Really amazing how bad—excruciating, even—the dialogue is in the new “3 Body Problem” Netflix show. It’s from a book full of smart, hard-sci-fi ideas and yet the writing is worse than the cheapest, crappiest soap opera. How does this end up happening?!
@StuartJRitchie That is disappointing. Excellent book.
@ewanbirney @StuartJRitchie Hot Take: The books had lots of interesting ideas, but both the physics and the actions/motivations of individuals and societies were laughably bad.
@ewanbirney @StuartJRitchie One thing that especially annoyed me: if high-energy physicists suddenly noticed all sorts of anomalies in accelerator data, this would be the greatest thing to happen to them in decades, not what their reaction is in the book (trying to avoid spoilers)
@leonidkruglyak @StuartJRitchie I liked the whole game <=> cpu analogy though. And the setting being China and the cultural revolution. Agree it was not the perfect sci-fi book.
@ewanbirney @StuartJRitchie Agree the part he wrote based on his experience was powerful, and the rest was certainly thought-provoking, if flawed. What are your (modern) sci-fi favorites? For space opera stuff, Iain M. Banks Culture books are right up there for me.
@leonidkruglyak @StuartJRitchie I love the culture books as well. Peter F Hamilton star flyer books was space opera plus one really good idea (primes and MorningLightMountain) but some of the rest was so so. (Soft spot for his books set in a futuristic Newcastle)
@leonidkruglyak @StuartJRitchie I do like Kim Stanley Robinson’s mars trilogy. There was another similar one in Jupiter’s moons forget the author.
@leonidkruglyak @StuartJRitchie What do you like beyond Iain m banks?
@ewanbirney @leonidkruglyak Ted Chiang all the way for me!
@StuartJRitchie @ewanbirney I wish he had more than just the two short story collections!