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.
a time travel machine to hold Liu at gunpoint and force him to delete the stupid fucking imaginary waifu subplot that takes up half the book and goes nowhere
I always imagine it was a boomer’s reaction to K-pop and K-drama that were getting popular among Chinese youth in the early 2000s lol. It’s the kind of romance plot you’d expect. It’s also likely where the whole “future human beings are feminized” trope came from.
I think for me the misogyny is less pronounced (still problematic) than ageism and the boomerism are in his work.
Liu focus on theme/ideas before good characters, he talks about it in an interview where the characters are “unhuman” because he uses them represents concept. I think he explicitly uses (his word) Luo ji and chengxin as example. Luoji, a man, represents logic and cold and calculation and Cheng Xin, a woman, represents emotion, heart (humanism) which is super problematic itself.
In the second book, it is represented that the status quo of the dark forest which requires logic and game theory to annihilate others to survive. However, Chengxin’s humanism is portrayed as seeing the wrongness of the dark forest. I think the end of the trilogy proves her right. I think Liu tries to convey that cold and lack of humanism is ultimately the downfall of the civilization, but since he is not focus on writing good characters (i personally think he is a bad writer and never talk to women) makes it looks at the end as some gendered (and cishet normative) deterministic take that it makes my eyes roll.
As of his ageism (shown in the bunker era of 3BP being post-gendered, effeminate, weak , also in his book supernova era and also that novella about filial poety) is a belief that he unironically holds.
Tldr he is a bad writer with some ok world building, but since he is the first chinese sci-fi writer that made it to the mainstream, we have to suffer his writings.
Edit: it happens that better chinese scifi books are written by women authors like Hao Jingfang and Xia Jia
To be fair, Cheng Xin was originally written as a male character until his publisher told him that he should try writing a female protagonist for his third novel. He went back and re-wrote the character and even included the subplot with Yun Tianming’s gifting a star to Cheng Xin when the two had little interactions in the original draft.
The point being that the protagonist of book 3 would still have headed down the same route, whether it had been a man or a woman. Most of his characters are just there to represent diametrically opposite view points and to provoke the readers to contemplate further and come to their own conclusions (the most prominent in Book 3 being Wade vs Cheng Xin i.e. authoritarianism vs democracy). There is very little hand holding in the series in spite of the fact that Liu let his personal views slip through at times.
Logic and reason are considered exclusive and incompatible with emotion by most people, and are also considered "masculine" traits and therefore highly desirable, so it wouldn't be surprising if people took away a specific message from the books that wasn't intended just because the wrong ideology was portrayed as men/male coded traits
If you finish it dark forest theory being reactionary is the whole point. The misogyny is wild though
a time travel machine to hold Liu at gunpoint and force him to delete the stupid fucking imaginary waifu subplot that takes up half the book and goes nowhere
I always imagine it was a boomer’s reaction to K-pop and K-drama that were getting popular among Chinese youth in the early 2000s lol. It’s the kind of romance plot you’d expect. It’s also likely where the whole “future human beings are feminized” trope came from.
The waifu stuff is also present in Ball lightning and he also approved that 3BP fanfic which is basically incelcore literature
oh my god I read the fanfic and it was SOOOOOO CRINGE AHHHHHHHH
ruined the trilogy for me tbh
I think for me the misogyny is less pronounced (still problematic) than ageism and the boomerism are in his work.
Liu focus on theme/ideas before good characters, he talks about it in an interview where the characters are “unhuman” because he uses them represents concept. I think he explicitly uses (his word) Luo ji and chengxin as example. Luoji, a man, represents logic and cold and calculation and Cheng Xin, a woman, represents emotion, heart (humanism) which is super problematic itself.
In the second book, it is represented that the status quo of the dark forest which requires logic and game theory to annihilate others to survive. However, Chengxin’s humanism is portrayed as seeing the wrongness of the dark forest. I think the end of the trilogy proves her right. I think Liu tries to convey that cold and lack of humanism is ultimately the downfall of the civilization, but since he is not focus on writing good characters (i personally think he is a bad writer and never talk to women) makes it looks at the end as some gendered (and cishet normative) deterministic take that it makes my eyes roll.
As of his ageism (shown in the bunker era of 3BP being post-gendered, effeminate, weak , also in his book supernova era and also that novella about filial poety) is a belief that he unironically holds.
Tldr he is a bad writer with some ok world building, but since he is the first chinese sci-fi writer that made it to the mainstream, we have to suffer his writings.
Edit: it happens that better chinese scifi books are written by women authors like Hao Jingfang and Xia Jia
To be fair, Cheng Xin was originally written as a male character until his publisher told him that he should try writing a female protagonist for his third novel. He went back and re-wrote the character and even included the subplot with Yun Tianming’s gifting a star to Cheng Xin when the two had little interactions in the original draft.
The point being that the protagonist of book 3 would still have headed down the same route, whether it had been a man or a woman. Most of his characters are just there to represent diametrically opposite view points and to provoke the readers to contemplate further and come to their own conclusions (the most prominent in Book 3 being Wade vs Cheng Xin i.e. authoritarianism vs democracy). There is very little hand holding in the series in spite of the fact that Liu let his personal views slip through at times.
Oh wow I didn’t know about the editor asking him to do some changes to the character.
This confirms that STEMslord like Liu can’t write once again
Yeah he’s famous for treating his characters as simply tools to advance the plot (工具人).
Liu is certainly a 工具
Logic and reason are considered exclusive and incompatible with emotion by most people, and are also considered "masculine" traits and therefore highly desirable, so it wouldn't be surprising if people took away a specific message from the books that wasn't intended just because the wrong ideology was portrayed as men/male coded traits
I think this furthers a discussion on Gender roles in modern Chinese (where liu and I are from) society
yeah idk the gender roles in China, I just know of angloid hegemonic masculinity