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The Three-Body Problem

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The Three-Body Problem

By: Cixin Liu, Ken Liu
Narrated by: Daniel York Loh
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About this listen

 Bloomsbury presents The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, read by Daniel York Loh.

Read the award-winning, critically acclaimed, multi-million-copy-selling science-fiction phenomenon – soon to be a Netflix Original Series from the creators of Game of Thrones.

1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.

Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang's investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns.

This is the Three-Body Problem and it is the key to everything: the key to the scientists' deaths, the key to a conspiracy that spans light-years and the key to the extinction-level threat humanity now faces.

Praise for The Three-Body Problem:
'Your next favourite sci-fi novel' Wired
'Immense' Barack Obama
'Unique' George R.R. Martin
'SF in the grand style' Guardian
'Mind-altering and immersive' Daily Mail
Winner of the Hugo and Galaxy Awards for Best Novel©2023 Cixin Liu and Ken Liu (P)2023 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Asian & Pacific Islander Creators First Contact Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Fiction China Interstellar
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I haven’t listened to a science fiction book for some time. This was a wonderful story with lots of twists and internal connections between people and events. His imagination is extraordinary: whole new worlds have been created out of the chaos of ‘three worlds’. I had to keep listening to know what might happen next. His characters had depth and the relationships between characters were interesting. The narrator was perfect for such a complex and technical text - forceful but slow enough to convey much meaning. Well done. Looking forward to the next volume.

Wonderful imagination

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The plot had me guessing from beginning to end, and the ominous narration superbly complimented the story. I was first introduced to this book as a novel about "playing a video game to save the world" and I am so glad that this crude summary truly paled in comparison to the totality of the story itself.

A surreal dreamlike dive into a parallel universe

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This book reinvigorated my interest not just in science fiction, but in reading fiction in general. there's lots to think about in this story

Great science fiction

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This book is unique as it is written from a different cultural point of view. Intelligent and entertaining. Couldn’t stop listening.

Brilliant

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I don't read much sci fi but this was fascinating. I really enjoyed the Chinese perspective.

Fascinating

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Explanations and theme were interesting. I felt like an echo of the source language which was cool.

Translation Style

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it was a little long-winded and unfortunately i had already seen the Netflix film and they differed

great translation

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engrossing story that got me from the start - wait now for the re rest of the trilogy.

deep and thoughtful

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The author obviously likes science, but uses the book to show off random tidbits of disconnected science fluff and weaves a clunky narrative that’s full of holes to connect the dots. There’s random exposition that is just plonked in because the story doesn’t have any reason to explain things, the decisions of people don’t make sense, huge chunks of story are skipped in between ‘cool’ science stuff because it’s too hard to explain how things would actually occur in context of the setting etc.

Just felt like someone read a science textbook and wanted to jam it all into a story. Cool premise, but just poorly executed.

Disconnected Pop Sci-Fi

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Some of the different characters I found difficult to distinguish between which made the performance trying.
There were sections which I think were added incase people didn’t understand the history/cultural aspects of china however the writing in these sections did not match the rest of the book so it was a little jarring.
Maybe I am just not used to complex sci-fi but I found the chunks of physics were a little out of sink and took me out of the story.
A number of the characters did not have humanity, maybe that was showing what belief had done to them.
Maybe I had hyped this up but it didn’t live up to the hype, I struggled to listen to it all the way through.

Really interesting but I don’t think the translation quite worked.

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