I’ll be honest. I’m fairly new to science fiction. I have mainly read murder mystery and fantasy.
I heard about the “Three body problem” and gave it a try. It had a hugh impact on me. Even after months of having read it, I find myself randomly thinking about defeatism and other concepts of the book. This series is going to be one to remember for me for sure.
After this series, I thought I’ll give sci-fi as a genre a try. I read “The Martian” and really liked it. It was exactly the kind of light reading I needed after this heavy series.
Next I read “Project Hail Mary”. I know a lot of people really like it but I didnt enjoy it at all. The reson for it is that unlike Martian, it introduced an alien species and we see a friendship of alien with the protagonist. Having recently read three body, this just felt so nonsensical to me. While he was befriending the alien species, my mind was thinking about Dark Forest Detterence and just how foolish this is.
I know I probably shouldn’t judge this book as it is a light reading and not so much thought into it is required but this made me realize that maybe “three body problem” has ruined sci-fi for me being as good as it was?
Since I am new to this genre, I want to ask your thoughts about this and which books I can try which won’t leave me disappointed and won’t make me just compare it to three body.
by GraphAndGossip
2 Comments
Blindsight, by Peter Watts
Here’s a variety of other sci fi you might like. I tried to get a bunch of different writing styles and directions these books take the genre, so if you end up not liking one, you will hopefully like others. But they all, like Three Body Problem, deal with big, mind-blowing ideas:
* Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
* Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke Disclaimer: There are aliens. I won’t say whether they’re friendly or not, but this book does not use the dark forest concept.
* Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward. Disclaimer: features a friendly relationship between aliens and humans. But try to keep an open mind. Just because one sci fi novel says something, doesn’t mean it’s an immutable truth of the universe.
* The Killing Star by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski. Very, very similar to Three Body in a lot of ways
* Succession by Scott Westerfeld. Also published as two separate volumes, The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds.
* Contact by Carl Sagan
* The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
* The Freeze Frame Revolution by Peter Watts
* Exhalation by Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang. Two collections of short stories.
* The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley. Something horrible has happened to a fleet of colony ships in space. But not the same kind of horrible as what we see in the Three Body Problem series.
* I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. Disclaimer: not the same kind of sci fi as the rest of the things on this list. It doesn’t go into detail about any science or sci fi concepts, but the over all *feel* of bleakness and what it says about defeatism, is why I put it on this list.