>>25276981
I finished the first book and hated it. The most stilted prose and wooden characters. It is exactly the sci-fi stereotype of being more about some bullshit thought experiment than being an interesting or compelling read. Fuck off China you suck.

>>25276981
I read the summary on wikipedia. It sounds like just a ripoff of Foundation and a bunch of other old scifi books.

>>25277097
I think it's deliberately structured to draw from the entire history of the Western science fiction, ordered from the most grounded to the least grounded. In the first book we open with 1984 vibes and go on to Contact etc., until reaching the techno-thriller level. Near the end of the third book we have reached the realm of Douglas Adams, Sailing Bright Eternity by Gregory Benford, that one short story by Arthur C. Clarke that I can identify with reasonable certainty, and maybe even William Hope Hodgson.

I skipped a lot of the intermediary stages, which involve the likes of Flatland, Tau Zero by Poul Anderson, and many others.

This kind of story development in the Western science fiction is pretty rare. Gregory Benford did it in his Galactic Center series but in a less derivative way. That one starts out as relatively grounded near-future science fiction but by the sixth and final book - the very same Sailing Bright Eternity mentioned earlier in this post - ends up becoming really bizarre.

>>25277143
No, it's a commentary about Chinese foreign policy.

>>25277245
You just haven't read enough science fiction. The series goes through multiple sub-genres including dystopia, first contact, techno-thriller, "scientist makes an amazing discovery", VR game, near-future political thriller, ecological science fiction, cyberpunk, realistic space travel, space opera, historical science fiction, big dumb object, and more. In some cases I can determine the exact work that is the source.

>>25277287
Nope. It's all political. The Sci-Fi shit is just a backdrop.

>>25277019
I have come to appreciate the thought experiments inside science fiction more than the shallow characters, childish wish fulfilments, magic technology, etc. To me, the bullshit thought experiments are less bullshit than the rest of the bullshit.

>>25277291
No, the overarching plot is just an excuse to tie all the disparate science fiction elements together in a way that approximates a coherent story.

>>25277354
I might want to add that there is some isolation vs. cooperation vs. war theming going on, but the entire story has many significant plot elements that would be very difficult to tie to China's foreign policy, such as the parts about China's historical internal policies, Yun Tianming's incel angst, the four-dimensional fragments, etc.

>>25277287
You’re right but ascribe it too much design. The ripping off is not that conscious as to make some planned structure.

>>25277527
I think ripping off everything in a genre as expansive as science fiction and doing it so thoroughly and having it all end up ordered by degree of groundedness is too unlikely to have happened by accident, especially as the plot ends up making weird turns rather than developing naturally.

Gregory Benford's Galactic Center goes through a massive span of time and ends up in a fantastic and arguably nonsensical territory too, but it doesn't try to encompass all of science fiction. For example, at no point in Galactic Center does a genius scientist invent a groundbreaking new technology even though that is an old science fiction staple.

>>25277291
>>25277245
i don't understand why you think these two things are mutually exclusive instead of mutually reinforcing
the books are in large part about china's relationship with the west, yes, and the recapitulation of the history of western scifi is relevant to that. there's a bit in death's end about trisolaran "reflection culture", alien works crafted in conscious imitation of earth forms. can you not see the obvious parallel here? i don't want to limit it to just that, i think there's more going on, but that's certainly a part of it.

All of you kys
>muh prose
>muh characters
>muh politics
We only read it for the worldbuilding and real science i just got to the end of the first book yesterday and was literally basedfacing when the santi where messing with the extra dimensions
Maybe if you retards liked science you would like this science fiction book

>>25276981
>Reincarnation after the end of the previous universe
Was that the idea? I didn't catch that at all. I actually liked the end of the series, though I can understand if people didn't. My take was that it sort of meandered off into a bunch of thought experiments about extreme physics. Maybe I missed the reincarnation thing.

>>25277737
There are a lot of other themes too.

1. The Fermi paradox and its various solutions. Unlike what one might think, the series does not in fact support the dark forest theory. That line of thinking leads to logical inconsistencies that can be resolved by realizing that unreliable narration is involved.

2. Religious themes. For example, the sophons work pretty much exactly like Maxwell's demons and also resemble demons in other ways.

3. Dimensions in characterization as well as in space. The difference between imaginary ideal girlfriends and fully realized people with depth.

4. Relationship with Japan. Japanese or Japanese-presenting characters are portrayed negatively.

>>25277966
>2. Religious themes. For example, the sophons work pretty much exactly like Maxwell's demons and also resemble demons in other ways.
that seems like among the least interesting places to read religion into it. bill hines' wallfacer plot is where it's really most noticeable (at one point it's not even subtext: when he talks about wanting to use the mental seal on the statement "god is dead", and the way this moment has to be reinterpreted once you find out that the mental seal makes the user judge the statement to be false rather than true)
and you've left out what is perhaps the biggest and most pervasive one: communication under conditions of hostile surveillance
encryption, decryption, esoteric writing, acausal communication by simulating each others' minds, etc. it's there from the very beginning to almost the very end. i would be very interested in reading a serious attempt to interpret the books in the way we're shown yun tianming's fairy tales were designed to be interpreted.

>>25278005
I was trying to be concise, so I just put in an early example. I also think the series has a lot of hidden Christianity in it.

>i would be very interested in reading a serious attempt to interpret the books in the way we're shown yun tianming's fairy tales were designed to be interpreted.
I really could use a reread with knowledge of the full plot, but that isn't going to happen in the near future. However I think the safety signal was a cross, and it's not a coincidence that Princess Bubble in the fairytale was protected by a cross-shaped device rotating over her head much like the orbital cross constructed soon after rotated around Earth. I think it's very significant that the "false alarm" occurs right when the orbital cross is being dismantled, but luckily humanity passes the test.

By the way, based on the sophons' interference with particle accelerators that make use of very powerful magnetic fields, the idea that strong magnetic fields could protect from sophon surveillance sounds like a Trisolaran lie. (The idea that Trisolarans are unable to lie was naturally another lie. This kind of thing makes it difficult to figure out their side of the plot though, as everything needs to be questioned.)

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>My cool OC genius scientistman character? Yeah, he's me. It was all real! I am his reincarnation after the end of the previous universe, here to warn you not to repeat the same mistakes!

>>25278071
>However I think the safety signal was a cross
within the context of the story, the safety signal is clearly explained to be the black domain. the signal has to be a reflection of a real unfakeable reality. if it were only a signal, just a mere pattern of information, anyone could send it, right? even if a dangerous civilization couldn't independently generate the pattern of information, they could certainly copy it once someone else had sent it.
the question is, what does the black domain represent? it's an action that allows you to demonstrate harmlessness, and therefore be left alone, by giving up the ability to affect the outside world at all. what might that mean?

>>25278088
The idea is that if that in this universe aliens exist and have their own version(s) of Christianity and the symbol of that is the cross, the same as on our planet. The Trisolarans can't put up a cross because that would be tantamount to endorsing a worldview they reject. You may remember that our view of the Trisolaran ship shows an active rejection of symmetry, and I think that must tell something deep about Trisolaran psychology. For whatever reason the Trisolarans won't have even one accidental cross near them.

The characters coming into conclusion that the safety signal must be the black domain is because the characters in question cannot comprehend that the answer could be in a declaration of religious faith.

>>25278152
>The Trisolarans can't put up a cross because that would be tantamount to endorsing a worldview they reject.
you yourself said you think the trisolarans can lie (and by the end of the series they absolutely can, whatever their situation was at the start). why would they be unable to tell this specific lie?