Scott Shepard

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Scott is Currently Reading

Scott Shepard is currently reading

A Drop of Corruption (Shadow of the Leviathan, #2)

by Robert Jackson Bennett (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading, 2026, audiobook, authors-white-men, fantasy, library, series

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Jan 17, 2026 05:00AM

Scott Shepard is currently reading

The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)

by Liu Cixin (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: own, science-fiction, hugo-award-winners, aliens, 2017, series, authors-of-color, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in September 2017

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Scott Shepard said: " Did I read the same novel as everybody else or I was I given a deficient version? I struggled through this book. I rarely felt compelled to read it and never got fully engrossed in the story. The characters were strange and distant, the plot pretty s Did I read the same novel as everybody else or I was I given a deficient version? I struggled through this book. I rarely felt compelled to read it and never got fully engrossed in the story. The characters were strange and distant, the plot pretty straightforward but missing large chunks, and the writing incredibly terse and lacking emotion.

I imagine some of my discomfort comes from reading a translation. This is a Chinese work of science fiction, the first Chinese sci-fi to win the coveted Hugo Award, which is dominated by Western authors. The author Liu Cixin has won eight Chinese Hugos (or their version of) and has been the dominant force in Chinese sci-fi for quite some time. I enjoyed the worldly perspective, and loved the translators footnotes on culture that helped explain the references (to specific historical events during the Cultural Revolution, to Chinese scientists and authors, etc). However the character writing was just awful! Perhaps a Chinese audience expects differently from their authors, but I felt absolutely zero connection to any character. When a character was supposed to be distant Liu said, “He was very distant.” Or when they were overcome by emotion Liu would write, “She was suddenly overcome by emotion.” The old show-not-tell adage doesn’t seem to apply to this book.

This book has been heaped with praise. It won the Hugo, got nominated for the Nebula, and NPR picked it as the Best Book of the Year. Best Book of the Year?! What version did you read?! I really enjoyed the hard-physics aspect, but no more than I did Blindsight, Dark Matter, of The Gods Themselves, all of which were much better in my opinion.

I’ll continue with the series because I’m in it now and I already have the other two on my shelf, but I think The Body Problem doesn’t put a “new spin on an old genre” as the NYT said but rather just rehashes ideas in Chinese that have been put to bed by Arthur Clarke. It definitely has the feel of Childhood’s End if the aliens are sinister instead of benevolent. It might be more relevant to a Chinese reader because of it’s obvious metaphor for the industrialization and competition of Chinese Communism, but it didn’t hold my attention for very long. ...more "

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— Sep 12, 2017 03:12PM

Apr 08, 2019 02:22PM · see review