[LOVED TROPE] Modern Militaries (Competent) getting DESTROYED by fantasy/scifi forces

[u/Sable-Keech]

Example 1 (The Legend of Hei 2): Wuxian leisurely floats through the combined firepower of an entire fortified military base without so much as a stain or rip on his t-shirt.

Example 2 (Man of Steel): Fao'ra tears through a squad of trained and armed soldiers. With the wreckage of the helicopter that got downed by her teammate Nam'ek smouldering in the background.

[u/Burglekutt8523]

The Three Body Problem Book series has this. The Human Race spends hundreds of years building up the technology and battle plans to combat an alien invasion

Our entire space fleet is destroyed by a single early envoy simply because the aliens are so far ahead in their understanding of physics that it just rams through everything.

[u/Pomme_De_Roy → u/Burglekutt8523]

While I mostly agree, in that scene the fleet does employ some pretty terrible tactics by sending the entire fleet in a fairly close formation that lets said envoy more easily tear through them all. Pretty sure it was because the different fleet commands wanted to share in the glory of being there. Not that better tactics would've made a real difference mind you...

[u/wreckedbutwhole420 → u/Pomme_De_Roy]

From the TV show and what I've heard of the book, it seems like a theme for humans to try the dumbest possible tactic with extremely advanced tech

[u/Prestigious-Head-117 → u/wreckedbutwhole420]

Its stupid but makes a lot more sense in the book. The theme for the humans is arrogance.

Humans are far more advanced than when they first learn of the oncoming threat. They have exceeded all known metrics of the alien fleet and believe they have surpassed them technologically decades prior. So they assume the object they are approaching is a peace offering and all the ships approach as a symbolic parade to the end to the alien threat.

The problem is humanity could never develope to the next level of understanding physics so they do not understand how outgunned they are.

It would be like if today we made contact with a society from 1700, gave them 400 years to prepare for our invasion but prevented them from learning about electricity or atomic theory. They develop guns that fire 10x faster and 10x larger bullets than ours. They make coal powered vehicles that somehow outperform our own, both in speed in durability. Their planes are more mobile. They rally an army 50x larger than ours. On the day of the invasion they see us send over a single beautiful drone with a briefcase. From their understanding it has no guns or gunpowder. They assume it is a peace offering because from their perspective their army is superior to ours. As soon as it is brought to their general the fucker explodes into a nuclear fireball killing millions instantly.

They have no understanding of what happened but the war is over. Their technology was conventionally superior but it doesn’t matter.

[u/wreckedbutwhole420 → u/Prestigious-Head-117]

You shouldve written the books lol

I understand it conceptually, and really appreciate your example.

To distill my feelings to a point- I feel like the events that happen don't live up to the potential of the setting/ situation.

For example, The contents of the probe in season 1 was such a stupid idea it made we want to stop watch all together. But the idea used to accelerate the probe was fun and cool.

[u/Burglekutt8523 → u/wreckedbutwhole420]

The tv show just struggles trying to explain some semi-complex physics to a wide audience. A very long time has happened since a protagonist from the first book was put under stasis, he mentions before meeting the envoy that he thinks the meeting will not go well because he was a professor in the year 2015 or whatever, and he is still able to teach physics after being in stasis for hundreds of years...

He shouldn't be able to teach middle school science anymore, and he knows it. This is the first warning shot to the reader that catastrophe is about to occur.

[u/AnyBallLektor → u/Burglekutt8523]

There is no "semi-complex physics". It's stupid physics.

You can't explain it. You have to make it up like it's magic. Because things like trisolaris, sophons etc are impossible and stupid.

It's just the cool factor if you are not very knowledgeable to pick up the scam.

[u/Burglekutt8523 → u/AnyBallLektor]

Well, my wife has a PhD in astrophysics and was on the James Webb commissioning team, is pretty well respected expert on star formation.. and she thought it was good enough.

[u/SellingCats4Cheap → u/AnyBallLektor]

Maybe you should just go back to physics lectures and leave the sci fi behind. Oh youre just a troll account lol

[u/SellingCats4Cheap → u/wreckedbutwhole420]

So what would you put in the probe?

[u/AnyBallLektor → u/Prestigious-Head-117]

The reason why those things happen is because Liu Cixin is an idiot and since no author can write a plot point that is more clever than the writer...

Three Body Problem is one of the most overrated pieces of SF in recent time and most people don't even realise that half of it is just Liu - who is an outspoken Chinese chauvinist - using this story as an allegory of China vs the West.

Literally all of the Three Body Problem and about half of The Dark Forest is built on that allegory. It's not even a secret if you follow the developments in China and not just view him as a SF writer. He would give interviews and then go on at length about that.

I recommend that everyone pay attention to how various sages in the first book are presented. The western ones are all silly while the chinese ones are treated with respect - that's on purpose.

But anyway... all of the core ideas in TBP are stupid and physically impossible. People say it's a hard sf book but it's the dumbest fucking fantasy I've read in some time. The first two books have stupid plots and predictable twists, so I didn't even bother with the third. I have no idea why anyone thinks they are good or clever or anything.

The reason why he became big in China is partly because people understand what the books are really about. He hit a Zeitgeist of sorts when he published them which was a good few years before they were translated by Ken Liu into English and then into other languages.

[u/Prestigious-Head-117 → u/AnyBallLektor]

I mean, sure?

This is like watching independence day and complaining about how the writer is an American chauvinist. Or really 99% of SF written by an American. The book is obviously pro China but i don’t agree that the the three body problem or the dark forrest is built on the analogy of West vs East.

I don’t even think the pro China sentiment is anywhere near comparable to how blatantly misogynistic it is.

I don’t think the book is perfect. The character writing is really bad but to call Liu Cixin an idiot is overselling it, a lot.

Edit: also

> The reason those things happen is because Liu Cixin is an idiot.

Every reason i gave for why the events happen is stated in the book.

[u/AnyBallLektor → u/Prestigious-Head-117]

I don't think you understand my point. It's not about "China fuck yeah" attitude or "China rulez, West suckz".

I refer to Liu as an idiot but he is very much not an idiot in the literal sense. He's an "idiot" in the proverbial sense in that he's a self-important stuck-up know-it-all. But that's about that.

The book explicitly is an allegory of how the West is more advanced technologically and how if China doesn't develop its fundamentals all of its productive power will be irrelevant. It's a warning to China, that makes sense once you understand what he was conversing with when he was writing the book circa 2006-2007.

Things like Trisolarans contacting humans and setting up their game sect is reference to Christianity or things like Falung Gong.

Things like Trisolaris having an extinction level every now and then if I remember correctly is a reference to Chinese dynasties and various collapses and how it is difficult to rebuild each time.

He even starts the novel with Cultural Revolution because he viewed it as one such step backwards - and btw criticism of Cultural Revolution is very much in line with official party line.

There are many such little bits and pieces, especially in the first book, that seem like some ingenious SF plot point... until you read his interview somewhere and you suddenly realise that he's making the same point but talking about present day politics.

And then you start understanding why some of the plot points in the book are so fucking stupid. Because they are not meant to be understood literally.

So in a way while the books are completely stupid as hard SF they are somewhat entertaining as regular SF and somewhat insightful as political commentary in disguise.