Just finished the three body problem and while I really enjoyed it I found myself awfully lost during a lot of the deeper physics explanations. I’ve taken AP physics, have read a bunch of popular science books, took a college class on astronomy and still felt like a lot of it went over my head. How much did you guys really understand of the harder sci-fi and physics parts??? I can’t help but feel frustrated that I didn’t grasp some of these concepts more to better understand the workings of the story. Especially concerning the three body video game and the chapter on trisolaris Sophons, I was def getting frustrated rereading the same parts and just not understand it! How did you guys deal with it??
by clksagers
3 Comments
I don’t think you really need to understand much beyond the fact that the system is unstable and the race gets nearly wiped out repeatedly. It’s not like they’re asking you to actually math it out, lol.
I stopped reading it. A lot of the book makes little sense.
It’s describing a technology that we literally cannot comprehend, in a way, if it were physically obvious or 100% non-magical seeming, then it wouldn’t fit the narrative need it fills, and then the ending of book 1 would be completely unsatisfying. There is no way to resolve the book without magic-level technology, and the explanation for it wasn’t bad.