The Three-body Problem——Sword Holder
Sometimes I think about those high res Jupiter pics and then think about Van Gogh and get emotional because it’s like this one, lonely man that didn’t experience an ounce of fame or recognition in his life time had the image of the universe in his head and he didn’t know it.
I also felt the same way about the lack of Black characters. It seemed like when characters weren’t Chinese he defaulted to white, with one or two Latino characters. Although there was one Black character, Fraisse. I think especially with the subject matter basically being humanity itself, at some point in the story we should have gone to Africa, the birthplace of humanity. But, like you, that failing was further motivation for me to continue writing, as was the serious sexism problem in the book.
The last time a book penetrated me this deeply was when I read one of the Song of Ice and Fire for the first time and was blown away by the audacity and imagination of the writer and Liu Cixin just revised my favorite top ten lists of authors.
Even when I didn’t agree with where the narrative went, I still remained captivated.
I don’t know how to summarize the plot because this is the last book of a trilogy and while every book can be read without the others, this last one tops the other two, but that comparison is only possible because I read the other two. I guess a few key words in this trilogy are humanity, alien, space, civilizations, galaxies, time travel, science, love, hope and death. But that still doesn’t do justice to the roller coaster effect you get from reading this.
Cant thank enough Ken Liu for translating this, because having for the last two years started to read more science fiction, you start to know how things will go, but this thriller, cinematic ride that Liu Cixin is able to draw out in the midst of hard science concepts where scientists go back and forth on ideas says a lot about his skill level as a writer.
Now comes what I really didn’t like about the trilogy: where are black people in the multi universes Liu Cixin created? Of course the main actors are Chinese and the supporting cast is white and even some Latino, but not even one black character. Then again that’s true of 99% of science fiction out here so thank you Lou Cixin for giving me the motivation to write what I am not seeing in the science fiction world.
“Welcome to jupiter,” a voice said over the radio at Nasa’s JPL, with scientists cheering, clapping and hugging each other.
The burn time was within one second of the predicted time, putting it in exactly the orbit it needed.
“You’re the best team ever! We just did the hardest thing Nasa has ever done,” shouted, principle investigator of the Juno mission, Scott Bolton.
Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains.
Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem
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