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Comment by sho | Hacker News Reader

While I'm always happy to see good scifi being promoted and well-funded, as a huge fan of the books.. I could not get into the TV series at all. It feels like 90% of it is missing, and what remains just doesn't convince. I heard it has quite a decent budget but whatever it was, it wasn't even close to enough.

It's quite possible that this kind of expansive (sorry) space opera can never be fully realised on a small screen, or on any screen. The limitation of the format are just too restrictive. Kudos to them for trying but for any fans - take my word for it and read the books. You won't regret it.

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I'll second the books, but I do like the show as well. I agree that the full story most is probably impossible to translate into TV/movie format. Nevertheless, I'm happy with the compromises they've made to make it fit. I particularly like the VFX work, because it tries its hardest to obey the laws of physics even in smallest of details.

(A particularly memorable scene for me was the initial launch of the Nauvoo. During the sequence, ship's engine exhaust was shown to heat up structural elements of the scaffolding it was leaving far in the background, and also it destroyed a small drone that got too close. Neither of those things were important to the scene or even immediately noticeable for the viewer.)

The screens are restricted to showing protagonists doing, experiencing and talking, whereas books can ramble on forever about background.

Screen adaptations of background-rich books have three choices: simplify away the background, add new scenes engineered to convey background via protagonists, skip the background and let the viewer sink or swim on their own.

Readers who later watch an adaption are rarely happy with either option, but "simplify" is the worst. People new to the material rarely even notice "simplify", but fall into two very polarized camps for "engineer" and "skip". Just ask them about miniseries vs. Lynch Dune.

Personally, I love the feeling of only scratching the surface of a much deeper world, and I hate having everything spelled out in detail. As for The Expanse (TV only), I could have binged through ten seasons of life, death and intrigue in an industrialized collar system, could protomolecule ruined that, cancellation or not - guess I should read the first book for more of the good parts)

I enjoyed both the Lynch film and the books. Though I saw the film first...

I thought the film captured the religious elements and emotional content of the book quite well. It obviously felt a lot out of course.

He’s referring to the German-Czech produced miniseries, not the book.

I believe that you are in the minority. Judging by the amount of activity by book readers on Reddit, the show has been faithful enough. I've read the first 5 books and I felt that the show has been great so far.

My one gripe is that they gutted the Avarasala character completely - she is one of my favourite book characters ever but in the show she is so watered down.

I wouldn't judge by the activity on Reddit. Not liking the Expanse there only leads to downvotes. I'm pretty sure there are many who won't criticize it just like there is a group who just jumped on the hype train you can't miss.

Isn’t this the case with all book -> tv/movie adaptations, you lose 90% of it? No surprise really.

No, it’s not always the case. I like more the Lord of the rings movies than the books. And game of thrones is a great adaptation although it’s probably the only case that I know in which the tv serie is ahead of the books.

Yeah, same here. Having read the books, I was pretty frustrated at some points at how much some things were simplified for the TV viewers.

It's still the best recent scifi series on Netflix, though.

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