[isoprophlex]

I also don't get the cult status. The setup in the first book is pretty engaging, the trisolarians are compelling antagonists, and i loved the power plays resulting from Dark Forest theory...

But the storytelling just falls flat in books 2 and 3, with the overlong story-within-a-story and the needless romance plot. The... relativistic stuff (lets call it that to avoid spoilers) at the end didn't do anything for me at all, and just felt tacked on to wrap up storylines i didnt care about in the first place.

Could have been 50% shorter imo.

[raverbashing]

Agreed.

And I'd also argue that while the dark forest theory is a possibility it tells me more about the author and their culture than an actual plausible reality. As much as humans have been completely horrible to one another in several times of history, it was always because there was "something for us" and there was never a complete wipe out of other groups just because.

But yes, apart from that, the writing is poor, the plot holes abound. Sure, the story has several interesting plot points but it doesn't hold together. And the 2nd book is the worse in my opinion (translation probably didn't help)

[RobertoG]

>>"[..] it was always because there was "something for us" and there was never a complete wipe out of other groups just because."

It seems we read different history books.

[raverbashing]

If you want to further the point provide a counterexample, otherwise it will just sound condescending

But I'm all ears on how alien civilizations will engage in costly missions to completely wipe civilizations out of their reach

[RobertoG]

I aimed to sound funny not condescending and, obviously, I failed.

Groups wiped just because, would be the jews, the armenians and a long list actually (1). You could argue that some of them is because territorial fights, but is it not that also the reason of the "Three body problem" aliens?

About why alien civilizations could decide to engage in this kind of thing: if you are paranoiac enough you can frame it like a preventive attack, if you are reasoning that you will be fighting them for resources in the far future.

About how, there are many ways. The most obvious, though expensive, is just accelerate a lot of stuff (ideally antimatter), the closest to light speed as possible, in a interception vector with the undesirable solar system.

This is not the kind of thing I was planning to think about in Christmas eve.

(1) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides_by_death_tol...

[raverbashing]

Yeah I had though about those cases, but even then there's a "gain" (even if it's a political/imaginary one) and they were of course extremely costly.

I agree, it's not a conversation for Christmas Eve, and thanks for actually explaining your point.

[peteretep]

With any luck this is the magic a bunch of professional TV producers will bring. GoT TV series was dramatically better than the books because so much of the bollocks was cut

[wfleming]

... right up until the series had no books to adapt, at which point the consensus seems to be they took a steep dive in quality.

[Jedd]

Not convinced it's consensus, though I appreciate that people hoping for something better from the books that are unlikely to ever be written were disappointed by the TV screenplay that most definitely was were preemptively frustrated.

Some of our most popular fiction authors are frequently accused of not being able to write endings - there works are either drawn out way too long, or wrap up way too quickly.

It feels like there's few examples of consensus around what's 'just right' for how fast, and neatly, to wrap up many concurrent plot lines, especially in obnoxiously surreal universes.

[ekianjo]

> GoT TV series was dramatically better than the books because so much of the bollocks was cut

Looks like you havent watched the last few seasons.

[0-_-0]

Well the final books didn't come out yet so we can't say the movie was worse. I suspect the books will be just as bad because the series suffers from the same effect many stories like this suffer from: The writer establishes many interesting threads without knowing where they lead, and then can't tie them up and the series falls flat in the end. Happened with Lost, with Heroes and many other series as well.

[FreakyT]

Totally agree, that needless romance subplot was the most WTF part of book 2.