Answering some of the repeat objections to my Three Body Problem video

Answering some of the repeat objections to my Three Body Problem video

This Is Clickbait — there’s a huge amount of uncritical coverage of 3BP, very few people have taken the time to question the pro-authoritarian stance of the book. I think the gushing essays and videos saying “this is how hard SF should be” are actually where the clickbait is happening.

Liu Cixin Can’t Speak Freely — I would be more willing to give LC the benefit of the doubt if his responses in interview hadn’t been so explicity anti-Muslim, and if they weren’t mirrored in 3BP itself. I don’t see any reason to believe that LC is not what he presents himself as, a right wing nationalist who supports the violence against Uyghur Muslims.

But The War On Terror — I never supported the Western hysterical response to terrorism either, and I don’t give any time or attention to the chunk of the scifi community that went hard right in the 00s. But a major difference is that I could publish any number of denunciations of post 9/11 politics without consequence, in contrast I had to think for a week about whether to publish one mild criticism of Chinese cultural product, and the very realistic possibilities of facing direct consequences for doing so.