Three Body Problem follows two main character; one starting from the Culture Revolution era China, another in current day. The story was originally written in Chinese, and there are quite obvious cultural differences, but luckily translator is up to the task and gives a Western reader enough extra information to help us decipher at least most of the references to Chinese history. <br/>For me, the book splits into two parts. For the first two thirds, it's a murder mystery with some elements that you might call even supernatural, some interesting virtual reality scenes and very little in the way of science fiction. The language is a bit blocky at times, the characters are fairly thin, but all in all it's still enjoyable read.<br/>Then we come to the final third of the book. That's where the science fiction kicks in... and that's where the enjoyment ends. When in the first two thirds there's talk about relatively mundane science, here it turns into unbelievable fiction, and the writer seems to know it. <spoiler>There's, for example, a pre-emptive "aha, but we just borrow energy" paragraph in case someone notices the law of conservation of energy doesn't seem to hold.</spoiler> The viewpoint moves from first person to third person to... fourth person?, but no matter who's talking, there's too much description and too little action. The sections of alien civilization are mostly dialogue where the content seems to be aimed for the benefit of the reader, not the parties of the conversation.<br/><spoiler>And the aliens? They seem pretty human to me. Even though they strive to be emotionless, they are regularly described to have and to talk about emotions (love, terror, ecstacy...). Their culture seems to have similar "Ages" as humans have, but whereas humans move from one age to another at accelerating speed, the aliens' velocity through ages is constant.Describing this difference using Ages draws parallel to two cultures which aren't supposed to be similar. Why would the aliens go through Hunter-Gatherer/Agricultural/Industrial/Atomic/Information age? Why would they recognize them as distinct ages? And why would the speed they go through them be constant, considering achieving tehcnical prowess of one age is mandatory but also makes it easier to achieve the next step faster?<br/>And yes, the unfolding of n dimensions of a proton into 2D (and missing it by one, twice) and then re-folding it back into a proton - and, as a sideshow, meeting another civilization and destroying it - just bends the reality too much. The idea is nice but the execution doesn't work.<br/></spoiler><br/>All in all, I find this book hard to judge. The first part is promising, but the second part falls flat and does it spectacularly. There's still enough good points to make me mildly interested in the second part of the trilogy, but I can't really say I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for it.
