Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem

[mmcirvin]

I just finished this book, which was a bestseller in China and recently won the Hugo for Best Novel (in a year somewhat marred by the Sad/Rabid Puppy mess, though this book was not on the Puppy slate). I don't have a lot to add to James Nicoll's review, which I largely agree with, except to say that even the more "modern" elements of the book read

Comments

[markgritter]

It's not a 3-body problem! Three suns plus one planet = 4-body problem! *sigh*

[mmcirvin]

I was wondering when somebody would mention that.

(I suppose you could argue that the fourth body is small enough that we can neglect it in modeling the interactions of the stars, and treat it as a body in a varying background potential... but if they're truly chaotic, I suppose that is not true.)

The complaint that bothers me more (and that Nick Alcock is currently echoing over on my Google+ post about this) is that the Alpha/Proxima Centauri system, while it has three stars, just isn't anything like that.