
Liu Cixin's “The Three-Body Problem” Is Published in the US - mojoe
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/books/liu-cixins-the-three-body-problem-is-published-in-us.html?_r=1
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DaNmarner
I grew up reading SciFi in both Mandarin and English. In my impression, though
not flawless, this series is the only long-form novel produced in China that
can stand among the best SciFi literature in the west.

It deserves to reach a larger audience :)

~~~
Hexcles
To those who want to try something else, here is an incomplete (personal) list
of famous contemporary Chinese Sci-Fi novel authors:

Wang Jinkang (王晋康, quite productive), Chen Qiufan (陈楸帆, just started to
publish books recent years), Han Song (韩松)

To my surprise, when I wrote this list, I suddenly realized how few names I
could think of, even after I looked up in a Chinese website Douban (
[http://book.douban.com/tag/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E7%A7%91%E5%B9...](http://book.douban.com/tag/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E7%A7%91%E5%B9%BB)
). The truth is: there are quite a few good Sci-Fi writers with a whole bunch
of brilliant Sci-Fi short stories in China, but few of them ever writes full-
length novels, not to mention "good" or "famous" ones.

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twic
I read Liu's short story collection "The Wandering Earth" recently, and rather
liked it. My roots are in Clarke, Baxter, Niven, etc, and Liu fits right into
that denomination. His stories are often a little less refined than in
contemporary western SF - plots are often obvious and straightforwardly
developed - but the scope and detail of his imagination is fantastic.

I would definitely say Liu's writing has a different feel to it than western
SF - it feels like the story is always really about the society rather than
the individuals who may happen to be the protagonists. However, i knew as i
was reading it that he was Chinese, so i can't rule out the possibility that
this is confirmation bias. Or, er, racism i suppose.

Anyway, i thought "The Wandering Earth" was well worth reading, and highly
recommend it.

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mojoe
I began reading this last night, and was struck by how the analogies and
metaphors the author uses make the book feel much different than the
American/European science fiction that I'm use to reading. I'm enjoying it a
lot.

~~~
walterbell
You may be interested in the work of R.A. Lafferty
([http://ralafferty.org](http://ralafferty.org)) who has a Japanese following
([http://hayakawa-online.co.jp/product/books/721412.html](http://hayakawa-
online.co.jp/product/books/721412.html)).

~~~
mojoe
Are you saying that he writes in a style that fits Japanese culture? I looked
at his wikipedia page and it looks like his influences are
irish/catholic/native american tall tales. Do you know how he got popular in
Japan?

In any case he looks interesting, thanks!

~~~
lobster_johnson
I don't think it's necessarily because of any particular fit, it's just those
odd "big in Japan" [1] phenomena where an artist reaches a higher celebrity
status in a foreign country, especially in Japan.

Lafferty is closer in style to authors like Vonnegut, Dick, Burroughs and
Murakami than to more classical scifi writers. Lafferty is an oddity. If you
think Vonnegut is a bit of an oddball — that digressive, chatty, ironically
self-referential style is not for everyone — then Lafferty is something else
again. His writing sometimes borders on schizophrenic ramblings, mixing
baroque allegory with Vonnegutian tall tales, flamboyant artifice (Wes
Anderson comes to mind, but also Borges) and broad vaudeville comedy, with no
attention to realism. However, beneath the oddball exterior is a rather
thoughtful humanist.

His most well-known novel, Past Master, is masterpiece in which politicians
from the future kidnap Thomas More to help fix their utopian society. It
sounds like something Alfred Bester (who was also into this sort of colourful,
balls-to-the-wall storytelling) could have written, but goes off in an
unexpected direction.

If you want to read only one thing by Lafferty, I think it should be the short
story "Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne", one of the finest time-travel paradox
stories ever written. It's short, can be read in its entirety on Google Books
[2]. (Edit: Actually, Google Books' preview skips two pages, not sure if it's
possible to get them.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_in_Japan_(phrase)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_in_Japan_\(phrase\))

[2]
[http://books.google.com/books?id=Y_FoU_KMOmkC&pg=PA171&lpg=P...](http://books.google.com/books?id=Y_FoU_KMOmkC&pg=PA171&lpg=PA171&dq=thus+we+frustrate+charlemagne&source=bl&ots=C8LJ3mM0ga&sig=uwlD52BdXB5Fsefwe7hJmPW0f0U&hl=en&sa=X&ei=AtpmVMifBrjbsATG84LQAw&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=thus%20we%20frustrate%20charlemagne&f=false)

~~~
walterbell
Try [https://sites.google.com/site/thebooksofsand/the-man-who-
tal...](https://sites.google.com/site/thebooksofsand/the-man-who-talled-tales
---r-a-lafferty)

~~~
lobster_johnson
Awesome, thank you!

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hackuser
I was just looking into this book recently; these links may be of interest to
everyone:

* An essay by the author on Chinese science fiction and his trilogy's place in it (in English):

[http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/05/the-worst-of-all-
possible-u...](http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/05/the-worst-of-all-possible-
universes-and-the-best-of-all-possible-earths-three-body-and-chinese-science-
fiction)

* A very interesting review by a blogger:

[http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2014/09/review-of-three-
bod...](http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2014/09/review-of-three-body-problem-
by-liu.html)

* A couple professional reviews:

[https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/cixin-liu/the-
thr...](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/cixin-liu/the-three-body-
problem/)

[http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-7653-7706-7](http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-7653-7706-7)

~~~
stoolpigeon
Scalzi ran a "Big Idea" post on it.
[http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/11/11/the-big-idea-liu-
cixin...](http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/11/11/the-big-idea-liu-cixin/)

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brianwillis
I'm reading through the sample on my Kindle now. His similes are a little
forced ("battles like this one raged across Beijing like a multitude of CPUs
working in parallel, their combined output, the Cultural Revolution"), but he
does know how to tell a story. By the end of the second chapter I was sold.

~~~
hackuser
Metaphor might not translate easily, either linguistically or culturally.

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akfanta
It's a great story told by a not-so-great story teller. Hope the translation
helps.

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attorney_dcl
Do you know that? Liu Cixin is a computer engineer at a power plant in bleak
mountain place of Shanxi, China(not far from my hometown). He once wrote a
program to write poems!

~~~
attorney_dcl
He mentioned Unix in one of his novel, describe it as "silent, sturdy".

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zhaowang
As a Chinese working in U.S.. I really enjoyed reading the Chinese version.
Now I have another good options to give gifts to my U.S. friends.

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infruset
> The series is likely to be a change of pace for science-fiction fans in the
> United States, where many leading contemporary writers in the genre are
> rejecting classic alien-invasion plots in favor of those that take on real-
> world issues like climate change or shifting gender roles.

Does anyone know what books the author is referring to?

~~~
pavlov
I guess such recent works as Ursula Le Guin's _The Left Hand of Darkness_ and
J. G. Ballard's _The Drowned World_ , among others. Who knew that sci-fi could
be something else than alien invasions and scantily clad women in pulp covers?

~~~
infruset
Thanks! For a while I've had this notion that the best way to understand
differences in gender is to picture some situations of everyday life with
reversed genders, and then I thought while reading this, maybe there's a sci-
fi book doing exactly that? Turns out this is slightly different, but it seems
interesting, I'll give it a try.

~~~
pavlov
Both Le Guin and Ballard are absolutely worth it!

To clarify, the snark in my post was not directed at you, but rather the
original author's suggestion that these are somehow recent themes in science
fiction. It sounded like he had just been revived from cryogenic sleep where
he'd spent the last 50 years with a dusty Heinlein novel in his stiff hand :)

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eloff
I bought it for my upcoming trip. I also bought stars & empire which contains
10 "galactic tales" from popular indy authors. At $.99 it's tough to go wrong
on that one. And I have 78 hours of flying and airports, so I need the
length...

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J_Darnley
Oh, this is a novel rather than an academic paper about the physics problem of
the same name.

