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by ethbro 2714 days ago
I guess the piercing of my suspension of hard sci-fi disbelief happened in the 2nd book(?), where post-Fall they rebuild into a militarily space capable society with relatively advanced weaponry.

If you're going to take 1,800 pages (English translation) to lay out your series, and you can't spare a few for 'well, now we're building giant fusion-powered warship fleets'? That's not anything approaching hard sci-fi in my book.

Yes, all the technologies used on the ships are extrapolated and believable, but the realignment of society, economics, and the organization of such a construction effort boggles the mind. And to say 'it just happens'? That's kind of like going from WWII to 'and so we landed on the moon' in a single page.

1 comments

Fair. The time jumps were a bit jarring, though I guess I got used to those after a similar one pulled in Seveneves. I wouldn't mind if Cixin Liu shortened some parts of his book and used the reclaimed space to fill in those time jumps a bit, though.