Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

factordaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 205 posts

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#181

Post by TeMPOraL »

mercutio2 wrote: post #179
TeMPOraL wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not yet. I've been meaning to, and recently my wife bought me hardcover Foundation books for my birthday; it's my next fiction to read after I finish the newest Safehold book!

Funny. I can look down my nose at David Weber’s wooden and cringeworthy characters and dialog, but at the end of the day, I lapped up every Safehold book. I don’t need my sci-fi to be literature, but I need the story to move every ten or twenty pages, or characters I care about. Character development is an alternative to plot development, basically, but to go along side your interesting science bits, you have to give…

Ironically, while I always react to new Safehold books like children to candies, I find them to be overly long and spending too much time on introducing (and then killing off) characters whose names I won't remember by the end of the chapter - and it's something I don't remember feeling about 3BP. Then again, Uplift saga felt sluggish to me too at times. However, in all of those cases, the plot is good enough for me to like it. I guess I can bear overly long stories if they're still interesting stories.

EDIT:

> I can look down my nose at David Weber’s wooden and cringeworthy characters and dialog

"Truer words have never been spoken." ;).

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#182

Post by ethbro »

mercutio2 wrote: post #179
TeMPOraL wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not yet. I've been meaning to, and recently my wife bought me hardcover Foundation books for my birthday; it's my next fiction to read after I finish the newest Safehold book!

Funny. I can look down my nose at David Weber’s wooden and cringeworthy characters and dialog, but at the end of the day, I lapped up every Safehold book. I don’t need my sci-fi to be literature, but I need the story to move every ten or twenty pages, or characters I care about. Character development is an alternative to plot development, basically, but to go along side your interesting science bits, you have to give…

That's a good a three prong test as I've ever heard for sci-fi!

I've never been able to explain as succinctly how I can enjoy both Asimov and Bacigalupi.

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#183

Post by FeloniousHam »

mercutio2 wrote: post #41
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…

Wow. I couldn’t stand the first book of this series. Interminable, I never built any empathy for any of the characters. I’ve been told it gets better after the first book, but why would I subject myself to another book after my experience of the first? Anyway, to each their own, but as a huge sci-fi fan, I generally love the Hugo winners and nominees. The Chinese sci-fi that’s been nominated has all left me cold.

I'm a third through Death's End, but I had a similar experience connecting with the characters. I had a hard time keeping the Chinese names straight (to the point of confusing gender), but even when that wasn't an issue, I still just wasn't invested in them personally (Da Shi is one exception). It's probably my lack of familiarity with Chinese cultural, but sci-fi generally often disappoints in the character development department.

That said, I thought the story was fantastic, huge, and believable through details. I loved the Cultural Revolution backdrop in the first book, the second book was more action packed than the first.

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#184

Post by mercutio2 »

samatman wrote: post #48
yumraj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such as? Edit: especially curious about which topics folks think might be considered taboos in Western science fiction.

Can you think of a Western science fiction novel that portrays eugenics in a positive light? Sterling’s Shapers come to mind, but it’s not common.

I wouldn’t quite say “positive” light, but Stand on Zanzibar is surprisingly balanced as it contrasts overpopulation with eugenics.

Of course this is almost unreadable fifty years later, so I’m not actually recommending the book.

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#185

Post by mercutio2 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #181
mercutio2 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny. I can look down my nose at David Weber’s wooden and cringeworthy characters and dialog, but at the end of the day, I lapped up every Safehold book. I don’t need my sci-fi to be literature, but I need the story to move every ten or twenty pages, or characters I care about. Character development is an alternative to plot development, basically, but to go along side your interesting science bits, you have to give…

Ironically, while I always react to new Safehold books like children to candies, I find them to be overly long and spending too much time on introducing (and then killing off) characters whose names I won't remember by the end of the chapter - and it's something I don't remember feeling about 3BP. Then again, Uplift saga felt sluggish to me too at times. However, in all of those cases, the plot is good enough for me…

Re: Safehold:

I mostly skip the soldier narratives after the first few books taught me they were all going to become either red-shirts or over the top permanent sycophants within 10 pages.

But man, Safehold has far and away the best set up for “what if I knew everything about the history of militaries and military technology and wanted to conquer the world circa 1200 A.D. with it” I’ve ever seen. So satisfying ;)

I’ve actually recommended people who can’t abide military sci-fi or David Weber in general just read the first 50 pages of the first book.

Surprisingly many of these people go on to read the whole series.

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#186

Post by chillee »

jayalpha wrote: post #93

Long overdue. When South Korea and Japan have super interesting Sci-Fi books and movies (e.g. Korean Bladerunner "Natural City"), why not China? I am glad China is coming along. Since I learn Mandarin, feel free to recommend Chinese movies. (I am trying to read 三体 already, don't need more books). I start with the first (non-scifi) movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Breaker_(film) Please recommend more Chinese…

Three Chinese movies I've seen get fairly widespread acclaim are: 1. Hero 2. Flowers of Shanghai 3. The Legend of the Drunken Master

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#187

Post by tabtab »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #168
da_chicken wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I couldn’t stand the first book of this series. Interminable, I never built any empathy for any of the characters. I didn't entirely have this problem (though it was more difficult), but I had a problem with some of the plot points. Namely, (minor spoiler) scientists killing themselves when science did something they couldn't explain. I just couldn't buy that people who dedicate their lives to discovery would do th…

> Namely, (minor spoiler) scientists killing themselves when science did something they couldn't explain. This was more of "science turned into magic", experiments started to produce arbitrary nonsense, though I don't remember if they realized the cause at the time. That said, I found it weak and weird too; I'd expect those scientists to try much harder before giving up.

Re: experiments started to produce arbitrary nonsense [leading to scientist suicides]

That would normally stimulate scientists into trying to find the pattern of "arbitrary". If it's completely random, that's a discovery in itself. If it has a pattern, then the pattern becomes a subject of experiments and speculative models, even if "weird". It's roughly comparable to the observer seemingly affecting the results of quantum experiments.

Scientists rarely quit or get bored just because they have no clear-cut explanation. Most of them like puzzles, even tricky ones more.

Maybe the culture in China is different and perhaps filters out the genuinely curious for those who produce definitive results? I'm only asking, not claiming.

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#188

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

yorwba wrote: post #20
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liu Cixin already covers this in his well-known trilogy. Also, Folding Beijing is an award winning short story encompassing all three things plus class strife, written by a Chinese author.

Folding Beijing was linked in TFA, but in case someone overlooked it or went straight to the comments, here's the English translation: http://uncannymagazine.com/article/folding-beijing-2/

Rabbit hole: one of the acknowledged magazine supporters is the creator of a verbless language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kēlen

(4 or 5 clicks and a search/name check, must get a grip ...)

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#189

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

int_19h wrote: post #98
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soviet censorship used to be less heavy on science fiction then on other subjects. is that true for China as well?

Still plenty heavy though. Infamously, one of Strugatsky's books was censored because it described an alien totalitarian society ruled by "The Unknown Fathers"; the censors demanded that the label be changed, among other things. Then there was Efremov, who had trouble publishing some of his stuff at all, despite it being heavily ideologically communist.

Still they got it out in 1969, when everything was in deep freeze as the tanks rolled into Prague in 1967.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_Power

Re: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

#190

Post by jandrese »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #168
da_chicken wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I couldn’t stand the first book of this series. Interminable, I never built any empathy for any of the characters. I didn't entirely have this problem (though it was more difficult), but I had a problem with some of the plot points. Namely, (minor spoiler) scientists killing themselves when science did something they couldn't explain. I just couldn't buy that people who dedicate their lives to discovery would do th…

> Namely, (minor spoiler) scientists killing themselves when science did something they couldn't explain. This was more of "science turned into magic", experiments started to produce arbitrary nonsense, though I don't remember if they realized the cause at the time. That said, I found it weak and weird too; I'd expect those scientists to try much harder before giving up.

All of human society is treated pretty poorly in those books. People make fundamental society level decisions once and never ever re-examine those decisions, even when the circumstances are wildly different. For the most part everybody who isn't a named character is a total sheep and a total idiot. Many of the name characters (even the protagonist in some cases) aren't much better.
Post reply on HN