Incidentally, this book seems to have some sort of cult critical status; I personally found it very poorly written, despite the original ideas in the plot.
I hope Netflix are able to turn it into something much better in their translation to the screen.
Edit: be more concise
But the storytelling just falls flat in books 2 and 3, with the overlong story-within-a-story and the needless romance plot. The... relativistic stuff (lets call it that to avoid spoilers) at the end didn't do anything for me at all, and just felt tacked on to wrap up storylines i didnt care about in the first place.
Could have been 50% shorter imo.
And I'd also argue that while the dark forest theory is a possibility it tells me more about the author and their culture than an actual plausible reality. As much as humans have been completely horrible to one another in several times of history, it was always because there was "something for us" and there was never a complete wipe out of other groups just because.
But yes, apart from that, the writing is poor, the plot holes abound. Sure, the story has several interesting plot points but it doesn't hold together. And the 2nd book is the worse in my opinion (translation probably didn't help)
Netflix has some fine series, I'm sure it's perfectly capable of doing a good job with good source material; and hopefully capable of being transformative when the source quality is more mixed.
Hence, it was poorly translated. Which is a different problem.
To be fair, I also thought that the translation was terrible. The essence of the work gets lost in translation. But the ideas inside it, were gold, and quite creative.
I jest, sure, but that bitter mental taste in my brain still remains.
As far as I can tell, there is a movie by Yoozoo that was finished in 2015 but never released: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(film)
There is a Chinese produced series made by Tencent that (I think) is still in production: https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/entertainment/china-t...
And there is also an animated series by Bilibili that is scheduled to come out in 2021: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-11/18/c_138564215.htm
Is the Netflix version additional, or a replacement for one of these?
Besides, why would the Chinese government go down that route when they already have the power to censor and direct the production?
While there are direct references to the CR in the first few chapters, the real cleverness is the indirect approach and the (traditional) use of SF to critique the present society. In the book, advanced higher-dimensional aliens have invaded earth .. with a pair of subatomic particles. Since these are under their full control, they are able to warp reality in higher-order physics experiments to prevent humans ever learning certain things.
The parallel with the CR and Maoism (or indeed post-Bernays propaganda states) in general is obvious - the ability to finely control what information someone receives, especially at critical moments, is the ability to control what they think and know.
Edit: a scene where someone comes out of an obervatory or what was it.....
edit 2: why is this being downvoted.... i wrote an observation, didnt offend anybody, what??
