Liu Cixin’s the Three-Body Problem book trilogy is one of the world’s bestselling Chinese sci-fi series, being read and endorsed by figures such as George R.R. Martin and Barack Obama. In Chinese public debates, however, critics highlight the series’ social Darwinist, misogynistic, and totalitarian tendencies, raising concerns about how the trilogy has been used by […]
I don't really agree with this and totally fucking love these books. However, it is a fairly interesting essay.
I thought the books were great, too, but I have to say that I took away basically the same thing as the author. The worldbuilding and overall narrative is really compelling and well-considered, but only if you wholly accept the extreme and highly-questionable assumptions made about both human and galactic civilization. I’m happy to suspend disbelief in order to be taken on a ride, but once the ride is over, you have to look at this stuff as pure fantasy.
The society described in the age of optimism was a caricature of what a right-wing dipshit thinks a ‘woke’ society would be like. Gender fluidity, disintegration of the nuclear family, public services, etc. It’s something that Jordan Peterson would write unironically as a prediction.
But even setting that aside, the thing that struck me was how little imagination or depth was given to the idea that society might evolve away from what we have now. One of the major plot points is that a guy buys the rights to a star, and even though the world government wants the star, it’s made explicit that property rights are too sacrosanct to force him to sell it to them. You have all this fart-sniffing about human nature and the need to survive at all costs, but the powers that be are going to get caught up about who holds the land title on a star system that no one has ever been to?
That’s just a small example, but the point is that these themes are everywhere in the book and go basically unchallenged and unexamined. That’s totally fine, because the books are explicitly about exploring those themes, but it’s really easy to find the reactionary perspective that runs through the whole thing. If you were a typical conservative/libertarian, you could easily read the books and uncritically agree with the underlying assumptions they make, and that’s something worth a bit of critical analysis.
I thought the books were great, too, but I have to say that I took away basically the same thing as the author. The worldbuilding and overall narrative is really compelling and well-considered, but only if you wholly accept the extreme and highly-questionable assumptions made about both human and galactic civilization. I’m happy to suspend disbelief in order to be taken on a ride, but once the ride is over, you have to look at this stuff as pure fantasy.
The society described in the age of optimism was a caricature of what a right-wing dipshit thinks a ‘woke’ society would be like. Gender fluidity, disintegration of the nuclear family, public services, etc. It’s something that Jordan Peterson would write unironically as a prediction.
But even setting that aside, the thing that struck me was how little imagination or depth was given to the idea that society might evolve away from what we have now. One of the major plot points is that a guy buys the rights to a star, and even though the world government wants the star, it’s made explicit that property rights are too sacrosanct to force him to sell it to them. You have all this fart-sniffing about human nature and the need to survive at all costs, but the powers that be are going to get caught up about who holds the land title on a star system that no one has ever been to?
That’s just a small example, but the point is that these themes are everywhere in the book and go basically unchallenged and unexamined. That’s totally fine, because the books are explicitly about exploring those themes, but it’s really easy to find the reactionary perspective that runs through the whole thing. If you were a typical conservative/libertarian, you could easily read the books and uncritically agree with the underlying assumptions they make, and that’s something worth a bit of critical analysis.