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<blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9415302" data-attributes="member: 7035894">I'm currently reading The Three Body Problem and...I do not understand the acclaim for this book.The writing is terrible! Maybe it's a bad translation, but even setting that aside the characters are paper thin and the dialogue is excruciating. Real people don't talk like that! Everyone talks like they are giving a painfully mendacious speech. And character motivations don't make any sense.Also, I've read lots of gorgeous Chinese literature in translation. So I don't think we can just blame the translator.I'll give it props for having an original take on aliens, though I am highly doubtful that anything remotely like their star system could ever produce sophisticated life, or any life, let alone an advanced civilization. For allegedly &quot;hard&quot; sci-fi (DUBIOUS!), there are an incredible number of logical leaps in this novel.I liked it best when it focuses on exploring the pressure of doing science during the Cultural Revolution. That aspect of the book is interesting, and in that context it makes sense when everyone talks as if they are giving a speech. But that gets tired very quickly in other contexts.Oh, and once again we get the theme that environmentalists are the real villains. And the &quot;video game&quot; used to further their agenda is utterly nonsensical.I dunno - Cultural Revolution episodes aside, I think it's basically awful. I'm soldiering through to the end out of a sense of duty and because it's short. But it won the Hugo. I don't get it. At all.Eh, scratch that last point. It's a Hugo award. But it was also nominated for a Nebula, which I find inexplicable!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Clint_L, post: 9415302, member: 7035894"] I'm currently reading The Three Body Problem and...I do [I]not[/I] understand the acclaim for this book. The writing is terrible! Maybe it's a bad translation, but even setting that aside the characters are paper thin and the dialogue is excruciating. Real people don't talk like that! Everyone talks like they are giving a painfully mendacious speech. And character motivations don't make any sense. Also, I've read lots of gorgeous Chinese literature in translation. So I don't think we can just blame the translator. I'll give it props for having an original take on aliens, though I am [I]highly[/I] doubtful that anything remotely like their star system could ever produce sophisticated life, or any life, let alone an advanced civilization. For allegedly "hard" sci-fi (DUBIOUS!), there are an incredible number of logical leaps in this novel. I liked it best when it focuses on exploring the pressure of doing science during the Cultural Revolution. That aspect of the book is interesting, and in that context it makes sense when everyone talks as if they are giving a speech. But that gets tired very quickly in other contexts. Oh, and once again we get the theme that environmentalists are the real villains. And the "video game" used to further their agenda is utterly nonsensical. I dunno - Cultural Revolution episodes aside, I think it's basically awful. I'm soldiering through to the end out of a sense of duty and because it's short. But it won the Hugo. I don't get it. At all. Eh, scratch that last point. It's a Hugo award. But it was also nominated for a Nebula, which I find inexplicable! [/QUOTE]

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