Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels discussion

Group Read #33

I'm only on chapter 4 but I definitely like it so far.

This is exactly why I like reading books by authors from other countries. I had heard of the Cultural Revolution in China, but didn't recognize it the descriptions of it because that's about all I knew about it. Now I know a little more thanks to wikipedia, and I'll probably look a bit more into it later. Too modern an event (even though mostly before my birth) for me to be ignorant of.

I was lucky enough to read this book several years ago and I always say that this is my favorite science fiction novel of all-time. So, I am excited to reread the book and see if I still love the depth of the story for the second run through of the series.

Anybody here tried an audio version of it? I am not getting enough down time to read it properly, haven't even started it yet. Worst case scenario I will just "read" it on Youtube or something.

Surprised to see the lack of discussion of this novel! I'm starting it today, hopefully I'll get through a nice chunk of it.

I'm reading it, but I took a detour to read something else. Because I read the first half of it so long ago, I am surprised that it still makes a little sense!

Art- did you try the audio version? How is it?

Art wrote: "Surprised to see the lack of discussion of this novel! I'm starting it today, hopefully I'll get through a nice chunk of it."

It is an interesting story, quite unlike 'usual' SF. I haven't discussed it here because I've read it last year so first impressions aren't that fresh

Rebecca wrote: "Art- did you try the audio version? How is it?"

So far so good, I will be alternating between the two. The Audible version I'm listening to is decent, as they usually are.
I am looking forward to the regular version of it, the writing seems beautiful.

Art wrote: "Surprised to see the lack of discussion of this novel! I'm starting it today, hopefully I'll get through a nice chunk of it."

I'm waiting for my copy to come back in at the library, so I'll be very late to the party. Really intrigued by this one though!

I'm about 100 pages in and really enjoying it. The style I great and the mystery is building. If the whole trilogy is like this, I'll find a way to squeeze in the challenge!

I am only now starting to catch up on our group reads. I like a lot about this novel, how Liu Cixin manages to merge the facts and actual events into the story.

The game rings familiar to Diamond Age in a way, but I guess I won't give any spoilers here. One thing to say, Liu Cixin writes in a very elegantl manner, there is refreshing lack of useless information or just "feelings" and "anxiety" descriptions which are so popular these days.

One thing of negative to say is that since it's a translation, dialogues to me seem a bit bland, but that is probably due to the nuances of Chinese dialogue not being translated well.

Just finished the book. Exciting stuff. Found out a bit about the Cultural Revolution. The author used the Three-Body problem in a very unique way. He dug pretty deep into what kind of civilization that would develop on such an environment. Very creative I think.

I agree, very creative. But I was more interested in the aliens than the humans . . .

Taseen wrote: "Just finished the book. Exciting stuff. Found out a bit about the Cultural Revolution. The author used the Three-Body problem in a very unique way. He dug pretty deep into what kind of civilization..."

Exciting stuff indeed, the only down side is that I now begin to doubt the author's ability to keep me excited throughout the trilogy. The cop character's monologues were absolutely painful to tolerate, maybe in original Chinese he was meant to be a down to earth fella, sort of semi-comical relief not unlike Pratchet's Captain Vimes. But every scene featuring him made me cringe once or twice.

A weak 4 star for me, will drop a few lines in the spoiler section when I get a chance.