Re: The three body problem
For me, the 3 body problem was a good introduction to Chinese culture and history, rather than good SF.
The characters seem to shout rhetoric at each other a _lot_. It seems to be the only form of debate and discussion between characters who have wildly clashing view points. You're given some of the historical context of that from the cultural revolution and its impact, but I can't help but think that the revolution was itself a symptom rather than a cause. Humans can be more alien than we think possible, and culture could be the most significant difference between us.
From an SF/cool stuff point of view, it has some nice ideas in there, but suffered from trying to explain too much.
But to me the best of science fiction tries to uncover the truth about ourselves. Perhaps 3BP problem does that, but the people it describes are so different from the people I know, I can't tell.
(as a side note, the VR sections are very woolly, but I thought that was OK, it ignored the detail, to get to the meat of what the author was trying to get across. Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash was deliberately woolly (e.g. about things like UI), but that was a successful book.)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
