of doing [X], [certain characters] put those resources instead into building space industrial infrastructure space colonies? This also applies to The Wandering Earth.

In general, I get the feeling that the people who gush about all the awesome ideas in the 3BP books, are not people who read very much sci-fi. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. But those ideas have been explored previously, and much better (IMO), in other less popular books.

That's fair -- I read some here and there but I recognize that I'm not a hardcore sci-fi reader.

You mentioned that there are other, lesser known books that explore the same ideas in a more compelling way. Can you give some examples so I can add them to my reading list?

Re: Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

#57

Post by Shorel »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #38
wilsonnb3 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it’s way more than “some flaws”. I bought into the hype and finally read the first book recently. The plot, prose, the characters, literally everything except a couple of really neat sci-fi ideas is comically poor. So bad that you start to wonder if you accidentally rented 2007’s Transmorphers at Blockbuster instead of Transformers.

The first book was not great. I particularly hated that stupid monofilament thing --- it's physically impossible for what should be obvious reasons. The second book is much better, though, and the third is better still. If you've managed to work your way through the first, it's probably worth checking out the others. They're nothing mind-blowing. But they're very competently written (unlike the first book, which was…

> it's physically impossible for what should be obvious reasons.

In our universe, it is impossible.

In the universe of the book, if technology existed to unfold protons, those same protons could be woven into a long fibre, resulting in a material thinner and stronger than anything made from conventional atoms.

Regardless of whether this is a sound argument, it remains purely fictional. =)

Re: Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

#58

Post by burnte »

jnovek wrote: post #53
burnte wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These are good books with some flaws. You should read them. Counter view-point: These are bad books with a few thought provoking ideas that are never explored, left behind to explore a ridiculous plot full of nonsensical actions taken by paper cutout characters chasing a political goals that also make no sense. Granted I didn't read the third book, but that's because I gave up not halfway through book 2. When I got…

I think your criticisms are legit. I think the books are love 'em or hate 'em. Like you I never connected to any of the characters, but the direction of the story and its almost exponential growth in scale was what drew me in. But c'mon, almost nothing is as bad as Atlus Shrugged (aside from maybe The Fountainhead). :-P

> But c'mon, almost nothing is as bad as Atlus Shrugged (aside from maybe The Fountainhead). :-P

I actually made it through The Fountainhead, but just couldn't make it to the end of Atlas Shrugged. I think The Fountainhead could actually be rescued as a story, but Atlas Shrugged is just a bad political manifesto with some narrative elements thrown in. :D

Re: Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

#59

Post by jtgverde »

mvdtnz wrote: post #22
jitl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, what were your complaints? I thought they did a pretty decent job - although I finished Death’s End in 2019 so it’s been a while. They preserved the most important parts in my mind, and otherwise the compromises seemed acceptable. I had low expectations and was pleasantly surprised.

The splitting of the main character (who was a humble middle aged Chinese scientist) into 4 pointlessly racially diverse beautiful young people who somehow represent the apex of the scientific community (and a snack company for some reason). The total butchering of interesting concepts, for example the usage of the sun as an amplifier which, while based on some hand-wavey fictional science, was quite fleshed out in t…

It's interesting that your primary criticism is that the scientists are too diverse...truly a struggle for me to see why that's such an abhorrent error

Personally I thought they did a good job at adapting a book that I thought would be nearly impossible to transform into a "pop" sci fi series.

Re: Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

#60

Post by TheGRS »

The books are very imaginative. Not always a fan of the prose, and the character development is lacking, but I think this is a great new take on the alien invasion genre that tries to put all of the current theories about extraterrestrials (or lack-thereof) into a very big plot.

Part of the draw of the first book is how much it talks about communist China from an insider perspective. I found those parts the most interesting by far, with some of the more interesting sci-fi ideas emerging toward the end. The next 2 books basically go down a speculative fiction path with the first book's ideas set in motion.

I always felt like the books were a fan fiction of certain blog posts I've read about the Fermi Paradox or the Great Filter. Any self-respecting sci-fi nerd needs to read them, and all 3 of the books. They probably won't wow you in the same way other award-winning authors have, but they should be thought-provoking.

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