re: The Three Body Problem or Red Rising for Next Book

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The Three-Body Problem all the way. Read both its sequels also. The third entry, Death's End, is one of the best sci-fi books I've read in years.

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Absolutely, you have to read all three. I really hate telling people to stick with a book, but you really have to stick with these books and just get through them. Some of the concepts that Liu Cixin came up with are simply mind blowing.

I've read a few "hard sci-fi" books - heavy on the technical side - The Martian, Seveneves, etc.. sometimes it can come across as mental masturbation. This is the first "hard sci-fi" series that I felt was truly innovative, and didn't rely on tropes.

Fans of Sci-Fi have to read this series because future authors will be riffing off of this work for years. Solar-Radio Astronomy, Sophons, Dark Forest Theory, Game Theory, Materials Sciences, etc... He really pushed the envelope.



Edit: I really enjoyed "The Martian" FWIW

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The Three-Body Problem all the way.

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Agreed. 5 years ago in this thread I wrote about Red Rising:

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For a light weight page turner it's very good, and that is fine.

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And I decided not to go any further, there are more interesting things to read. I finally got around to Three Body and am early into Death's End. I'm very impressed. It's the best fairly recent sci-fi I've read in a long time. I like the hard science (same reason I like Neal Stephenson) and the author takes it to interesting and unexpected places. It's not perfect, there are some things that I consider to be fairly large plot holes and sometimes the twist in the book has been obvious for a while. But overall it's still very good and thought provoking, and having the perspective of a Chinese author is interesting.