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Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

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Re: Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

#21

Post by silenced_trope »

tb1989 wrote: post #5

[flagged]

> His political leanings are clear. Of course, when asked about Xinjiang, his reply can hardly be used as a criterion for whether he has been brainwashed. If he publicly said this in China in the way that Westerners think he has been "brainwashed", he would have been arrested.

lol this is always one of my pet peeves with Western "journalists".

"Hey I've got this celebrity/author/whomever from China here, let me try to have a Barbara Walters moment and ask them a profound question about something-controversial-in-China that will get them or their family killed!"

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I'm convinced it's just journalists patting themselves on teh back.

Re: Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

#22

Post by mvdtnz »

jitl wrote: post #10
mvdtnz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely loved the whole series. I have never been as disappointed at a screen adaptation as I was at the netflix show. I couldn't get past episode 2. Terrible.

Huh, what were your complaints? I thought they did a pretty decent job - although I finished Death’s End in 2019 so it’s been a while. They preserved the most important parts in my mind, and otherwise the compromises seemed acceptable. I had low expectations and was pleasantly surprised.

The splitting of the main character (who was a humble middle aged Chinese scientist) into 4 pointlessly racially diverse beautiful young people who somehow represent the apex of the scientific community (and a snack company for some reason).

The total butchering of interesting concepts, for example the usage of the sun as an amplifier which, while based on some hand-wavey fictional science, was quite fleshed out in the book, turned into an utterly ridiculous scene where characters literally wrote out an equation on a blackboard that amounted to "a + b = c" (I'm not exaggerating) and you could practically see the mathematical symbols floating around their heads like that Zach Galifianakis meme.

But most of all it is the shit dialog. I don't remember the books trying to force sciency sounding words into every fucking line of dialogue. This show is determined to make very stupid people think "wow this is smart".

Re: Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

#23

Post by stcredzero »

m3kw9 wrote: post #12
jnovek wrote: post #6

I just finished Deaths End this morning so I'm experiencing that ponderous glow that you get after reading something thought provoking. Without going into spoilers, Death's End makes everything so... huge. It really made me feel tiny in our universe. These are good books with some flaws. You should read them.

Every book ever has flaws

One thing I've noticed about Liu Cixin's books, is that for people who follow futurism and hard Sci-fi beyond the shallow level of a typical mainstream layperson, there are huge glaring plotholes. Here's perhaps the big one: Ask, what if instead of doing [X], [certain characters] put those resources instead into building space industrial infrastructure space colonies?

This also applies to The Wandering Earth.

Re: Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

#24

Post by drawkward »

mvdtnz wrote: post #7
jnovek wrote: post #6

I just finished Deaths End this morning so I'm experiencing that ponderous glow that you get after reading something thought provoking. Without going into spoilers, Death's End makes everything so... huge. It really made me feel tiny in our universe. These are good books with some flaws. You should read them.

I absolutely loved the whole series. I have never been as disappointed at a screen adaptation as I was at the netflix show. I couldn't get past episode 2. Terrible.

I recommend watching the Tencent-produced Chinese adaptation, free on YouTube. It hewed very closely to the novel.

Re: Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

#27

Post by pokstad »

jnovek wrote: post #6

I just finished Deaths End this morning so I'm experiencing that ponderous glow that you get after reading something thought provoking. Without going into spoilers, Death's End makes everything so... huge. It really made me feel tiny in our universe. These are good books with some flaws. You should read them.

The fourth book blessed by the original author is also great. Don’t sleep on that.

Re: Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

#28

Post by jnovek »

stcredzero wrote: post #23
m3kw9 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every book ever has flaws

One thing I've noticed about Liu Cixin's books, is that for people who follow futurism and hard Sci-fi beyond the shallow level of a typical mainstream layperson, there are huge glaring plotholes. Here's perhaps the big one: Ask, what if instead of doing [X], [certain characters] put those resources instead into building space industrial infrastructure space colonies? This also applies to The Wandering Earth.

The decisions made in Death's End in particular are very frustrating but I think the point was that humanity's biggest barrier to reaching the stars is itself.

Re: Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

#29

Post by wilsonnb3 »

jnovek wrote: post #6

I just finished Deaths End this morning so I'm experiencing that ponderous glow that you get after reading something thought provoking. Without going into spoilers, Death's End makes everything so... huge. It really made me feel tiny in our universe. These are good books with some flaws. You should read them.

IMO it’s way more than “some flaws”. I bought into the hype and finally read the first book recently.

The plot, prose, the characters, literally everything except a couple of really neat sci-fi ideas is comically poor.

So bad that you start to wonder if you accidentally rented 2007’s Transmorphers at Blockbuster instead of Transformers.

Re: Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

#30

Post by tb1989 »

gamepsys wrote: post #18
tb1989 wrote: post #5

[flagged]

> Because his writing style is so poor and very wordy, there are almost no golden sentences Did you read it in Chinese? I have only read English translations of his work, and I assumed the style issues were more related to the translation than anything else.

Yes. In fact, Liu's Chinese writing level is far lower than the average Chinese writer. In the original Chinese version, there are actually many words that are offensive to female (this is understandable considering his Chinese background and age). But as far as I know, these are optimized in translation. So his imagination is better amplified.
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