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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)

#81

Post by davidw »

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.

> makes everything so... huge. It really made me feel tiny in our universe.

I have to say... I kind of don't care for the exploding mind variety of sci-fi. I like good stories set in the future with some interesting technology and science that's not in our grasp yet, but still stories about people rather than 'wooooaaaahh' stuff.

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

#82

Post by Arainach »

davidw wrote: post #81
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.

> makes everything so... huge. It really made me feel tiny in our universe. I have to say... I kind of don't care for the exploding mind variety of sci-fi. I like good stories set in the future with some interesting technology and science that's not in our grasp yet, but still stories about people rather than 'wooooaaaahh' stuff.

Liu's trilogy absolutely centers around people, not technology.

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

#83

Post by peteforde »

bookofjoe wrote: post #48
mvdtnz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely loved the whole series. I have never been as disappointed at a screen adaptation as I was at the netflix show. I couldn't get past episode 2. Terrible.

Try the 30-episode Chinese version: it's superb.

My friend and I had a hard time staying awake through the first episode. It was just incredibly slow.

Each to their own.

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

#84

Post by fmoralesc »

marcellus23 wrote: post #69
jnovek wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For an exploration of the dark forest theory at least, I recommend The Killing Star. Fair warning though, it’s extremely bleak.

I read it recently and while the ideas are there, it is not a great read (the dialogues in particular are pretty bad).

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

#85

Post by rendaw »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #29
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.

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.

I watched the Tencent show based on the immense praise here at HN and I agree. The characters especially, but even none of the major plot pieces had any actual bearing on the plot. If you replace the robots in "I, robot" you'd have a completely different work. If you replace the "three body system" in "three body" with an impending nova, or asteroid, or a billion other disasters you'd... still have essentially the same story. What was the point of the game (read: the game's had no real world purpose and was merely a plot device to convolute exposition)? Omnipotent handwavey magic alien technology what?

People here saying "well the second book is better"... should have qualified their praise for the first book a bit more because I'm rather disinclined to believe it.

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

#86

Post by psadri »

simonblack wrote: post #80

A country should never take on another country who has more men of military age and which has far more manufacturing capacity. That way lies destruction. Just like Japan, while starting off WW2 with a more powerful military, couldn't maintain it's ascendancy over the US with its bigger industrial might and bigger population as the War in the Pacific progressed from 1942-1945, I fear that the US will not be able to ma…

So what’s your plan?

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

#87

Post by rendaw »

ajross wrote: post #50
breuleux wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the "neat" sci-fi ideas are often complete nonsense, such as the whole concept of sophons, which leverage a neat fringe idea of theoretical physics while running afoul of boring, well-established physics.

Isn't that true for basically all speculative sci-fi? The point to the form is to pick an idea with "enough plausibility" and extend it to an interesting implication. Not all "sci-fi" can be (or should be) 2001 or The Martian; Foundation and Dune are kinda good books too.

I like fantasy, and there's "believable fantasy" and "unbelievable fantasy". If you start saying the world has some unusual property X and then show the consequences of that, that's believable - maybe in the future there will be some technology, or physics, or whatever that show how a world with X could actually come to be, but it's the starting assumption of the work.

Dungeons and Dragons has magic, but it has a rule system, with some form of thermodynamics-y like stuff, internal consistency. Dune starts with some rules and largely doesn't violate them (and if it does, that makes it less kinda good).

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

#88

Post by breuleux »

asdasdsddd wrote: post #72
breuleux wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To various extents, yes, but it is easier to suspend one's disbelief about certain things than others. The main issue with sophons is that they routinely have to interact with quantities of energy that should annihilate them: when they are unfolded, for instance, they have to bear the impact of light all over their planet-spanning surface. They are "god-tier" technology, but only because they flaunt basic conservatio…

Ah yes, eating worm poop is the only thing that allows humans to navigate ships moving at light speed is more plausible.

It is unironically more plausible than etching a supercomputer inside a proton, yes. It's odd, but it's not broken.

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

#89

Post by throwaway4good »

luyu_wu wrote: post #61

I'm happy most of the comment section is discussing Liu Cixin's works instead of this article, but having made the mistake of reading said article I have a bit of a rant. This journalist seems so intent on making everything political (from the beginning to the end of the article) that it reads like they have no interest in anything he's actually written. The author of this article never describes a single genuine que…

Politics can add another layer to sci-fi.

For example "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is a great sci-fi on its own. But the background of McCarthyism and the red scare of its time makes it much cooler and much more entertaining and thought provoking.

I am slightly annoyed by Netflix's adaption of the book which takes the technocratic communist China out of it. I understand why it has to be like that but still we would have better TV if everything didn't have to be boiled in the same generic soup.

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

#90

Post by xandrius »

Izikiel43 wrote: post #79
lmm wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first book is what, 500 pages? That's too much time to spend reading crap. I was ready to give up about a third of the way through but people told me it got better so I carried on (and I foolishly assumed there must be some reason it run the Hugo). It did not get better.

Just a day of reading, it passes by fast, I read the whole tetralogy in 4 days, 1 per book, really liked them

Just understand that not everyone skim reads 500 pages in a day.

500 pages for me take probably a month or so.

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