Books

The three body problem is the ONLY SciFi series to repeatedly blow my mind. I read a lot of scifi, it's always the same stuff.

It happens sometimes.

I really enjoyed the movie Arrival, so I picked up the story collection it’s based on. My, what a load of genre fiction in the worst possible meaning of the word.

I tried to read the book but good God it was so bad and so boring it took me months to get about halfway, then the show came out and I was like 'yes! Maybe this will give me motivation!' and I couldn't be bothered to finish that either.

I definitely found many, maybe even most of the characters bordering on comically corny. But i hadn't read anything like it regarding the core stories and concepts, and those got the hooks in me. Maybe for a bit i was holding my nose to keep moving through the story, but at some point i just didnt care and had to read all three books, and in the end they're still a dear favorite. If the underlying story isn't doing it for you, you're only crazy if you force yourself to keep reading it.

Haven't read it, but the show was interesting enough for me to watch the entire season.

Yeah. I struggled with the cringy romance sections. Very much a freshman entry. But the series as a whole does work well. The Dark Forest is huge improvement. it also had a different translator and has a different structure that I feel works better than the first.

I understand this community is about books, but I’m curious if anyone here who read this book also watched the Netflix series?

If so, do you hold a different opinion of the show?

I liked the Chinese tv adaptation, didn't read the book, and won't watch the American version. I think the series was good largely because of the actors, not so much the plot.

Now that you mention it, yes. The characters are quite 2 dimensional and unlikeable (not all, but definitely important to mention).

That being said I thoroughly enjoyed the books and didn't stop too much on the characters. Under unlikeable, flat, awkward characters there was an interesting premise and good thinking to be had: living in a society that has no private thoughts; dark forest theory, life in a society after the end.
So what I did was take a big sip of suspension of disbelief and enjoyed the ride. The interest to see the conclusion of the story was enough to coast through all three of the books.

Also, I read those just before the hype. I first heard of the first book a few years before from an Adam Savage podcast and the premise stuck to me. So after reading the Witcher I wanted something sci-fi'ish and this hit the spot.

I believe its the authors first book. It gets significantly better.

I was very happy to stumble upon this post. I’ve been struggling through The Dark Forest for what feels like forever. I’m usually a pretty voracious reader, but this series is like quicksand to me. It’s really really boring. I just keep hoping it will get interesting. It threatens to…and then starts sucking again. I never DNF books, but I’m so SO tempted here. Glad there are others out there!