I have read the trilogy, I enjoyed it a lot, and I have only two objections: the happy ending, and the lack of serious effort to kill Luo Ji. The latter is especially weird coming from aliens who would have no problem with exterminating half of the human population.
My impression is that the Three Body trilogy is essentially a universe-sized meditation on Moloch.
I am however completely surprised at your indignation at how the book depicts humans. Because I find it quite plausible, at least the parts about how “no good deed goes unpunished”. Do we live in so different bubbles?
I see politicians gaining votes for populism, and losing votes for solving difficult problems. I see clickbait making tons of money, and scientists desperately fighting for funding. There was a guy who landed a rocket on a comet, or something like that, and then a mob of internet assholes brought him to tears because he had a tacky shirt. There are scientists who write books explaining psychometric research, and end up physically attacked and called Nazis. With humans like this, what is so implausible about a person who would literally save humanity from annihilation, being sentenced to death? Just imagine that it brings ad clicks or votes from idiots or whatever is the mob currency of the future, and that’s all the incentive you need for this to happen.
As the beginning of the trilogy shows, we do not need to imagine a fictionally evil or fictionally stupid humanity to accomplish this. We just need to imagine exactly the same humanity that brought us the wonders of Nazism and Communism. The bell curve where the people on one end wear Che shirts and cry “but socialism has never been tried”, and on the other end we have Noam “Pol Pot did nothing wrong” Chomsky in academia. Do you feel safe living on the same planet as these people? Do you trust them to handle the future x-threats in a sane way? I definitely don’t.
The unrealistic part perhaps is that these future (realistically stupid and evil) people are too consistent, and have things too much under control. I would expect more randomness, e.g. one person who saves the world would be executed, but another would be celebrated, for some completely random reason unrelated to saving the world. Also, I would expect that despite making the suicide pact the official policy of the humankind, some sufficiently powerful people would prepare an exit for themselves anyway. (But maybe the future has better surveillance which makes going against the official policy impossible.)
I have read the trilogy, I enjoyed it a lot, and I have only two objections: the happy ending, and the lack of serious effort to kill Luo Ji. The latter is especially weird coming from aliens who would have no problem with exterminating half of the human population.
My impression is that the Three Body trilogy is essentially a universe-sized meditation on Moloch.
I am however completely surprised at your indignation at how the book depicts humans. Because I find it quite plausible, at least the parts about how “no good deed goes unpunished”. Do we live in so different bubbles?
I see politicians gaining votes for populism, and losing votes for solving difficult problems. I see clickbait making tons of money, and scientists desperately fighting for funding. There was a guy who landed a rocket on a comet, or something like that, and then a mob of internet assholes brought him to tears because he had a tacky shirt. There are scientists who write books explaining psychometric research, and end up physically attacked and called Nazis. With humans like this, what is so implausible about a person who would literally save humanity from annihilation, being sentenced to death? Just imagine that it brings ad clicks or votes from idiots or whatever is the mob currency of the future, and that’s all the incentive you need for this to happen.
As the beginning of the trilogy shows, we do not need to imagine a fictionally evil or fictionally stupid humanity to accomplish this. We just need to imagine exactly the same humanity that brought us the wonders of Nazism and Communism. The bell curve where the people on one end wear Che shirts and cry “but socialism has never been tried”, and on the other end we have Noam “Pol Pot did nothing wrong” Chomsky in academia. Do you feel safe living on the same planet as these people? Do you trust them to handle the future x-threats in a sane way? I definitely don’t.
The unrealistic part perhaps is that these future (realistically stupid and evil) people are too consistent, and have things too much under control. I would expect more randomness, e.g. one person who saves the world would be executed, but another would be celebrated, for some completely random reason unrelated to saving the world. Also, I would expect that despite making the suicide pact the official policy of the humankind, some sufficiently powerful people would prepare an exit for themselves anyway. (But maybe the future has better surveillance which makes going against the official policy impossible.)