While not my favorite book, I think it's certainly Hugo quality. What would you pick for 2015? Besides, winning would seem fair, nominations possibly not?
I read "The Three Body Problem" due to all the promotion it received at the time. In fact, I proposed it as the first book for our small reading club. We all agreed that I should have simply bought some beers and read whatever book another member had proposed. While the book presented two very good ideas (the nature of the history loop and the "computer architecture"), it was marred by excessive repetition, flat characters, and poor writing (at least, in the Spanish version). Some characters' reactions to certain events were utterly ridiculous, and the deus ex machina resolution was disappointing. The structure was so repetitious that it seemed as if half of the book was the same chapter repeated over and over. I found it quite boring.
I would appreciate any suggestions for works by other Chinese science fiction authors, as I understand that it's not fair to judge such a vast culture based on a single data point.
I concur on all your points. The writing was so bad - basically middle of the line fanfic level - that at first I thought that it was a low-quality English translation; but I was assured that it was faithful to the original. When it was announced as Hugo winner, I was speechless.
I should also add that as reasonably hard sci-fi goes, the very notion of "sophons" (and their mechanics) as presented are not even wrong. In general, when it comes to most sci-fi elements of the book aside from the titular concept, it felt like someone just clipped whatever sounded cool from a popular science magazine and then tried to write a segment of the story around it - i.e. some things, like nanowires/sheets, are introduced not because they make sense in context, but solely for the cool factor.
2015 was the first year of the Rabid Puppies, as can be seen from "No Award" actually winning the Best Novella and Best Short Story categories, among others.
We'll never know who would have won in the absence of all that ballot stuffing.
N.K. Jemisin won three years in a row, which is far worse. (Three Body Problem was actually okay, though it seemed to me that books 2 & 3 were far better than the first.)
At this point, I'd say just about anything is legitimately good enough to win a Hugo.
Jemisin gets a lot of flak for her politics and the way she weaves it into narratives, but as far as quality of writing itself goes, I'd say she's vastly better. Characters behave like, well, people, not like cardboard cutouts that are there to say the line that author needs to be said.
I personally enjoyed it a lot, although the later books were better.
The writing style wasn't brilliant, but it was a translation. I don't necessarily expect great literature from sci fi. The ideas were cool though and that's my main thing.
Yeah. I didn't exactly find it memorable[1], but I was recommended it by relatives whose literary tastes don't usually include scifi
[1]pretty much the only bit I really remember is how the oppressive Cultural Revolution era backdrop made the idea of alien overlords seem worth considering, so I'm particularly struggling to see it as a promotion of Chinese values...
3 Body problem is the novel that made me go from reading one sci Fi novel every couple years to ferociously reading multiple per year for a while trying to recapture the feeling I had reading it. Have read some good ones after but nothing so far that captured me in the same way.
Refreshing is perhaps the best word to describe the book. Excellent out of not, it’s barely good, but quite different from western sf, which earns it extra credit.
I'd agree it's different: I just don't think it's different and good. And difference alone doesn't bump it past similar but better-written books, imho.
