I have been reading the English translations and the characters and especially their dialogues feel very fake. I do appreciate the hard science aspect of the books but the long monologues, kids speaking like middle-aged philosophers, and army personnel being one-dimensional macho men breaks the immersion for me. It has the depth of a 1980s low-budget thriller.
I don’t read a lot of hard science fiction or translations of Chinese books. I don’t know if this is genre-related.
How did I forget Dune?? I thought about how to answer your question for a day, then forgot half the answer.
Dune is absolutely great! The science is spot on, the writing sucks you in, the characters are so appealing, each with their motivation and ideologies. Everything is just amazing. It builds a whole galaxy by looking at only a handful if characters, all on the same small planet. It’s still revolutionary, in particular its focus on ecological terrorism is extremely modern.
Good to know! This is a favorite of mine as well.
It gets recommended a lot, but Red Mars has a lot if science content, especially geology-related, in case you haven’t read it yet.
I had never heard of it! And there is goes, on my reading list. Thanks! I have hardly read any geology focus scifi book yet… exciting!