The Three‐Body Problem

zemoko reviewed Le problème à trois corps by Cixin Liu

J‘ai trouvé ma lecture passionnante, et palpitante, mais j‘ai quand même quelques réserves

4 stars

« Le problème à trois corps » est trilogie de SF chinoise, voire de hard-SF. En 2021, le roman avait déjà une belle renommée car il avait obtenu le prix Hugo (en 2015) et que Barack Obama en avait fait l‘éloge public. Comme j‘écris ma chronique avec 3 ans de retard, je peux ajouter qu‘elle a encore gagnée en visibilité cette année, puisqu‘elle a été adaptée en série par Netflix !

En Chine, la Révolution culturelle bat son plein. Ye Wenjie est une jeune astrophysicienne dont le père, également éminent scientifique, a été accusé d’être contre-révolutionnaire, et exécuté sous ses yeux. Elle refuse de le condamner et est envoyée en camps de rééducation… bref, révolution culturelle et fort passif pour Ye Wenjie, vous voyez le truc. Puis, ses compétences étant reconnues, elle sera finalement affecté à la base secrète de Côte-Rouge pour participer à un mystérieux projet…

40 ans plus …

« Le problème à trois corps » est trilogie de SF chinoise, voire de hard-SF. En 2021, le roman avait déjà une belle renommée car il avait obtenu le prix Hugo (en 2015) et que Barack Obama en avait fait l‘éloge public. Comme j‘écris ma chronique avec 3 ans de retard, je peux ajouter qu‘elle a encore gagnée en visibilité cette année, puisqu‘elle a été adaptée en série par Netflix !

En Chine, la Révolution culturelle bat son plein. Ye Wenjie est une jeune astrophysicienne dont le père, également éminent scientifique, a été accusé d’être contre-révolutionnaire, et exécuté sous ses yeux. Elle refuse de le condamner et est envoyée en camps de rééducation… bref, révolution culturelle et fort passif pour Ye Wenjie, vous voyez le truc. Puis, ses compétences étant reconnues, elle sera finalement affecté à la base secrète de Côte-Rouge pour participer à un mystérieux projet…

40 ans plus tard, alors qu’une étrange vague de suicides frappe la communauté scientifique internationale. Wang Miao, un scientifique expert en nano-technologies, se voit confronté à d’étranges phénomènes qu’il va rapidement relier à un nouveau, et mystérieux, jeu de réalité virtuelle.

J‘ai trouvé ma lecture passionnante, et palpitante, mais j‘ai quand même quelques réserves. Le livre est complexe, ce qui est assez naturel pour un roman de hard-science, mais je l’ai aussi parfois trouvé confus. Si les aspects scientifiques sont (vraiment) bien traités, les personnages, eux, ne sont pas assez développés. À l’exception notable de Ye Wentje, et peut-être de Shi Qiang, les personnages sont à peine ébauchés et cela m‘a gêné pour apprécier réellement ma lecture.

Je suis néanmoins content de l’avoir lu… mais je n‘était manifestement pas pressé ni d‘écrire à son sujet, ni de lire la suite 😉

Edd62@bookwyrm.social reviewed El problema de los tres cuerpos (Trilogía de los Tres Cuerpos, #1) by Cixin Liu

El problema de los tres cuerpos, reseña

4 stars

ciencia ficcion, puray dura, profunda investigacion fisica, matematica, social, geopolitica, para crear a partir de un problema de modelo matematico, ( los tres cuerpos) una novela innovadora, un salto cuantico en la ciencia ficción

marionline reviewed The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Three-Body Trilogy, #1)

Interesting Book

4 stars

Content warning And I loved violin playing Albert

It was an interesting read. Somewhat hard to get into the story, but then it was making me turn pages and I could barely put it down. I loved some of the sci-fi ideas presented there.

todb reviewed The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Three-Body Trilogy, #1)

Ultramodern cosmic horror with loads of astrophysics

4 stars

Got a cold, so had loads of time to finish Three Body Problem. It was kind of a slog for me about 20% of the way through, but the beginning (set in the Chinese Cultural Revolution) and the mainline story was pretty darn gripping. This is about as hard of hard sci-fi as you're going to find, and I'm looking forward to being aggravated by the Netflix version. Also, many people warn that this first book of the trilogy doesn't have an ending, but I didn't see that at all -- the ending is just appropriately nihilistic, as anything set on a cosmic scale ought to be.

Anyway, this is about as spoiler-free as I can make this comment. I will say that between this and @strcpy@infosec.exchange's recent posts, I'm most definitely back into #Stellaris, with pre-FTL civilizations cranked up.

tinebeest reviewed The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Three-Body Trilogy, #1)

Yes but…

3 stars

Interesting premise but could get a bit wordy at times and once i read all three I couldn’t help but think back to the implied/embedded nationalism and misogyny. Or how being a historian of China ruins everything 😅

suddendef reviewed The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Three-Body Trilogy, #1)

A interesting idea, but author seems to be more obsessed with the scientific part

4 stars

I liked the plot and the unusual idea for the story, but the characters are somehow not so well detailed and it was hard to immerse myself into the book. Nevertheless, I'm going to read the second one in this series.

Brian Plunkett reviewed The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Three-Body Trilogy, #1)

The Three-Body Problem

4 stars

Imaginative and thoughtful "hard" science fiction. Fingers crossed that Netflix will do a good job with the series. The setting in China was interesting. Some parts were excellent, while others were a little tiresome (e.g., some of the military/police conversations), but I enjoyed it quite a bit overall. The chapter with Newton, Von Neumann and the human-formation computer was a fascinating and humorous highlight for me.

Daniel reviewed The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Three-Body Trilogy, #1)

How to hack a proton

3 stars

This was a little too weird for me and I can’t say I really bought the premise of the story fully…

Jonathan Hartley reviewed The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Three-Body Trilogy, #1)

Not just bizarrely nihilistic and cynical, but also pro-authoritarian propaganda

1 star

Content warning This book is intensely political.

Everyone loves this, but I can't understand why nobody seems to be put off, or at least puzzled, but the way that every human individual or organization in the book is just relentlessly awful, ranging from suicidal to genocidal, and everything in-between, without respite.

Most of them, given any chance at all, are trying hard to selfishly save their own skins, with not a moment's regard for the fact that their plans will immediately doom the rest of the human race. Those not intent on self preservation at any cost are instead committed to bitter nihilism, such as the ultimate eco-terrorists, who feel that to save the Earth's biosphere they must collaborate with alien forces to bring about humanity's defeat, and likely annihilation.

These characters and groups are not depicted as outliers. They represent the human race in its entirety. The only thing that holds back this tide of destructive behavior is the government, who keeps everyone in line.

I can't tell how much of this bizarrely one-sided depiction of humanity is a deliberate choice by the author, versus simply being an unplanned exposure of their worldview, shaped as it is by their native Chinese immersion in authoritarianism. Does that form a subconscious backdrop to everything they wrote here, or are they consciously making a deliberate point that strong government is absolutely necessary?

The author Liu Cixin has since gone on record in support of the Chinese government's internment of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang. There, people have been rounded up, because of their ethnicity, into over 400 internment camps. The camps administer cultural and religious re-education, forced labor, involuntary sterilization and abortion. This is something Liu Cixin is openly in favor of.

It makes my skin crawl to read that, and then carry on blithely with this story book of theirs, which seems to be an unapologetic justification for an authoritarian government's impositions on its populate. I did finish it, but have no desire to read the sequels - and not just because I don't agree with the politics. I genuinely found the behavior of all the characters to be intrusively bewildering, demented and incessantly frustrating.

Beta Block : Bookwyrm reviewed The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Three-Body Trilogy, #1)

Science Fiction

5 stars

Spannend aufgebaut mit verschiedenen Handlungssträngen, die sich irgendwann zusammenfügen. Technische / physikalische Grundprinzipien auch für mich als Laien verständlich dargestellt. Und die Frage nach dem "First Contact" mit all ihren Implikationen wurde toll beackert. Zusätzlich erfährt von noch etwas über die jüngere chinesische Geschichte.

Kian Ryan reviewed The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Three-Body Trilogy, #1)

Good, but watch out - sets up trilogy

5 stars

The first few chapters had me darting to and from Wikipedia to help add some context to a story that is deeply set in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It',s a triviality to call the story complex, a mystery than unfolds through the book. Be warned this is the first in a trilogy and a very much sets itself up this way, which was a little frustrating in the last few chapters.

Luis reviewed El problema de los tres cuerpos (Trilogía de los Tres Cuerpos, #1) by Cixin Liu

Está bien.

No rating

Es el primero de una trilogía. Me ha gustado, aunque hay algunas cosas "científicas" que me han parecido muy simplonas. De cualquier forma, estoy leyendo el segundo, y creo que también leeré el tercero. Lo recomiendo.

doc-halo@bookwyrm.social reviewed The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Three-Body Trilogy, #1)

Review of "The Three Body Problem"

4 stars

A good hard fiction novel that explores the question of making first contact. It's a quick read that has decent character development, a smooth flowing plot, and asks deep philosophical science questions.

comrad reviewed The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Three-Body Trilogy, #1)

Guter Auftakt der Trilogie

4 stars

Ich hab innerhalb von zwei Tagen "Die Drei Sonnen" von Cixin Liu gelesen. Das hatte ich schon sehr lange auf meiner Liste und erfreulicherweise waren alle drei Bände der Trilogie in der Stadtbücherei vorrätig.

Die knapp 550 Seiten haben sich schnell und angenehm gelesen. Das Meisterwerkgefühl bliebt bei mir jedoch leider aus.

Die Geschichte ist nett, aber jetzt nichts neues, vieles wirkt eher konstruiert und anstatt Entdeckung wird eher präsentiert.