Three Body Problem

[karanguni]

Just wrapped up Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem and that was a bloody fine read. Some really good, thought-provoking bits and baubles of physics – theoretical and applied! – and some of the finest damned description of multi-dimensional thinking I've ever read packed into delicious historical context with lots of sideways look at the progression of science as a social phenomenon. In a sci-fi book! In a sci-fi book! I haven't enjoyed myself this much in ages.

Going to pick up the second book now, and just unwind. It's been a long-ass 2016 already, but... Not bad. Busy, but not bad. Not doing too good on my original/fic writing resolutions, but work is going – well. I can't really internet anymore because I'm so tired coming back from the job, but I think it'll start to... burn in.

I still want to get more social goals fulfilled, but for now? This is... all right. It's been a while since life was... all right.

Comments

[karanguni]

I can see that! The physics and theoretical stuff only got really interesting for me when you hit the mathematician trying to quantitatively solve for the three-body problem and the last last chapter where you get to dimensional folding and unfolding; everything before that was pretty "I could know nothing about physics and just nod along."

The book being in translation is another thing: I read it having done a tiny bit of research/practical translation myself, and so I'm a lot more forgiving of the oddity of the language. Plus my background is in this sort of historical stuff, so it's an auto-win for me.

But definitely a book that you have to read the ABSOLUTE LAST CHAPTER OF to get why ANYTHING in the first n-1 chapters work...

[beatrice_otter]

Well, I like the historical stuff too, that wasn't the problem--it was that it wasn't connecting with anything yet, and I didn't like any of the characters in anything from the historical stuff or the modern stuff.

I read once that the book had been rearranged by the translator--that the original was not in internal chronological order, but differently. And I wonder if the effect I got out of it (irritating progression of randoom events in the lives of random people I don't care about) would have been different if it were arranged in the original way, so we got the connections Liu Cixin was making.

Traduttore tradittore.