We Are Bugs in this thread for The Three-Body Problem 三体 and its various adaptations

I'm reading the first book and really dislike all these characters, especially the police dude. They keep referring to the aliens as "our Lord" and that is making my brain shut down.

Three episodes in and I actually kind of like this? I have some complaints, but I like the body horror aspect of the dehydration process and it's moving along surprisingly well (so far). Turns out John Bradley is pretty well cast as a rich man-baby.

yeah i'm enjoying it after the first couple of episodes. i was impressed by the dialog-free scene at the end of episode 2, which i thought was given appropriate weight despite it coming so early in the story relative to the novel

An executive who worked on the show was sentenced to death for fatally poisoning one of its producers.

The release of Netflix's series 3 Body Problem has been watched millions of times around the globe since its release late last month.

It has even found an audience in China where Netflix is unavailable, sparking much chatter among viewers of the series.

But many fans of the three-book series, credited with propelling China's nascent science fiction genre after its publication in 2008, have also been paying attention to a court room in Shanghai where one of the key players behind the adaptation was sentenced to death just a day after the show's release.

His crime? Murdering a man sometimes dubbed China's "billionaire millennial" - the gaming tycoon Lin Qi, whose company Yoozoo Games owns the rights for film adaptations of the Chinese science fiction epic.

According to the court, Xu Yao, who was known as a distinguished lawyer, became consumed by professional rivalry after Lin sidelined him shortly after he helped land the Netflix deal in 2020.

Within months of this apparent slight, Lin was dead - the victim of a poisoning plot described as both "premeditated" and "extremely despicable" by the court last week.

...

Lin and Xu were reportedly on good terms at the start: Lin had appointed Xu to spearhead a subsidiary called The Three Body Universe a year after he joined Yoozoo as the company's chief risk officer in 2017.

The subsidiary was in charge of securing intellectual property rights for the film adaptations, and the two had worked closely together in brokering the deal to adapt the novel into a Netflix original series.

But they fell out when Lin - who founded Yoozoo in 2009 - decided to put other executives in charge of business operations, local reports said. Xu, authorities allege, began to plot.

Some reports said he set up a company in Japan to acquire the lethal substances and even tested them on animals. Xu then disguised the substances as probiotic pills and gave them to Lin.

Lin checked himself into the hospital when he felt unwell after taking the pills, and was initially in stable condition. But his condition took a dramatic turn - he died 10 days later, on Christmas Day 2020, at the age of 39. At the time, he was believed to have had a net worth of around 6.8bn yuan (£745m; $941m), according to the Hurun China Rich List

Four other people fell sick from drinking poisoned beverages in the Yoozoo office but survived, the court heard.

binge watched this and loved it way, way, way more than i imagined I might. lots of great things about it but the greatest, as many have already mentioned, is Benedict Wong.

He is great. I love his response when American Wallfacer guy asks him if everyone's just going to smile at him from now on.

yeah that was proper lol. they talk about it in the books too

just gone back to the trilogy of books as I started the third one and thought "Eh, I'll come back to this". Hoping it's as rewarding as the other two

it goes to some wild places, figuratively and literally

my memory of it is that it's about 600 pages and has about 10 new ideas in it all of which could've been their own book

i doubt i'll ever re-read all 1800 pages though.

I had no idea so much of the show cribs from books 2 and 3. Even stuff in the opening first episode takes place in 3. Have to admit, that's some clever adapting

Yeah, they don't seem to have tried to do the usual streaming thing of padding it out eternally. Feels this could be comfortable done in 3 (maybe even 2?) seasons.

How can you guys just skip past the fucking crazy Walter White lawyer poisoning his billionaire boss story?

any time Benedict Wong is mentioned i think of him on the phone to his mum in 14 Storeys High.
"hi mum, it's me, your son. yes, the Chinese one..."

quite liked this

How can you guys just skip past the fucking crazy Walter White lawyer poisoning his billionaire boss story?

I don’t want to watch a movie of this

could wade be any more over-the-top tho

ep 5, man.
Annoys me when you can't tell if something makes zero sense intentionally because of sneaky people in the plot or because it makes good TV.

forgot Kevin Eldon was in it in one of the first eps too to add to the weird-but-I-like-it vibe

yeah episode five was good stuff. it’s one thing reading that culebra cut scene, another thing entirely watching it *shudder*

I started reading the books after watching the Netflix show. It's good to know the physicists version of Friends was a creation of the GoT guys.

so no one told you life on other planets was going to be this way

The One With the Nanofibers

"Could there BE anymore sophons?!?!"

when it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or your stable era

We're almost done with the season and I'm enjoying it, if not as much as the books, but god the scenes with the physicists hanging out at the beach are so boring and clashing in tone with everything else and so far adding nothing to the plot either

The bit about her being a boring beautiful was funny and accurate, though.

things i don't get: a) how tatiana seems to have superpowers (like physically overpowering/killing jack; i get that she can surreptitiously appear anywhere at any time) b) why there was a need to kill keiko o'brien ye wenjie

or how VR swordswoman / his own eyeless corpse appeared to wade IRL

I finished it a few days ago, I think it got better as it went on. I kept wondering why sad cancer man kept on hanging around but the scene with saul trying to persuade him not to kill himself was one of the best in the series.

It was also never explained how benedict wong (does anyone even know his character name lol) didn't see jack getting killed.

like you ledge, i found it seemed to get better, or i minded various things less, like how it looked and how people acted, and partly because a lot of the time i realised “no, shit, that *was* in the book”.

supernatural lady and that scene generally were shit tho. i *think* the implication was that aliens can control what you *perceive* but that takes their potency waaaaaay too far. one of the features of the story is the odd asymmetric equilibrium between the aliens and humans. aliens are *extremely* powerful and advanced but limited in important ways.

yes, slamming a proton through your retina millions of times a second to make a wobbly countdown appear is one thing, completely controlling your whole experience is quite another.

anyway i want another series.

i probably learned this when i read the book and then forgot again, but the alpha centauri system, our closest stellar system at 4 light years away, is a three body system. but not as chaotic.

top three benedict wong moments:

1) tequila
2) i don't know i'm from manchester
3) *grins, points*

It was also never explained how benedict wong (does anyone even know his character name lol) didn't see jack getting killed.

― ledge, Thursday, April 11, 2024 9:09 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

In the show he's called Clarence but in the book he's usually referred to as Da Shì (think that's right), which is pronounced something like "Dah-Shuh" or "Dah-Shur"

Netflix's Three Body Podcast is worth a listen. They interview Wong and Marlo Kelly and both of them come across extremely warm and likeable

One of the big changes from the book is the content of the conversation between Ye Wenjie and Saul. Makes me wonder what direction they'll take the show in the 2nd season.

I do admit that I liked the subtle easter eggs for readers of the book - like the ant on the headstone and, gonna hide this one, the goldfish given to Will as either just an Easter egg or foreshadowing future seasons

da shi is far more abrasive/annoying in the books (and the one episode of the chinese show i’ve seen) — much prefer wong’s mellow version

There's loads that doesn't make sense to me - please feel free to explain if I haven't gotten it... The High Sparrow guy had been talking to My Lord for what, a decade at least? Years anyway? And they've JUST discovered that humans can say things that aren't true... even make up fictional stories without intent to deceive? And they just abandon their plan to train /test/manipulate people via super VR? Also, why was it a bad plan to bomb the cargo ship in case the hard drive (which as far as I can tell 's existence was just guessed at) got destroyed but fine to chop it into bits with a material that can destroy anything? I can't tell if it's the way the show's been adapted but Wade being on a very singular course of action made me think he'd come from the future or something to guide people onto that path.

Also the passing of time is quite unpredictable. I wish certain characters were still in it as well. That the whole concept of a Wallfacer seems insane make me laugh, just how weird it seems to have just one person deciding a course of action then doing it?

Yeah in the books people come to think that the Wallfacer project is insane as well.

Can’t believe I didn’t recognise Keiko! Duh.

I thought this was plenty of fun but sort of fizzled a bit after the fifth episode. There’s a giant eye in the sky -- exciting!!!!! — but then everything just got… slower and slower?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRnXzP6Gb1Y

The High Sparrow guy had been talking to My Lord for what, a decade at least? Years anyway? And they've JUST discovered that humans can say things that aren't true... even make up fictional stories without intent to deceive?

as I recall, the books have some more explanation for some of the weird ideas/decisions you see in the show (for example, the scientists discuss that the nanofiber cut is so perfect, the hard drive can be restored) but overall I don't think it's a book series that really holds up well to logical scrutiny. the batshit impractical ideas are the basis and most enjoyable aspect of the books, and I think the characters, story, etc is just there to accommodate them. I don't think the show writers should bother too much with trying to explain things better either

most of the weird concepts in the books have explanations, but they’re all glorious nonsense

Haha yes true

Is Wade in the books? He’s such a great manga character made real

He is, and pretty much the same there

ah ok, good to know, happy to suspend disbelief!

Wade, I have recently found out, turns up in the third book. In fact so much stuff in the show is taken from the third one!!

Vinnie and voodoo chili OTM. It is the hardest of sci-fis, but within that it manages to lay out the workings-out of some totally unhinged ideas. I actually think it's a very positive book in the way all these different nations and organisations seem to more-or-less happily collaborate and go along with the most loopy shit imaginable. I couldn't imagine a Western post-Covid book being half as optimistic