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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)

#91

Post by xandrius »

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.

Can you give me your top 3 sci-fi books/series?

My favourite one so far was Broken Earth trilogy.

I'm looking for something new and really awesome but I'm not interested in a series with more than 3-4 books (as they rarely keep the same level of quality across the series).

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

#92

Post by yongjik »

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.

Forget lightspeed: melding your body with worms give you first-person access to memories of your ancestors. Like, your ancestors who lived in Ancient Greece. And all others.

Sophon is downright mundane compared to this.

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

#93

Post by xandrius »

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…

If you think it's going to be US vs China, you're going to be absolutely wrong.

If it remains a cold war then it's about friction and who can last longer but if it becomes active, the world will split into 3 factions as WWII and the numbers will shift.

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

#94

Post by janalsncm »

silenced_trope wrote: post #21
tb1989 wrote: post #5

[flagged]

> His political leanings are clear. Of course, when asked about Xinjiang, his reply can hardly be used as a criterion for whether he has been brainwashed. If he publicly said this in China in the way that Westerners think he has been "brainwashed", he would have been arrested. lol this is always one of my pet peeves with Western "journalists". "Hey I've got this celebrity/author/whomever from China here, let me try t…

I mean even coming from a democracy I don’t feel responsible for domestic or foreign American policy. It’s not even really a gotcha question. I don’t run the country.

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

#95

Post by AStrangeMorrow »

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.

Yeah, I did enjoy the books, but the characters are not great and the prose pretty basic, the romances fall flat etc. But the more you go on the more interesting science fiction are brought up.

Overall I thought that these were some great and thought-provoking science function ideas wrapped up in an average to poor literary package.

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

#96

Post by throwbadubadu »

hintymad wrote: post #76
TheGRS wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea I can see this in the article as well. And anyone who has read the books can probably see this wasn't the authors real interest. I can see where someone with their pulse on international politics might read into Trisolaris vs Earth being some sort of a proxy for China vs USA. But my take is that the author was just writing about sci-fi ideas from their personal perspective in China. Chinese history, politics, and…

> I can see where someone with their pulse on international politics might read into Trisolaris vs Earth being some sort of a proxy for China vs USA. Yeah. Viewing The Three-Body Problem merely as a metaphor for China-US relations shows a limited perspective, as the novel addresses the fates of civilizations across different solar systems and the fates of the living beings in the entire universe. In such grand scheme…

Fully agreed, those books are no metaphor but exploring sci-fi ideas.. and especially because at the beginning, it imo gives a pretty realistic inside perspective from inside China. One might question "realistic" but I mean it in a way that the author also stated in the interview, staying outside of politics and not burning any bridges. Just read a bit between the lines, and accept that it is fiction.

(I'm not sure why people always need to bolt on those interpretations, they are maybe eventually more true with Tolkien as he definitely took some experiences into his fantasy, but also believing him that there were not any allegoric intentions, just fantasy creation. You are always to some degree what made you...)

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

#97

Post by hoseja »

ospray wrote: post #33
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 series gets better don't stop at the first book.

It does not.

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

#98

Post by hoseja »

breuleux wrote: post #47
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.

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.

What's the well-established inner structure of an electron?

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

#99

Post by simonblack »

psadri wrote: post #86
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?

I don't have a plan.

I'll just have to take each day as it comes, though I am expecting lots of bad stuff to happen.

Because I'm old enough to have outlived a lot of my peers, I can accept that I won't be a survivor without too much angst, but I certainly won't be happy about it.

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

#100

Post by simonblack »

xandrius wrote: post #93
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…

If you think it's going to be US vs China, you're going to be absolutely wrong. If it remains a cold war then it's about friction and who can last longer but if it becomes active, the world will split into 3 factions as WWII and the numbers will shift.

the world will split into 3 factions

One of those factions will be the West. Unfortunately for the West, the West is too small to be a major player and will be a big loser in WW3. Modern warfare is just arithmetic, and the West just doesn't have the numbers that stack up.

The whole of the West is smaller than just China by itself. Also China has far more manufacturing capacity than the whole of the West combined. The West is going to get its ass kicked big time.

If you put Russia and China together, you get something that has the huge raw material and energy resources of Russia plus the advanced technology of Russia plus the huge manufacturing capacity of China plus almost a quarter of the world's total population. A very hard combination to overcome.

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