The analogy with Ready Player One is apt. Both are things that my nerd friends raved about but I hated. Three-Body Problem had the excuse of being read (by me) in translation, though.
Another nerd disconnect was all the people who told me I just had to watch "For All Mankind", a hideous alt-future soap opera that nobody should waste their time watching.
I’ve found sci-fi recommendations, in particular, to be totally useless unless I have a very good sense of the taste of the recommender.
I think three factors are at play (though not necessarily all three in every case):
1 - Some sci fi fans care very little about some things I care about a great deal (quality of prose or dialog, characters, that sort of thing) so will judge “great” a book, movie, or show that’s not just mediocre, but terrible at those things, because those readers/viewers aren’t tuned-in to those qualities.
2 - Many sci fi fans tend to over-praise works that aren’t bad, but also aren’t very impressive. I dunno if this is due to a low rate of really good sci fi creation, or what.
3 - Some genre fans don’t seem to read much outside their preferred genre, and may even hold one or another kind (I’ve seen multiple causes) of grudge against e.g. capital-L Literature, all with predictable results when they judge and communicate about works of their preferred genre.
(Clearly there may be some causal overlap between these, but I do think each likely occurs on its own, at least sometimes)
Fantasy can also be rough when it comes to separating wheat from chaff based on fan “takes”, but sci fi seems to have it the worst, for whatever reason.
I agree. My reading journey has been from fantasy to sci fi and then to books that tip more towards literary fiction and interesting writing styles.
With sci fi, once you've read a lot of it there are tropes that so often get repeated it can be very predictable. The type of books I used to enjoy I now find boring, but that doesn't mean they are bad or not worthwhile.
I do not dismiss the writing styles that I no longer enjoy, and still recommend those books. By the same token I hope people who prefer the plainer style wouldn't dismiss books with more literary prose.
FWIW I consider myself a bit of a classic scifi nerd, but couldn't understand what's all the fuzz about both Ready Player One (stopped reading after 50 pages or so, since it didn't get any better) and the Three Body Problem (worked myself through the first book but there was absolutely nothing that would have stuck in my brain), and yes, in case of the latter it could just be a bad translation (I was reading the English version).
Another nerd disconnect was all the people who told me I just had to watch "For All Mankind", a hideous alt-future soap opera that nobody should waste their time watching.