This is possibly the worst place to do so but I have to put this in writing for later:
You mean the fact that it was written by a jingoistic pseudointellectual masturbator Liu Cixin?
When I look back at the previous decade in SFF I have to say that
The Three Body Problem was the single dumbest and most pseudointellectual piece of literature I've read and it only went worse in the latter novels. I will never touch anything else he writes without hazmat suit on. And in that sense I find it fitting that it got a Hugo right between between the fetishistic asshat Scalzi and rabid drivel-spewing demented wokester Jemisin. Hazmat suits apply as well.
While TBP was tremendously engaging on a cultural level I found it positively insulting as a sci-fi enthusiast. It was the equivalent of writing an entire novel about furry porn while exessively quoting genderqueer theory. And thats mostly because his "sci-fi" is in reality a convoluted pseudointellectual metaphor for his political drivel and blatant personal issues. It is "sci-fi" not sci-fi.
There are two types of authors:
- those who seek understanding and use story as a laboratory - primarily obsessive
- those who claim understanding and use story as a sermon - primarily narcissistic
I was brought up on so called "golden age" of sci-fi. Specifically being Polish that was Stanislaw Lem, possibly world's most underrated sci-fi author in all of history. If you think he's not underrated it's pretty obvious you haven't read him and lack understanding of the time at which it was written. He's likely the best cultural thing that ever came out of my country and most people ignore it because it's too smart for them. The only other person that in my view has similar "science-fiction" potential is Clarke. Asimov is prolific but too derivative of existing ideas. The others don't even register except as authors of individual works with potential. But they are not consistent.
These people were the first type of author. Explorers.
Liu Cixin is the second type, as are all contemporary "woke" SFF writers in the west. The difference is that their fetishistic obsession lies elsewhere. While western wokesters masturbate to furry porn in space Liu Cixin masturbates to Chinese spaceships and people confuse that for sci-fi.
Nope. The entirety of Remembrance trilogy was Liu proclaiming "
look how smart and wise I am" when in reality he's an obnoxious retard. My entire experience of reading the novels was "
wait.. he didn't mean it seriously... oh... he can't be this f*** dumb". But he did and he was. It was frustrating. The only thing good about it was that it was Chinese i.e. original to me as a western reader.
Want good sci-fi? Pick someone intelligent to write it. With 1+ billion people it shouldn't be too hard.
This was a rant. Now here's a philosophical remark I wanted to save for later.
And never will be.
See the "science fiction" that you refer to is something very specific in terms of cultural evolution. It's a product of a very peculiar type of culture that I would call
culture of paradigm shift. The paradigm shifts are natural occurrences and cause transformations of the entire society and the way it perceives reality around itself. They can be cultural, political and technological. You may recognize that from the period of early internet however... that paradigm shift was too quick to establish a
lasting culture that is it came and went and we see the period of transition as a fuzzy period of what came before and after the change. We see the periods of cultural stability in clear terms but the period of change as a chaotic and confusing time.
In evolutionary theory it's called
punctuated equilibrium and it's a natural dynamic that underpins all of life and broader evolutionary change.
Science fiction is a product of people for whom that paradigm shift wasn't a period in their lives but rather constituted the entirety of their understanding of the world. And as far as
science fiction goes that was only possible during the
industrial revolution.
Now here's the thing. Only "the west" has undergone the
industrial revolution. Other cultures like China have only undergone
industrial revolution i.e.
industrialization. China hasn't invented the scientific method and the scientific-industrial paradigm and the industry and the socio-political movements associated with it and most importantly those changes haven't affected the
entirety of society.
That process is happening now after all of it has been already invented. The consequence of that is that the way that the average Chinese person perceives the change that is occurring right now is more
efficiently expressed in the
metahporical language of
mythology or "fantasy".
Art is two things at the same time: a
meta-language and a
method of coping for cultures experiencing trauma. Art conveys knowledge that emerges sub-consciously from a society and there are two types of knowledge:
- transformative knowledge i.e. the knowledge of the change - causes and outcomes, successess and failures and mental states associated with them
- evolved or adopted knowledge i.e. the knowledge of successful solution without the mental state that brought it about.
Specifically religions are evolved knowledge while science is transformative knowledge. However science can be misunderstood as religion and regularly
is.
For China and Russia/Soviet Union industrialization was like adoption of new religion which is also why they both experienced periods of violent upheaval and societal disaster: Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, Stalinist Collectivization etc. Those are usually associated with religious revolutions i.e. impositions of evolved knowledge without adaptation. In Europe/West we had the adaptation so all the upheavals and societal disasters were spread along the period of adaptation. In fact France had the revolution precisely because in political terms it was the most backward society of all major cultures.
Western sci-fi authors were born in the period of change that had human speed. Their parents lived in periods of such change as often did their grandparents. Their children and grandchildren would also live in it (in their view of reality) so they came up with ideas that formed science fiction. Science fiction begins in 19th century and ends in 20th century. The entire preceding century was the setup. What came before and after was mythology because
mythology is the default mode of culture.
So let's generalize:
Science fiction is a type of fantasy with science as religion and technology as magic.
Science fiction is uniquely western because
only western societies had to cope culturally with industrial and scientific revolutions. Everyone else adopted ready solutions and that usually leads to a culture that looks more like mythological tale of magic rather than sci-fi.
- West did "how the hell do I make a magic sword so it doesn't become cursed somehow".
- China does "here's a magic sword, but beware of this curse, off you go on your quest".
In the west we are already moving toward the mythological. Star Wars is that. Star Trek was the last twitch of "real" sci-fi and look where it ended. Consider that 2001 Space Oddyssey was made in 1968. Then came a brief wave of cyberpunk and even that is gone swallowed by Japanese nonsense.
And what's Japanese cultural creations? Kaiju and Gundams. Myths. Because Japan
adopted rather than
transformed.
Evangelion is positively hilarious. It's like suburban soccermoms starting yoga and meditation. And not in a sexy way.
It's like the difference between quirky adventure tales of colonial Britain and the everyday frontier tales of 18th and 19th century America. Why was "the western" so successful in America but failed elsewhere? Because you have to
understand the western to do it well. You may as well try making kung fu movies in the west. None works.
It's like the difference between contemporary western adoption of ancient Chinese philosophical practices (Dao, Tai Chi, Feng Shui) and how those same practices are perceived in China. The "magic" was "science" of the ancient past. The stories that explored it were the "science fiction" of that era.
I'm very interested in the processes of cultural change (being a product of such moment in time) so I easily see the parallels between things like the emergence of Confucianism and Daoism and European "Enligthenment". Different times, different settings and different needs but the same process. This is why chicks doing yoga or tai chi to look sexy are so stupid to me. I get the point of them much as Chinese creators don't get the point of sci-fi.
China will never have sci-fi. It's literally trying to speak western while talking Chinese. It's like westerners using Chinese lettes for tatoos or ornament. To people in China it's fun. To people who grew up with sci-fi it's stupid. Because it's the difference between needing to know the curse and avoiding it.
