From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)

Liu Cixin,

Ken Liu (Translator)

Start date: February 1, 2016

Finish date: February 28, 2016

Discussion: Genre

Discussion leader: Lauren

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Genre

Genre - December 2016 - Ancillary Justice
By Dawn , Loves a Challenge · 57 posts · 41 views

last updated Jan 13, 2017 11:18AM

Genre - February 2016 - Whatever Science Fiction Books You Want to Pick Up
By Dawn , Loves a Challenge · 77 posts · 55 views

last updated Dec 17, 2016 04:13PM

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What Members Thought

May 30, 2020 Henk rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: owned

Loving the Netflix adaptation 🎥, maybe this is story is even better suited for the screen than the rendition in a book 📚
Addictive, gripping, filmic in scenes, big on ideas, but sloppy in execution and characterisation - 3.5 stars rounded down
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. - The queen from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There

Part 1
She could no longer feel grief. She was like a Geiger counter that had been subjected to too much radi ...more

92 likes · Like · see review

Jan 31, 2016 El rated it liked it

Shelves: 21st-centurylit, science-fictiony, library-borrow

I hadn't heard about this book before one of my GR groups decided to read it, and I'm not disappointed that they did. This science fiction novel is one that would appeal to those who are into the more science end of the fiction, and I can think of a few people who would probably enjoy the shit out of it from that perspective.

Personally, while I'm not afraid of a little science (even if it's not my favorite thing), it's not enough to carry a novel for me. This is a novel that unfortunately has a ...more

12 likes · Like · see review

Mar 15, 2016 Viv JM rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: author-male, science-fiction, in-translation, read-in-2016

I really enjoyed this book. It had the pace and excitement of a decent thriller, together with a really imaginative alien planet concept. I found the science at times a bit mind-boggling (in a good way!) and also found the moral and ethical questions very thought-provoking. I enjoyed the writing style (or maybe it is the style of the translator, Ken Liu) in as much as it felt like there wasn't a single superfluous word in the book. I notice that the next book has a different translator so it wil ...more

12 likes · Like · see review

Aug 24, 2015 Camelia Rose rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, dystopia, 中文

Reviewed on 24th August, 2015

Overall rating for the trilogy: 3 star

It was announced last Saturday that Liu Cixin's The Three-body Problem was the winner of 2015 Hugo Awards Best Novel. For the last two days, the wave of praises and celebrations has swept across Weibo, the biggest Chinese micro-blogging site. I feel I must write a review.

Liu Cixin is probably the most well-known and well-celebrated Chinese science fiction writer. I've read almost all his writings. He is good at mixing Chinese so ...more

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Oct 11, 2016 Nadine in California rated it liked it

Five stars for ideas and plot, two stars for the writing and especially the characters, who seem to exist just to explain the ideas and further the plot, often in info-dumping fashion. Faced with the choice of reading the info dumps slowly to try and understand the physics, or just skimming, I chose skim. But I am inspired to push Astrophysics for People in a Hurry and Seven Brief Lessons on Physics higher on my tbr pile. I don't lay the blame for the writing on the translator, whose imaginative ...more

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Jun 28, 2015 Meghan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, chinese, favorites, own, science, award-winning, asian, ibook, translated

I did not know what to expect but man was this a fun read. Read a lot of jokes about China coming out with its own sci-fi prize but if this is the kind of writing they're rewarding, then more power to them. Put your misconceptions and biases away and just get ready for some science-based sci-fi fun.

Didn't know this was a trilogy but reviews for the second book look good. Unfortunately a different guy did the second book which is a bummer because I thought Ken Liu did a fantastic job balancing th ...more

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Feb 29, 2016 Wendy rated it liked it

Shelves: audiobooks, in-translation, hugo-award, science-fiction

"Three-Body Problem? Isn't that what Jack the Ripper has on a busy night?"

*ba-dum-chish* (Thanks, Matt)

I don't read a whole lot of hard sci-fi, but I quite liked this one, enough that a certain someone is getting a fresh new copy for Fathers day. (Thanks for all the calculus and physics tutoring you gave me back in the day, Dad! Can you explain proton folding to me now? Coffee and bagels on me).

Lots of big interesting sciencey ideas here, not a whole lot of character development, but the first- ...more

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May 04, 2015 Dawn rated it it was ok

Shelves: science-fiction, series-abandoned

Obviously not a book I liked all that much, I found it uninvolving. The story revolved around a concept and there was nothing to bring it to life. The characters were stilted, only there to explain the concept, without having any personality. Their interactions were like reading the script for a very bad B movie, dialogue made to explain and forward the plot but not much else.
I did like the idea of the story but, for me at least, the execution didn't pan out. ...more

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Nov 24, 2017 Erika rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction-science-fiction

(No spoilers!) The ideas are fascinating (and coherent even for a reader whose physics and astronomy days are admittedly in the distant past), and the writing (rather, translation) is lovely. I don't have a good feel for the characters (with one or two exceptions), but this is not driven by character, so perhaps that is not an issue. But it is a profoundly depressing book. It's not the plot that is depressing; many in the genre concern unfriendly alien species coming to the earth. It's the speci ...more

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Mar 29, 2016 S.L. Berry rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy-paranormal-magic, my-asian-book, science

The Three-Body Problem (Part One a Trilogy) asks a fundamental question: Is science good for humanity? What happens when the progress of science is halted? Can humanity live, endure without science? What is the appropriate balance between religion and science? Is SETI (the search for extraterrestrials) science? If you have seen the movie or read the book Contact, Cixin Liu is very similar in some ways. I have seen the movie Contact; the book is on my ever-expanding TBR list. There is some emphas
The Three-Body Problem (Part One a Trilogy) asks a fundamental question: Is science good for humanity? What happens when the progress of science is halted? Can humanity live, endure without science? What is the appropriate balance between religion and science? Is SETI (the search for extraterrestrials) science? If you have seen the movie or read the book Contact, Cixin Liu is very similar in some ways. I have seen the movie Contact; the book is on my ever-expanding TBR list. There is some emphasis on higher mathematics and science in the movie Contact. In The Three-Body Problem, significant portions of the book deal with basic physics and some calculus. It is not hard going, but unless you have a background in either higher mathematics, mechanics, or physics, be prepared for a slow down. It is still very interesting and I learned a lot from the narrative as well as the author's post-script. Some ideas that had in the past been merely abstract concepts became real, understandable. Particle accelerators (e.g. The Hadron Collider) and the relationship of dimensions to size were two such concepts.

The Three-Body Problem is also a retelling, a quick glimpse of history, particularly life during Mao's Cultural Revolution, the race for space, and the recovery of life after Mao.There are also glimpses back in time all the way back to our hunter-gatherer days through the inventive use of virtual reality gaming, Eventually, the game has to end and virtual reality becomes reality. And you have Independence Day. The question transforms from SETI as a science to whether contact with extraterrestrials should be encouraged or discouraged? What are their aims? To replace us, live among us? What is special about Earth? What is valuable about humankind? Would it be so bad that humankind was wiped off the face of the planet? Is humankind redeemable? Should it be saved? What is the role of science, religion? All worthy questions.

As far as the narrative, Ken Liu did an excellent job in translating Cixin Liu's writing. The writing flows, and I did not see any parts that should have been left out. The sections on history, physics, and mathematics are nicely done, intelligible and do not make the story-line drag. Beware there are footnotes, but these are spare and are helpful in bridging the gap for readers who are not familiar with Chinese history. I found the video game sections at first hard to get into as they appear to take away from, interrupt the plot but that quickly changes. Onto The Dark Forest, Book 2. ...more

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