Producer of Netflix Three body problem found poisoned | Hacker News Reader

Producer of Netflix Three body problem found poisoned

variety.com

54 pointsAhmedb56 comments

I think it's a bit early to be assuming Chinese oppression tactics (though understandable).

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.

I personally really enjoyed the writing. As others mentioned, TBP was written in Chinese by a Chinese author. I imagine most people here read the translation, as did I. After just a few pages it becomes immediately clear that you’re reading a work written from the perspective of a different culture. This gave it a genuine ring to me, and once I adjusted my perspective I really enjoyed it. The storytelling, historical setting, and assumed knowledge of world history all reinforce this. It would not have been possible to translate this book and turn it into something that appears to have been written by a western writer. I’m happy the translator didn’t even try and went for authentic instead.

Edit: be more concise

The original Chinese version is poorly written. The English translator, Ken Liu, did an excellent job polishing it up.

I also don't get the cult status. The setup in the first book is pretty engaging, the trisolarians are compelling antagonists, and i loved the power plays resulting from Dark Forest theory...

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.

Agreed.

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)

>>"[..] it was always because there was "something for us" and there was never a complete wipe out of other groups just because."

It seems we read different history books.

If you want to further the point provide a counterexample, otherwise it will just sound condescending

But I'm all ears on how alien civilizations will engage in costly missions to completely wipe civilizations out of their reach

I aimed to sound funny not condescending and, obviously, I failed.

Groups wiped just because, would be the jews, the armenians and a long list actually (1). You could argue that some of them is because territorial fights, but is it not that also the reason of the "Three body problem" aliens?

About why alien civilizations could decide to engage in this kind of thing: if you are paranoiac enough you can frame it like a preventive attack, if you are reasoning that you will be fighting them for resources in the far future.

About how, there are many ways. The most obvious, though expensive, is just accelerate a lot of stuff (ideally antimatter), the closest to light speed as possible, in a interception vector with the undesirable solar system.

This is not the kind of thing I was planning to think about in Christmas eve.

(1) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides_by_death_tol...

Yeah I had though about those cases, but even then there's a "gain" (even if it's a political/imaginary one) and they were of course extremely costly.

I agree, it's not a conversation for Christmas Eve, and thanks for actually explaining your point.

With any luck this is the magic a bunch of professional TV producers will bring. GoT TV series was dramatically better than the books because so much of the bollocks was cut

... right up until the series had no books to adapt, at which point the consensus seems to be they took a steep dive in quality.

Not convinced it's consensus, though I appreciate that people hoping for something better from the books that are unlikely to ever be written were disappointed by the TV screenplay that most definitely was were preemptively frustrated.

Some of our most popular fiction authors are frequently accused of not being able to write endings - there works are either drawn out way too long, or wrap up way too quickly.

It feels like there's few examples of consensus around what's 'just right' for how fast, and neatly, to wrap up many concurrent plot lines, especially in obnoxiously surreal universes.

> GoT TV series was dramatically better than the books because so much of the bollocks was cut

Looks like you havent watched the last few seasons.

Well the final books didn't come out yet so we can't say the movie was worse. I suspect the books will be just as bad because the series suffers from the same effect many stories like this suffer from: The writer establishes many interesting threads without knowing where they lead, and then can't tie them up and the series falls flat in the end. Happened with Lost, with Heroes and many other series as well.

Totally agree, that needless romance subplot was the most WTF part of book 2.

I've only read the first book (the English translation) and thought the writing was fine? I believe the translation was done by the author's brother. Really enjoyed the book but don't see how they'd turn it into a compelling tv show.

The translations are widely regarded as well done. I’ve heard this series described as a “philosophical fiction” (like Asimov’s Foundation series) where you don’t specifically follow characters and their development; but rather the characters just exist to advance the overall story. It’s offputting to many because it seems simple and lacking character development.

Perhaps you think the book poorly written due to the fact that a translation of the original work was read? Or did you, in fact, read it in the original Chinese? Also, I doubt very much that Netflix shall produce something worth my time . . .

The "poor translation" idea did occur to me and I nearly included it in my comment as potential, but I found it so bad it seemed unlikely as I thought the problems were more fundamental than that.

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.

I will admit that I thought the books' story-telling quite clear. So clear -- in fact -- that my impression of the author's flow was, in one word: ,,simple''. (I shrugged this opinion off since I knew the work to be translated and the plot was intricate enough to have me continue reading.) I agree Netflix has some fine series, but, for me, the amount of these is in the single digits. (Recommendations appreciated. lmao)

This article mentions "mycotoxins" as a potential accidental toxin in this type of tea: https://www.californiateahouse.com/tea-blog/hidden-danger-in...

The trilogy book are best-seller in China and the first book wins the Hugo Award in 2015. That's what get people in US interested.

It was written in Chinese. I doubt you read it in Chinese.

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.

Considering the utter hack job and the travesty that was the last season (and a half?) of Game of Thrones, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss really are not any kind of a selling point for me personally. I'm still incredulous it got made and released in such state. So, frankly, it's quite the opposite. What's the visual equivalent of "not touching something with a 3.048 meter pole"? "Not observing a thing with a fiber-optic cable"?

I jest, sure, but that bitter mental taste in my brain still remains.

This is some pretty crude wallbreaker strategy.

How does this series relate to the film and other series that have previously been announced?

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?

I read 20 pages into the kindle ebook but gave up the first book of the series. I know the story/plot is quite good according to the reviews and whatnots. But the whole writing style is not very elegant and hard to follow. I am not sure if it is because of bad translation.

Given the subject matter of the books - I wouldn't want to touch the production of these. And that's sad.

This seems a bit too conspiracy-minded. The article notes that it's likely a colleague who poisoned him.

Besides, why would the Chinese government go down that route when they already have the power to censor and direct the production?

As if you need to be conspiracy-minded to think the Chinese government will straight up assassinate you for pushing the wrong message.

That's the point. They don't need to be covert and use poison.

Ahh, thanks for clarifying. Yes, that's a good point.

Can you summarize what would make these books so sensitive/controversial?

It's about the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution . Any kind of history outside the Party in China is inevitably going to be a bit dangerous.

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.

You're absolutely wrong. The book uses the cultural revolution to contrast with the progress of the modern era.

Wasn't Xi's family attacked during the CR? I would think that makes it a safer topic than most.

No, this is not how you think.

Xi puts the blame for his misfortunes on "wrong kind of dilettante communists," and being wronged, not that CR was wrong, it's just some poor pissants perpetrating it were wrong for taking on grand "true communist" personas who his family were.

So, the only wrong thing about it he sees is that the he wasn't at the helm back then, and not acknowledged as being worthy to join the purgers.

A legitimate Chinese perspective on early Maoist China onward. It doesn't cover up the horror that took place. The first few chapters are especially difficult - with lynchings of academics (e.g. cultural revolution). It also covers how modern chinese people deal with that.

Odd. I remember some of that from the first book but Liu Cixin lives in China and doesn’t seem to suffer for it. He also wrote the source material for Wandering Earth which did very well in Chinese theatres and is pretty pro-China.

I mean the book literally shows a democratic "optimistic" society doesn't work and an authoritarian "pessimistic" one is the only workable outcome, I don't see why the PRC would have anything to object to that.

I'm glad a big-budget production is shining a light on that part of history. Extremely under-depicted and necessary to review and reflect on, especially right now

It has a strong chinese perspective, there are themes in the book which are sexist (weak willed females/effiminate men are at fault for dooming humanity...) and you could read a lot more into it if you wanted.

>there are themes in the book which are sexist (weak willed females/effiminate men are at fault for dooming humanity...)

Huh, that wasn't what I took away from it while reading, might be lack of awareness on my part but I feel like saying that is a theme of the book which is sexist seems a bit much to me. could be interpreted as maybe, if you could name examples?

The detailed commentary on the noticeably androgynous physical and “mental” characteristics of the future males in a society that has decided the trisolaran issue doesn’t exist anymore and has fully accepted defeatism (through non natural means, but still).

IIRC, this society then attempts to pursue diplomacy only to get massacred before the archaic male heroically sets up a MAD situation.

The archaic male then controversially hands over control of the MAD response to a weak willed/nuance entertaining female, and the trisolarans immediately attack.

Apologies if I’ve mixed the timeline, it’s been a while and the human story draped over the skeleton of an interstellar war was a bit thin.

I think the message of the book is more complex than that. The character who sets up the MAD situation spends half of the book having already given up, before discovering the MAD solution. At the same time, Earth pursues a straightforward military strategy of building a large space fleet to stop the Trisolarians, but are unable to anticipate the aliens' superior technology makes their efforts futile.

Ultimately, Earth sends the MAD signal, and ends up destroyed. The goal of the artificially installed defeatism was to make humanity flee the Earth, and it's only the those who fled the Earth who survive its destruction.

Huh, I guess I have to do a reread then I never connected those dots.

Maybe "are" was too harshly worded. I don't share that viewpoint myself but that's what the most complaints were about that I'm aware of.

I probably should have written "can be interpreted as"

I read them a few years ago and I remember them being pretty critical of chinese policy and the cultural revolution. The second contact with the trisolarans basically being a big FU from the scientist that was exploited her whole life by the government.

Well, I've read many interpreted it as critique on the petty small-mindedness of individualism.

Chinese Viewpoints are fascinating in some respects.

I think the main character in the third book is supposed to be ambiguous, because she is heroic in her own way. The novels clearly set up a universe where the logic of the Dark Forest implies that the universe itself is doomed to destruction, and this doom will come irrespective of the conflict between Earth and the Trisolarians. She is the one character who always rejects the logic of the Dark Forest, and is willing to hope for the best from aliens. This doesn't particularly work out, but neither does the alternative.

There’s a long section on the excesses of the cultural revolution. The Chinese originals reordered the plot (and its reverted in the English translations) to diminish that aspect of it a bit.

It's not taboo to criticize the cultural revolution in China.

The Wikipedia entry that says that’s the reason the two languages present the book in different orders needs updating then.

But movies about don't get released. Even the biggest ones.

I... attempted to read the three body problem. I got as far as the obervatory I think. It was like a year ago. I has exhaused because listening would make me fall asleep and then I would have to find the last remembered position... dang. It was long.

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??

I haven't downvoted you, but if you want an honest answer, it's probably because people see this comment as low value. People generally upvote comments that contribute to the discussion. This comment doesn't address the article or really say anything beyond, "I didn't like this book."

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