[jsenn]

I know what you mean about the bad writing, but I don’t think that makes it a terrible book. Unfortunately most sci-fi has flat writing for the same reason most great literature recycles the same ideas and concepts: it’s hard to do everything at once.

Sci-fi generally sacrifices prose quality and character depth to pack in more interesting ideas; great literature generally makes the opposite tradeoff. If you read a sci-fi novel expecting great writing you’ll be frustrated.

Three Body Problem had enough interesting ideas to keep me turning the page, where most sci-fi novels don’t—I prefer short stories for sci-fi exactly because of the generally low quality writing.