Hi friends, my name is Meonicorn, a book lover and reviewer.
I'm hosting a long term, ongoing reading event called From and About Asia Reading Project since May 2021, which you can check out the detail here: www.thebookishland.com/from-and-about-asia
I am also a language lover, I believe languages lead us to a wider world. I'm currently actively learning Norwegian, Spanish, and Japanese.
I have not read this series, nor watched the show. However, I've seen and read a lot of discussions about it, since I have an interest in storytelling and ideas from different genres and cultures. And something about the Three Body Problem always... rubbed me the wrong way. From how humanity was doomed because of a woman to the underlying current of xenophobia/racism within humanity, it just. Felt kinda icky. So seeing these examples in Chinese with both the direct and published translations into English really helped put my feelings into perspective. I truly appreciate this! It seems like this story was heavily edited through the translation, downplaying the misogyny and male gaze. (On a sidenote, it's always a delight to hear people read out loud in their native language.)
Thank you for posting this. I read the English translation and found the book very difficult to read because of the poorly written characters. I hope we get more and better-written Chinese fiction.
I just read it and I was a little confused because everything that happens on the stories is so strange. Btw, muy first language isn't english, and I was wondering what was I reading, but now your review has given me light about all those social topics. Thank u ❤
Half way through this book and I’m enjoying it. I understand what this person is saying with the criticisms but I think you have a serious problem with interpreting everything as misogyny. If you think this book was written from a male perspective then there is nothing wrong with that, the author is a male. I think you might have brainwashed yourself and probably should try to see things from other’s perspective and practice empathic thinking.
Thank you so much for the information!!! I started reading Chinese fantasy with some online novels, and I got so intrigued about this world ❤ I specially love TGCF ❤. I want to know more about this kind of literature, so if you could recommend me anything related to the theory of Chinese fantasy literature or something like that I will be really grateful 😊.
i agree for the most part what you say about the girls in the book, except for "ai" in the last book who is taking the role of correcting cheng xins decision making. i just finished the third book in english and especially book 2 can be extremely bland and boring for long periods of time. i even jumped chapters about luo ji falling in love with a woman in his dreams.....what the. but what i dislike the most is the excessive turn of tide moments, one moment humanity is doomed. then luo ji awakes from his hibernation and humanity and the santi are in negotiations. then humanity is doomed again.....luo ji saves the day......cheng xin makes the wrong decision and humanity is doomed again....oh not yet, one space ship did transmit the dark forest message...humanity is saved again.....but for how long? and so on and so on.... also the thing between tianming and cheng xin, what the heck was that? during their early years, she hardly noticed him and because he gives her a star as a gift, suddenly all she thinks about is seeing him again. and that shows the bad writing again, after such a long time of trying to meet and its just moments away that tianming and cheng xin can finally reunite.....BOOM.....something happens again and we jump 18million years to the future, tianmin and ai had a nice life and cheng xin will explore the universe a bit more before everything will collapse into 2 dimensions. the books are definitely not as good as the hype tries to make it.
“Life returned to the soft body” Is a metaphor for the erratic movements her body made in response to the bullets. The point is to bring significance to the taking away of a beautiful life from a normal person who in their time of violent death can still be observed as beautiful. Grossly romantic maybe but what youre implying is that he’s misogynistic which is just silly. Clearly youre a communist also and the purpose of your bookclub is likely to deconstruct books like three body that openly criticise chinese regime. Using terms like “male gaze” to describe someones prose is absolutely pathetic, that is not even a word. Cixin liu is also not a misogynist, the majority of prominent characters in the remembrance of earths past trilogy are women and there is no sex that is given preferential treatment. You are trying so damn hard to make it seem that way like a true communist peon, youd likely be clapping in the crowd at the beginning when yewenjis father was killed
4:09 I think this is the opening scene and it just gets worse from there whenever a woman is being described doing literally anything I had a lot of eye rolls through this series. I still enjoyed most of it, but hated the ending.
You seem intent on holding the science fiction genre to exceptionally high standards. Historically, however, SF novels haven't been regarded as serious literary works. I don't agree with the criticisms you've raised about Liu Cixin's writing. Why is it necessary for characters to always evolve in a story, and why is misogyny such a significant issue? From what I understand, many renowned literary works could be faulted for similar reasons. After all, most of the prominent authors in the past were male. You might argue that I simply don't like it, but your explanation doesn't seem to adequately justify your point
I don't know how a writing about a bullet passing through a woman's body more easier than it would pass through a man's body is an example of misogyny? Males have more muscle mass and bone density than females do 100% a bullet would decelerate less going through a woman than a man, not sexist but science fact. So why is that offensive in anyway?
EDIT: Okay, so this video kinda made me re-examine the books and yeah holy cheese even worse than garden variety mysogyny. I was blinded by all the cool science stuff. OG comment below---- Hi, there. Reader of Ken Liu's English translations. The vibes I got weren't necessarily plain, garden-variety misogyny. The vibes I got involved a very specific kind of misogyny that I told myself I was gonna keep my mouth shut about. I got clued in on this in the opening chapters of The Dark Forest with what Luo Ji learns from that writer when his car breaks down. I'm not saying "go read it again." Just saying... It's fishy.
Im the last person to be irritated by sexism in books but this was just incredible. Nevermind the writing and the characters and the absolute nonsensical plot 🤣🤣🤣
When I first saw this video recommended, I was very sceptical since everyone swears by this book. But you are completely right. I DNFed the second book at 75%. The writing was so amateurish and the ideas stopped being imaginative in book 1 and became completely unbelievable in book 2. The video game, the ETO, the wallfacer project, all seem like a child's understanding of how the world works.
A few years back I read to about midway through the second book. I found it very difficult to get that far because I didn’t find the characters realistic. It’s hard to enjoy a story when the motivations don’t make sense to you. A nonfiction fiction book discussing the concepts would have worked better for me.
I tried to read Three Body after all the noise, and while these points definitely smacked me... what *I* don't get is the arguments that it's held up by its science. Its science is awful! Character is a genius because he correctly predicted GM crops cause birth defects and environmental calamity? Right sure and I guess moonlight gives you cancer and air makes your foot fall off. And Alpha Centauri isn't a chaotic system; it's a little binary pair with a boring third meandering in a stable orbit on the fringes! Microwaves don't work like that, videogames *definitely* don't work like that... and even if they did the entire narrative purpose served by said game is thrown away when it's abruptly summarised with 'oop we have to turn the game off now we're not going to finish the story or say why, but the aliens were totally awesome just look at all these high flyers who agree because we said so'. ... Oh right and the whole 'scientists commit suicide because of contradictory experimental data' thing. Set aside for a minute the fact the author apparently got bored and didn't bother exploring that idea, introduce me to a researcher who'd be depressed in the face of *new science.* *Augh.* ... Thank you for posting this >.> Ugh I wish I could let this go, the whole way this is spreading its tendrils into the public consciousness is making me ill. I had to go looking to see if I was going mad with all the praise it was getting after given up at the 2/3s mark, but really, you can't mistranslate factual statements. What made me laugh though was it got nuclear weapons *right.* It was actually fun to see someone point out nukes are actually quite delicate at their core, and you can stop a nuclear explosion by damaging the device.
This is such an amazingly bad take on the story its like you read it to look for a scifi story to be feminist instead or scifi. Im a girl and i loved this story and felt nothing wrong at all. I cringe to see such things said and expected everything will be bad as star wars acolyte if people focus on that instead of a good story.
I've only read the English version 9f the first book, but from what you're saying, it seems like there were liberal changes to not just the prose but also the actual story. I don't remember feeling the 15 year old who was killed was subject to the male gaze. It seemed more about an innocent 15 year old who deeply believes the cause, running into the true consequences of war. I also feel like the main female character (I can't remember her name now, but the woman scientist) is considered extremely smart by her peers. One thing I liked about her character was she continues to follow her convictions even in the face of getting old, and even when it involves being extremely ruthless. I still wasn't a huge fan of the book, as I overall found it boring and meandering. I don't feel like they explained people's motivations well, or developed the characters mich. But I do think some of the flaws you mention were edited out, for the better.
@TheBookishLand I agree. Can you recommend any good works of contemporary Chinese literature? I’m studying Chinese and would like to be able to get into a good book. So far, I haven’t been able to find one. What I’ve been able to find is full of misogyny, gross descriptions of bodily fluids, and exaggerated depictions of desperation, suffering and agony.
Hi, have you read this new one titled Myths and blind spots in the fighting arts’ world / After the Bible, it’s the next gοοd bοοk for you! It doesn't have anything to do with history, but it clarifies so much stuff and exposes so many lies, that it blew me away, I mean WHAT A BOOK THAT IS!! he tires to make martial arts realistic again and useful for self-defense and speaking of kung fu he exposes many false concepts of wing chun. Although the writer is raw in many places in his writing, he sounds very sincere and responsible wanting to protect practitioners that go to learn to defend themselves and usually never do... Wish I new these things when I started training long ago and there is so much wisdom in it, at least for me. His style of writing was unexpected for me and refreshing when compared to other books. It's a must have for all instructors and I am sure they will be checked on if they are really doing what they are paid to do. Trust me, I said nothing here, I feel that describing it, will do it injustice. If you ever review it, please let me know here thanks. I know you will will definitely agree that it was worth buying. Anyway, have a good day.
After watching the Chinese adaptation and listening to the audiobook, it really felt like the adaptation was the final draft. Still had a lot of problems with characters speaking in exposition dumps, but enough was added to the secondary characters that I enjoyed my time with them. The two main characters were the exception with the better written Ye only being slightly better than her book version, while Wang was the most boring protagonist I think I ever encountered in both. He's a little better fleshed out in the adaptation, but to externalize his thinking, he ends up being led by his nose to every solution and comes across as clueless. The Netflix version is my favorite, but I did enjoy the Chinese adaptation quite a bit, while I don't think much of the novel beyond its concepts.
Yep, the writing sucks obviously. He sound like he found teared bodies sexy, lovely and romantic. But, what is thing with misogyny that you so stuck with. Did you find it misogynic that girl body is described too weak and fragile and hence writer is trying to deliberately downplay the physical strength of women with his description of the scene and convince the audience that women are weak or something... I mean what? How did we get to the point that some sadistic militants turning the body someone they killed into sponge suddenly gain a misogynic viewpoint just because body is a woman body. Does any writer have to describe such a scene with a male body to escape that? I do not get what you mean? Sorry. His descriptions makes no sense to that, to that I agree, it is unnecessarily obscene which means writer is after shitty intense drama for the sell. But misogyny, that simply escapes me. I just started to watch you because you stated that a science fiction should have scientific bases supported by existing literature which I very agree to, but all I hear was misogyny and sexists. Wow! Not even one single example of bad and unfounded science presented here which is matters a lot since it is supposed to be a science fiction. Bravo!
Glad to see I'm not the only one feeling iffy about the book! I wanted to read it after watching the netflix series and hearing about how the immensely better the book was... so far I'm not convinced. I'm also struggling with the flat characters and the weird pacing. It abruptly alternates between slow scenes with vivid details, and fast-paced matter-of-fact description. And I was disappointed when I realized that all the main characters were men. I'm only halfway in the first book, but so far, I prefer the netflix version: more fleshed out characters that you can root for, including female characters, smoother pacing. But don't tell anybody, I might get strangled for saying that 😅
I've been trying out Audible as a way to catch up on books sometimes when I code or want to lay my head on a pillow and drift into it. There was a lot of hype for the book so I got the first 3 books in the series. I have finished the first which was translated and read in English so I can't speak to the original written material. I would say I was not as engaged as I have been with say Azimov series books. A couple of months later I had to look up the characters that were in book 2. I did that because I didn't connect with all the characters in the first book. In book 2 I am looking for a little more. I do like some of the math the idea of trying to stop science and looking for a clear message that I can either agree or disagree with. I'd say I'm still a fence sitter 1/3 into the second book.
4:14 - Um, in the first example you gave about the girl with one eye... I didn't get anything "sexual" or "objectifying" from that. It was a scene describing a tragedy, and seemed to subvert the severity of the situation by adding a poetic description of those final moments. "Despite her injuries and that death was imminent, her final moments were filled with beautiful memories of that old 1967 sky." A rather harmless and delicately written scene, describing a character's final thoughts, letting the reader know that their final moments were filled with beauty, and not pain or suffering.
Huh... To me that sentence didn't read as being from the girl's POV, but rather an outsider's. Mainly because she was already dead and the whole series seem to be written from a third person perspective? I could be wrong about that.
I am the book fan and I read the mandarin version. I love those science ideas and imaginations, especially the descriptions on the future society and the dark forest theory, which is really inspiring and quite different from other science fictions I've read before. I still remember how excited I was when I first read about the dart forest theory and I almost stay up all night to finish that book. But I need to admit that the author Liu is an engineer more than a writer, and the writing is not good. So the literature value of this series is definitely not that high. And Liu admitted that he tried to include his thoughts on China's modern history from 1840s into this book series. So there is no wonder that those guys, who are not familiar with Chinese modern history after 1840s, will find this book series kind of difficult to read and hard to chew over. But I still recommend those readers that you can try to focus on the science fiction part and just neglect those society part, the dark forest theory is really wonderful.
