Finishing Dark Forest made me really wish I could speak and read fluent mandarin, so that I wouldn't have to wait another 4 months for the final volume! They pushed the publication date back again...
I had some serious problems with the Three Body Problem, which annoyed me enough to put a pause on reading the next novel. I loved all the interpersonal stuff - I haven't liked a character as much as I like Big Shi in a long time - but the tech and science of it seemed implausible to me.
It's hard to go into details without being spoilerific, but: the problem is hard to solve, but you can still make very useful short-term predictions; the technology they have access to is being insanely under-utilized given their goals; and I don't believe the actions of the scientists given how they use that technology - I would expect the reaction to be the exact opposite of what ends up happening.
Personally, I found the strength of TBP and DF to be the depth that Liu achieves with his plots at the highest level, and it's important to take a step back and not judge him as pure hard SF (as it seems to have been sold to you, based on your review) but as a writer of literature using SF as his medium (as might have Heinlein, PKD, or Asimov who is his clear and direct inspiration).
The science "plot holes", the suspension of disbelief were I think fair play as a base to deploy his explanation of the Fermi paradox (which is to an extent the point of the whole series). Like psychohistory in Asimov's Foundation or Batman's seeming invincibility in Nolan and Ledger's masterpiece, it helps plot development and the greater ideas about human nature, politics, information operations and so on that are put forward by the book.
The analyses of human nature, particularly of bureaucracies and destruction via inaction (to quote Admiral Rickover, "the person who disclaims responsibility is correct: by taking this way out he is truly not responsible; he is irresponsible").
What makes a good book/movie/narrative work of art? To me it is increasingly about the plot and, to quote FCH, about how long the work can make you think about it after you're done reading it. It's clearly working since it's been weeks since I've read the books and I still couldn't resist making the quip despite the increasing amount of karma it is costing me for being off-topic.
Compared to another famous recent Hugo winner, Rainbows End, I thought Liu's work was much more enjoyable, because it was technically unpolished but had a great, interesting, innovative plot (and I'm sure half of the polish went missing in translation), whilst the latter was technically impeccable if now a little dated, but had little in the way of plot; the plot was almost a frame in which Vinge was developing his ideas about wearable tech and information operations' logical conclusion. It's like Esterhase mysteriously putting on a bad Hungarian accent in Smiley's People when he was the epitome of the try-too-hard British arriviste in TTSP - you can forgive them the glitch since the core of the writing is so exceptional and both Esterhases were fabulous characters with great depth.
Liu's ability to toy with the reader and take unconventional paths is rather rare in today's crop of writers. I would draw a parallel there with many of Charlie Stross' books; the polish is not always there, but he keeps reinventing himself and (at least for me) each foray into a new genre or avenue of thought is a success (and a source of great movies and books to explore).
As a side note, I thought it was one of the few successful depictions of a truly alien culture (what you call near-Strong-AI?) in SF today (and no, I didn't think Vinge's FOTD's Hugo winning hive-dogs were truly alien: put human heads instead, set it in medieval "Ireland-Spain", and you get Game of Thrones, down to an epic fire battle before the walls of King's Landing).
As a second side note, isn't it fun to draw parallels between TBP and the real world? How do you, today, as the PLA, deal with the fact the NSA can hear and read everything except your thoughts when planning defense strategy? Suddenly the sophons don't seem so alien... I don't like tin foil hats, so I didn't try too hard to put myself in the Chinese position, but it was definitely an interesting line of thought.
Yeah, the human nature aspects were what I really loved about it. Liu could have left out most of the interstellar scifi, and told a story just as good.
I'm not sure if I buy the alien-culture, though. The Trisolarians seemed just as human as ... humans, especially given their introduction in the titular video game, and the Sophons barely seem to have a culture at all.
(I also agree about the Tines; I really love them as a species, but I hated the sequel, because I don't really care about basically pre-tech societies enough to read long fiction about them - same problem I had with Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and the reason I haven't read any of the ASoIF novels.
> I'm not sure if I buy the alien-culture, though. The Trisolarians seemed just as human as ... humans, especially given their introduction in the titular video game, and the Sophons barely seem to have a culture at all.
Did you really think so? I can't remember where DF started, so I'm going to have to be careful with spoilers but in my view, the "game characters" were either humans (professor Ye if I remember well), or weak AI game characters programmed by the Trisolarians in an attempt to map their propaganda to humans. The game itself is an information operation: it is designed to cultivate a resistance within humanity and disinform humans psychologically in order to gain yet another edge over them militarily.
However Trisolarians themselves are a "superior civilisation" which is both helped and hindered by a particular feature of theirs which we don't have (related to the Tines, actually) and which becomes the core plot point enabling most of DF to play out (like the Wall Facer project). Sophons are just sophisticated communication devices, there to send back information to Trisolarians so they can better understand, hinder and later destroy Earth; they are not themselves strong AI (and therefore not a civilisation).
Thus what makes it interesting is the game theoretic aspect of it, and especially the treatment of information flow. Trisolarians know everything except the thoughts of humans (and, initially, they also lack the information that humans are capable of private thought).
It is not what they say (which is purposely adapted to look human) but how they react to learning bits of information that makes them a fully fleshed out alien culture (such as learning abstract concepts like deception, then figuring out the game theory of deception and altering their conversation onto the ETO accordingly).
The human fifth column goes from being a convenient tool of further aggression, to a core path to avoiding the one realistic chance humans have against the invasion. The ability of the Trisolarians to create a high quality "virtual machine of human minds" within their civilisation capable of such manipulation makes them a convincing "higher civilisation" (which is what will make the third book interesting, I bet, especially after the closure brought by DF).
Ah, ok, I haven't read DF yet. I think what you've given me here is a bit of a spoiler, but enough to make me actually want to read it.
Is the English translation that's out right now good enough? I've heard very mixed reviews about it - does it make sense to wait for a possible new translation, or should I just dive in?
Also, I thought that the Sophons were an AI, and that their actions on Earth were largely self-controlled - not driven by Trisolarians remotely.
I think the rules for the sophons are not entirely clear, because he set them up as a plot device for a few of the things he needed (FTL, no more science, omniscience of the enemy) in order to create the special conditions that force humanity to defend itself by creative thinking and this is also why I didn't spend too long cross-referencing their viability. Nevertheless I vaguely remember them being some kind of giant PCB when unfolded in 2D with a fairly high level of abstraction and autonomy without being strong AI (and therefore a new civilisation). It's a given in the plot anyway that you don't want to create a higher civilisation, because of the DF... well, I'm not going to spoil it, but the Trisolarians have very good reason not to create real intelligence capable of resetting its goals.
The translation is as good as it's going to get. The main issue is that Liu is from the PRC and spent most of his life there. It took me years in Asia to slowly realise how differently the Chinese think from Westerners (hell, Westerners themselves think very differently just across borders - compare the worldview of a Brit to that of a Nordic or a Frenchman). If you compare Strugatsky and Asimov, you also get this huge cultural difference that is untranslatable because of the large amount of metadata bagage that Russians would already have coming into Strugatsky's work after growing up in Russia.
The book is "very Chinese", if that makes sense, which I think is what confuses people (and to me is a feature). A quick intro to what that means might be watching a few episodes of If You Are The One (非诚勿扰), a slightly crazy dating show that since the second season has had a government censor added to the panel to moderate the gold diggers; an Australian TV channel has started subtitling a bunch of episodes, although I unfortunately could never find the infamous season 1 ("I'd rather cry at the back of a BMW than smile on a bicycle"). You both get a sample of PRC normal citizen thinking and a taste of how the government is setting the tone culturally.
I'd love to get an annotated translation that dives deeper into the characters' motivations. The translation I had was full of footnotes, but mostly explaining historical and cultural allusions. But I think the book would probably be three times longer, and would raise more questions than it would answer.
Thanks for taking the time to have a nice, long conversation with me about this!
