The Three-Body Problem

Cixin Liu

Bestselling Chinese Sci-Fi novel that was translated to English. Although it is sci-fi, I would probably say its primary genre is Mystery-Thriller based on how it reads. It just so happens that the mystery is sci-fi based. Beginning at the cultural revolution, we are introduced to a scientist and his family and a set of ethics/values that sets the stage for a conflict between a scientific worldview and a cultural/religious worldview. This feels like a common conflict and recalls the feeling of other Chinese cultural revolution or Soviet Marxist revolution story-lines. This setting provides the basis for decisions, planning and scheming around a first contact event with an alien (extra-solar) civilization. Liu does an excellent job of playing with both the psychology of humans knowing about alien civilization and the reality of physical interaction with that civilization. Overall, this is a fun exploration of competing worldview's and the implications of worldview on actions.

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The Martian

Andy Weir

This is straight up science fiction of the best sort. No dystopian messages or utopian hopes. It is near future, human space travel to Mars. We start with the third manned mission to Mars aborting after 6 days on planet due to a massive dust storm. During evacuation, Mark Watney (mechanical engineer/botanist) is injured, blown away, and then left for dead. This gets you through about page 3. The entire story is a survivalist thriller in an extreme environment. Watney is the ideal "think outside the box" engineer who refuses to believe that a problem exists that doesn't have a solution. His only task is to survive for around four years until the next manned mission arrives and can rescue him. This is a page turner novel, putting one extreme situation after another in front of the reader that you can't really believe, but need to see how he solves the problem. It is also fun to cut back to earth to see NASA, etc. working Apollo 13 style to try to solve problems from their end. If you want a feel good, hope for humanity, space thriller, this is it. Well done Weir. 
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behind the beautiful forevers

Katherine Boo

Narrative non-fiction. Boo spent about 5 years interviewing people and learning about life in a small slum called Annawadi, near the Mumbai airport. She follows several "characters" to explore what life is like in what she calls the undercity. Abdul is one of 9 siblings working in the recycle trade, Manju is the daughter of an aspiring slumlord and one of the few who is attending college. As these two lives intersect with the city around them, we discover just how small their world is as they rarely leave the area surrounding the airport. For most of the book, the fact that it read like a novel was distracting. I continuously wondered if it was actually true, how could Boo have known what characters where thinking or feeling. And as a novel, it wasn't really that engaging. Boo was restricted in her storytelling by only being able to attribute thoughts and feelings that were coming out of her research. Even with these literary limitations, I found the book fascinating, giving insight to Hindi-Muslim relations, corruption, politics, slum life, caste restrictions and hopes & expectations for a progressive life. For some reason, it also made me start to wonder about parallels between Indian poverty and US poverty. Are race and class issues in U.S. cities similar to the caste issues in India? From the perspective of the local poor, how big of an issue is government corruption? Are the hopes for upward mobility in the U.S. just as strong (and just as unrealistic) as described for the Mumbai slum? As a final note, I will also recommend as a companion Shantaram, which is the fictional story of life in Mumbai's underworld, with both books referencing some of the same landmarks and slum life descriptions.

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