Bible.
We are all victims of Jehova Witnesses, Evangelists, and other religions that take preaching/ contagion as a core value/ sacred activity for their members…
Any of the Reacher books. God, they’re terrible. They’re just about a guy who jumps to outrageous conclusions and is always right nlbecause he’s just so special. He’s also big and tough and the best sniper in Army history.
In the first one, a guy skips town because he’s a witness, and Reacher finds him in a hotel instantly because of the following logic:
Clearly he would have changed cities every night going in clockwise order or whatever - except for the one night after the place he was in was closer to the city he was fleeing - he’d rest 2 nights in the next city because sleeping thay close was so exhausting.
Because Reacher saw a Beatles album in the guy’s house, he just knew he’d be using the last names of the Beatles, but keeping his own first name (which was Paul iirc), cycling them at each hotel.
So he walks into a random hotel near a bus stop in a random city and asks for the room of Paul Lennon and finds him because Reacher is just so smart!
And in the second book, he comes upon a woman being raped, kills the rapist, and the woman has sex with Reacher instead because he’s a big, tough hero. And nothing like attempted rape puts you in the mood to fuck a stranger.
Here’s a condensed version of all the books …
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.
10/10 copypasta 🤌
Served al dente
And the acoustic guitar version for the uninitiated.
Wow haven’t seen that meme in so long I forgot about it, thanks!
Sounds kinda like this great rant about the show ‘Sherlock’:
So apart from tumblr fanbase, why doesn’t /tv/ like this show?
Because it has smart characters written stupidly.
Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men is a smartly written smart character. When Chigurh kills a hotel room full of three people he books to room next door so he can examine it, finding which walls he can shoot through, where the light switch is, what sort of cover is there etc. This is a smart thing to do because Chigurh is a smart person who is written by another smart person who understands how smart people think.
Were Sherlock Holmes to kill a hotel room full of three people. He’d enter using a secret door in the hotel that he read about in a book ten years ago. He’d throw peanuts at one guy causing him to go into anaphylactic shock, as he had deduced from a dartboard with a picture of George Washington carver on it pinned to the wall that the man had a severe peanut allergy. The second man would then kill himself just according to plan as Sherlock had earlier deduced that him and the first man were homosexual lovers who couldn’t live without eachother due to a faint scent of penis on each man’s breath and a slight dilation of their pupils whenever they looked at each other. As for the third man, why Sherlock doesn’t kill him at all. The third man removes his sunglasses and wig to reveal he actually WAS Sherlock the entire time. But Sherlock just entered through the Secret door and killed two people, how can there be two of him? The first Sherlock removes his mask to reveal he’s actually Moriarty attempting to frame Sherlock for two murders. Sherlock however anticipated this, the two dead men stand up, they’re undercover police officers, it was all a ruse. “But Sherlock!” Moriarty cries “That police officer blew his own head off, look at it, there’s skull fragments on the wall, how is he fine now? How did you fake that?”. Sherlock just winks at the screen, the end.
This is retarded because Sherlock is a smart person written by a stupid person to whom smart people are indistinguishable from wizards.
And I blame shit like sherlock for making idiots online think they can deduce shit based on random shit like this. Even if Sherlock is smartly written, he’s still written to be right and bases deductions on random tiny details. Not to mention, there’s tropes to writing that makes outcomes more easily predictable, and someone picking up on foreshadowing might think they can do what Sherlock can do and apply it to stupid shit on the internet, like if a story is real or if someone is telling an accurate version of the story for AITA type judgements.
Holy shit that just sounds like some conservative, gun-toting, military cosplaying wanna-be tough guy’s wet dream in the form of a novel.
Except Childs also doesn’t know shit about guns.
In the first book Reacher carries a Desert Eagle, and anyone who knows anything about guns knows the Desert Eagle is a range queen. They’re unreliable, eject shells into your face, not terribly accurate, have a tiny ammo capacity and don’t make a person any more dead than a 9mm.
Then in the second book he shits on Glocks for being unreliable, and describes the Barrett 50 cal as a sniper’s weapon of choice. The Barrett isn’t a sniper rifle - it’s an anri-materiel rifle made to break shit. The only reason it even exists is because the Army wanted foot soldiers to be able to use the 50 BMG round to take out enemy equipment without having to carry a 130-pound gun that had to be assembled to use.
Basically, he gets his gun knowledge from video games.
To be fair here, the sniping distance record was made with a Barrett M82 multiple times. A Browning M2 also held the record for nearly 20 years.
Yeah, but those are shots that happened to hit. They could’ve missed by a ton just as easily. It does have a longer range than a typical precision rifle, but that’s just because it’s a really big projectile with a fuckton of powder behind it.
It’s a 1-2 MOA rifle, whereas a precision rifle might be 1/4 MOA.
Sounds like Republican erotica basically.
It’s definitely incel erotica. Saw a video once demonstrating that Reacher never actually needs to initiate anything with a woman, show any interest whatsoever, flirt, etc. He just sorta exists in proximity to women and they just sort of “give” him the sex that they apparently owe him for being the main character.
Haha, jeez i forgot about these.
I think I read the first three? Such a tropey train wreck i actually had fun for the first couple.
But I was well and done after two, I was like well this is just unhealthy now by the second book you can tell childs isn’t paying any attention to plot or character development or anything that would make a story interesting, he was actively shutting my brain down.
it felt like that episode of The boondocks where Huey exclusively watches UPN as a social cognitive experiment.
https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=travis+mcgee
Travis McGee is what Reacher and Dirk Pitt dream of being. He lives on a houseboat he won in a poker game, and solves crimes when he finds himself low on cash.
The author died in 1986 and the books are still being published.
Wait, is this real? Fuck sake that’s bad.
Ready player one. If I wanted to read about a guy masturbating over memorizing 1980s Wikipedia I’d just go to forums.
It was the most boring Mary Sue-esque trash and I have no idea why it was so popular
Yeah, I was a third of the way through and realized it kinda sucked. I did stick it out to the end though.
One of the plot points has the main character literally act out scenes from classic movies. It’s never a good idea to remind the reader that there’s better entertainment that they could be enjoying right now.
I forced myself to finish foolishly hoping the ending would blow my mind. Now people keep telling me the movie is even better but I’m like that’s such a low bar I’ll just go read Annihilation again or something
I’ve perused both. The film is the same wank-fest over 80s references.
Same. I like Spielberg, but after reading the book I can’t imagine I’d like the movie!
There’s mind-blowingly bad stuff in the world building.
This is exactly what happened to me. I was reading it for a while like okay, I guess this is kind of fun, and then a third of the way through I thought “oh wait, this is just kind of boring”.
I like the part where they figured out the previously undiscovered secret in the race was to drive backwards. I tried that shit in Mario Kart when I was 8, you’re telling me NOBODY had tried it in that game before?
I still remember exactly how the announcer enunced “You’re Going The Wrong Way!”
I haven’t read the book, but yeah that really broke immersion for me in the movie.
The book’s first puzzle is solved by Wade playing the arcade game Joust against a bot. Then when he wins, he’s dropped into the movie WarGames, replacing Matthew Broderick’s character, and he has to act out every scene to progress.
Seriously, that’s it.
Eh, to each their own. I liked it. I also liked the different pacing than the movie. It made more sense.
The only Kindle book I’ve ever returned.
Ready Player One isn’t event the worst book Ernest Cline has written. lol
I enjoyed it as a fun YA adventure but Armada is so much worse.
I thought the movie was kinda fun. Never read the book though.
I liked the book a lot, but the movie looked bad. They made the MC white for some reason?
They made the MC white for some reason?
Yeah, if that’s the case I’m even more inclined to walk away.
The Bible
I skimmed it but all I ever saw was just a bunch of begat this and begat that with some quotations sprinkled in between.
And this fucking thing is partly responsible for why numerous things are going wrong with humans today and humans of history.
That’s mostly the first chapter, genesis, the begat this stuff.
R crumb, the comics artist, has a fantastic graphic novel of Genesis where he communicates the emotions through his drawings of what the words are trying to communicate. This made genesis, the most boring and pedantic part of the Bible, more interesting.
The Bible has undoubtedly led to incalculable suffering as a cult, but just as a book, it’s nowhere near the worst piece of literature I’ve ever read.
That’s mostly the first chapter, genesis, the begat this stuff.
But then, don’t discount the chapter where the twelve Jewish tribes send their gifts to Moses (iirc), and the full account of the lavish gifts is given, per each tribe. I’ve read through the whole thing to confirm the madness that the list is identical for each tribe, and is repeated twelve times.
I’d like someone in a US church choose that chapter for their Sunday reading of the Bible, and then see the faces of the congregation sitting through it.
Whoever wrote those books, didn’t have much consideration for the reader.
graphic novel of Genesis where he communicates the emotions through his drawings of what the words are trying to communicate
I have a long-standing dream of someone just adapting the Bible to the screen exactly as it’s written — at least the first parts up to and including Moses’ wanderings. I have a feeling that a direct retelling would cause more than a few butts to be hurt.
Pasolini, an atheist and communist, came close in the approach with ‘The Gospel According to St. Matthew’, but the result is a rather romantic vision of the life of Jesus, perhaps dictated by both the chosen source material and Pasolini’s ‘nostalgia for belief’.
I’d like someone in a US church choose that chapter for their Sunday reading of the Bible, and then see the faces of the congregation sitting through it.
Not in the USA, but I’ve heard some pretty interesting sermons on the topic. Generally about prophecies and how the ancient Israelites viewed certain numbers
Whoever wrote those books, didn’t have much consideration for the reader.
Sizable chunks of the Old Testament were documentation, rather than formatted with the intent of being engaging. It’s like how a family bible often has genealogy hand-written inside it, except it’s the contents of the book itself.
That’s cool and dandy, but I still think that writing “every tribe brought exact same shit” would work swimmingly.
A direct retelling wouldn’t be allowed to air. Murdering your wife in Christ’s name for not cooking you dinner, divinely owning slaves as an entitled Christian, lobster sending you to christian hell; the production wouldn’t get very far.
What are you on about?
Whats that?
When did someone murder their wife in Christ’s name for not cooking you dinner
Love that you’re like “we all know shrimp sends you to christian hell, but wife discipline? Seems farfetched!”
Corinthians, ephesians, most books of the Bible reiterate that women must submit to their husbands:
“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.”
And to not submit to their husbands is to go against God.
“But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.”
And guess what happens if your husband asks you for dinner and you say no?
“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.”
Eve’s decision to prioritize her own desires over God’s instructions led to disastrous consequence including physical death and eternal obeisance.
“Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.”
“Genesis 2:18-24 “And the lord god said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him”
Christian women are servants to men, and if they defy men, they defy god. Through all of every version of the bible, the Christian punishment for defiance is death.
Why?
“For the wages of sin is death”.
Pasolini, an atheist and communist, came close in the approach with ‘The Gospel According to St. Matthew’, but the result is a rather romantic vision of the life of Jesus, perhaps dictated by both the chosen source material and Pasolini’s ‘nostalgia for belief’.
As a former Christian and current socialist, it makes sense for socialists/communists to have a romantic view of the life of Jesus. It’s the one part of my old beliefs that I can’t let go of, since it shaped the values that I have now. The values that Jesus preached are often the same values that lead people to socialism/communism.
It’s definitely not just the first chapter of Genesis. Like the entirety of First Chronicle is genealogy.
The begat stuff is Matthew, it’s the genealogy of Jesus. This was important within Judaism and also for the prophecy that Jesus was in the line of David, so He was an eligible Messiah.
what’s wild to me is the people who swear by it as the answer to all lifes questions and yet…they’ve never read it.
if i thought and all knowing all powerful being put answers to all lifes questions into a book i’d be reading the shit out of it
If you can get hold if it, look out for Thomas Jefferson’s The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. It’s the New Testament with all the spirituality, supernatural, etc edited out. Instead you’ve just got a book about morals and ethics as taught by some guy.
I assume he also edited out the slavery bits 🙄
"but Jesus never actually talked about slaves
Yeah, and that’s a major fucking problem
And this fucking thing is partly responsible for why numerous things are going wrong with humans today and humans of history.
No no no no. It’s the gays that are responsible. THE GAYS!!!
No no no no. It’s the gays that are responsible. THE GAYS!!!
That’s not even what it says. The Bible doesn’t really mention homosexuality too much.
But what it says about it is really horrible.
By what standard?
Ok, you just told on yourself. There is no standard by which Leviticus 20:13 is not really horrible. It was really horrible when it was conceptualized, it was really horrible when King James edited it, it was really horrible when Gutenberg printed it, and it’s really horrible now. I attend a UCC church and my pastors do not defend what the Bible says about homosexuality the way you just did. God is still speaking, I encourage you to listen.
How do you define “really horrible”?
Also, it’s universally accepted that Leviticus 20:13 is not a command for today. It was a law for Israel to show that even earthly means and men cannot keep Israel’s purity. Christ set us free from the law. We don’t need to kill each other for sinning. Because we cannot be pure. So Christ died to make us pure.
I attend a UCC church and my pastors do not defend what the Bible says about homosexuality the way you just did.
UCC has been known to be rapidly spiralling down into heresy. They say vague things like “God is still speaking” and that god for whatever reason always affirms what the white cultures believe is right. Convenient that your god changes his mind just to placate the culture about what white people living in the west think, huh. Once again like Israel of old, man thinks he stands in judgement over God.
How do you define “really horrible”?
Once again, telling on yourself. What’s not horrible about saying people should be put to death for their private consensual bedroom behavior?
UCC has been known to be rapidly spiralling down into heresy
Oh give me a break. “No true Christian” much?
for whatever reason always affirms what the white cultures believe is right.
I assume that by this you’re trying to paint homosexuality and the acceptance of it as exclusive to white cultures. This is complete and total bullshit.
There’s plenty of history of non-white cultures that were fully accepting of homosexuality. Japan is a clear example. Samurai wrote so many gay love poems to each other that they had established literary conventions about it.
What happened, around the world, is that colonizers and missionaries went around the world destroying indigenous traditions and customs and instilling bigotry regarding homosexuality. At the same time, suffering under the yoke of colonialism stifled social progress and the potential for the sort of organic social movements that happened in the West.
Even then, we are seeing in the US a rollback of LGBT rights that we only recently managed to achieve. I don’t think it’s fair to generalize “white cultures” as believing LGBT people have rights, just as it’s not fair to generalize non-white cultures as not believing that.
And this fucking thing is partly responsible for why numerous things are going wrong with humans today and humans of history.
That’s like blaming a doctor’s diagnosis of cancer for someone’s death. The Bible is just a diagnosis of humanity’s problems with a crapton of examples, as well as the solution/hope (although it also makes it clear that people will never try and solve it because of the aforementioned problems)
Except the Bible is less a diagnosis and more a treatment plan. And people definitely have been killed by bad treatment plans before.
The treatment plan is “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved”. It’s more like being killed by misunderstanding or misinterpreting the treatment plan. Which can be deadly
In that case it’s more like having a curable form of cancer and eating fruit and studying homeopathy instead, and then dying and having to spin in your grave watching your company make year after year of shit that people still buy for some reason, knowing you put way too much effort into making things high quality while you were alive when you could have clearly just sold rose gold feces and it wouldnt have made a lick of difference to the people following your cult.
Okay then. What’s the cure?
This was a joke about Steve jobs
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand hands down. it’s like normal economics except they stripped away the mask that makes it look human.
The main point of the book could have been summarised up in an email. I listened to it as an audio book just to know what it’s about and it’s just “communism bad” mixed with everything Margaret Thatcher could masturbate to.
But isn’t it better writing to summarize it in the climax radio speech that takes three hours to read aloud?
Good book to take with you to jury duty if you want to avoid being picked for jury duty. 😉
I found a use for Atlas Shrugged, to kill wasps.
But who is John Galt???
Mein Kampf. Apart from being a bad person, Hitler was a terrible writer. Low quality thoughts articulated badly. I only read it so I could nail neonazis when they came at me with their stupid arguments.
Adolf Hitler was a modern-day edgelord and an incel. He didn’t have any original thoughts, he stole the ideas from the magazines he read while he was poor and unemployed
It’s a good thing people don’t act like that any more /s
And when he finally did get laid he got syphilis. Loser.
Modern-day edgelords and incels are…edgelords and incels. Maybe “premodern” would be more accurate? Probably not, I’m not sure.
That was the modern era, we live in the postmodern era.
Was that helpful or necessary in the end? Or was is such trite that you could have done without?
It is extremely babble-minded and not at all worth reading or deconstructing.
I read it in the mindset of your first question.
Turns out, any argument you can think up in 2 seconds against bigotry is going to be more insightful and well-founded than a rebuttal against nascent nazi scribblings.
Well I’ll save myself the trouble of being put on some sort of list for reading it then, thanks.
You got it.
I finished it and was like omigod at least nobody I ever come across with the same morbid curiosity has to read this now.
Only way I can look at reading that book not being a complete waste of time.
If nothing else, it’s worth it just to see how brain-dead nazism really is. They’re not Machiavellian masterminds, they’re thugs with an ideology built on brainfarts. Also quoting from the book (in the original German) is a good way to kill a conversation with one of the modern spawn.
Many years ago, I posted about how horribly written it was, and right on cue, a neo-Nazi pipes in asking which translation it was, because apparently all the faithful translations are a Jewish trick, or something…
No reply when I posted the introduction in original German, of course.
Yeah, that’s probably the one thing that makes the book almost (ALMOST) worth reading. Using their own tripe against them.
I’m guessing it’s the same kinda situation as one having to actually read ‘Atlas Shrugged’ to see for themselves that it’s a complete turd of a book.
A Friend of mine with similar political inclination keeps telling me I should read it, for the same “know thy enemy” kind of argument.
I just can’t bring myself to it, we all get bombarded enough with that shitty ideology, and have to push it back irl constantly, so I’d love to escape it, a bit, in my downtime.
It does in fact help a little bit, when you see how Rand portrayed the libertarian paradise for which she advocated: where everyone is a genius at the top of their game, and a few dozen of these geniuses build the shiny libertarian utopia. It’s juvenile, just like her other literary attempts. The ‘utopia’ wouldn’t stand against just a few real-life problems. It’s also notable that Rand herself was on social security and Medicaid in her late years.
Furthermore, it’s fun to read some of Aleister Crowley, e.g. ‘The Diary of a Drug Fiend’, compare it to Rand’s ‘objectivism’, and ponder as to how Crowley was called ‘the most wicked man’ while Rand became the torchbearer of USian unabashed corporatism. At least, Crowley actually could write, had a soul, and was generally a fun man — but he didn’t have a Red Scare to ride on.
I listened to parts of it as an audiobook. I felt like I was going insane. Helped me pass the time at work though.
I think it’s even worse in German. It comes across as a toddler trying to sound grown up.
I’m always a little bit scared that what I’m listening to will start blasting out of my phone speaker because I forgot to turn on my headset or something.
By the way, one big takeaway of ‘Triumph of the Will’ is that the Nazi rally was extremely fucking boring after the first ten minutes or so. But apparently seven hundred thousand people had nothing better to do than stand and listen to Nazis shout at them for hours.
I’m terrified of that personally
I couldn’t get through the first chapter. Utter babbling nonsense. It’s not that I disagreed with it, I had no idea what it was supposed to be saying!
It doesn’t get better after chapter one haha.
The Book of Mormon. Someone literally paid me to read it. It is so glaringly obvious that it’s tall tales by Joseph Smith it hurt to read from the cringe. And it was so dark, too! Most memorably the section titled “Doctrine & Covenants.” In chapter 132, verse 54, Joseph says Emma Smith, his ninth wife, would be destroyed by god, and her entire family destroyed for good measure, if she refused to sleep with him.
I don’t understand how Mormons can be so gullible, and in believing all of it, how they can believe a deity that threatens women for refusing to sleep with a sexual predator can be a deity they want to worship. It makes me sad to think about.
Ready Player One.
I laughed my ass off starting on like page five. It was such a hate read, total hail corporate nostalgia bait slop. Never took the coworker who recommended it serious again.
I was in a horrible spot mourning for a close relative who had just hanged himself. I made the mistake of posting on Facebook and a friend from high school recommended “12 Rules for Life, an antidote to chaos”.
I was not in a good space and didn’t even look at the author before ordering it. When it arrived a few days later I only had to read the first page before realizing I’d been had. Jordan fucking Peterson. What a pile of shit that guy is.
The DaVinci Code
I have now!
I noped out about page 3 where the author wrote ‘world famous symbologist.’
I knew there was no such word,
I managed one page and gave up. Dreadful stuff.
I read it and then the other three that were out at the time (Digital Fortress, Angels and Demons I think and something else I can’t remember) because I was morbidly curious. Four physical books. Apart from the general awfulness Brown tried to cover up with frenetic pacing, the biggest thing I noticed was that even though there were four books, there were effectively only two stories, just repeated with different character names.
Ha ha, amazing! I salute your fortitude in getting through them all 😁
I threw it across the room after 5 pages. Utter crap.
I bought the illustrated version in high school because I was taking an art history class and liked looking at the pretty paintings. The story itself did not leave any impression on me lol
The wheel Of time series. I got through the first 2 books before realising that I disliked every character. Also every female character was written so poorly it made me want to “Tug on my braid and stamp my foot”
Did you at least lament tugging your braids wistfully? :)
Don’t make me box your ear!
The first book I really enjoyed. The second was good. It started sliding downhill quickly from there… So much stuff needed to be either cut or at least re-written! His wife was his editor. She was a professional, but I feel like she didn’t have the heart to be tough on him. Or possibly he felt he didn’t have listen to her like he would an editor he wasnt married to… Could have been a great series with another draft or two. One of the rare instances of the movie versions being better than the books.
I loved Wheel of Time for the world building and the background mythology. I did trudge though till Jordan’s last book and I have not returned to it. The only character I liked at all was Mat. It just seemed like a long D&D game that got a little out of hand.
Anything and everything written by Ayn Rand.
The 3 Body Problem. It’s trash and I’ll die on that hill.
Haha that trilogy might be my favorite of all time but I also TOTALLY get that take. I’m just a big fucking sucker for the second and third books as they get increasingly ridiculous.
If the author totally doubles down on ludicrous, maybe it’s worth a go! I only barely got through the first book.
I almost stopped after the first book, so I can understand your view.
But compared to the second and third, it’s basically just a boring opening chapter
2 and 3 get weird and wild
Might be worth giving it another try
Totally worth it to read the second and third. The first book almost feels unrelated but it’s got some crucial context that gets built on to the extreme later Easily my top 5 sci-fi
I didn’t even make it through the first few chapters, Chinese writing style is just terribly convoluted and full of unnecessary pathos. Reminded me of some early 1700s literature from Britain, like Robinson Crusoe.
Related:
The tencent tv adaptation was boring as hell lol, couldn’t get past like episode 8/30 as a native Mandarin speaker.
The netflix adaptation was far more enjoyable.
Also tencent cut out the cultural revolution scene from the book… boo… governments really stifles creativity.
The netflix series was one of the best science fiction shows I’ve seen, it was very intelligent. I’m sad so many people thought it was slow and boring, it had real moments of humanity and awe and horror. I guess if you don’t understand a lot of the concepts and scope and scale of the ideas being portrayed it may seem as convoluted and hand-wavy as any other science fiction that doesn’t make an effort.
Yeah the Netflix show was a good watch, agree. Didn’t even try the tencent one, I saw it coming…
But ‘Robinson Crusoe’ is good. For a solid couple months after finishing it, I was still daydreaming about some kinda survival shelter-building game set on a tropical island — only a mobile one, because I didn’t want to be perched at the desktop more than necessary.
Have you read the original? It’s half book, half bible study. There are modern copies with most of the religious context removed or shortened which are great.
I need to recheck exactly how ‘unabridged’ my audiobook was (I typically search for a while to make sure I’m getting the whole package). At least, I’m vaguely certain it wasn’t modernized regarding the language, since I would hope English from 1719 is fairly understandable — but yeah, it’s quite ornate. I might’ve blacked out the religious parts for their small relevance to the adventure part.
I can see that. I definitely gave it a huge benefit of the doubt, as it was the first post-revolution Chinese fiction-cum-political commentary I ever read. In retrospect I feel like the point of the book was the commentary and the story was just some kind of allegory that didn’t resonate as an American.
Yeah agree. I was living in China when it was recommended to me since it was super popular with the locals, but really couldn’t get through.
I did enjoy the Western series though despite the mixed reviews, they reduced all the political clutter to the bare minimum to provide historical context, so maybe that’s something to check out instead.
You just don’t get 11 dimensional particle physics. I was actually into it up until that point. As soon as they pulled that shit, I would have quit but wanted to finish for our book club discussion.
Coincidentally, eleven dimensions is how many there are in the M-theory, which is a unified variant of the different versions of the string theory, which in turn is a ‘theory of everything’ that marries gravity to quantum physics. Alas, to my knowledge, string theories don’t make new predictions that could be tested and potentially falsified, so there’s no way to know if they’re actually true.
Probably not a coincidence
LOL until they tried to explain to me that humanoid people just randomly rolled up like parchment and got carried around until things cooled down a bit, I was like, “OK I’ll keep an open mind to this weird political story.” And then when they figured out logic gates but only with 5th century hoards with flags, I just mentally noped out. I did finish the first book but I had regrets.
Humanoid didn’t roll up, that was just inside the game. The aliens weren’t humanoids
Humanoid didn’t roll up, that was just inside the game. The aliens weren’t humanoids
If that’s the case, that would A) have been explained in book 2 or 3 which I didn’t read, and/or B) conflict with clips I’ve seen from the show which showed thousands of them in a field waving flags just like from the book. Either way, it sounded stupid. Also, if they had interstellar spacecraft, why did they need post-revolutionary Chinese people to tell them “hey come here!!” before just leaving their fucked up system and find somewhere else to live?
I love you friend, but there is just so much wrong with 3 body problem.
That’s fine, I’m not saying you should like it, I just want to explain it. The clips are from inside the game, and I thought they figured out aliens were not humanoid during the first book, but that was just in passing.
The Dark Forest book talks about how every civilization in the universe is trying to hide from each other, and when Earth sent that signal in the first book, everybody noticed Earth exists, and it was just a matter of time until some more powerful civilization would try to take advantage.
I didn’t read books 2 or 3 either, and just limped to the end of book 1, but they do make it quite clear that the things depicted in the game are meant to be strange but not totally alien to the players. that’s why the leader was some ancient well know Chinese figure from folklore, despite that not being the actual name of the alien
figuring out binary logic wasn’t with flags, it explained in the book that in reality they reflected light with their bodies, but that’s super alien to humans so they used flags as an equivalent in the game
I agree though that the science and logic don’t follow with their decision making regarding earth. you could argue that with this godlike AI why didn’t they just go to the nearest uninhabited livable world instead of earth, and they kinda addressed it by explaining that the trisolarians (which is a way better name than the san-ti, Netflix) were scared of humanity so want to squash us before we can become another interstellar superpower
but I don’t buy it. I’m watching through the netflix adaptation now and I’m already disappointed in it. better in some ways for sure, but also presents its own brand new problems.
it’s a real shame, honestly, because the history of an alien civilization evolving on a planet in an unstable orbit of a three-body star system sounds really interesting, but the book cares less about world building than it does about political allegory 🤷
Thanks for your take on this! So much better than “you should watch it” or whatever. I’m going to give it a shot just so I can have an honest opinion.
My great great aunt made me read the Bible so I’d be a good little Christian. Read it got the privileges for it, sucked right ass. My only conclusion is that I liked Samson and that most Christians are hypocritical asshats. But what was I expecting my great great aunt thought Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia were evil because they had magic.
Also if anyone is curious how well the good Christian aspect faired now that I’m 26 and not 8. Well hark to the ancestors, the spirits, and the gods, I’ll burn every last mega church to the ground and send them to their god to face a second judgement not my own.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The author is over a billion in debt. Just constantly leveraging assets in a never-ending chain of debt.
