Also, "The Dark Forest" could've been shortened to a chapter if Ye Wenjie could have been bothered to just tell Luo Ji what she meant, saving a couple hundred years, hundreds of trillions of dollars, and untold human suffering in wasted efforts.

The last was a very different book than the first.

I also enjoyed Project Hail Mary, but I think the sci-fi carries it. The dialogue gets pretty tropey, but I was geeking out so I didn't let it bother me.

I think three factors are at play (though not necessarily all three in every case):

1 - Some sci fi fans care very little about some things I care about a great deal (quality of prose or dialog, characters, that sort of thing) so will judge “great” a book, movie, or show that’s not just mediocre, but terrible at those things, because those readers/viewers aren’t tuned-in to those qualities.

2 - Many sci fi fans tend to over-praise works that aren’t bad, but also aren’t very impressive. I dunno if this is due to a low rate of really good sci fi creation, or what.

3 - Some genre fans don’t seem to read much outside their preferred genre, and may even hold one or another kind (I’ve seen multiple causes) of grudge against e.g. capital-L Literature, all with predictable results when they judge and communicate about works of their preferred genre.

(Clearly there may be some causal overlap between these, but I do think each likely occurs on its own, at least sometimes)

Fantasy can also be rough when it comes to separating wheat from chaff based on fan “takes”, but sci fi seems to have it the worst, for whatever reason.

The first book is more akin to universal literature than strictly sci-fi. It literally opens with scenes from the Cultural Revolution. It's a slow burn that gradually touches on science subjects to eventually throw all the fiction into the reader's face. It has one of the best endings you'll find in sci-fi.

It's a great book especially for begginers of the genre.

So much for an accurate summary.

Trying to explain and explore concepts where the Characters are just talking carriers of ideas. It's b Not everybody's cup of tea but I loved it.

Anything else?

They are good, the themes are fascinating (and I actually disagree with many of it's viewpoints, but still love the books) and the scenarios are really well written with it sounding too wild and crazy but once you learn more about what is happening it makes sense. The alien world is like something out of Stapledons Star Maker.

I'm very picky about scifi, but this is highly recommended.

A civilization that can unwrap protons and build machines that violate energy conservation inside of them wouldn't need to care about taking over other species as basically all the material and energy of any solar system, regardless of whether it had life in it or not, would be available to them. And if you could build such objects you could probably find a better way to destroy our enemies than fiddling with their particle accelerators.

The Dark Forest idea is also very dumb. The universe is so stupidly big that going out of your way to destroy other lifeforms, especially if you are a technologically advanced species, is a huge waste of resources for no gain whatsoever. Furthermore, even in a hostile universe there is much to be gained from alliances, especially for intelligent lifeforms for whom the idea of a "civilization" is not tightly coupled to a specific biological underpinning.

I'm not saying a book couldn't be written with these premises. Obviously fiction can go all sorts of places. I just found the presentation of these ideas highly implausible in this text.