Book Group

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GregP Feb 2022 11:27am, 16 Feb 2022 132,915 posts	0 GregP I know several people who have similar taste in Sci Fi to me who have damned Three-Body Problem with the very faintest of praise.
McGoohan Feb 2022 11:37am, 16 Feb 2022 51,004 posts	0 McGoohan Gave after the bore-fest book 1
KPM Feb 2022 12:43pm, 16 Feb 2022 918 posts	0 KPM GregP I read the first book last year and thought it was a bit boring. I had no interest in a cultural revolution in China, which was the main part of the first book; it wasn't really my bag. For whatever reason though, I think a few of the novel ideas that are threaded into the story that stuck with me, i decided to read it again and must say the second time through I thought it was brilliant. Went straight onto book 2 and then book 3 and am powering through it as we speak. The scope of the first book seems very small, but it is insane how far it goes. Book 1 Cultural Revolution in China, set sometime in the 1960s i think? Some minor dealings through a game with an alien race. Turns out they're real and due to someone who'd given up on Earth, give the aliens the ability to locate Earth. They set off to find us and the journey will take centuries. Book 2 - this is where it kicks off for me More info on aliens, who develop technology to restrict human development - maybe this is in book 1 actually. Time passes and they are monitoring our every move to stop us from being able to progress to a state where we can defend ourselves against them. The story focuses on the brilliant ways we come up with to try and solve this problem of being in 100% surveillance and finding a way to still try and stop them, when restricted technologically as we are. Hundreds of years pass. Book 3 - still all in They arrive. We're completely powerless against them and without hope. Or are we? Mind blowing ideas abound
GregP Feb 2022 1:14pm, 16 Feb 2022 132,935 posts	0 GregP Hmm. Maybe it's me and mine. We were equally underwhelmed by the Tchaikovsky books with the spiders.
GregP Feb 2022 1:15pm, 16 Feb 2022 132,936 posts	0 GregP In terms of Big Ideas, while we're here, I'm thoroughly enjoying Pandora's Star thus far.
KPM Feb 2022 2:53pm, 16 Feb 2022 923 posts	0 KPM Yeah we all have our own preferences, i'm just saying that the second time around it clicked for me - this is quite rare as i've tried to re-read a few things before and newarly always have the same opinion (Dune - dense and boring!) Peter F Hamilton, I keep getting tempted by his stuff and then put off as i've read him classed as 'Space opera', making me imagine Coronation Street, in space.
GregP Feb 2022 2:55pm, 16 Feb 2022 132,940 posts	0 GregP I read The Reality Dysfunction a few years ago and liked it a lot. Pandora's Star is, so far, altogether better. The Expanse series are space opera. What's not to like?
KPM Feb 2022 3:06pm, 16 Feb 2022 925 posts	0 KPM I do have The Expanse series queued up as i'm enjoying the TV show, but when it comes to books I usually prefer reality-shifting/psychological Sci-Fi (I can't get enough Dick) and find it hard to spend time on other things, though I have loads queued up. The other issue with those types of books is the size. They're usually the size and weight of weapons, those books, so it's a lot of time to invest.
Badger Feb 2022 5:01pm, 16 Feb 2022 14,844 posts	0 Badger I liked Pandora's Star and the concluding book, disliked the Reality Dysfunction as magical fantasy dressed up as SF, and hated the end of Great North Road so much that I've never read another word by Hamilton.
Badger Feb 2022 5:02pm, 16 Feb 2022 14,845 posts	0 Badger (Channelling my inner McG there I think )