In this first book of a hard SF trilogy, nanomaterials expert Wang Miao is recruited to help investigate the suicides of several prominent scientists. His inquiries lead him to a strange VR video game called Three-Body, in which the player is challenged to solve the mystery of why the game's simulated world keeps falling victim to unpredictable changes in climate that cause its civilizations to inevitably collapse. Interwoven with the book's near-future narrative is a story of the past, in which an astrophysicist who lost everything in Mao's Cultural Revolution is assigned to a secret military base that she comes to realize is dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. These two seemingly unrelated threads come together to reveal a multilayered conspiracy of world-ending stakes.

I had this on my TBR list for so long that I'd completely forgotten what it was about, and I think that worked out well for my experience of it. I never knew where it was going to go next, and I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. Liu has a flair for creating epic set pieces of jaw-dropping cinematic scope that nonetheless follow naturally from the speculative science. I consumed a lot of popular science media in the 2000s, specifically, so for me the science in this book felt... oddly nostalgic? Not that it's obsolete, necessarily, but the particular preoccupations of that era and what was cutting-edge are strongly represented here. It made me want to go read a Brian Greene book.

The translation by Ken Liu reads nicely and I appreciated the informative but not excessive footnotes helping with some points about Chinese culture and history. I love that they let him write an afterword about the translation process!

The book is definitely more interested in ideas than people, and it's particularly weak on female characters. I was not entirely surprised to hear that the Netflix adaptation makes some of the male characters women, including Wang Miao. (I guess it also changes the nationality of a lot of characters, which makes less sense to me since the Chinese setting seems crucial to the book's themes, but I haven't actually watched the adaptation so it's not for me to say how well it works.)

I do plan to continue with the trilogy, though I have a suspicion that it might turn out to be too pessimistic in its outlook on the future for my taste? But I guess it depends on where the story ends up. My library hold on the second book just came in.

Writers: Barbara and Karl Kesel

Pencils: Rob Liefeld

Inks: Karl Kesel

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Kestrel empowers a street punk to kill Hawk and Dove.

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Writer: Beau Smith

Pencils: Mitch Byrd

Inks: Dan Davis

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Zero Hour tie-in.

Getting super powers from drinking magic water isn’t enough, so now it is revealed Guy is actually half-alien.

Warning for blood.

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A low tide after work meant I headed down to Custom House. I sank more in the mud than I have before and left a big footprint and tottered about cautiously after that.

There were quite a lot of tourists about, as it's close to the Tower of London. I watched one man skip over the muddy patches with more ease than I did, while talking loudly on his phone.

I found little bits of Bellarmine jugs and some combware and Westerwald stoneware, and some colourful sherds.

I didn't pick up a vape that said “Lost Mary” on it, nor a large chunk of a cup or a saucer or something, but I almost did.

Low tide arrived and I was getting hungry so walked to Blackfriars, passing Queenhithe where there was a man on the foreshore and I watched as his foot plunged into the mud far deeper than mine had and he swore loudly and pulled his foot out, his shoe entirely covered in gloopy mud. The tide had come in far enough then that I wondered how he was going to get back to land, maybe over a fence or through the water.

Although I'd been to Greenwich before, I hadn't been there at low tide, so thought I'd try it.

I got to Greenwich and found a massive cruise ship, with people just getting off it and getting into tour groups.

The foreshore was also full of tourists but the tide was out enough to walk along and the next beaches were quieter and I felt calmer.

I picked up an earring, but not the sunglasses nor the high heeled shoe.

I saw a dead eel, which made me feel sad.

I walked past a pub and heard people laughing loudly.

I heard thunder but wasn't sure if it was actually an aeroplane from City Airport, but then the skies opened and the rain poured down and I got drenched as I headed back up to the town centre.

I found a sticker that said “Logan Maliepaard” on it and it seems a 5 year old with that name won an elephant art competition in South Africa a few years ago. Did this child visit London? Or another person with the same name.

I found another concrete cylinder to go with my other one.. another core sample from a bridge or once part of a signpost?

I found a bunch of crayons on the beach and sometimes I picked them up and then put them down again when I found more. There was a lot of light grey board (?) with a black covering that snapped in my hand. I picked some up to start with, but there was so much that I put it all down again.

I picked up a purple hand! I wonder whose hand it was.

I picked up a snapped part of keyring or something, which said “The Book of Mormon” on one side and “I believe” on the other side.

I picked up a piece of pipe that has “lwich” on it. Dulwich, perhaps?

There was a nice wavy piece of wood and a sherd that said “decor protect” on it. There was a flint that looked like an egg yolk when I picked it up but doesn't now it's dry.

There were some small red stones and sherds of different colours and patterns.

Writer: Steve Englehart

Pencils: Joe Staton

Inks: Bruce Patterson

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John Stewart's secret identity is revealed on live television.

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Happy birthday, emperorzombie!

1. Had a long day today with a lot of driving, but it was a good day. I made three store visits and they were all pleasant and not being made because of some stressfull issues that had to be addressed or anything like that. More of this, please.

2. While I was out, I had a bunch of delicious foods. The first store I went to has a little restaurant that sells freshly made sushi hand rolls and I got those for lunch, including their wagyu beef one, which is so good. Then when I went to the next store, there was a shop in the same shopping center that has mochi donuts and lattes and I got a sakura matcha latte and black sesame mochi donuts.

3. Carla went out shopping today and actually stopped at a different branch of the same mochi donut store and brought home donuts, so I can have more of them for dessert and for breakfast tomorrow!

4. This morning as I was about to leave for work I spotted this silly guy in the laundry.

The Voice is the Ventriloquist's Scarface - the Tower is Bledin Towers, a Gotham City apartment building.

Scarface's voice is guidance - he's a symbol under which some of " Bleedin' " Towers' residents've rallied, against the City's demolition plans. They've killed one Gotham cop and taken another hostage - Jim Gordon and others're outside while Batman's made his way in.

Issue #5 had Batman finding that the Ventriloquist wasn't from where Scarface was emanating - he was in the Tower, but his tongue was cut.

Someone else was speaking the gangster's words - not the Towers resident who was apparently his second, but that man's abused wife. She'd ended #5 killing her husband because Scarface told her to - and then turning to the hostage cop, who'd been restrained witness to the act.

#6 opened on Scarface's others rushing in: " What the hell happened here?! "

( She told them. )

We ended up doing another after work trip last night. It was very hot during the day, but had cooled off nicely by the time we got there (though still a bit muggy).

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Hi everyone!

We'd like to get your input on a suggestion we received after the previous round.

Our current rules allow participants to request/offer any combination of the seven permitted drabble types. This means that a participant could theoretically opt out of requesting or offering single drabbles (i.e., a drabble of exactly 100 words). In other words, participants could exclusively request longer drabble types if they wished.

We received feedback that it may be more in the spirit of the exchange if participants could not opt out of single drabbles. We think this makes sense, and have drafted the following rule change:


Under this new rule, you would still be able to request/offer the full range of drabble types we permit in this exchange—you would just not be able to opt out of single drabbles, specifically.


If you feel there are additional factors or perspectives we should consider, please do leave a comment below, email us, or leave a comment on the Mod Contact Post (where it will be automatically screened).

⌈ Secret Post #6761 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 06 secrets from Secret Submission Post #965.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Words and pencils: Alan Davis

Inks: Mark Farmer

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Brian in Wonderland.

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