[Panoramix]

Spoilers ahead

It was such a letdown, the book starts great, and then the explanation turns out to be magical Alien proton computers? Yikes. It was so promising.

I eventually read the whole trilogy, I have very mixed feelings about it. It had some pretty cool ideas but it's hard to get past all the giant plot holes and outlandish fantasy. I guess you have to be in the mood to constantly brush off the bad parts (and boy there are many) and plunge forward.

[visualradio]

A more materialist approach would be to say that it is the artists and authors of such books which are influenced by cosmos and the three body problem is an error detection code for repairing memory errors in collective consciousness to prevent civilizations from repeating unpromising patterns of development which have already been simulated.

[cynicalkane]

Spoilers.

There are a few parts of the book, according to the translator, that are done in the manner of a Chinese folktale, which he tried to translate to a different style in English. I'm no expert, but I got the impression the sophont chapter was in this category. It has this otherworldly silliness with the multiple attempts to create a sophont going wrong in different dimensions, calculated to fit the repetitive pattern of a fairy tale.

I think the thrust, which might be hard to read in translation, is this: we can't imagine the technology a superior alien species would come up with, so it's related as a fairy tale beyond technological realism.

Anyway, I doubt it was meant to be hard sci-fi.

[shmageggy]

> Anyway, I doubt it was meant to be hard sci-fi.

Which was extremely disappointing, given that it was billed as such by many, and until the aforementioned mumbo-jumbo was doing a seemingly nice job on that front.

[jjoske]

There where some good ideas in it but it never really worked for me, I have often wondered if it was translation issues.

[megablast]

Thanks for the spoilers.