Fiction Books

1029 readers

2 users here now

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

To find more communities on this instance, go to: !411@literature.cafe

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

gabe@literature.cafe

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

submitted 2 years ago by lightsecond@programming.dev to c/fiction@literature.cafe

13 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

[–] MikeyMongol@literature.cafe 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

The translator is a novelist in his own right, and his Dandelion Dynasty series is quite good. It's not the translation. I suspect it's a combination of it being a hard-sf "ideas" book, and different national styles in novel writing.