ekZeppNetflix’s 3 Body Problem Is a Grandiose, Compelling Sci-Fi Yarn You Don’t Want to Miss
TroyAnyone who has read the books want to chime in? I read the books and they had a “painting in a museum” type quality to them, where each chapter was a well described static scene. Fun concepts (in particular, the Dark Forest concept), but really dry prose…
dariusj18I am personally wondering how they will pull it off. My guess is that the story/plot/pacing will be based on the book, but I’m sure they’ll add in more characters and drama. Probably heavily rearrange the order too.
entropicdriftOh I hope they don’t rearrange the order. That first book’s timeline-hopping narration was fantastic.
I haven’t read the other two, tbf
SzethFriendOfNimiThey’re pretty good. The quality of the writing, for me as an English speaker, was in the translation work by Ken Liu who did a phenomenal job.
I can’t imagine it’s easy to convey idioms/ideas that native speakers take for granted in a concise way.
I think he didn’t do the second book or third and it shows. Still good but more stilted.
All that is to say that the incongruity and style may be a side effect of the translation process itself.
NielsBohronI think there are some editions of the second book done by Ken Liu, aren’t there? I haven’t read it yet, but I got a copy from a used book shop, and remember thinking that it was the same translator. At least, I thought I thought it was…now I’ve gotta go home and check
The ideas were mostly neat but I just couldn’t abide the plot being driven by absurdly stupid actions over and over.
I had the exact same impression. Excellent ideas but need more fleshing out
It’s just a massive time scale that it happens on, but yes that gives way to feeling like that. Read the first 2, put the last one down halfway through after it started shitting all over the first 2 books with a certain character’s actions.
The second book has a really cool few pages that helped visualize what experiencing the 4th dimension could be like.
The series is more interesting for its concepts than it is for plot or any one character imo
I put the third one down as well, it just got too far into horror. I didn’t really have a problem with any of the dialogue or character development and really liked the first two. I do tend to be very uncritical of novels in that respect though. I was just not at a time in my life where I wanted to read horror in my leisure time. I went from that to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series and was ever so delighted.
I read a lot of SF and I really enjoyed it because of the ideas and scope of the story. The ending is really lovely and unique, but getting there can be a little rough. I think the format of a TV series is the perfect way to retell this story.
Ex NummisOn one hand, it’s the freaking 3 body problem.
On the other, it’s Netflix🤮🤮
MimicJaracting as a strong comeback for Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss.
No thank you.
I’ve heard great things about this story, but I’m not watching something run by these loons.
If it’s a one and done season, I’ll watch it once it’s done. If it’s going to take multiple seasons, I’ll watch it when it’s done. It’s Netflix, so they won’t finish it.
It’s based on book one of a trilogy.
Spunky MonkeyWell, if they just stick to adapting the books (and to my knowledge the story is finished) I’m OK with it. With GoT the problem was mostly when the source material was over, till then they did a good job adapting the story.
I agree, if they’re good at one thing it’s adaptations of existing stories. They botched the last season of GoT, but at least they wrote something in that time. GRRM still hasn’t gotten that far
GRRM has probably written and rewritten The Winds of Winter a dozen times at this point. I bet the word count is higher than everything he wrote for the rest of the series combined, if you count everything written and deleted.
Honestly, with his process we’re lucky we saw A Dance of Dragons at all.
And it’s still unpublished 13 years later. So why does everyone think D&D could have done half as much in a year and a half’s time?
The problem with GoT is the same as with all productions where they constantly escalate with very little character building. There's nowhere to go, so inevitably when they do try and tie all things together there's nothing of substance and it's just a huge letdown.
RBGJust pirate it. And if you are paying for Netflix already it doesn’t matter if you watch it or not, you already paid.
It’s not a matter of pirating or not, it’s a matter of quality.
Eh, even when pirating, you don’t want to get invested into a story for them to completely ruin it in a few seasons. For how good the early seasons of game of thrones are, I can’t rewatch them because of season 8.
That’s why I say you should always watch only the first season, of any series. You’ll see a lot more series and you’ll never be disappointed.
Except when the season ends with a massive cliffhanger, which they all do.
Still have to invest time and emotion into watching it. Money isn’t the only metric
Hurculina Drubmanthey do perfectly fine when they are adapting existing material. it’s when you ask them to write their own story that they can’t handle it. the first four seasons of Game of Thrones were fucking exceptional. I have no idea how you turn this book into a movie though
Over its eight-episode run
It’s a series AFAIK.
I do agree they did a solid job adapting things, and I would hope the collective slap from the failure that was the final seasons of Game of Thrones would humble them.
I’m not writing the series off completely, I’m just not willing to give it a shot until after a thorough review and clear ending.
Unlike Game of Thrones, the source material for this is finished. Game of Thrones went to shit once they ran out of source material.
Yeah I think you hit on the issue with your last sentence- a story that’s so nonlinear, idea focused, and time-spanning, I don’t trust them to adapt it and keep the nuance.
SoleInvictusI had the same reaction. George R.R. Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, Scott Lynch, and Brandon Sanderson have me spooked.
Brandon Sanderson is a machine. Nothing like the others
It’s about the frequency of Stormlight Archives releases. Last I checked, he stated he had over a dozen Cosmere novels to release before the next. If he gets hit by a truck, that’s the end of it.
Yeah but that applies to every author
A dozen cosmere novels is what, four years of writing for him?
Of all those people, Sanderson shouldn’t have you spooked at all. As long as he doesn’t die, he will finish what he starts, I guarantee it.
Hell, he picked up and finished the massive Wheel of Time series for Robert Jordan.
Yeah where is thorn of emberlain? What’s the story with lynch?
Apparently he has crippling anxiety. I get it and, out of everyone I’ve listed, I’m very okay with him and Sanderson. I’m just wary of getting invested in unfinished series. Lynch only has the Gentleman Bastards series, which I fell in love with. Sanderson has so many literary irons in the fire that he’s going to have gobs of unfinished business if something happens to him or he pulls a GRRM and just fucks off one day.
bfg9kOh those fuck boys are involved? Hard pass
lmao is this post advertising something made by Dave and Dave? hard pass…
I knew they were involved, but I was surprised to see their name dropped in the article. I assumed they would try to downplay their involvement so I checked the article to be sure.
I appreciate the honesty, but no thank you.
The main trailer has “from the creators of Game of Thrones” so yeah they’re doubling down on the D&D.
I meannnn. They had to finish an unfinished story, and they def fucked it up. But they also made some of the best television I’ve seen S1-5 based off GRRMs work. I’m not giving them a pass but holy fuck that gamble of him having an ending by S9 wasn’t like out of the realm of possibilities, I kinda also blame GRRM.
That being said I’m definitely waiting for large scale reviews and friend suggestions on this one. The trailer did look promising though.
It’s fair for GRRM to share some of the blame, but any Internet commenter, who can’t write for shit (see me), could have written a better ending.
To me it seemed like they were bored and wanted to move on. They had Star Wars/Disney lined up. They had Netflix (possibly this thing) lined up. Conceptually I get it. They’d worked on Game of Thrones for years, it was time to move on.
But they fucked up bad. Real bad.
Obviously I hope they’ve learned and are better now, but I’m not betting on it.
And the Three Body series is finished as far as I know.
I mean, that ending had to have been the final ending right?
I mean, he could pretty easily continue it. It’d just move to higher dimensional viewpoints. Or become Flatworld.
It ends with the universe rebooting so…
Yes, with humans walking into the new universe, after the novels established that aliens had been eradicating dimensions from reality as a form of WMD.
Spoilers!
Unfortunately there’s no way to actually predict the Three Body Problem.
Ohhh I see what you did there.
Get your sophons out of my life!
To be fair, the dramatic nosedive in quality of GoT happened when they ran out of source material and had to wing it.
3-body problem is a finished trilogy, so it could all have the quality of the first seasons of GoT.
Minor spoilers ahead.
I have no clue what this show will be like.
I read the trilogy and I’m not really sure what it will translate to the screen very well. The story is absolutely massive and spans from beginning in the Chinese cultural revolution and ends at the literal end of time.
That being said, it is probably my favorite and what I consider the best sci-fi trilogy out there.
Incredibly interesting concepts are explored and it also has a really interesting way of telling the story. It’s not just about one guy saving the whole universe. It catalogs all of civilization’s attempts at coming together and protecting humanity from an alien threat. And it also goes into all of the issues that humanity runs into while trying to work together.
It’s a really fantastic series and I would highly recommend it to just about anyone with an intellectual interest in humanity’s future.
The series was a really interesting exercise in not giving the protagonists anything like a fair fight. Like, the level of hopelessness is impressive. It made me realize almost every other story I’ve ever seen is like children’s material compared to this, in terms of hand-holding the audience and making sure they’re safe.
Adrian Tchaikovsky. Three books starting with “Children Of Time.” After centuries of collapse after meltdown, Earth’s last gast is an attempt to terraform dozens of exoplanets. The books do a great job of describing non-Human races
BizzleChildren of Stuff is incredible, I didn’t expect a whole lot but I was blown away. Very cool story.
I think the first book is easy enough.
I haven’t heard great things about the story, quite the contrary. Combined with these two dumbos behind it I have no hopes for this to be good. I’ll still watch it, because it’s sci-fi, though.
Well I read the book, and I want to say I loved it. But 90 percent of the book is buildup, focusing on the Chinese social revolution. It’s equal parts tragic, confusing and horrifying. I mean, it’s a human story, but it’s not scifi and it’s honestly hard to get through. But then the last two chapters have some fantastic scifi, some of the coolest ideas I’ve seen in fact!
But I’m not sure it’s worth it. I kind of want to recommend reading just the last three chapters or something.
In contrast, The Expanse is a fantastic book series (and tv show) and that’s a fantastic scifi story all the way through for like 6 books.
What about the last 3?
But this article is saying great things about the story…