from Hacker News

"3 Body Problem" Is a Rare Species of Sci-Fi Epic

by irtefa on 3/18/24, 4:46 PM with 117 comments

  • by ryandvm on 3/18/24, 5:41 PM

    I read the first one and, while it's definitely epic, I couldn't get past the terrible dialog and cardboard characters. I get the nerd appeal, but just because you're mainlining hard sci-fi doesn't mean you should have to put up with awful writing. Reminded me of Ready Player One.

    I dunno - I guess if the concept is grand enough, maybe it's worth putting on the waders and slogging through the rest of the series.

  • by sigmoid10 on 3/18/24, 5:42 PM

    I'm having a really hard time to be optimistic about this. After all, it is still David Benioff and D. B. Weiss behind the scenes, aka the guys who screwed up GOT in a way that was thought to be impossible. I guess they can play more to their strengths with finished source material, but lack of story was clearly just one of many huge problems.

  • by AndrewStephens on 3/18/24, 5:54 PM

    The original Three Body Problem novel is a real throwback to 1950s/60s style american big-concept scifi. I can understand why some modern readers bounce of it - it reads very strangely when judged by modern scifi tastes.

    The next two books continue in the same vein but I really hated the point-of-view characters and found the books a bit of a slog to get through.

    My longer comments[0]

    [0] https://sheep.horse/2017/3/book_review_-_the_three-body_prob...

  • by maskedinvader on 3/18/24, 5:49 PM

    I love this series, read all the books multiple times and also watched the 30 episode long book 1 tv adaption in Chinese. I can't wait to watch the book1 adaption on Netflix in a couple of days. I am really hoping its well received and they go on to make the season 2 based on book 2 which was by far my favorite book in the series.

  • by mullingitover on 3/18/24, 5:46 PM

    I loved/hated the books. I made it through the first two, and I loved parts about them, but I couldn't get myself emotionally invested in the characters enough to drag myself through the third. Maybe something was lost in translation. There are some great plot twists that I really enjoyed.

    I'm hoping the series goes through the third book, because based on my reading of the plot summary that's where things get really crazy.

  • by quartesixte on 3/18/24, 6:17 PM

    A bit of a meta comment, but the character-based criticisms I find fascinating because:

    1) Golden Age SciFi (Asimov, Clarke, etc) had the same “problems” 2) It’s leveled as real criticism instead of a matter of taste? I think there should be room for fiction-as-idea-vehicles as much as there is room for characters-as-core.

    3BP and its sequels sit very squarely in both the latter camp as well as follows a lot of cues from Chinese fantasy epics (classic and modern). It has been a while since we have had some good High Science Fiction and the ideas were thought provoking enough.

    I have a personal bone to pick with the Cult-of-the-Character but that’s something for another day…

  • by nabla9 on 3/18/24, 6:15 PM

    I loved the books because:

    1. It's old school high concept scifi where protagonists are smart like scientists.

    2. It's alien in two levels. First story, secondly the writing and style has many aspects of Chinese culture that seems alien western reader. Really refreshing.

    ps. Chinese already made 3 body problem into long tv-series. It's really slow burn and follows the plot quite close. The ship cutting scene was well done.

  • by __rito__ on 3/18/24, 6:35 PM

    I never really cared for SciFi before I read Neal Stephenson. I read Cryptonomicon (among my all-time top-5) and Diamond Age and I was hooked.

    Then I read 3BP, and I really really loved it. Historical plots, present day, big ideas, imaginitive author, focus on multiple technologies rather than one, and so on.

    Since then, I have been trying to find the high I found in them. And I am mostly failing. I disliked Blake Crouch's Dark Matter. But I liked the lighthearted "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir. I am currently reading "Anathem" by Stephenson. I really like it, and it's different from 3BP. I also found Ted Chiang's short stories, and liking them.

    Can you suggest me books that are like 3BP? I know they are not perfect, but damn did they blow my mind!

    I got Dandelion Dynasty by Ken Liu, but they read like fanstasy, and haven't given the series a proper chance.

    I wrote about my own thoughts on SciFi here: https://ritogh.substack.com/p/project-hail-mary-andy-weir-a-...

  • by aplusbi on 3/18/24, 8:10 PM

    Minor spoilers ahead:

    I still can't get over the fact that Trisolaris is actually a four body problem, not a three body problem. I've heard some explanations that this is because you can ignore the mass of the planet. While I'm not an astrophysicist, I'm not sure that's true given that the entire point is to figure out how three suns affect the planet.

  • by ndsipa_pomu on 3/18/24, 6:18 PM

    I really enjoyed watching the Chinese version (with subtitles) when it came out and read the first book afterwards and have just re-watched the whole series in preparation for the Netflix version. I gather that the Netflix version will be jumping around the trilogy of books, so maybe I need to read the other two now.

  • by slowmovintarget on 3/18/24, 7:07 PM

    I was so confused, because I tried an episode of "Three-Body" on Amazon Prime. This is the Chinese TV adaptation which seemed like a one-for-one adaptation of the book. It seems that very few people are aware of this series though.

    I didn't realize there is also now a Netflix series. I saw the promo on Netflix, but I thought they just licensed that same Chinese-made series. I'll have to check out the Netflix adaptation to see if it's more accessible than the first-mover.

    Review of "Three-Body" here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/arts/television/three-bod...

  • by 7thaccount on 3/18/24, 6:08 PM

    I made the mistake of reading the story synopsis awhile back and the dark Forest prob gets talked about on YouTube all the time now.

    It seems like the ending doesn't go well for humans though which is sad. I typically like scifi that has a positive spin. I do like hard sci-fi or sci-fi with expansive world building like ring world, mote in God's eye, revelation space, and rendezvous with Rama to name just a few.

    Spoilers:

    It seems to me that the major achievement of the book is in making the concept of dark Forest mainstream. The concept of being silent and not attracting unwanted attention is hardly new though. The spin is on how it might be best for any species to simply launch some planet killers in the direction of anything that makes noise. Of course I don't believe that.

  • by aamoyg on 3/19/24, 12:39 AM

    Watch the Chinese version of this it's 10x better and the intros are so good (the Cold War intro is super James Bondesque and sounds awesome).

  • by ok_dad on 3/18/24, 5:39 PM

    If anyone saw this and also read the books please say how the show is and if it’s worth watching! The books were excellent.

  • by smellf on 3/18/24, 6:05 PM

  • by dekhn on 3/18/24, 5:46 PM

    I didn't like the book, would I enjoy the movie. I did learn many of my issues with the book are related to the translation, but it's mostly the weird particles that made it feel off to me.

  • by rKarpinski on 3/18/24, 6:32 PM

    The story is a metaphor/sci-fi retelling of European colonialism encroachment into China, and the show runners un ironically chose to turn most of the characters to British

  • by jacknews on 3/18/24, 10:07 PM

    I found the first book at least to be just a cacophony of ideas, some interesting, some just weird, and all barely hanging together well enough to make an actual story.

  • by nathan_compton on 3/18/24, 6:01 PM

    I didn't find the Three Body Problem particularly compelling. Almost everything in it is goofy.

  • by ottaborra on 3/18/24, 6:07 PM

    Man, I don't get it. Was I the only one put off the video game portion of the story? It seemed so out of place and enough for me to go "rubbish" and toss the series aside

  • by curiousDog on 3/18/24, 5:34 PM

    Such an amazing show and kudos to Netflix!