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A review by lpm100
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
2.5
Book Review
Three Body Problem
3/5 stars
"Yet another banality from the invasion literature genre"
*******
Yes, variations on this theme have been written so many times that there is an entire genre called "invasion literature." (War of the Worlds. Independence Day. Dune. Planet of the Apes.)
One thing that I've learned from this reading is that: when a book is advertised to be an award winner of some type, you should probably check and see some of the other books that have won the award so you will know what type of company you are keeping. (No matter how many copies have been sold or how popular the title is.)
Oprah's Book club recognitions, for example, are near perfect predictors of trash books. (That sell a lot of copies and are popular because of Oprah's branding.)
The Hugo Award has been given since 1953, and of the list of 51 books to date I've read one other ("Dune") in addition to the book being reviewed.
"Dune" was a three-star book, that had too many abstruse references for all but a very few to recognize. (קפיצת הדרך links up to a bunch of Jewish sources that even probably 95% of Jews don't know about). At the end, the author's son gave something like a decoding essay to explain the symbolism / concepts.
And after you have labored through such a plot (either that book or this one), what do you have except for something that never existed in reality but is wrapped in a bunch of scientific-like concepts? (That you may or may not have understood, and that may or may not have some basis in reality.)
It's a lot of old wine in new bottles for this book.
1. There is a lot of discussion of the Chinese emperors and famous figures
Qin Shi Huang shows up in chapter 17
I have yet to meet a SINGLE non-Chinese person who knows who that was, let alone how brutal he was; But if you do know that, then you know that he can scripted huge amounts of corvee labor to do his various projects, and the game with creating the computer using 30 million subjects could probably have only been done by him.
2. There are a lot of proverbs that only make sense to someone with familiarity of the Chinese language.
-(215) 焚書坑儒 "Burn the books and bury the scholars" is quoted as "When you buried all those scholars alive after you unified China, it's a good thing you saved these ones!"
-(215) 圖窮匕現 "When the scroll is unrolled, the dagger is revealed" is quoted as "Wang's chest tightened, remembering the legend of the assassin who hid a dagger in a map scroll that he then displayed to the emperor."
-(229) 顛倒黑白 "You're standing reality on its head" comes as "You're calling black white and white black"
-(132) 一根直肠通到底 "I'm a straight shooter" comes out as "Look down my throat and you can see out my ass."
3. There is a lot that ONLY makes sense in light of the Chinese conceptual space: some civilization somewhere making the same mistakes OVER AND OVER and being fully aware of it. Even though millions of years pass from one of these civilizations to the next, and it is a few decades, at most, from one Chinese dynasty to the next.
4. Study of the Cultural Revolution is a thing in its own right; To expect people to know a lot about this hysterical, brutal, pointless, shameful 10-year episode in Chinese history (1966-1976).... It's kind of a lot to ask.
*******
For the life of me, I can't understand why this book sold as many copies as it did; on the other hand, I don't really understand why "Dune" did the same - - though it sold fewer copies than this book.
Second order thoughts:
1. If it is done well, a book can have several layers / subplots, and different readers will notice different things. Such that two people can read an entirely different book.
But, the topics have to be approachable enough for that to happen, and I just don't see that here.
2. Is the game that: "Wow! I can recognize certain of these esoteric concepts, so I must be a really important guy!"
And that is what hooks the reader - - even though he may have only picked up on 1 or 2 out of 100 symbols/allusions?
3. Does anybody expect a reader to track down the other 98-99, and do all that leg work? And, just, ain't nobody got time for that?
4. Several possible (allegorical) readings of this book:
a. The way that educated/wealthy people are completely out of touch with the other 99.9% of the world. The most destructive mass movements (Communism, Mohism, Transgender hysteria, etc) ALWAYS start with the cognoscenti and the costs are borne by the hoi polloi. (Eric Hoffer has said that: "Where people toil from sunrise to sunset for a bare living, they nurse no grievances and dream no dreams." )
b. A political / religious movement auto-generating with the purest of intentions and degenerating into a bunch of squabbling factions.
c. Yet-Another-Apocalypse will lead us to Utopia. The world is irredeemably spoiled and we will arrive at Utopia once everything is torn down and the New Man makes it all new. (The Marxist. The Nazis. The Islamists. Etc.)
5. How accurate is the science? Most people are not physicists, and most physicists are not of this type - - so how plausible is it really?
I have only an extremely inchoate understanding of some concepts of particle physics. No way to know one way or another How much of this is observed versus speculation.
Verdict: Not recommended
*******
Quotes:
(218, Qin Shi Huang) Europeans criticize me for my tyrannical rule.... But in reality, a large number of men yoked by severe discipline can also produce great wisdom when bound together as one.
(395, author postscript) There's a strange contradiction revealed by the notification and kindness demonstrated by humanity when faced with the universe: on Earth, human can can step onto another continent, and without a thought, destroy the kindred civilizations found there through warfare and disease. But when they gaze up at the stars, they turn sentimental and believe that if extraterrestrial intelligences exist, they must be civilizations bound by universal, noble, moral constraints, as if cherishing and loving different forms of life are parts of a self-evident universal code of conduct. I think it should be precisely the opposite. Let's turn the kindness we show toward the stars to members of the human race on Earth.
(393) The great flood of August 75... In a single day, 100.5 centimeters of rain fell in the Zhumadian region of Henan. 58 dams of various sizes collapsed, one after another, and 240,000 people died in the resulting deluge.
Vocab:
syzygy
princeps
Three Body Problem
3/5 stars
"Yet another banality from the invasion literature genre"
*******
Yes, variations on this theme have been written so many times that there is an entire genre called "invasion literature." (War of the Worlds. Independence Day. Dune. Planet of the Apes.)
One thing that I've learned from this reading is that: when a book is advertised to be an award winner of some type, you should probably check and see some of the other books that have won the award so you will know what type of company you are keeping. (No matter how many copies have been sold or how popular the title is.)
Oprah's Book club recognitions, for example, are near perfect predictors of trash books. (That sell a lot of copies and are popular because of Oprah's branding.)
The Hugo Award has been given since 1953, and of the list of 51 books to date I've read one other ("Dune") in addition to the book being reviewed.
"Dune" was a three-star book, that had too many abstruse references for all but a very few to recognize. (קפיצת הדרך links up to a bunch of Jewish sources that even probably 95% of Jews don't know about). At the end, the author's son gave something like a decoding essay to explain the symbolism / concepts.
And after you have labored through such a plot (either that book or this one), what do you have except for something that never existed in reality but is wrapped in a bunch of scientific-like concepts? (That you may or may not have understood, and that may or may not have some basis in reality.)
It's a lot of old wine in new bottles for this book.
1. There is a lot of discussion of the Chinese emperors and famous figures
Qin Shi Huang shows up in chapter 17
I have yet to meet a SINGLE non-Chinese person who knows who that was, let alone how brutal he was; But if you do know that, then you know that he can scripted huge amounts of corvee labor to do his various projects, and the game with creating the computer using 30 million subjects could probably have only been done by him.
2. There are a lot of proverbs that only make sense to someone with familiarity of the Chinese language.
-(215) 焚書坑儒 "Burn the books and bury the scholars" is quoted as "When you buried all those scholars alive after you unified China, it's a good thing you saved these ones!"
-(215) 圖窮匕現 "When the scroll is unrolled, the dagger is revealed" is quoted as "Wang's chest tightened, remembering the legend of the assassin who hid a dagger in a map scroll that he then displayed to the emperor."
-(229) 顛倒黑白 "You're standing reality on its head" comes as "You're calling black white and white black"
-(132) 一根直肠通到底 "I'm a straight shooter" comes out as "Look down my throat and you can see out my ass."
3. There is a lot that ONLY makes sense in light of the Chinese conceptual space: some civilization somewhere making the same mistakes OVER AND OVER and being fully aware of it. Even though millions of years pass from one of these civilizations to the next, and it is a few decades, at most, from one Chinese dynasty to the next.
4. Study of the Cultural Revolution is a thing in its own right; To expect people to know a lot about this hysterical, brutal, pointless, shameful 10-year episode in Chinese history (1966-1976).... It's kind of a lot to ask.
*******
For the life of me, I can't understand why this book sold as many copies as it did; on the other hand, I don't really understand why "Dune" did the same - - though it sold fewer copies than this book.
Second order thoughts:
1. If it is done well, a book can have several layers / subplots, and different readers will notice different things. Such that two people can read an entirely different book.
But, the topics have to be approachable enough for that to happen, and I just don't see that here.
2. Is the game that: "Wow! I can recognize certain of these esoteric concepts, so I must be a really important guy!"
And that is what hooks the reader - - even though he may have only picked up on 1 or 2 out of 100 symbols/allusions?
3. Does anybody expect a reader to track down the other 98-99, and do all that leg work? And, just, ain't nobody got time for that?
4. Several possible (allegorical) readings of this book:
a. The way that educated/wealthy people are completely out of touch with the other 99.9% of the world. The most destructive mass movements (Communism, Mohism, Transgender hysteria, etc) ALWAYS start with the cognoscenti and the costs are borne by the hoi polloi. (Eric Hoffer has said that: "Where people toil from sunrise to sunset for a bare living, they nurse no grievances and dream no dreams." )
b. A political / religious movement auto-generating with the purest of intentions and degenerating into a bunch of squabbling factions.
c. Yet-Another-Apocalypse will lead us to Utopia. The world is irredeemably spoiled and we will arrive at Utopia once everything is torn down and the New Man makes it all new. (The Marxist. The Nazis. The Islamists. Etc.)
5. How accurate is the science? Most people are not physicists, and most physicists are not of this type - - so how plausible is it really?
I have only an extremely inchoate understanding of some concepts of particle physics. No way to know one way or another How much of this is observed versus speculation.
Verdict: Not recommended
*******
Quotes:
(218, Qin Shi Huang) Europeans criticize me for my tyrannical rule.... But in reality, a large number of men yoked by severe discipline can also produce great wisdom when bound together as one.
(395, author postscript) There's a strange contradiction revealed by the notification and kindness demonstrated by humanity when faced with the universe: on Earth, human can can step onto another continent, and without a thought, destroy the kindred civilizations found there through warfare and disease. But when they gaze up at the stars, they turn sentimental and believe that if extraterrestrial intelligences exist, they must be civilizations bound by universal, noble, moral constraints, as if cherishing and loving different forms of life are parts of a self-evident universal code of conduct. I think it should be precisely the opposite. Let's turn the kindness we show toward the stars to members of the human race on Earth.
(393) The great flood of August 75... In a single day, 100.5 centimeters of rain fell in the Zhumadian region of Henan. 58 dams of various sizes collapsed, one after another, and 240,000 people died in the resulting deluge.
Vocab:
syzygy
princeps