I read The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, originally written in Chinese and translated by Ken Liu.
And where do I start?
I think former President Obama nailed it with the blurb in the back of the book: “Wildly imaginative”. This is not a political endorsement or anything like that. I don’t put much weight on book blurb but these two words like I said, nailed it and should complete the post. The rest of is side dish.
Since I can’t use “wildly imaginative”, I found it eye opening. Surprising. Out there. Unusual.
Ken Liu did a excellent job translating it. Ken is also a legit accomplished sci-fi author himself. I’ve read acclaimed foreign work in the past and the translation can be clunky. I appreciated the English version of Metro 2033 (Russian), it felt that some of the original flow was lost in translation. I had the same feeling when I read bestseller Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano.
It was also very interesting to dive into Chinese culture and history. I had to google stuff about the cultural revolution to get fill in.
The book has been recommended in the past. And after seeing it on a few list, why not give it a shot. I was looking for something different and it delivered.
What is it about? Because this book is so out there (in a great way), I find it hard to talk about without ruining it. Or to even make sense. You just have to pick it up and go for the ride.
The Three-Body Problem is a complex work. It’s a blend of physics, science, astronomy, and technology with a dose a philosophy. Put all that stuff in the blender and you get a Hugo Award-winning.
This is the first book of a trilogy. I think it was setup that way because the first book doesn’t end. So I will need to read the second and third book. The body of work is over 1,200 pages. The trilogy have now sold more than nine million copies.
Netflix announced that Game of Thrones co-creators David Benioff will adapt Liu’s award-winning trilogy. I look forward to see how to adopt such a complex work. They already did a stellar job with the fantasy stuff, let’s see how they do with sci-fi.
Chinese sci-fi certainly seems to be having its moment in the spotlight. It’s definitely attracting Western attention.
The Wandering Earth, a collection of shorts by Liu Cixin, was adopted as a movie. Apparently it was the third highest grossing film of 2019, behind only Marvel Studios and Disney’s “Endgame” and “Captain Marvel” and nobody noticed. $700m of that was in China, so maybe that’s why. The movie was on Netflix, so I checked it out with English subtitle. The special effects are on par with anything Hollywood produce. However the script, or the subtitle in my case, was pretty bad. It reminded me of some corny action movie from the 90s. So watch it for the graphic.
Brian Langis 