Fiction Books

806 readers

1 users here now

The discussion of fiction books! Please tag spoilers and follow instance rules.

To find more communities on this instance, go to: [email protected]

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

The writing in The Three-Body Problem (Cixin Liu) feels tacky (programming.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I have been reading the English translations and the characters and especially their dialogues feel very fake. I do appreciate the hard science aspect of the books but the long monologues, kids speaking like middle-aged philosophers, and army personnel being one-dimensional macho men breaks the immersion for me. It has the depth of a 1980s low-budget thriller.

I don’t read a lot of hard science fiction or translations of Chinese books. I don’t know if this is genre-related.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Oh agreed! I'm rereading Dune right now to refresh my memory before the movie later this year and I love the characters, but at the same time I understand where the criticism comes from.

I don't think it's a translation problem; the second book has a different translator and if anything, the characters are even less realistic.