Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 119 posts

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

#31

Post by mrybczyn »

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.

Watch the Tencent adaptation - like 30 episodes on just the first book (with subtitles). Really well done and faithful to the first novel.

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

#32

Post by tb1989 »

fransje26 wrote: post #16
tb1989 wrote: post #5

[flagged]

> To overuse the word "concentration camp" is to disrespect the tragic dead of World War II. What? No. Not at all. The exploitation and killing of prisoners in concentration camps predates WW2, and the use of "concentration camps" to describe those camps is fully appropriate. From the killing of the Boers by the British, to the genocide of Armenians by the Turks, to the killing of undesired by the Germans, to the for…

you are right. But what I mean is that there is no need to make exaggerated reports, but it should be discussed from the perspective of the Chinese government's serious violations of laws and human rights, even if the Chinese government will argue that "this is my internal affairs." Exaggerated reporting is a barbaric and dishonest act that does nothing to solve the problem and prevents the public from understanding the true context of the matter.

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

#33

Post by ospray »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #29
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.

The series gets better don't stop at the first book.

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

#34

Post by bigstrat2003 »

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 personally thought it was blindingly obvious that the show would be bad, to the point I haven't bothered watching. Not only are the books kinda hard to translate to TV, but the people in charge are the guys who did Game of Thrones. The train wreck that show turned into gave me no confidence that they could do a good job with an even more difficult adaptation.

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

#35

Post by schwartzworld »

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.

Unlikely, since the translator is an author in his own right, and his work does not suffer from this problem.

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

#36

Post by donatzsky »

ein0p wrote: post #25
tb1989 wrote: post #5

[flagged]

[flagged]

The simpler, and much more likely, explanation is that those countries don't want to upset China, since doing so tends to be bad for trade. Just ask Latvia (I think it was) what happens if you make it a point to recognise Taiwan.

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

#37

Post by jnovek »

ospray wrote: post #33
wilsonnb3 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The series gets better don't stop at the first book.

FYI, the first half of the second book is very slow and somewhat cringe at times. You just have to plow through because the back-half of the second book + the third book are a wild ride that's totally worth it.

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

#38

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #29
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.

The first book was not great. I particularly hated that stupid monofilament thing --- it's physically impossible for what should be obvious reasons.

The second book is much better, though, and the third is better still. If you've managed to work your way through the first, it's probably worth checking out the others.

They're nothing mind-blowing. But they're very competently written (unlike the first book, which was loaded with errors,) their scale is reminiscent of Stephen Baxter's grander works, and the trilogy is rather more accessible than a lot of Baxter's stuff.

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

#39

Post by bigstrat2003 »

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 liked the books overall but I didn't really care for a lot of Death's End. Hard to get into why without spoilers, of course. But personally I felt that the quality of each book in the series was worse than the one before. That said, the first book was incredibly good so even if they get worse as they go the series is quite good overall.

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

#40

Post by ein0p »

donatzsky wrote: post #36
ein0p wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The simpler, and much more likely, explanation is that those countries don't want to upset China, since doing so tends to be bad for trade. Just ask Latvia (I think it was) what happens if you make it a point to recognise Taiwan.

I don’t see how it is more likely given that the US has spent several trillion dollars on wars against countries which posed no threat to it, the consent for which was entirely manufactured by mass media. I think it’s more likely that this is a psyop.
Post reply on HN