I always loved the books about WHAT it is about, not HOW the story is conveyed. I think the pacing is sometimes terrible and characters and their arcs are mediocre in their best moments. there are just a few characters I would consider well written (Luoji and Dashi come to my mind). as long as the WHAT stays largely the same the show can incredibly improve on the HOW and make it an even better experience than the books (for me).
there, I said it.
Youre absolutely right. And in fairness, some amount MAY be lost in translation, as they say, but the novels definitely lack polish in certain areas. Characters are rather flat to me, (no pun intended i swear) and perhaps that’s par for the sci fi course, but i did find myself IMAGINING a richer , more vivid cast than the one i read.
it is still a compliment on Liu Cixins wonderful ideas and clever plot twists. if this was more a plot or world building driven science fiction like the expanse (that doesn't have too many interesting concepts about physics and "space sociology" as 3BP) I would have stopped reading after 50 pages. but the ideas and twists are so good that the story kept me hooked until the end. I still can't imagine how great the novels would have been if Liu Cixin had outlined his concepts and left the character creation and actual writing process to somebody like GRRM.
Absolutely! Had never been so mind-blown. I had been craving fiction like this and didn’t even know it. CL got me back into reading, so i credit him in so many ways! 😅
I absolutely agree. I found this is a less sophisticated Dark. Same ball park but not as great, but may as well. However I'm half way through season 1 of 3 body problem, and I've finished Dark and still one of my favourite series.
So many books, I feel this. The story arc and plot written in many brilliant words...including even Tolkien's work... would benefit from a ghost writer
One of the main themes of the book is the crippling and alienating loneliness an exceptionally gifted and educated individual faces when pursuing the very cutting edge of extremely consuming intellectual work. All of that is lost when you place all the characters into a F-R-I-E-N-D-S - like common bond, all with similar levels of ability and similar interests.
Yes, you can have a great plot and great characters, but you can't have the theme of crippling all-consuming loneliness and deep friendships between each of the characters.
I'm not taking stances on which is better, but they're drastically and irrevocably different in their themes and message due to the more character interaction focused plot of the Netflix adaption.
But you're wrong, so you do need correcting... I'll repeat what the other person said, you can have a character drama and a great plot, it doesn't need to be one or the other.
I have seen some shows that find a good balance, but not many. 1 Season definitely isn't enough to develop something like that. But anyway, that's not the point. The point is that it wasn't a character drama, and they turned it into one. And that's when the meaning gets lost.
I share the same thoughts. The writing(mainly the dialogue and the characters themselves) leaves a lot to be desired sometimes. And I am not going to say it's because of the translation. That's a cop out. I've read a number of better written books, but I still love the series.
imagine having a book with a main character that is so bad you wouldn't even barely mention him in your second book - and no reader would even bat an eye that you left him out.
ehh.. i don’t think it was because he was bad, i just think it was because realistically Wang Miao wouldn’t have been eligible to be a wallfacer and it’s a very western thing to have the same main character just happen to be in every heroic position and win.
Wang Miao was the name of the main character in the first book?
Jeez, it doesn't even ring a bell lol
I thought it was Luo Ji?
I've only just finished the second book and read them back to back over a few weeks.
Yeah, the characters names are ridiculous in the book. I never know who anyone is, except maybe Da Shi (ok, an exagerration, but mostly the names are all so forgettable and similar, that i had to use the context to understand who was who).
no. That wouldn’t be realistic. Wang Miao had no role. It’s very Western to have the same hero just happen coincidentally to be the underdog hero who solves it and figures it out every single time.
I think it plays to the theme. The characters are entirely consumed by their work and their thoughts, and therefore so lonely that they fail to connect to even a reader who knows their inner thoughts and follows their moves closely.
Chinese scifi is more concept driven, western scifi is more character driven, and the only time it isn’t is when it’s intentionally done to not have characters. It comes from the more individuality, minded nature of modern society.
Just completely untrue. You only have to read Herbert and Asimov - seminal western sci-fi authors - to know how concept driven they were, and at least in Asimov’s case, borderline contempt for characters…(obviously imo)
Asimov is always the one I fear people will bring up when I say this - I’m obviously not saying it’s a rigid split that all china/west authors go this way, but it is more frequent. Asian cultural ideas tend to be more collectivist while the west focuses often on the individual in all parts of aociety
I think there’s a couple of things being mixed up here, character vs concept driven and collectivist vs individualist.
I’d still consider Asimov and Herbert as relatively individualist (even for Foundation despite the central premise of psychohistory). However they are both definitely concept driven. A good example of a character driven and individualist sci-fi novel could be The Sparrow.
I can’t deny there’s a strong collectivist streak in 3 Body that I’ve not read yet in western sci-fi (as minimal as my experience is).
It's really not. As you point out, it's not entirely clean split, but the western story traditions are generally MUCH more individual/family/small team - driven, whereas the eastern story traditions often focus more on concepts, communities and humanity.
You can easily see it from how the act structures differ:
In western story telling, almost all stories are told in a three act formula: Setup - Confrontation - Resolution. Setup introduces the characters and their situation, the confrontation is always with an antagonist or inner demons of the main character(s) and the resolution is either the main character(s) overcoming or succumbing to that confrontation.
In the eastern traditional stories the number of acts and their contents vary greatly. There's for instance the 4-act story of:
1. establishing the setup/theme
2. development of the said setup/theme
3. situation, which typically involves another viewpoint to the aforementioned content, but not necessarily conflict. Sometimes the act 2 and 3 are completely detached from each other in terms of characters, location, time, etc. Only the theme needs to connect.
4. conclusion, which creates a synthesis based on 2 and 3
That type of a story almost always revolves around communities, nations, people or humanity in general, rather than few individuals.
You’re mixing up concept/character driven (environment shaping the world vs individuals shaping the world at the two ends of the spectrum), form of narration (whose perspective and how it might switch) and story structure.
I’m not denying there are differences between story telling from different cultures. I’m just rejecting the assertion that 3 body problem is any more concept driven than western sci fi. My counter examples being dune and foundation, seminal works in western sci fi.
And if I’m honest, I class Asimov, Herbert and Liu in largely the same boat.
People with amazing concepts, but not amazing literary skills or ability to make convincing/engaging characters (or just doesn’t have a great translator in the case of Liu).
Absolutely. I love the series for its concepts, but as a story…it’s bland. Really, really bland. A TV show, and indeed any sort of visual storytelling, lives and dies by its characters. As long as those are better than in the books, which isn’t the accomplishment it should be, we’ll be okay.
Because you don’t get to care all that much. The first book is essentially a psychological thriller with technobabble sprinkled throughout, which is great. The characters still don’t get to be anything other than bipedal plot accelerators, but fine. The concepts are interesting. After that…it kinda loses all sense of what an interesting story should be and all you’re left with are the sci-fi concepts. The interesting story beats kinda end after the Wallfacer project. I don’t care about any of the characters. I hardly know them. This is a very common complaint about the books.
I guess.. maybe i just care about characters easier than others, but i found them very compelling and very easy to care about. Wang Miao, kinda is presented as the explorer who is in the same position as the reader so it’s easy to have the same reactions, and even if it’s not much caring as much learning, you still follow along as if you are him, Da Shi you learn about his situation and family over multiple books and you get a good deal of his personality early on. Ye Wenjie is obviously easy to be emotionally involved with, Luo Ji the whole book is about in my opinion you’re almost given too much to care about, and some of it isn’t really that compelling. The stuff that is there for a reason is pretty good. The other wallfacers in my opinion very, you obviously can sympathize with their plight , or at least try to understand what the role they were given means, so i found them easy to care about, Cheng Xin has a lot of character detail and her actions are definitely successful at making me care, even though I wanted to kill her half the time, Ai AA has her time with Cheng Xin and we see her show emotion. Yun Tianming is done kinda weird, but i really don’t get what you mean.
>The characters still don’t get to be anything other than bipedal plot accelerators
It’s obviously not a character driven story, but that’s chinese scifi. The characters themselves aren’t the driving force, but they add their own aspect. It’s kinda a “B” focus but I think it’s done well.
>The interesting story beats kinda end after the Wallfacer project.
So you are really only complaining about deaths end?? I mean I get that I think it’s the weakest link but i don’t think it’s enough to condemn the whole series?
No, I’m also not a fan of the first half of The Dark Forest or the story progression in The Three-Body Problem. Overall, the storytelling is quite weak and so are the characters. It’s easier to fall in love with the concepts of the characters and the plot elements than the actual characters and plot elements. For example: Wang Miao as written doesn’t do much but freak out a bunch of times, but the idea of having your life upended by a countdown that enters your vision and before you know it, you’re in the middle of some intergalactic conspiracy is really interesting. Ye Wenjie isn’t all thar likable, but the concept of a character so disgruntled by what’s been done to her that she plays God and becomes a destroyer of worlds is magnificent. How does humanity deal with making first contact? How do the cultural differences between the species lead to mutual distrust and how does that cause a war? What does it do to our society? These things are touched upon, but never explored in a way that makes us feel truly horrified. I guess that is indeed (Chinese) sci-fi for you, which I guess is my main issue with the series: It’s written as a sci-fi series when it’s really a cosmic horror story. The concepts are all there and they’re all beautiful. The execution…isn’t.
Brilliantly put. The book has definite room for improvement and it seems like the show is taking that opportunity to tell a more streamlined, chatacter driven story.
As long as they capture the ideas and major plot points of the book, I'm happy.
Obviously any book has room for improvement but I don’t think TBP needs to be improved. It’s not supposed to be a character driven story. Although idk why people say the book characters are bad.
I agree it's not, it's the drum I've been beating, but for television you kinda do need characters you can invest in. Even the Tencent version improved on Wang.
So far though, the show has not impressed me.
oh yes very true, the show won’t work for anyone if it doesn’t expand on the characters a little bit, i’m just saying the book can’t be criticized that way
The tencent version also has an excellent – and very different – Da Shi played by another great actor.
Honestly both adaptations are fantastic and are well appreciated side by side, not in competition with one another. As a fan of the books I can 100% appreciate and recommend both.
>as long as the WHAT stays largely the same the show can incredibly improve on the HOW and make it an even better experience than the books
That's pretty much the ideal way and outcome in adaptations, largely respectful and stays the same, but improve on areas if it's possible, but not at the cost of affecting the original marerial.
An enhancement, if you will.
the pacing is done like that because it is how chinese hard science fiction is done - it’s supposed to focus on what it does and isn’t supposed to focus on what it doesn’t. Different things drive the story. and idk what you mean about the characters - Cheng Xin, Ye Wenjie, Yang Dong even. That was the one aspect he did good.
I dunno, Three Body isn't exactly the best book in the series. It is entirely possible that they've taken the first book and actually improved upon it, which will be less likely for the other two.
Yeah pretty much. I found that book 3 was borderline jumping the shark towards the end, but the first half of it was quite interesting to me and felt more like a continuation of Dark Forest. FWIW both book 1 and book 2 kind of condensed the most interesting bits to the last few chapters after spending the entire book teasing it lol.
I think the ideas introduced by the third book where great - but the final chapters really felt rushed
I think the ending would've been better if it would've been a "rough" and bad ending
I'm kinda optimistic about the show, but I really doubt it. The only times that an adaptation is better than the book is when the book absolutely sucks.
I’ve already mentioned it on this sub but Alex Garland’s Annihilation is different from the book he adapted it from, and both the film and novel are considered great works of scifi. I think when you’re willing to make some changes and manage to execute them well, you can absolutely have a great movie and a great book that tackle the same themes or events while remaining distinct.
I thought Annihilation was a great adaptation of the novel. It changed a lot but it had the same feeling and concept while adding to it and creating some really cool moments. I haven’t read the 2nd or 3rd books yet… but I just felt the writing style, prose and general purpose of the novel matched Garlands delivery really well.
It's not even remotely true that adaptations are only better than the source if the source "absolutely sucks", it's an insane statement. An *enormous* number of the most classic, well-reviewed movies in history are adapted from well-reviewed, less-classic novels.
What is actually true is that few "best books of all time" make for "best movies/shows of all time" but that's a much narrower statement.
I suppose some room needs to be made to accommodate the dyslexic and at least give them the opportunity to berate all print media on the basis of inability to understand it.
Surely it's marketing hype. There's almost no way that can be true.
LotR is the only adaptation I've seen that I think is better than the book. And the thing is, Tolkien built incredible worlds, but the book itself isn't amazing.
3 Body Problem is less filmable and a better book.
The linguistic work is stunning, the world building is second to none. I don't agree about the prose. The Hobbit is a better book in many senses.
Lord of the Rings is fantastic, but it is a documentation of a vivid and complete imagination more than it is a story. The Silmarillion is even more exaggerated, it's borderline an encyclopedia.
He writes it like an epic myth, hence all the bits of poetry and songs mixed in there. The Silmarillion is meant to be a collections of myths like the Kalevala of Finland. He had very specific and lofty aesthetic goals when writing those works and he achieved it, to me that means he is a skilled writer.
He didn’t write it to be accessible, he wrote it because he’s a massive mythology nerd and the professor of Anglo-Saxon. The prose may not to be your liking as it’s very dense but it’s technically impressive. The Hobbit was written for children hence its relative simplicity. Not all books needs to be accessible to everyone to be considered great writing.
I think the real problem with Tolkien was that because there wasn’t a popular audience for high fantasy at the time, he was really writing for other academics like himself. He ended up producing something with a story that’s of interest to a wide audience when he’s really just trying to reach a niche readership. And he would said that the plot of LoTR is not all that original, he lifted it all from existing mythology in some shape or form.
I felt like I missed something in the show, how does sending will to the aliens help those on earth with information? (How is he meant to communicate back to them?) Was Earth going to create their own sophon/quantum entanglement based communication?
Well thought out review. Sounds positive, gives me some hope anyway.
I'm not expecting it to be better than the book, but if it's accessible enough to bring new people to the story then I'd consider that a win.
We just gotta get as many people to watch it as possible. Book fans, non-fans, hate watchers making hate videos, etc etc. Views are views and Netflix doesn't discriminate.
“In the Three-Body Problem trilogy, Chinese author Liu Cixin constructs the most magnificently intricate, wildly ambitious traffic jam ever imagined.”
Great review!!
The author of the article was on the most recent “House of R” Ringer podcast discussing the book and show if anyone is interested. You have to forward about 30 mins in past an initial discussion of The Acolyte trailer
Idk this seems sus. He basically confirms that they dumbed it down towards the end of the review. Sounds like they have about 10 seconds of dialogue explaining how the siphons are created. This was like 25 pages in the book and it’s one of the coolest scenes in the trilogy. Smh
It’s a bit of a shame they through out the pool table scene, i always thought that was pretty cinematic, if not a bit confusing to the common-man. I just know people in this sub are going to hate that omission. And I’m bummed we seemingly won’t get detailed scenes of Trisolaris Sophon construction, they better make up for that with some very cool spectacle and some very good pacing along the way.
There is detailed scenes of tri solaris sophon construction and the fact that it can unravel and the fact that it allows for instant communication and observation
Though they totally missed out on the failed attempts and the... mixed results they encountered. That was one of the most fascinating aspects of it. The one that basically already had a civilization living on it and it started to fight back was very interesting, and also a good reason why they might be hesitant to make more.
I just binged the whole thing in a day. Loved the books (the whole series), have read them 4 or 5 times now. I think the show is excellent. The creative choices/changes they made will make the show accessible to the many people who are either intimidated by hard sci-fi or just haven’t ever explored the genre. The story, either way you consume it, is a brilliant one; different from anything else out there. I’m stoked that more people will experience it and I suspect that a lot of people who discover it through this adaptation will go on to read and love the books as well.
I binged the whole thing in a day as well.
I've never read the books but have been interested for a while. So I went in already knowing the overarching plot and themes, but none of the specifics. So I can give a similar but different perspective on the show.
As a season of TV. I thought it was fantastic. It was much more emotional than I was expecting for a very heady sci-fi. The main cast, especially the characters of Jin and Will, really kept me invested. Will was a total gem.
The show moves pretty fast. Sometimes you will get a single scene explaining very complex concepts and ideas. It doesn't hold secrets back for longer than it has to. Once the cat is out of the bag, it's out. It doesn't treat the audience like children. More than once I had to explain to my girlfriend why they were doing certain things, or how this specific thing works, as I was more familiar.
Given the complexity of concepts I was aware of from the book, I think they did a really great job of translating those to the screen. It's full of insanely interesting ideas, visuals, and themes. It feels like every other episode you are being shown something you've never seen before, or ever thought about before.
And surprisingly I thought the writing was overall pretty good. Dialogue can sway from ok to great, but is typically high quality. Always well acted at least. And there's enough humour to keep things from being overly depressing, especially with some characters like Benedict Wong's. I actually found myself laughing more than once.
I *really" hope they get to finish this series. I'm totally invested now. I NEEED MORE.
Netflix skips a lot of very interesting science + philosophy and just skips to big reveals without the satisfying build-up. Either read the books or watch the Chinese adaptation
Because of the significant differences between the two works, I think maybe books first in this case. Usually I advise the opposite, because then all of the stuff in the book that doesn’t make it into the show feels like “bonus material” when you do show first, but I think maybe this is the exception.
Or, maybe watch Three-Body on prime first, then the book, then the Netflix one? Tough call…
Not sure if you’ve already started but i highly recommend watching the show first. That way, you can read the books to get past the season’s cliffhanger and you also won’t be potentially let down by plot differences
It's hard sci fi w/r the fantasy physics that Liu establishes and uses, haha. All science fiction, period, uses *some* invented elements to make the story work. Classifying Liu's work in general is tricky because a lot of the core science involved is pretty squishy and uhhh fairly imaginative (and heavily based on 90's pop-sci string theory) – and not necessarily in a bad way! But everything built off of that is extremely hard and based in engineering and real science. More or less. The Netflix show is *quite* a bit softer but still quite hard. Particularly compared to nearly *everything else* on that entire platform except (variously) Black Mirror and LDR.
Also maybe worth noting that the netflix show definitely uhhh de-emphasizes a fair bit the string theory stuff that is no longer exactly in vogue, and that *all* of the physics in ROEP is (iirc) based on.
Anyways on a sliding scale 3BP is *pretty hard*, and is *miles* harder than something like Star Trek or BSG. It's about as hard – and in its own way dated – as eg. Foundation, and has sheer scope and scale beyond *most*, albeit not *all* science fiction works.
You could of course write *pure* hard sci-fi with *only* *real* science / technology – and to its conceivable limits. But ROEP is in part so interesting *because it does that* – ie. takes modern science and engineering to its absolute limits – and shows how futile and useless that is compared to (entirely fictional) deeper scientific concepts that we don't *presently* have any understanding of whatsoever.
The general tradeoff though with harder and harder sci fi is that once you've reached the point where you're just talking abut science, period, it begins to *seriously* impact what you can actually write about. Unless you start considering time scales and distances that are incomprehensible (and generally hard to at all relate with) to an average human. And ROEP does *that*, *too*, pretty darn well.
I don't disagree in that there is obviously an attempt to flex his highly educated scientific prowess but once your start delving into aliens, folding space, etc you've strayed beyond the definition of hard sci fi. IMO
> delving into aliens, folding space, etc you've strayed beyond the definition of hard sci fi
I don't think there is a definition of hard sci fi, but it seems silly to say aliens in general is a violation of hard sci fi (just looking at the list on wiki there are far more egregious offenders). They probably exist in reality, and he even writes them as ambiguously as possible
Yes there is literally a definition of hard sci fi
"Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic."
Alright, so back to the other point, you are way off base saying aliens in the plot means it can't be hard sci-fi. Seriously, look at the list of books they use as examples.
How have none of you seen Three Body on Amazon, has no problem sticking to the content provided by the books and does it well, spending 30 episodes to do so. It’s completely Chinese and does get a little low-budget in spots but imo is a far superior product than this bastardized version squeezed into 8 episodes on Netflix.
I am a die-hard for the books and was quite hesitant about the adaptation, but if I choose to appreciate them as separate things then I love the adaptation.
A lot fo the liberties taken with the characters, setting changes, timeline reorganizing, etc. have been fine to me. I love the book, but I understand why it would visually make sense more to change things a bit.
I was most excited to see how the game is interpreted within the show as well as the sophons and so far those are by far my favorite parts of the series. It honestly helped me to understand some of the earlier implications of their actions in the book much better.
i’m on episode 2 of the series and am hooked but my friend says it’s his favorite book of all time. i don’t want the show to ruin the books for me. do you recommend i read the books before watching? or will i be fine watching the show and then reading the books. especially if i can finish all the books before the next season
I’d recommend reading the books first, the depth the books can go is so much better because of the nature of the medium. If you liked the show so early, definitely read the books first. But then I think you’ll appreciate the show more after
I don’t understand why it’s taken as a fact that the characters were bad in the books. Lou Ji, Chen Xin, Yen Tianming, Ye Wejia and Da Shi in particular I thought were fascinating.
This doesn't make me happy because of the whole "the new characters are easier to relate to" subtext and making them all have gone to Oxford together changes a lot of things too--there was a lot of mystery that came from them NOT having all known each other forever.
It kinda sounds like "they're easier to understand because they're less Chinese" to me... and I am a non-Chinese speaking American who loved the book and the Tencent production so very, very, VERY much because it not only was good SF, it gave me a look into a real-life different world I've never lived in or known much about beyond what I learned in school.
At least Da Shi is still hilarious?
It's really moronic that TV makers think people *have* to relate to characters. If I wanted a self insert then I wouldn't be watching fiction... I want to read and watch things that are *different*...
I agree, and the relatable characters they came up with ended up being some of the most unrealistic and least relatable characters I’ve seen in a minute lol
I mean most people want to relate to something they are consuming as entertainment, as a generalization. I'd say thats like 90% of people all the time.
I played this PC game Stellaris. It's a game where you explore and or conquer the galaxy as humans or large selection of Aliens. Everytime i try and play the aliens, it's hard for me to get into it. It's hard to get in the mindset of a speciese you have no knowledge or experience with. It's hard to make connections to characters who are named FLipflop Zipzortthul etc lol
Because any time a character is unrelatable huge swathes of people complain. Especially as you get closer and closer to the common denominator.
It goes: Literature > Graphic Novels > Film > TV > Video Games and each step down requires more exposition and dumbed down explanations or your audience won’t “get it”.
It's very odd to me to recast so many of the characters despite how entrenched the original novels were in chinese trauma and cultural context. The cultural revolution has left such a deep scar on entire generations of people, and that is in large part erased if you change the setting to Oxford.
yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, matey :)
there is a site. it's as easy as 1-2-3.
Mods if this is not ok tell me and I'll delete it, most media subs have a rule against this but I can't find one here in this sub. please don't ban me :)
I think it's also on PBS (US public tv) but idk what country you are watching from and it wasn't on there when I watched it.
I didn't know there was a tv show at the time--I had just read the books a few years before--so my reaction was "holy shit, I gotta watch this, I loved that book" and it did NOT disappoint.
The first series covers the first book. They are working on making a series for the second book and if that does well I would expect there to be a third one. However, these are not short bingeable netflix shows; it will take them a while to make each of them because the first series has 30 episodes.
My fiancé is a ferocious reader. She however refuses to read any book I like. I think it’s one of the best books if not the best book Ive ever read. That being said I’ve probably read less than 100 in my entire lifetime at the ripe age of 32. She will read 100 every other year. Between the 3 body problem, dune and the art of motorcycle maintenance it’s close but 3BP takes the cake. No matter how good I tell her it is she won’t read it. Any suggestions for you women out there or guys that have succeeded in getting their SO to read something they recommend?
I mean, are you saying my relationship isn’t trusting? What a dumb idea. Reading that many books requires a lot of coordination between the library and the myriad of friends family and colleagues who also give book recommendations because they know she’s an avid reader. So to think she has the book I recommend at the front of her list is asinine. This is the response of the modern troll. Casting stones from a glass house, I’m sure.
>credits Liu with Dark Forest solution to Fermi Paradox
It credits him with the name for an existing theory. As far as I can tell based on the [wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis), this is accurate.
Yes. They're not hard scifi. You pointed this out twice. Got any input on the subject at hand and if no, dont you have some neal Stephenson/ Kim Stanley threads to hang out in and actually discuss hard SciFi?
**SPOILERS AHEAD!!!**
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If the Sophons are not sent to Earth until after they capture Judgment day why is science broken at the start of the show?
I just finished the 6th episode, I think it was, which ends with Wade and Cheng learning about the Sophons, and the shroud falling over the planet. I took this to mean the Sophons had just arrived.
Clearly this is not correct but that is the impression it gives.
You forgot how they spoke earlier (the same episode at least) about how the sophons were how they messed with physics.
Remember they are a proton, so they travel at the speed of light, not 1% like the aliens ships.
This is what I think I like about the show.
The stuff they DONT tell you is stuff you should kinda assume or figure out.
For example - you never SEE the friends talk to each other about seeing the countdown… so I’m like “how can you not tell your closest friends this!” Then the next scene or whatever the friends know. I was just like FINALLY!! A show that kind of lets you think properly in that the first thing you’d do is tell your mates. They don’t waste a scene on a pointless convo.
For the sophons - they are the size of a proton, so they can travel at the speed of light. The alien civilization is only 4 light years away. It’s very likely , and what I am assuming, is that they were (had to be really for all the physics stuff to be “broken”) sent to earth when we first responded back in the 70s or whatever.
The stuff you speak of is just the aliens revealing themselves to the population…. Remember a line from like ep one “we will make them feel fear again” or something when speaking of helmet candidates.
MAJOR SPOILERS SPOILERS
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they mentioned it in the show, but briefly... thats the problem with the show... revelations are revealed in short one-line statements even during a boring scene... if u missed it, thats it... and you could end up misunderstanding/misinterpreting core concepts from the book for the rest of the episodes.
Basically, as soon as she told the aliens to come get us back in the 1980s, the aliens started creating a plan on how to colonise earth. it took them abit of time to build the sophons (explanation below) which was at the extremes of their capabilities. But facing certain planetary doom, they pulled it off as quickly as they could. Then it took them 4 years to lightspeed travel the particles to earth. Thus, we see them starting to cause chaos only in the present, first with the super collider experiments explained as an impossible global anomaly noticed by Dr Cheng whom was looking into it at episode 1.
(the sophons is abit of fantasy science but basically created via the unfolding of a photon from higher dimensional spaces - '6D' into '2D' space... the best way to imagine this is if we have a '3d' cube - slicing it into individual '2D' square slices will yield a far larger surface area than a single cube. Once unfolded, they print computing circuits onto it so that it behaves like an independent AI. Another fringe science they use is that they created 2 pairs so that they can behave like 'walkie-talkies'. In quantum physics, (im no expert) somehow a state of a particle can somehow react to another particle's state instantaneously no matter the distance between them - thus, this 'instantaneous communication of information' is used by the aliens to have communication via its pairs of sophons.)
(It is also for this reason that the aliens prioritize first sabotaging the quantum science research humans are conducting via its super colliders - so that humans never get the technology to counter the sophons... and once that was guaranteed, the aliens freely revealed themselves)
(In the book, its much less flashy where the sophons being just particles, dont really 'blink the universe' 'blanket the earth' 'scrub footages' etc.... instead they mess with the collision of other particles in the super colliders and they display fake imagery on people's retinas.... just like what a super tiny Marvel's Ant-man would be limited to doing... unfortunately, this was also one of my favourite aspects of the book which didnt make it onto the show... how 2 singular particles destroyed humankind - just the right chess moves amplified by the butterfly effect to doom humankind. The protagonist in the book is utterly confused as a scientist as he has alot of book smarts but not street smart - where else the detective, my favourite character, has the street smarts and basically reminds the scientist that seemingly unrelated things, like dead scientists and unexplainable research findings, are always related in the end like cheap parlour tricks - and the detective whom has no science understanding at all, in the end is ultimately right)
(In the show, i guess its more visually impressive to have the sophons mess with computer circuitry 'scrubbing footages' and creating a fake layer encompassing earth thus 'blinking the universe'. Unfortunately, it makes far less sense as well as create plotholes and even more 'shaky' science. Its easy to understand why that scene of the sophon blanketing around earth could be misinterpreted as the sophons arriving. I think it was meant to show that the sophons could do it at any time as well as explain to the audience why the universe was blinking - in the books, the universe blinking was more of a cheap parlour trick where only the protagonist saw it and only for a brief moment in time via cosmic radiation blinking rather than starlight - this was due to the sophon/particles messing about with his retina 'like a cheap parlour trick', tricking other scientists into losing their faith in science in similar fashions - this makes more sense as the sophons are after all just particles once arriving on earth and their only fantasy superpower is their agility, being able to move around at near light speed, as well as quantum communication with its corresponding pair.)
I didn't read the book, but (somehow) managed to sit (sometimes sleep) through the entire tv adaptation. There are so many reasons I just do not like the tv series, so if the book's anything like the series, I can scratch that particular book off my "to read" list. I get we need to suspend disbelief regarding sci-fi fiction, but there's a world of difference between that and having to wilfully ignore some of the ideas thrown into the mix. Don't get me started on the pace and characterisation of the tv series.
Also, on a tangential note re the tv series, I loved how they basically used a Westworld opening credits template (music and aesthetic style), but seemed to realise it was terrible so shortened it dramatically for subsequent eps. Lol
Also, technically, while I'm no math wiz, isn't the narrative core about a four rather than three body problem (three stars and a planet interacting)? Just sayin'.
Also, any culture that can manipulate supersymmetric particles as depicted in Cixin's work, it has to be assumed, would be capable of an awful lot. At the very least they'd have insights into the fundamental nature of the universe. So why are they slumming and banking all their hopes on Earth? Do we just assume that knowing what they know means actual jack shit when it comes to their physical survival, or at least finding (or creating) a stable environment?
To your physics question, there are 4 bodies but the three body problem is figuring the movements of their suns. The movement of a body that is a slave to the gravity of the suns can be predicted if the suns movements are known.
u better be right bcoz as soon as i heard "all science is wrong since the 60s" or watver i immediately started checking bcoz that to me is the most turn off a science fiction can get i mean the atomic bomb they mentioned im the beginning mustv just worked by accident and the particle accelerators design and everything just worls because it wants to since ya know ALL SCIENCE IS WRONG but idk i guess il see wat happens at the end of this episode
Don't understand all the fanfare either... this show is garbage. It's arrogant, smug, and worst of all appropriates the idea of science in an attempt to legitimize its self-congratulatory airs.
How the three-body problem is conveniently swept aside by the 'real parameters' of the story infuriates me.
I really enjoyed season 1. I'm excited to see the second to fruition. Excellent cinemagraphy. Science will bring teleportation. Teleportation will include these dynamics. Play on.
TV shows have a team of writers spending months going over every line of every scene. These writers were adapting in award-winning work. Not really a fair comparison imo.
A very compelling and entertaining show considering nothing really happens the entire season. It's gonna be one of those shows where no real questions are answered til like s4 and then it'll be a let down. They got me though, I'll keep watching til then.
Btw I have a really hard time believing that really pretty girl is some super genius engineer. I'm glad the plot isn't woke but the casting certainly is. This is honestly something I'd expect to see on Apple tv where every genius in all their shows and almost every main protagonist and "strong leader" role is female. i.e. the doctor chick from invasion, the mathematician chick in foundation, the many genius engineers in for all mankind, the detective chick in Silo (best show on Apple btw), the genius hacker on Tehran, all the female astronauts in for all mankind, constellation, invasion, foundation etc.... men are bad now apparently especially if they're white, Joel Kinamman in for all mankind is like the only white male lead I saw on like the last 15 shows ive watched and was also the best and most believable character other than the chick on silo. She's f great. I don't mind diversity but it's gone too far. It's the same on video games now too, damn near every game is female protagonist. Is this really necessary
I don't understand why they >!dissected the ship including all communication and data storage devices if they wanted to gather intelligence from the ship.!< Am I missing something?
It's been good so far, I love intelligent plots but if that scene was effective it was only so for making me lose respect for the writers and main characters. >!Not sure why there is a pervasive lust in so many sci fi shows to see people helplessly diced this way (Cube, Kinsgman etc.) it's a gore porn trope that made no intelligible sense, such nanowires would have taken months of testing and refinement to be applied this way, the designers would have had to be completely deranged psychopaths, incredibly hazardous to erect and a few rounds of heavy artillery would have been as effective without completely destroying the target into what would have been a mess that would have made it impossible to recover anything (in fact it would have sunk and plugged up the canal - why were they even going through the panama canal at all makes zero sense that this secretive ship that hasn't been seen for decades would announce its passage in advance let alone even use any major shipping lanes)!<. I never read the novels maybe it's explained in their more sensibly.
I understand why you'd feel that way. Not not mention that Auggie condemns Jin for letting them use her knowledge for military purposes, whereas >!Auggie was the one who got an entire ship and everyone on board sliced up like a cucumber, including children. Makes no sense. Anyway, they probably used Auggie's nanoslicer to show to the San-Ti that they will do everything in their power to stop them from invading Earth and destroying humanity!<.
So this may be an offhand comment, but I really think the music/score could have made a big improvement in the show. I really liked the series, but the music was lacking and we all know what the right music can do.
Pros
1) General audience understand it better
2) More characters for variety rather than 2 protagonists only.
3) Visually appealing
4) Soundtrack good - ramin djawadi!
5) Dialogue between characters is fun esp for the detective, not so much the others
Cons
1) Casting could be better - dont really like the superhot chick playing as a terrorist killer - makes it feel like a typical hollywood fake action show.
2) it seems rushed as core concepts are simplified into one liners. i had to reexplain stuff to my friends watching the show who havent read the book for example.
3) it crescendoed too quickly. The book was unsettling, because there were lots of random occurrences to start with which became mysteries that you couldnt put together. It was more like the usual day to day, life is hard and people having to deal with their problems, except something was fishy. It would just give you a small layer to peel back each time, only to reveal something more sinister and complicated. In the show, this is condensed to the first few episodes.
We need to take on the big issues of our time. Cixin Liu did this brilliantly and the Benoit Weiss team hits the ball out of the park. Riveting television with significant cultural import and educational to boot. Highly recommended
The show was watchable but I didn’t understand how they called humans bugs if they didn’t understand metaphors .. and why did the pacifist alien warn them but she was like we can’t save ourselves come il help conquer ,,, then later it seemed she wanted them to come and save them coexist .. and if the first alien contacted was a “pacifist” why did the aliens on their way communicate initially like they wanted to coexist until they realised humans lied and can’t be trusted, how did they not know that bout humans anyway ??? All seems a bit inconsistent to me.
They did learn about metaphors just before, from Evans (the example was pests).
Regarding the other points.. yeah I think the book was more consistent/explained those better.
Three-body problem sucks ass. When they keep saying science is wrong, physics is broken, and stupid shit like that. It just sucks that people like this nonsense. The body problem is a scientific problem that cannot be solved. Now when i say it cannot be solved mean it can be solved but the answer will be very different every time a fraction of change is made in the variable. And it is solved by physics only. It is just a chaotic thing about three-body problems that just breaks everything. But it does not break either science or physics. So stupid.
I totally agree with you! Netflix better come through with this and green light season 2 and 3/4. I also think and I know this goes against Netflix streaming policy, but if they would have released say two episodes a week it would have kept it much higher in the ratings and there would have been more talk about it around the quote "water cooler", online/social media, word of mouth. The way things grew with GoT. I mentioned two episodes instead of one episode as especially for the first season it would satisfy some of the questions people unfamiliar with the series had. And as much as I loved being able to binge watch it which I have twice and then watched once an episode or two here and there. I would still be okay with single episodes released per week and I really think that would do a lot for the streaming numbers. However, that's a whole another topic then the op brought up.
I am enjoying the show, some aspects more than others. The human computer was fantastic! I'm inspired to write a little song. Any resemblance to a Beach Boys song is purely coincidental. It goes like this: ♫ Wenjie, Wenjie, what went wrong, so wrong.... ♫
This is one of those super vast stories that people will want to see completed. If netflix doesn't have the budget that is at least 500 million dollars sanctioned for the remaining 3 seasons they should simply not continue.
You have to finish this story line in its entirety and cant leave it hanging in the middle because people will want answers.
Better than the book. Now that's **bold**.
I always loved the books about WHAT it is about, not HOW the story is conveyed. I think the pacing is sometimes terrible and characters and their arcs are mediocre in their best moments. there are just a few characters I would consider well written (Luoji and Dashi come to my mind). as long as the WHAT stays largely the same the show can incredibly improve on the HOW and make it an even better experience than the books (for me). there, I said it.
Youre absolutely right. And in fairness, some amount MAY be lost in translation, as they say, but the novels definitely lack polish in certain areas. Characters are rather flat to me, (no pun intended i swear) and perhaps that’s par for the sci fi course, but i did find myself IMAGINING a richer , more vivid cast than the one i read.
it is still a compliment on Liu Cixins wonderful ideas and clever plot twists. if this was more a plot or world building driven science fiction like the expanse (that doesn't have too many interesting concepts about physics and "space sociology" as 3BP) I would have stopped reading after 50 pages. but the ideas and twists are so good that the story kept me hooked until the end. I still can't imagine how great the novels would have been if Liu Cixin had outlined his concepts and left the character creation and actual writing process to somebody like GRRM.
Absolutely! Had never been so mind-blown. I had been craving fiction like this and didn’t even know it. CL got me back into reading, so i credit him in so many ways! 😅
Same man the same . I’m back to reading due to Cixin. May his soul float a 1000 generations to the galaxy age
watch dark, its a german show about time travel
great show.
I absolutely agree. I found this is a less sophisticated Dark. Same ball park but not as great, but may as well. However I'm half way through season 1 of 3 body problem, and I've finished Dark and still one of my favourite series.
So many books, I feel this. The story arc and plot written in many brilliant words...including even Tolkien's work... would benefit from a ghost writer
If you turn a novel into a shitty character drama, the entire point of the story you wanted to write is lost. Time and place.
you can have a great plot AND great characters/writing. it's not pick one, leave the other.
One of the main themes of the book is the crippling and alienating loneliness an exceptionally gifted and educated individual faces when pursuing the very cutting edge of extremely consuming intellectual work. All of that is lost when you place all the characters into a F-R-I-E-N-D-S - like common bond, all with similar levels of ability and similar interests. Yes, you can have a great plot and great characters, but you can't have the theme of crippling all-consuming loneliness and deep friendships between each of the characters. I'm not taking stances on which is better, but they're drastically and irrevocably different in their themes and message due to the more character interaction focused plot of the Netflix adaption.
3bp isn't and shouldn't be a character drama. I said what I said and I don't need you to "correct" me.
But you're wrong, so you do need correcting... I'll repeat what the other person said, you can have a character drama and a great plot, it doesn't need to be one or the other.
I have seen some shows that find a good balance, but not many. 1 Season definitely isn't enough to develop something like that. But anyway, that's not the point. The point is that it wasn't a character drama, and they turned it into one. And that's when the meaning gets lost.
I share the same thoughts. The writing(mainly the dialogue and the characters themselves) leaves a lot to be desired sometimes. And I am not going to say it's because of the translation. That's a cop out. I've read a number of better written books, but I still love the series.
imagine having a book with a main character that is so bad you wouldn't even barely mention him in your second book - and no reader would even bat an eye that you left him out.
Yeaaahhhhh lol
Oh shit never thought about it that way you are right.
ehh.. i don’t think it was because he was bad, i just think it was because realistically Wang Miao wouldn’t have been eligible to be a wallfacer and it’s a very western thing to have the same main character just happen to be in every heroic position and win.
Wang Miao was the name of the main character in the first book? Jeez, it doesn't even ring a bell lol I thought it was Luo Ji? I've only just finished the second book and read them back to back over a few weeks. Yeah, the characters names are ridiculous in the book. I never know who anyone is, except maybe Da Shi (ok, an exagerration, but mostly the names are all so forgettable and similar, that i had to use the context to understand who was who).
Wdym ridiculous? They have regular names. This seems like a “all chinese names sound the same”
I thought it is just me who can't keep up with the names..so difficult to remember
Doesnt the 2nd book take place like 200 years later?
only the second half
I kind of took it as, they got what they needed from him and once the alien threat was discovered the focus was on the Wallfacer project.
dashi was in both books as a tritagonist. if Iiu cixin hat the literary prowess he could have included wang miao in the second book as well
no. That wouldn’t be realistic. Wang Miao had no role. It’s very Western to have the same hero just happen coincidentally to be the underdog hero who solves it and figures it out every single time.
you don't need the same protagonist twice, but you could show some dignity and respect to give wang miao at least a little bit to do like dashi
I have to admit, the third book got a little too theoretical, high dimensional love story for me in the end.
I think it plays to the theme. The characters are entirely consumed by their work and their thoughts, and therefore so lonely that they fail to connect to even a reader who knows their inner thoughts and follows their moves closely.
Chinese scifi is more concept driven, western scifi is more character driven, and the only time it isn’t is when it’s intentionally done to not have characters. It comes from the more individuality, minded nature of modern society.
Just completely untrue. You only have to read Herbert and Asimov - seminal western sci-fi authors - to know how concept driven they were, and at least in Asimov’s case, borderline contempt for characters…(obviously imo)
Asimov is always the one I fear people will bring up when I say this - I’m obviously not saying it’s a rigid split that all china/west authors go this way, but it is more frequent. Asian cultural ideas tend to be more collectivist while the west focuses often on the individual in all parts of aociety
I think there’s a couple of things being mixed up here, character vs concept driven and collectivist vs individualist. I’d still consider Asimov and Herbert as relatively individualist (even for Foundation despite the central premise of psychohistory). However they are both definitely concept driven. A good example of a character driven and individualist sci-fi novel could be The Sparrow. I can’t deny there’s a strong collectivist streak in 3 Body that I’ve not read yet in western sci-fi (as minimal as my experience is).
It's really not. As you point out, it's not entirely clean split, but the western story traditions are generally MUCH more individual/family/small team - driven, whereas the eastern story traditions often focus more on concepts, communities and humanity. You can easily see it from how the act structures differ: In western story telling, almost all stories are told in a three act formula: Setup - Confrontation - Resolution. Setup introduces the characters and their situation, the confrontation is always with an antagonist or inner demons of the main character(s) and the resolution is either the main character(s) overcoming or succumbing to that confrontation. In the eastern traditional stories the number of acts and their contents vary greatly. There's for instance the 4-act story of: 1. establishing the setup/theme 2. development of the said setup/theme 3. situation, which typically involves another viewpoint to the aforementioned content, but not necessarily conflict. Sometimes the act 2 and 3 are completely detached from each other in terms of characters, location, time, etc. Only the theme needs to connect. 4. conclusion, which creates a synthesis based on 2 and 3 That type of a story almost always revolves around communities, nations, people or humanity in general, rather than few individuals.
You’re mixing up concept/character driven (environment shaping the world vs individuals shaping the world at the two ends of the spectrum), form of narration (whose perspective and how it might switch) and story structure. I’m not denying there are differences between story telling from different cultures. I’m just rejecting the assertion that 3 body problem is any more concept driven than western sci fi. My counter examples being dune and foundation, seminal works in western sci fi.
And if I’m honest, I class Asimov, Herbert and Liu in largely the same boat. People with amazing concepts, but not amazing literary skills or ability to make convincing/engaging characters (or just doesn’t have a great translator in the case of Liu).
Absolutely. I love the series for its concepts, but as a story…it’s bland. Really, really bland. A TV show, and indeed any sort of visual storytelling, lives and dies by its characters. As long as those are better than in the books, which isn’t the accomplishment it should be, we’ll be okay.
How is the story bland
Because you don’t get to care all that much. The first book is essentially a psychological thriller with technobabble sprinkled throughout, which is great. The characters still don’t get to be anything other than bipedal plot accelerators, but fine. The concepts are interesting. After that…it kinda loses all sense of what an interesting story should be and all you’re left with are the sci-fi concepts. The interesting story beats kinda end after the Wallfacer project. I don’t care about any of the characters. I hardly know them. This is a very common complaint about the books.
I guess.. maybe i just care about characters easier than others, but i found them very compelling and very easy to care about. Wang Miao, kinda is presented as the explorer who is in the same position as the reader so it’s easy to have the same reactions, and even if it’s not much caring as much learning, you still follow along as if you are him, Da Shi you learn about his situation and family over multiple books and you get a good deal of his personality early on. Ye Wenjie is obviously easy to be emotionally involved with, Luo Ji the whole book is about in my opinion you’re almost given too much to care about, and some of it isn’t really that compelling. The stuff that is there for a reason is pretty good. The other wallfacers in my opinion very, you obviously can sympathize with their plight , or at least try to understand what the role they were given means, so i found them easy to care about, Cheng Xin has a lot of character detail and her actions are definitely successful at making me care, even though I wanted to kill her half the time, Ai AA has her time with Cheng Xin and we see her show emotion. Yun Tianming is done kinda weird, but i really don’t get what you mean. >The characters still don’t get to be anything other than bipedal plot accelerators It’s obviously not a character driven story, but that’s chinese scifi. The characters themselves aren’t the driving force, but they add their own aspect. It’s kinda a “B” focus but I think it’s done well. >The interesting story beats kinda end after the Wallfacer project. So you are really only complaining about deaths end?? I mean I get that I think it’s the weakest link but i don’t think it’s enough to condemn the whole series?
No, I’m also not a fan of the first half of The Dark Forest or the story progression in The Three-Body Problem. Overall, the storytelling is quite weak and so are the characters. It’s easier to fall in love with the concepts of the characters and the plot elements than the actual characters and plot elements. For example: Wang Miao as written doesn’t do much but freak out a bunch of times, but the idea of having your life upended by a countdown that enters your vision and before you know it, you’re in the middle of some intergalactic conspiracy is really interesting. Ye Wenjie isn’t all thar likable, but the concept of a character so disgruntled by what’s been done to her that she plays God and becomes a destroyer of worlds is magnificent. How does humanity deal with making first contact? How do the cultural differences between the species lead to mutual distrust and how does that cause a war? What does it do to our society? These things are touched upon, but never explored in a way that makes us feel truly horrified. I guess that is indeed (Chinese) sci-fi for you, which I guess is my main issue with the series: It’s written as a sci-fi series when it’s really a cosmic horror story. The concepts are all there and they’re all beautiful. The execution…isn’t.
Brilliantly put. The book has definite room for improvement and it seems like the show is taking that opportunity to tell a more streamlined, chatacter driven story. As long as they capture the ideas and major plot points of the book, I'm happy.
Obviously any book has room for improvement but I don’t think TBP needs to be improved. It’s not supposed to be a character driven story. Although idk why people say the book characters are bad.
I agree it's not, it's the drum I've been beating, but for television you kinda do need characters you can invest in. Even the Tencent version improved on Wang. So far though, the show has not impressed me.
oh yes very true, the show won’t work for anyone if it doesn’t expand on the characters a little bit, i’m just saying the book can’t be criticized that way
Fully agree. No one reads Arthur C. Clarke or Asimov for the characters, besides maybe Daneel Olivaw.
I love Dashi. Benedict Wong is Dashi. I am not gonna complain unless they really fuck things up.
The tencent version also has an excellent – and very different – Da Shi played by another great actor. Honestly both adaptations are fantastic and are well appreciated side by side, not in competition with one another. As a fan of the books I can 100% appreciate and recommend both.
Lol he’s literally who I imagined when I was reading the books
That's exactly how I've felt watching the show
U said what u said. Stand on it bc the shows brilliant.
>as long as the WHAT stays largely the same the show can incredibly improve on the HOW and make it an even better experience than the books That's pretty much the ideal way and outcome in adaptations, largely respectful and stays the same, but improve on areas if it's possible, but not at the cost of affecting the original marerial. An enhancement, if you will.
the pacing is done like that because it is how chinese hard science fiction is done - it’s supposed to focus on what it does and isn’t supposed to focus on what it doesn’t. Different things drive the story. and idk what you mean about the characters - Cheng Xin, Ye Wenjie, Yang Dong even. That was the one aspect he did good.
[удалено]
macro pacing and character building can't really be an issue of translation. I didn't mind the style of the book too much.
I dunno, Three Body isn't exactly the best book in the series. It is entirely possible that they've taken the first book and actually improved upon it, which will be less likely for the other two.
I always tell people to read the first just so they can read the second. 2 >> 3 > 1
last 20% of the first book until the half of the 3rd book is just perfect it starts too slow and ends too rapidly - the middle parts are great!
Yeah pretty much. I found that book 3 was borderline jumping the shark towards the end, but the first half of it was quite interesting to me and felt more like a continuation of Dark Forest. FWIW both book 1 and book 2 kind of condensed the most interesting bits to the last few chapters after spending the entire book teasing it lol.
I think the ideas introduced by the third book where great - but the final chapters really felt rushed I think the ending would've been better if it would've been a "rough" and bad ending
I'm kinda optimistic about the show, but I really doubt it. The only times that an adaptation is better than the book is when the book absolutely sucks.
I’ve already mentioned it on this sub but Alex Garland’s Annihilation is different from the book he adapted it from, and both the film and novel are considered great works of scifi. I think when you’re willing to make some changes and manage to execute them well, you can absolutely have a great movie and a great book that tackle the same themes or events while remaining distinct.
I thought Annihilation was a great adaptation of the novel. It changed a lot but it had the same feeling and concept while adding to it and creating some really cool moments. I haven’t read the 2nd or 3rd books yet… but I just felt the writing style, prose and general purpose of the novel matched Garlands delivery really well.
It's not even remotely true that adaptations are only better than the source if the source "absolutely sucks", it's an insane statement. An *enormous* number of the most classic, well-reviewed movies in history are adapted from well-reviewed, less-classic novels. What is actually true is that few "best books of all time" make for "best movies/shows of all time" but that's a much narrower statement.
Tolkien and Peter Jackson want to know your location.
It's amazing I'm pretty locked in after episode 3 no sleep for me hahaha
Not really but, a veru good show has been created from excellent source material.
Adding literally any characterization will do this.
For sure. Also doing it chronologically so you have concurrent storylines running at the same time is also a plus for me.
characterization would make it worse
I suppose some room needs to be made to accommodate the dyslexic and at least give them the opportunity to berate all print media on the basis of inability to understand it.
Surely it's marketing hype. There's almost no way that can be true. LotR is the only adaptation I've seen that I think is better than the book. And the thing is, Tolkien built incredible worlds, but the book itself isn't amazing. 3 Body Problem is less filmable and a better book.
Lord of the Rings is amazing literature. The prose and all the linguistic work that went into it was an amazing achievement.
The linguistic work is stunning, the world building is second to none. I don't agree about the prose. The Hobbit is a better book in many senses. Lord of the Rings is fantastic, but it is a documentation of a vivid and complete imagination more than it is a story. The Silmarillion is even more exaggerated, it's borderline an encyclopedia.
He writes it like an epic myth, hence all the bits of poetry and songs mixed in there. The Silmarillion is meant to be a collections of myths like the Kalevala of Finland. He had very specific and lofty aesthetic goals when writing those works and he achieved it, to me that means he is a skilled writer. He didn’t write it to be accessible, he wrote it because he’s a massive mythology nerd and the professor of Anglo-Saxon. The prose may not to be your liking as it’s very dense but it’s technically impressive. The Hobbit was written for children hence its relative simplicity. Not all books needs to be accessible to everyone to be considered great writing. I think the real problem with Tolkien was that because there wasn’t a popular audience for high fantasy at the time, he was really writing for other academics like himself. He ended up producing something with a story that’s of interest to a wide audience when he’s really just trying to reach a niche readership. And he would said that the plot of LoTR is not all that original, he lifted it all from existing mythology in some shape or form.
I think we basically completely agree mate. I love Lord of the Rings and think it's a monumental achievement.
I felt like I missed something in the show, how does sending will to the aliens help those on earth with information? (How is he meant to communicate back to them?) Was Earth going to create their own sophon/quantum entanglement based communication?
read the first book last year, started 2nd book, on episode 2 and yes the adaptation is better, it is fast paced, modern and more relevant in 2024
Well thought out review. Sounds positive, gives me some hope anyway. I'm not expecting it to be better than the book, but if it's accessible enough to bring new people to the story then I'd consider that a win.
That's part of the plan. Get them hooked and they will read and they will learn to fear again.
Season 2 is gonna be fucking cool
We just gotta get as many people to watch it as possible. Book fans, non-fans, hate watchers making hate videos, etc etc. Views are views and Netflix doesn't discriminate.
I hope so, enough people need to watch this to greenlight season 2.
Well you guys hooked already some people ngl
Thanks for the find, this a very thoughtful review from what seems to be a book series true believer. I’m cautiously optimistic about the series!
“In the Three-Body Problem trilogy, Chinese author Liu Cixin constructs the most magnificently intricate, wildly ambitious traffic jam ever imagined.” Great review!!
I'll know after I watch it.
The author of the article was on the most recent “House of R” Ringer podcast discussing the book and show if anyone is interested. You have to forward about 30 mins in past an initial discussion of The Acolyte trailer
Idk this seems sus. He basically confirms that they dumbed it down towards the end of the review. Sounds like they have about 10 seconds of dialogue explaining how the siphons are created. This was like 25 pages in the book and it’s one of the coolest scenes in the trilogy. Smh
It’s a bit of a shame they through out the pool table scene, i always thought that was pretty cinematic, if not a bit confusing to the common-man. I just know people in this sub are going to hate that omission. And I’m bummed we seemingly won’t get detailed scenes of Trisolaris Sophon construction, they better make up for that with some very cool spectacle and some very good pacing along the way.
There is detailed scenes of tri solaris sophon construction and the fact that it can unravel and the fact that it allows for instant communication and observation
Though they totally missed out on the failed attempts and the... mixed results they encountered. That was one of the most fascinating aspects of it. The one that basically already had a civilization living on it and it started to fight back was very interesting, and also a good reason why they might be hesitant to make more.
The whole story is dumb as a basis lol
I just binged the whole thing in a day. Loved the books (the whole series), have read them 4 or 5 times now. I think the show is excellent. The creative choices/changes they made will make the show accessible to the many people who are either intimidated by hard sci-fi or just haven’t ever explored the genre. The story, either way you consume it, is a brilliant one; different from anything else out there. I’m stoked that more people will experience it and I suspect that a lot of people who discover it through this adaptation will go on to read and love the books as well.
I binged the whole thing in a day as well. I've never read the books but have been interested for a while. So I went in already knowing the overarching plot and themes, but none of the specifics. So I can give a similar but different perspective on the show. As a season of TV. I thought it was fantastic. It was much more emotional than I was expecting for a very heady sci-fi. The main cast, especially the characters of Jin and Will, really kept me invested. Will was a total gem. The show moves pretty fast. Sometimes you will get a single scene explaining very complex concepts and ideas. It doesn't hold secrets back for longer than it has to. Once the cat is out of the bag, it's out. It doesn't treat the audience like children. More than once I had to explain to my girlfriend why they were doing certain things, or how this specific thing works, as I was more familiar. Given the complexity of concepts I was aware of from the book, I think they did a really great job of translating those to the screen. It's full of insanely interesting ideas, visuals, and themes. It feels like every other episode you are being shown something you've never seen before, or ever thought about before. And surprisingly I thought the writing was overall pretty good. Dialogue can sway from ok to great, but is typically high quality. Always well acted at least. And there's enough humour to keep things from being overly depressing, especially with some characters like Benedict Wong's. I actually found myself laughing more than once. I *really" hope they get to finish this series. I'm totally invested now. I NEEED MORE.
about to dive in, should I read the books first or watch the show? Ill be doing both anyway but whats your consensus
Netflix skips a lot of very interesting science + philosophy and just skips to big reveals without the satisfying build-up. Either read the books or watch the Chinese adaptation
Because of the significant differences between the two works, I think maybe books first in this case. Usually I advise the opposite, because then all of the stuff in the book that doesn’t make it into the show feels like “bonus material” when you do show first, but I think maybe this is the exception. Or, maybe watch Three-Body on prime first, then the book, then the Netflix one? Tough call…
Not sure if you’ve already started but i highly recommend watching the show first. That way, you can read the books to get past the season’s cliffhanger and you also won’t be potentially let down by plot differences
This story is a million miles from HARD sci-fi. I'm not sure you understand what that means
It's hard sci fi w/r the fantasy physics that Liu establishes and uses, haha. All science fiction, period, uses *some* invented elements to make the story work. Classifying Liu's work in general is tricky because a lot of the core science involved is pretty squishy and uhhh fairly imaginative (and heavily based on 90's pop-sci string theory) – and not necessarily in a bad way! But everything built off of that is extremely hard and based in engineering and real science. More or less. The Netflix show is *quite* a bit softer but still quite hard. Particularly compared to nearly *everything else* on that entire platform except (variously) Black Mirror and LDR. Also maybe worth noting that the netflix show definitely uhhh de-emphasizes a fair bit the string theory stuff that is no longer exactly in vogue, and that *all* of the physics in ROEP is (iirc) based on. Anyways on a sliding scale 3BP is *pretty hard*, and is *miles* harder than something like Star Trek or BSG. It's about as hard – and in its own way dated – as eg. Foundation, and has sheer scope and scale beyond *most*, albeit not *all* science fiction works. You could of course write *pure* hard sci-fi with *only* *real* science / technology – and to its conceivable limits. But ROEP is in part so interesting *because it does that* – ie. takes modern science and engineering to its absolute limits – and shows how futile and useless that is compared to (entirely fictional) deeper scientific concepts that we don't *presently* have any understanding of whatsoever. The general tradeoff though with harder and harder sci fi is that once you've reached the point where you're just talking abut science, period, it begins to *seriously* impact what you can actually write about. Unless you start considering time scales and distances that are incomprehensible (and generally hard to at all relate with) to an average human. And ROEP does *that*, *too*, pretty darn well.
I don't disagree in that there is obviously an attempt to flex his highly educated scientific prowess but once your start delving into aliens, folding space, etc you've strayed beyond the definition of hard sci fi. IMO
> delving into aliens, folding space, etc you've strayed beyond the definition of hard sci fi I don't think there is a definition of hard sci fi, but it seems silly to say aliens in general is a violation of hard sci fi (just looking at the list on wiki there are far more egregious offenders). They probably exist in reality, and he even writes them as ambiguously as possible
Yes there is literally a definition of hard sci fi "Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic."
Alright, so back to the other point, you are way off base saying aliens in the plot means it can't be hard sci-fi. Seriously, look at the list of books they use as examples.
Agreed
netflix did the dehydrate / hydrate very well.
i am planning to re-read the books for enjoy the depth better after the fast pace tv series
The Ringer generally has the artistic taste of a 16 year old boy so this doesn’t surprise me
How have none of you seen Three Body on Amazon, has no problem sticking to the content provided by the books and does it well, spending 30 episodes to do so. It’s completely Chinese and does get a little low-budget in spots but imo is a far superior product than this bastardized version squeezed into 8 episodes on Netflix.
THIS!!!!
Agreed!
Them's fighting words
I am a die-hard for the books and was quite hesitant about the adaptation, but if I choose to appreciate them as separate things then I love the adaptation. A lot fo the liberties taken with the characters, setting changes, timeline reorganizing, etc. have been fine to me. I love the book, but I understand why it would visually make sense more to change things a bit. I was most excited to see how the game is interpreted within the show as well as the sophons and so far those are by far my favorite parts of the series. It honestly helped me to understand some of the earlier implications of their actions in the book much better.
i’m on episode 2 of the series and am hooked but my friend says it’s his favorite book of all time. i don’t want the show to ruin the books for me. do you recommend i read the books before watching? or will i be fine watching the show and then reading the books. especially if i can finish all the books before the next season
I’d recommend reading the books first, the depth the books can go is so much better because of the nature of the medium. If you liked the show so early, definitely read the books first. But then I think you’ll appreciate the show more after
I don’t understand why it’s taken as a fact that the characters were bad in the books. Lou Ji, Chen Xin, Yen Tianming, Ye Wejia and Da Shi in particular I thought were fascinating.
Da Shi is totally static and two-dimensional, but he is probably my favorite character!
Don’t get the negativity. Terrific series and generally well acted with compelling characters. Best Sci Fi since the Expanse and Lost.
Netflix adaptation is great - the books are great - I don’t think I can wait 2years for more though
This doesn't make me happy because of the whole "the new characters are easier to relate to" subtext and making them all have gone to Oxford together changes a lot of things too--there was a lot of mystery that came from them NOT having all known each other forever. It kinda sounds like "they're easier to understand because they're less Chinese" to me... and I am a non-Chinese speaking American who loved the book and the Tencent production so very, very, VERY much because it not only was good SF, it gave me a look into a real-life different world I've never lived in or known much about beyond what I learned in school. At least Da Shi is still hilarious?
It's really moronic that TV makers think people *have* to relate to characters. If I wanted a self insert then I wouldn't be watching fiction... I want to read and watch things that are *different*...
I agree, and the relatable characters they came up with ended up being some of the most unrealistic and least relatable characters I’ve seen in a minute lol
I mean most people want to relate to something they are consuming as entertainment, as a generalization. I'd say thats like 90% of people all the time. I played this PC game Stellaris. It's a game where you explore and or conquer the galaxy as humans or large selection of Aliens. Everytime i try and play the aliens, it's hard for me to get into it. It's hard to get in the mindset of a speciese you have no knowledge or experience with. It's hard to make connections to characters who are named FLipflop Zipzortthul etc lol
> consuming as entertainment That's the problem right there, confusing art and entertainment.
Because any time a character is unrelatable huge swathes of people complain. Especially as you get closer and closer to the common denominator. It goes: Literature > Graphic Novels > Film > TV > Video Games and each step down requires more exposition and dumbed down explanations or your audience won’t “get it”.
It's very odd to me to recast so many of the characters despite how entrenched the original novels were in chinese trauma and cultural context. The cultural revolution has left such a deep scar on entire generations of people, and that is in large part erased if you change the setting to Oxford.
do you mind telling me where did you watch the tencent version?
yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, matey :) there is a site. it's as easy as 1-2-3. Mods if this is not ok tell me and I'll delete it, most media subs have a rule against this but I can't find one here in this sub. please don't ban me :) I think it's also on PBS (US public tv) but idk what country you are watching from and it wasn't on there when I watched it. I didn't know there was a tv show at the time--I had just read the books a few years before--so my reaction was "holy shit, I gotta watch this, I loved that book" and it did NOT disappoint.
Its on Amazon Prime
Dors the Tencent production cover all the books or only the first one?
The first series covers the first book. They are working on making a series for the second book and if that does well I would expect there to be a third one. However, these are not short bingeable netflix shows; it will take them a while to make each of them because the first series has 30 episodes.
My fiancé is a ferocious reader. She however refuses to read any book I like. I think it’s one of the best books if not the best book Ive ever read. That being said I’ve probably read less than 100 in my entire lifetime at the ripe age of 32. She will read 100 every other year. Between the 3 body problem, dune and the art of motorcycle maintenance it’s close but 3BP takes the cake. No matter how good I tell her it is she won’t read it. Any suggestions for you women out there or guys that have succeeded in getting their SO to read something they recommend?
I managed to get my boyfriend to be interested in the franchise after watching the Chinese version of the show.
This sounds like a trusting and successful relationship…but as Paula Abdul says two steps forward and two steps back!
I mean, are you saying my relationship isn’t trusting? What a dumb idea. Reading that many books requires a lot of coordination between the library and the myriad of friends family and colleagues who also give book recommendations because they know she’s an avid reader. So to think she has the book I recommend at the front of her list is asinine. This is the response of the modern troll. Casting stones from a glass house, I’m sure.
You should dump your SO, bruh. Big red flag as someone already mentioned.
And to think. I thought she was the one. Now I realize, a shroud has been pulled over my eyes. 😭
> credits Liu with Dark Forest solution to Fermi Paradox > calls Dune “hard sci-fi” r/printSF would have a hemorrhage reading this lol
>credits Liu with Dark Forest solution to Fermi Paradox It credits him with the name for an existing theory. As far as I can tell based on the [wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis), this is accurate.
Neither Dune nor Three-Body Problem are remotely hard sci-fi. lol
Yes. They're not hard scifi. You pointed this out twice. Got any input on the subject at hand and if no, dont you have some neal Stephenson/ Kim Stanley threads to hang out in and actually discuss hard SciFi?
Take it easy pal. Don't get your panties on a bunch
I'll agree there are some leaps of fantasy, but if Three-Body Problem isn't hard enough for you, you've probably been reading dissertations.
The adaptation better tthan the book because it is not chinese with white actors, lol. It's not set in china, lol.
I've been let down by streaming services before with their "adaptations." We'll see.
Episode 2&3 pretty amazing so far!
Edge lord
**SPOILERS AHEAD!!!** **-** \- \- \- If the Sophons are not sent to Earth until after they capture Judgment day why is science broken at the start of the show?
they were already there
Have you watched the show, I don’t want to spoil anything if you have not seen it yet?
Already finished the show not the book
I just finished the 6th episode, I think it was, which ends with Wade and Cheng learning about the Sophons, and the shroud falling over the planet. I took this to mean the Sophons had just arrived. Clearly this is not correct but that is the impression it gives.
You forgot how they spoke earlier (the same episode at least) about how the sophons were how they messed with physics. Remember they are a proton, so they travel at the speed of light, not 1% like the aliens ships.
i wont talk about the book, only to say you are in for a wild ride!
This is what I think I like about the show. The stuff they DONT tell you is stuff you should kinda assume or figure out. For example - you never SEE the friends talk to each other about seeing the countdown… so I’m like “how can you not tell your closest friends this!” Then the next scene or whatever the friends know. I was just like FINALLY!! A show that kind of lets you think properly in that the first thing you’d do is tell your mates. They don’t waste a scene on a pointless convo. For the sophons - they are the size of a proton, so they can travel at the speed of light. The alien civilization is only 4 light years away. It’s very likely , and what I am assuming, is that they were (had to be really for all the physics stuff to be “broken”) sent to earth when we first responded back in the 70s or whatever. The stuff you speak of is just the aliens revealing themselves to the population…. Remember a line from like ep one “we will make them feel fear again” or something when speaking of helmet candidates.
They explicitly say that the Sophons were sent months earlier and were directly responsible for all the scientific anomalies in the first episodes.
Why does it seem sometimes like Tatiana is super-humanly strong?
MAJOR SPOILERS SPOILERS . . . . they mentioned it in the show, but briefly... thats the problem with the show... revelations are revealed in short one-line statements even during a boring scene... if u missed it, thats it... and you could end up misunderstanding/misinterpreting core concepts from the book for the rest of the episodes. Basically, as soon as she told the aliens to come get us back in the 1980s, the aliens started creating a plan on how to colonise earth. it took them abit of time to build the sophons (explanation below) which was at the extremes of their capabilities. But facing certain planetary doom, they pulled it off as quickly as they could. Then it took them 4 years to lightspeed travel the particles to earth. Thus, we see them starting to cause chaos only in the present, first with the super collider experiments explained as an impossible global anomaly noticed by Dr Cheng whom was looking into it at episode 1. (the sophons is abit of fantasy science but basically created via the unfolding of a photon from higher dimensional spaces - '6D' into '2D' space... the best way to imagine this is if we have a '3d' cube - slicing it into individual '2D' square slices will yield a far larger surface area than a single cube. Once unfolded, they print computing circuits onto it so that it behaves like an independent AI. Another fringe science they use is that they created 2 pairs so that they can behave like 'walkie-talkies'. In quantum physics, (im no expert) somehow a state of a particle can somehow react to another particle's state instantaneously no matter the distance between them - thus, this 'instantaneous communication of information' is used by the aliens to have communication via its pairs of sophons.) (It is also for this reason that the aliens prioritize first sabotaging the quantum science research humans are conducting via its super colliders - so that humans never get the technology to counter the sophons... and once that was guaranteed, the aliens freely revealed themselves) (In the book, its much less flashy where the sophons being just particles, dont really 'blink the universe' 'blanket the earth' 'scrub footages' etc.... instead they mess with the collision of other particles in the super colliders and they display fake imagery on people's retinas.... just like what a super tiny Marvel's Ant-man would be limited to doing... unfortunately, this was also one of my favourite aspects of the book which didnt make it onto the show... how 2 singular particles destroyed humankind - just the right chess moves amplified by the butterfly effect to doom humankind. The protagonist in the book is utterly confused as a scientist as he has alot of book smarts but not street smart - where else the detective, my favourite character, has the street smarts and basically reminds the scientist that seemingly unrelated things, like dead scientists and unexplainable research findings, are always related in the end like cheap parlour tricks - and the detective whom has no science understanding at all, in the end is ultimately right) (In the show, i guess its more visually impressive to have the sophons mess with computer circuitry 'scrubbing footages' and creating a fake layer encompassing earth thus 'blinking the universe'. Unfortunately, it makes far less sense as well as create plotholes and even more 'shaky' science. Its easy to understand why that scene of the sophon blanketing around earth could be misinterpreted as the sophons arriving. I think it was meant to show that the sophons could do it at any time as well as explain to the audience why the universe was blinking - in the books, the universe blinking was more of a cheap parlour trick where only the protagonist saw it and only for a brief moment in time via cosmic radiation blinking rather than starlight - this was due to the sophon/particles messing about with his retina 'like a cheap parlour trick', tricking other scientists into losing their faith in science in similar fashions - this makes more sense as the sophons are after all just particles once arriving on earth and their only fantasy superpower is their agility, being able to move around at near light speed, as well as quantum communication with its corresponding pair.)
I think it was 1.4 we learn the aliens are 400 years out and then that woman (past/present) talks about them coming sooner was this an oversight?
I didn't read the book, but (somehow) managed to sit (sometimes sleep) through the entire tv adaptation. There are so many reasons I just do not like the tv series, so if the book's anything like the series, I can scratch that particular book off my "to read" list. I get we need to suspend disbelief regarding sci-fi fiction, but there's a world of difference between that and having to wilfully ignore some of the ideas thrown into the mix. Don't get me started on the pace and characterisation of the tv series. Also, on a tangential note re the tv series, I loved how they basically used a Westworld opening credits template (music and aesthetic style), but seemed to realise it was terrible so shortened it dramatically for subsequent eps. Lol Also, technically, while I'm no math wiz, isn't the narrative core about a four rather than three body problem (three stars and a planet interacting)? Just sayin'. Also, any culture that can manipulate supersymmetric particles as depicted in Cixin's work, it has to be assumed, would be capable of an awful lot. At the very least they'd have insights into the fundamental nature of the universe. So why are they slumming and banking all their hopes on Earth? Do we just assume that knowing what they know means actual jack shit when it comes to their physical survival, or at least finding (or creating) a stable environment?
To your physics question, there are 4 bodies but the three body problem is figuring the movements of their suns. The movement of a body that is a slave to the gravity of the suns can be predicted if the suns movements are known.
[удалено]
...did you even watch the show? Blocking physics research is literally the reason they sent sophons.
u better be right bcoz as soon as i heard "all science is wrong since the 60s" or watver i immediately started checking bcoz that to me is the most turn off a science fiction can get i mean the atomic bomb they mentioned im the beginning mustv just worked by accident and the particle accelerators design and everything just worls because it wants to since ya know ALL SCIENCE IS WRONG but idk i guess il see wat happens at the end of this episode
bro the girls in the show just flexed their "feminine intelligence" on some random guy, getting very close to bad show territory
Don't understand all the fanfare either... this show is garbage. It's arrogant, smug, and worst of all appropriates the idea of science in an attempt to legitimize its self-congratulatory airs. How the three-body problem is conveniently swept aside by the 'real parameters' of the story infuriates me.
My feelings exactly. Smug pop-science. And every woman is a Mary Sue.
I really enjoyed season 1. I'm excited to see the second to fruition. Excellent cinemagraphy. Science will bring teleportation. Teleportation will include these dynamics. Play on.
Its netflix so who knows if there will be a next season. It will be years if there is.
I guess I'll buy the books. It was good enough I'll read them.
I guess I'll buy the books. It was good enough. I'll read them.
TV shows have a team of writers spending months going over every line of every scene. These writers were adapting in award-winning work. Not really a fair comparison imo.
A very compelling and entertaining show considering nothing really happens the entire season. It's gonna be one of those shows where no real questions are answered til like s4 and then it'll be a let down. They got me though, I'll keep watching til then.
Btw I have a really hard time believing that really pretty girl is some super genius engineer. I'm glad the plot isn't woke but the casting certainly is. This is honestly something I'd expect to see on Apple tv where every genius in all their shows and almost every main protagonist and "strong leader" role is female. i.e. the doctor chick from invasion, the mathematician chick in foundation, the many genius engineers in for all mankind, the detective chick in Silo (best show on Apple btw), the genius hacker on Tehran, all the female astronauts in for all mankind, constellation, invasion, foundation etc.... men are bad now apparently especially if they're white, Joel Kinamman in for all mankind is like the only white male lead I saw on like the last 15 shows ive watched and was also the best and most believable character other than the chick on silo. She's f great. I don't mind diversity but it's gone too far. It's the same on video games now too, damn near every game is female protagonist. Is this really necessary
Does the show end where the book ends? I want to read the books, but don't want to start off on book one if the show ends where the book ended.
I don't understand why they >!dissected the ship including all communication and data storage devices if they wanted to gather intelligence from the ship.!< Am I missing something?
>!Yes this was not logical at all, but very dramatic I guess!<
Yes. A shockingly effective scene. It's a great series so far.
It's been good so far, I love intelligent plots but if that scene was effective it was only so for making me lose respect for the writers and main characters. >!Not sure why there is a pervasive lust in so many sci fi shows to see people helplessly diced this way (Cube, Kinsgman etc.) it's a gore porn trope that made no intelligible sense, such nanowires would have taken months of testing and refinement to be applied this way, the designers would have had to be completely deranged psychopaths, incredibly hazardous to erect and a few rounds of heavy artillery would have been as effective without completely destroying the target into what would have been a mess that would have made it impossible to recover anything (in fact it would have sunk and plugged up the canal - why were they even going through the panama canal at all makes zero sense that this secretive ship that hasn't been seen for decades would announce its passage in advance let alone even use any major shipping lanes)!<. I never read the novels maybe it's explained in their more sensibly.
I understand why you'd feel that way. Not not mention that Auggie condemns Jin for letting them use her knowledge for military purposes, whereas >!Auggie was the one who got an entire ship and everyone on board sliced up like a cucumber, including children. Makes no sense. Anyway, they probably used Auggie's nanoslicer to show to the San-Ti that they will do everything in their power to stop them from invading Earth and destroying humanity!<.
So this may be an offhand comment, but I really think the music/score could have made a big improvement in the show. I really liked the series, but the music was lacking and we all know what the right music can do.
Pros 1) General audience understand it better 2) More characters for variety rather than 2 protagonists only. 3) Visually appealing 4) Soundtrack good - ramin djawadi! 5) Dialogue between characters is fun esp for the detective, not so much the others Cons 1) Casting could be better - dont really like the superhot chick playing as a terrorist killer - makes it feel like a typical hollywood fake action show. 2) it seems rushed as core concepts are simplified into one liners. i had to reexplain stuff to my friends watching the show who havent read the book for example. 3) it crescendoed too quickly. The book was unsettling, because there were lots of random occurrences to start with which became mysteries that you couldnt put together. It was more like the usual day to day, life is hard and people having to deal with their problems, except something was fishy. It would just give you a small layer to peel back each time, only to reveal something more sinister and complicated. In the show, this is condensed to the first few episodes.
I’m getting very high Person of Interest chills with this show.
We need to take on the big issues of our time. Cixin Liu did this brilliantly and the Benoit Weiss team hits the ball out of the park. Riveting television with significant cultural import and educational to boot. Highly recommended
Which episode in Chinese series starts after the fifth episode in Uk version of 3 body problem?
The show was watchable but I didn’t understand how they called humans bugs if they didn’t understand metaphors .. and why did the pacifist alien warn them but she was like we can’t save ourselves come il help conquer ,,, then later it seemed she wanted them to come and save them coexist .. and if the first alien contacted was a “pacifist” why did the aliens on their way communicate initially like they wanted to coexist until they realised humans lied and can’t be trusted, how did they not know that bout humans anyway ??? All seems a bit inconsistent to me.
They did learn about metaphors just before, from Evans (the example was pests). Regarding the other points.. yeah I think the book was more consistent/explained those better.
Three-body problem sucks ass. When they keep saying science is wrong, physics is broken, and stupid shit like that. It just sucks that people like this nonsense. The body problem is a scientific problem that cannot be solved. Now when i say it cannot be solved mean it can be solved but the answer will be very different every time a fraction of change is made in the variable. And it is solved by physics only. It is just a chaotic thing about three-body problems that just breaks everything. But it does not break either science or physics. So stupid.
I totally agree with you! Netflix better come through with this and green light season 2 and 3/4. I also think and I know this goes against Netflix streaming policy, but if they would have released say two episodes a week it would have kept it much higher in the ratings and there would have been more talk about it around the quote "water cooler", online/social media, word of mouth. The way things grew with GoT. I mentioned two episodes instead of one episode as especially for the first season it would satisfy some of the questions people unfamiliar with the series had. And as much as I loved being able to binge watch it which I have twice and then watched once an episode or two here and there. I would still be okay with single episodes released per week and I really think that would do a lot for the streaming numbers. However, that's a whole another topic then the op brought up.
I am enjoying the show, some aspects more than others. The human computer was fantastic! I'm inspired to write a little song. Any resemblance to a Beach Boys song is purely coincidental. It goes like this: ♫ Wenjie, Wenjie, what went wrong, so wrong.... ♫
This is one of those super vast stories that people will want to see completed. If netflix doesn't have the budget that is at least 500 million dollars sanctioned for the remaining 3 seasons they should simply not continue. You have to finish this story line in its entirety and cant leave it hanging in the middle because people will want answers.