The Three-Body Problem

Cixin Liu
Widely praised scifi novel and winner of the 2015 Hugo award. Added to the list after it was mentioned in a reddit post about how hunter aliens seek out civilisations that broadcast their presence, which sounded interesting.
==First read (late 2020)==
It was a very interesting book. Reading fiction by a Chinese author is a new experience, and its setting and characters were different to anything else I've read. I had a bit of a hard time understanding the context of the characters lives, as someone who isn't very knowledgeable (or interested, really) in history and sociology.
My main gripe, however, is that the whole book felt like reading an article about a historical situation and that ultimately there wasn't, really, any plot. It felt kinda like a prequel, I guess, in which the actual story is the thing which follows and this is just an expanded account of the background.
Also, the whole thing is called "The Three-Body Problem" when that element could literally be replaced by any random contrivance or, honestly, none at all. Do we need to know why the aliens want to conquer Earth?
Anyway, after a great deal of time reading the setup for the story, I shall now soldier on and read the next book which hopefully contains the actual story.
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Category:Science fiction books
Category:Hugo award winners
Category:Books read in 2020