The books are marketed as “hard” sci-fi but it seems all the “science” (at least in the first book, didn’t read the others) is just mountains of mysticism constructed around statements that can sound “deep” on some superficial level but aren’t at all mysterious, like “three-body systems interacting via central forces are generally unstable” or “you can encode some information into the quantum state of a particle” (yet of course they do contain nuance that’s completely lost on the author, such as “what if two of the particles are heavy and much closer to each other than to the third?”, or “which basis do you want to measure the state of your particle in?”). Compare to the Puppeteers’ homeworld from the Ringworld series (yes, cheesy, but still...)
Huh. I don’t think I ever heard someone call this series hard sci-fi where I could hear them; the most common recommendation was related to its Chineseness, which, as Zvi claims, definitely delivers.
And I’m not sure I’d take Niven as the archetype of truly hard sci-fi; have you ever tried Egan? Diaspora says sensible things about philosophy of mind for emulated, branching AIs with a plot arc where the power laws of a 5+1-dimensional universe become relevant, and Clockwork Rocket invents alternate laws of special relativity incidentally to a story involving truly creative alt-biology...
Your criticism that Alpha Centauri isn’t actually a three-body system and instead operates as a binary star system with another nearby star is palpably anal retentive. Liu takes a small liberty to create a difference between his fictional world and the actual world that’s still clearly well within the laws of physics. That difference creates a cool situation wherein a tough problem in physics serves as the backdrop for an alien situation. He describes the three-body problem accurately and doesn’t just use it as window-dressing. Yet you fault him for this smart inclusion. Poor take.
The books are marketed as “hard” sci-fi but it seems all the “science” (at least in the first book, didn’t read the others) is just mountains of mysticism constructed around statements that can sound “deep” on some superficial level but aren’t at all mysterious, like “three-body systems interacting via central forces are generally unstable” or “you can encode some information into the quantum state of a particle” (yet of course they do contain nuance that’s completely lost on the author, such as “what if two of the particles are heavy and much closer to each other than to the third?”, or “which basis do you want to measure the state of your particle in?”). Compare to the Puppeteers’ homeworld from the Ringworld series (yes, cheesy, but still...)
Huh. I don’t think I ever heard someone call this series hard sci-fi where I could hear them; the most common recommendation was related to its Chineseness, which, as Zvi claims, definitely delivers.
And I’m not sure I’d take Niven as the archetype of truly hard sci-fi; have you ever tried Egan? Diaspora says sensible things about philosophy of mind for emulated, branching AIs with a plot arc where the power laws of a 5+1-dimensional universe become relevant, and Clockwork Rocket invents alternate laws of special relativity incidentally to a story involving truly creative alt-biology...
Your criticism that Alpha Centauri isn’t actually a three-body system and instead operates as a binary star system with another nearby star is palpably anal retentive. Liu takes a small liberty to create a difference between his fictional world and the actual world that’s still clearly well within the laws of physics. That difference creates a cool situation wherein a tough problem in physics serves as the backdrop for an alien situation. He describes the three-body problem accurately and doesn’t just use it as window-dressing. Yet you fault him for this smart inclusion. Poor take.