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

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

Was Wade only in the third book?? I remember there are chunks of the later books which happen chronologically at the same time as the first book, so it's smart to set those threads up in the first season of the show

i might be wrong. it's been a while since i read the first two

There were some similar characters in the other books, like Col. Stanton.

haven't read the third yet, so i wasn't familiar with wade. i think it's an effective choice to have him as this mysterious power somehow more powerful than all western governments who's been secretly preparing for this invasion his whole life

and also a smart choice to have him replace the interplanetary council that da shi works for in the novel, if he's gonna have significance later in the timeline

Yeah I remembered Wade being the second book but I must have conflated him with a similar character. The show seems to be doing the same thing

The TV version is funny in that it honestly thinks the US would just stand back and let an obscure UK org run the show.

oh i'm sure wade's org is international, which presumably lets the fact that he's *irish* slide

anyway if it's okay with cch pounder it should be okay for all of us

one of the funniest things abt THE WANDERING EARTH (流浪地球) * is that it's the chinese that save the planet and the US is almost totally shut out (whenever it cuts to the UN, it signals this by having the french on the podium)

*(which is im sorry WAY better than this earnest and annoying and mostly poorly acted series, including being the EVEN HARDESTER of sci-fis: ffs they are moving our homeworld across the galaxy with giant rockets and nearly get caught in jupiter's gravity well)

I think people have lost sight of what “hard SF” actually means.

not me though

^^^built different