Me after hearing the recommendation and starting the book. Me after reading the book. Maybe I read it wrong, should have evaluated the book on a more meta level. Perhaps it was a commentary on the limits of print media, or the author’s own lack of context and each flaw was a way to break us out of our traditional media consumption stupor. But no… it was just bad.
Not recommended. It is a mediocre theory that seriously overfit data from the mid-90’s and has led to some really problematic ideas and policies since. For a much more nuanced perspective on the role of civilizations on the current state of global affairs, try World 3.0 by Pankaj Ghemawat.
This book seemed to be some combination of a 余华 novel about the cultural revolution, a fictionalized version of a Brian Greene book, and a Stephenson novel about some digital reality. I can’t say that it combines the best of those three authors, but as a fan of scifi, it is the most entertaining book I’ve read in Chinese so far. Some of the descriptions were a bit tedious, specifically the chapter when 三体 civilization creates a 智子: the first time around the result is a bunch of floating eyeballs in space, then a rainbow, then a sentient mirror that tried to destroy the planet, then a hyper-dimensional paired pseudo-AI capable of magic tricks on earth? This is probably a problem with my Chinese proficiency, but I was just confused. Still, I enjoyed the mildly technical descriptions, and the plot kept going with something of a scientific approach to the mysteries presented in the beginning. Perhaps most importantly, reading China-centric scifi is simply fascinating.
Great book, but the kindle version is a mess, and the organization seemed haphazard. Of course that comes with the territory for a book of such scope.
Suggested reading for Iraq familiarization for working at the U.S. Embassy. Interesting, but I quickly realized it had nothing to do with my job in Baghdad so didn’t finish it. Too bad.
This book definitely has a target audience - somebody who hasn’t read anything about theoretical physics, doesn’t want to think about it too hard, but at least wants to know what everybody is talking about when they say quantum mechanics, big bang, or general relativity. I was not a part of this audience. I’ve read a few pop-science books before, The Elegant Universe about 7 years ago, and From Eternity to Here a few months ago. I enjoyed Eternity to Here much more; it went in to better detail about the mechanics of the questions that the author was trying to answer. A Brief History of Time covers nearly all the same subjects, but in a more general and useless fashion. ...