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The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

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Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#111

Post by int_19h »

Scaevolus wrote: post #104
int_19h wrote: post #92

I have only read "Three-Body Problem", and I found it to be atrocious writing on pretty much all levels. Language-wise, it was more cliched and wooden than many fanfics I've read. Character development is non-existent, and most of the characters are very shallow and only exist to advance the plot. The plot itself, aside from the basic idea of a three-body system with life, was also very boring - the only part of it t…

"Dark Forest" is a fascinating idea that would make for an interesting short story, but I agree with you that the characters and plot are extremely lacking.

That's from the second book, right? A lot of people appear to be saying that the second one is the best. But then the same people mostly say that the first one is, if not great, then at least okay, and that's where my calibration goes off.

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#112

Post by arkh »

blackrock wrote: post #103
Jerry2 wrote: post #34

Cixin Liu's 'Remembrance of Earth’s Past' trilogy are the greatest sci-fi books I've ever read. I still remember when I picked the first volume and than patiently waited for a very long time for translations of the next books to arrive. The wait was well worth it. He manages to put his characters into seemingly insurmountable situations and it feels like he won't be able to write his way out of them but somehow he ma…

I think it depends on what you want out of it. In western sci-fi, the story exists to make the reader feel good about themselves. At least, the successful ones are like this. It makes for good movies, and good story telling. Think about that for a moment. All the western sci-fi that we've been used to: Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, etc.. All these stories are not really science fiction, but rather, scie…

You may want to read Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space.

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#113

Post by charliebrownau »

SCIFI from 2015 to 2020 without

* Wokeness

* Diversity Quotas

* Blue tint

* Dark Filter

* Loud music

* Low vocals

Besides Orville, whats a decent made scifi anymore ?

Woke scifi list:-

New Dr Who

New Star Trek Diversity

New Star Wars Movies

Latest Ghost Busters Movie

Latest Lost in space TV series

Season 3 of Lucifer

Dark Matter

The Gifted

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#114

Post by arkh »

zone411 wrote: post #67
demilicious wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely disagree. The science was pretty good, for a pop audience, but there was zero character development - beyond Luo Ji, zero characters develop in the _entire series_. I don't want to spoil anything, of course, but you can pretty much decide the rest of the series based on what I've already written. Extremely disappointing.

If your tastes require solid character development then sure. But other people might enjoy a book more for its plot or ideas. There are books (especially in science fiction), movies, and TV shows that are widely recognized as very good without a lot of character development.

> But other people might enjoy a book more for its plot or ideas.

I'm on the "don't care about character development" side. But those books are atrociously slow. The whole "3 body problem" could be condensed to maybe 50 pages.

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#115

Post by laacz »

tanilama wrote: post #84

Chinese book market, or fiction market has now almost fully embraced digital self-publishing. Magazine are now almost dead, books are just physical copies of their online version. Sad but true, the one most important Chinese SF magazine, the SF World, where all the mentioned authors started their career, has been hanging on the edge and gradually becoming irrelevant for some time now. The new generation of readers ha…

Isn't it that what's a strangling market in China, actually is good enough for its members to strive? All the readership numbers considered. I'd argue that a niche in China is enough to sustain itself.

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#116

Post by watwut »

blackrock wrote: post #103
Jerry2 wrote: post #34

Cixin Liu's 'Remembrance of Earth’s Past' trilogy are the greatest sci-fi books I've ever read. I still remember when I picked the first volume and than patiently waited for a very long time for translations of the next books to arrive. The wait was well worth it. He manages to put his characters into seemingly insurmountable situations and it feels like he won't be able to write his way out of them but somehow he ma…

I think it depends on what you want out of it. In western sci-fi, the story exists to make the reader feel good about themselves. At least, the successful ones are like this. It makes for good movies, and good story telling. Think about that for a moment. All the western sci-fi that we've been used to: Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, etc.. All these stories are not really science fiction, but rather, scie…

I agree with you, but I dont think the schema makes for "good story telling". It more that we defined we defined "good storyleling" in a way that limits options and forcing us to be repetitive. It makes for predictable story telling we are used to.

But I think it is changing slowly with new popular shows being bit different.

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#118

Post by PurpleRamen »

blackrock wrote: post #103
Jerry2 wrote: post #34

Cixin Liu's 'Remembrance of Earth’s Past' trilogy are the greatest sci-fi books I've ever read. I still remember when I picked the first volume and than patiently waited for a very long time for translations of the next books to arrive. The wait was well worth it. He manages to put his characters into seemingly insurmountable situations and it feels like he won't be able to write his way out of them but somehow he ma…

I think it depends on what you want out of it. In western sci-fi, the story exists to make the reader feel good about themselves. At least, the successful ones are like this. It makes for good movies, and good story telling. Think about that for a moment. All the western sci-fi that we've been used to: Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, etc.. All these stories are not really science fiction, but rather, scie…

> In western sci-fi, the story exists to make the reader feel good about themselves. At least, the successful ones are like this. It makes for good movies, and good story telling. > > Think about that for a moment. All the western sci-fi that we've been used to: Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, etc.. All these stories are not really science fiction, but rather, science fantasy.

I'm not sure how much Wetern Science Fiction you know, but those are all Cinematic Franchises, not western science fiction-books. That popcorn-movies have a specific angle for being successful is not a surprise.

If you wanna compare Cixin Lui's stories with modern western writers then be more honest, and take recent books from modern western writers. Charles Stross, Alastair Reynolds, Neal Stephenson, they all come to mind in that regard.

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#119

Post by glogla »

blackrock wrote: post #103
Jerry2 wrote: post #34

Cixin Liu's 'Remembrance of Earth’s Past' trilogy are the greatest sci-fi books I've ever read. I still remember when I picked the first volume and than patiently waited for a very long time for translations of the next books to arrive. The wait was well worth it. He manages to put his characters into seemingly insurmountable situations and it feels like he won't be able to write his way out of them but somehow he ma…

I think it depends on what you want out of it. In western sci-fi, the story exists to make the reader feel good about themselves. At least, the successful ones are like this. It makes for good movies, and good story telling. Think about that for a moment. All the western sci-fi that we've been used to: Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, etc.. All these stories are not really science fiction, but rather, scie…

Yes, but only if you count Star Wars or other American-style production "action movie but in space" movies or series (like Stargate, Firefly, ...).

When you go into the things that don't get blockbuster movies, you end up with old-school scifi. Newer like The Expanse or Blindsight, older like The Culture or Hyperion, or proper old school stuff like

In general, piece of unwanted and unrequested advice - whenever you make a huge sweeping statement about complex topic with many examples (like "In western sci-fi, the story exists to make the reader feel good about themselves.") you are inevitably wrong.

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#120

Post by tanilama »

infinii wrote: post #105
tanilama wrote: post #84

Chinese book market, or fiction market has now almost fully embraced digital self-publishing. Magazine are now almost dead, books are just physical copies of their online version. Sad but true, the one most important Chinese SF magazine, the SF World, where all the mentioned authors started their career, has been hanging on the edge and gradually becoming irrelevant for some time now. The new generation of readers ha…

Do you value the medium or the content? I can't see why you think 'digital self-publishing' is a bad thing. If anything, digital publishing where you can circumvent the publishers should allow for more content to reach market (not saying it's all good...see geocities webpages as an example of this) but I'm not sure why you think this would be bad for the Chinese SciFi scene.

The problem with digital self-publishing in China is a unique one. I don't want to expand too much on this subject because it is pretty complicated, but in short, digital self-publishing is not merely a publishing channel, it has reshaped the fiction genre in return.

The Chinese online fiction is now a rat race, every author is measured by the characters they are written PER day, which ranges like 3000 characters to 10k characters. To output that amount of text per day is not trivial task, it is not writing more like manufacturing. And works that doesn't meet such standard gets no chance to even reach the readership at all, per algorithm.

So, to answer your question, medium and content in this case are intervened. Medium is not neutral, it shapes the content by itself, and sadly in China's case, it opts to optimize for volumes not quality, and changes the readers' taste and expectation along the way.

Tradition publishing has one unique quality to itself that it offers advice and quality control through editorship. Not the case for self-publishing though, the market is flooded with more products with lower qualities, and it makes no easier for real good work to stand out since there is too much noise.

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