Books & Boba discussion

Apologies for the late thread post. This is the discussion thread for our January 2020 book club pick, The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu and translated by Ken Liu (author of our February 2019 book club pick, The Grace of Kings.

The Three-Body Problem sold millions of copies in China. After it was translated into English, the novel won the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Novel, being the first Asian novel to win the title. It was also nominated for best novel at the 2014 Nebula Awards.

Marvin has been wanting to read this book for some time now, and I'm curious as to what he thinks of it. It seems like many of our members here have already read the book and reviewed it on Goodreads. A good number of you seemed to enjoy the novel. Unfortunately, I am in the minority on this one. I had an extremely difficult time getting through Liu's book. I am not a hard science fiction fan, so a lot of the physics and theoretical science explanations flew over my head. I had to put the book down several times to attempt to process/imagine the science. There was a lot of info dumps, and I think they hampered the dialogue and pace of the story.

I found the characters bland (?) except Da Shi, the crass detective. Wang Miao seemed too passive for someone who is one of the protagonists. All of his decisions seemed to be plot devices. Wenjie was an intriguing character because of how much she endured during the Cultural Revolution, but even she fell a little flat to me. Besides her being rightfully cynical and tired of humanity's failures, I couldn't get a good grasp of her personality.

I did like the VR game bits of the story. I thought the world of Trisolar was very well built. I had fun visualizing the different civilizations and eras the game presented. "Dehydration" was also a concept I hadn't really seen in literature before. Chapters set during the Cultural Revolution were also engaging. I wasn't a fan of the constant time skipping. I don't mind flashbacks and time skips in novels, but I usually prefer them to be consistent in length.

Overall, I can understand why this book has received so much praise in the sci-fi literature world. It's just not my cup of tea, and that's okay!

I really wish I could have said I read this, but unfortunately, this title proves to be extremely difficult to check out of the library I use. There will come a day where I’ll finally read it.

In the mean time, I can see how it might not be a book for everyone. Science fiction is definitely one of those genres where depending on how hardcore it gets with the technicalities of its universe, may or may not appeal to a reader.