[HN Gopher] Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)
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Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 49 points
Date : 2024-04-29 18:23 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://archive.ph/RRBLj
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| (2019)
| metabagel wrote:
| Spoilers, LOL
| jnovek wrote:
| 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.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| 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.
| perihelions wrote:
| You haven't watched many Netflix adaptations! If the
| sensation of being banished from 10-dimensional cosmological
| heavens down into dead 3-dimensional purgatories could be
| meaningfully be experienced by humans, that ineffable
| tragedy, it would be the sensation of being forced to watch
| the Netflix _flattening_ of a book you once dearly enjoyed.
| jnovek wrote:
| "If the sensation of being banished from 10-dimensional
| cosmological heavens down into dead 3-dimensional
| purgatories..."
|
| Ahem, spoilers. :-)
|
| You made me laugh. I understand this reference as of about
| 14 hours ago.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| One could argue that your TV screen is 2-dimensional.
| jitl wrote:
| 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.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| 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".
| jtgverde wrote:
| It's interesting that your primary criticism is that the
| scientists are too diverse...truly a struggle for me to
| see why that's such an abhorrent error
|
| Personally I thought they did a good job at adapting a
| book that I thought would be nearly impossible to
| transform into a "pop" sci fi series.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| That's not my primary criticism. I literally prefaced my
| primary criticism with "But most of all".
|
| It's an "abhorrent error" because the themes of the books
| were deeply tied to the Chinese heritage and culture of
| the author and his characters.
| jnovek wrote:
| Same here, I've watched to episode 4 (the scene with the boat
| is in episode 5 and I just didn't want to watch that on a
| screen).
|
| I can understand the desire to humanize the characters for
| the show, but the characters feel like a CW teen drama. I
| don't mind that they added some drama, but the drama they
| added was _bad_.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Maybe expectations were too high? I thought it followed
| book 1 pretty closely.
|
| As book-movie translation go. I thought the choices they
| made in 3-Body were better than the tradeoffs in Dune 2.
|
| But I liked Dune 2 as a movie, but leaving out the Spacing
| Guild, and how the Water of Life can poison Sand Worms, and
| they change to the Atomics. It changed entire dynamic on
| the stand off with Emperor. And leaving out Alia.
|
| The only problem with 3-Body, is for season 1, they did
| stuff too much into it from Book 2, not that it was bad to
| do it, but maybe needed 1-2 more episodes, instead if felt
| rushed.
| davely wrote:
| I was so excited for the show I went back and binge read all
| 3 books over the month of March. I really enjoyed them!
|
| ...I feel like the show is so convoluted and confusing (by
| design, I understand they're trying to have this sense of
| mystery) that someone who hasn't read the books would be
| totally lost.
|
| I'm still watching, but I had higher hopes for it.
| justinhj wrote:
| Fully enjoyed both the books and Netflix adaptation. In fact
| I am surprised how well they made an entertaining tv series
| of this material that will appeal to a wide audience. My only
| criticism would be how fast they went through the story.
| drawkward wrote:
| I recommend watching the Tencent-produced Chinese adaptation,
| free on YouTube. It hewed very closely to the novel.
| mrybczyn wrote:
| Watch the Tencent adaptation - like 30 episodes on just the
| first book (with subtitles). Really well done and faithful to
| the first novel.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Yes!
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| 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.
| emmelaich wrote:
| I read the books and enjoyed them but there's a few dead-ends
| and the plot is a bit meandering.
|
| I thought the TV series was great.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Try the 30-episode Chinese version: it's superb.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Every book ever has flaws
| stcredzero wrote:
| 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._
| jnovek wrote:
| 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.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| > Ask, what if instead of doing [X], [certain characters]
| put those resources instead into [something else]
|
| In most of these cases the outcome is "it makes a less
| entertaining story". The Anthropic Principle of Literature,
| if you will.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| In general, I get the feeling that the people who gush
| about all the awesome ideas in the 3BP books, are not
| people who read very much sci-fi. Not that there's anything
| wrong with that, of course. But those ideas have been
| explored previously, and much better (IMO), in other less
| popular books.
| jnovek wrote:
| That's fair -- I read some here and there but I recognize
| that I'm not a hardcore sci-fi reader.
|
| You mentioned that there are other, lesser known books
| that explore the same ideas in a more compelling way. Can
| you give some examples so I can add them to my reading
| list?
| marcellus23 wrote:
| For an exploration of the dark forest theory at least, I
| recommend The Killing Star. Fair warning though, it's
| extremely bleak.
| pokstad wrote:
| The fourth book blessed by the original author is also great.
| Don't sleep on that.
| xster wrote:
| which one is that?
| pokstad wrote:
| "The Redemption of Time"
|
| It ties together loose ends and goes into more detail about
| what happened to that brain.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| 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.
| ospray wrote:
| The series gets better don't stop at the first book.
| jnovek wrote:
| 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.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I definitely feel like the series gets worse as it goes on.
| The first book is incredible though, so it's hard to really
| go up from there. IMO the first book in that series
| deserves every bit of accolade it gets and then some.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| 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.
| Shorel wrote:
| > it's physically impossible for what should be obvious
| reasons.
|
| In our universe, it is impossible.
|
| In the universe of the book, if technology existed to
| unfold protons, those same protons could be woven into a
| long fibre, resulting in a material thinner and stronger
| than anything made from conventional atoms.
|
| Regardless of whether this is a sound argument, it remains
| purely fictional. =)
| burnte wrote:
| I couldn't agree with you more.
| breuleux wrote:
| Even the "neat" sci-fi ideas are often complete nonsense,
| such as the whole concept of sophons, which leverage a neat
| fringe idea of theoretical physics while running afoul of
| boring, well-established physics.
| ajross wrote:
| Isn't that true for basically all speculative sci-fi? The
| point to the form is to pick an idea with "enough
| plausibility" and extend it to an interesting implication.
| Not all "sci-fi" can be (or should be) 2001 or The Martian;
| Foundation and Dune are kinda good books too.
| breuleux wrote:
| To various extents, yes, but it is easier to suspend
| one's disbelief about certain things than others. The
| main issue with sophons is that they routinely have to
| interact with quantities of energy that should annihilate
| them: when they are unfolded, for instance, they have to
| bear the impact of light all over their planet-spanning
| surface. They are "god-tier" technology, but only because
| they flaunt basic conservation of energy. I find it
| harder to suspend my disbelief about that than e.g.
| faster than light travel.
|
| Foundation and Dune's premises are much tamer, and
| neither story collapses entirely if they turn out to be
| false.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| 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.
| burnte wrote:
| > These are good books with some flaws. You should read them.
|
| Counter view-point: These are bad books with a few thought
| provoking ideas that are never explored, left behind to explore
| a ridiculous plot full of nonsensical actions taken by paper
| cutout characters chasing a political goals that also make no
| sense.
|
| Granted I didn't read the third book, but that's because I gave
| up not halfway through book 2. When I got to the end of book 1,
| I had no emotional attachment to any of the characters due to
| the poor writing, but some of the ideas were interesting, so I
| opened book 2. As it went on it became harder and harder to
| tolerate the incomprehensible motivations, stilted dialog, and
| the scope creep of the story, so I read the Wikipedia summary,
| and promptly realized I was right to stop reading the books.
|
| Yes, the end makes you feel tiny, so tiny that it's impossible
| to connect the start of the books with the ending, plus the way
| it ends makes you feel like there was no point to anything to
| start with. In my opinion the only way it could have been worse
| was if it was all just a dream/snowglobe all along.
|
| Nothing is ever resolved, just a few neat ideas sprinkled out
| with outrageous nonsense, and the stakes keep getting higher
| and higher until the universe itself is no longer big enough
| for the ending. I truly think they're bad books, I haven't read
| anything this bad since Atlas Shrugged.
|
| That said, I'm glad that other people enjoy them, and I'm not
| trying to say people who enjoy them are wrong only that like
| all art, beauty is in the eye of the reader.
| luyu_wu wrote:
| I think some of this is definetly due to lacking translation.
| The general consensus among fans is also that the first book
| is the least interesting, while the second and third become
| far better. IMO this is because the only role of the first
| book is a general setup with few Sci-Fi elements, of which
| all are hard!
| jnovek wrote:
| I think your criticisms are legit. I think the books are love
| 'em or hate 'em.
|
| Like you I never connected to any of the characters, but the
| direction of the story and its almost exponential growth in
| scale was what drew me in.
|
| But c'mon, almost nothing is as bad as Atlus Shrugged (aside
| from maybe The Fountainhead). :-P
| burnte wrote:
| > But c'mon, almost nothing is as bad as Atlus Shrugged
| (aside from maybe The Fountainhead). :-P
|
| I actually made it through The Fountainhead, but just
| couldn't make it to the end of Atlas Shrugged. I think The
| Fountainhead could actually be rescued as a story, but
| Atlas Shrugged is just a bad political manifesto with some
| narrative elements thrown in. :D
| jmccarthy wrote:
| I also finished Death's End this morning and have a similar
| afterglow re: scale (energy, space, time)!
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2019)
|
| Discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20202063
| TheGRS wrote:
| The books are very imaginative. Not always a fan of the prose,
| and the character development is lacking, but I think this is a
| great new take on the alien invasion genre that tries to put all
| of the current theories about extraterrestrials (or lack-thereof)
| into a very big plot.
|
| Part of the draw of the first book is how much it talks about
| communist China from an insider perspective. I found those parts
| the most interesting by far, with some of the more interesting
| sci-fi ideas emerging toward the end. The next 2 books basically
| go down a speculative fiction path with the first book's ideas
| set in motion.
|
| I always felt like the books were a fan fiction of certain blog
| posts I've read about the Fermi Paradox or the Great Filter. Any
| self-respecting sci-fi nerd needs to read them, and all 3 of the
| books. They probably won't wow you in the same way other award-
| winning authors have, but they should be thought-provoking.
| luyu_wu wrote:
| I'm happy most of the comment section is discussing Liu Cixin's
| works instead of this article, but having made the mistake of
| reading said article I have a bit of a rant.
|
| This journalist seems _so_ intent on making everything political
| (from the beginning to the end of the article) that it reads like
| they have no interest in anything he 's actually written. The
| author of this article never describes a single genuine question
| about his works that it honestly makes me a bit sick. So many
| quotes are taken so wildly out of context that they contain a few
| words placed awkwardly in the author's wall of text and opinion
| instead of representing genuine conversation.
|
| One of my favorite parts: "Liu's posture slackened slightly as we
| ate. The drinks had warmed him, and the heat of Sichuanese
| peppercorns seemed to stir him from his usual reticence. I
| decided to inch the conversation toward politics, a topic he
| prefers to avoid." The author reads as genuinely manipulative,
| and it was clear Cixin already stated he wasn't interested in
| discussing politics in the authors previous attempts... Maybe
| have some decency and respect?
| TheGRS wrote:
| Yea I can see this in the article as well. And anyone who has
| read the books can probably see this wasn't the authors real
| interest. I can see where someone with their pulse on
| international politics might read into Trisolaris vs Earth
| being some sort of a proxy for China vs USA. But my take is
| that the author was just writing about sci-fi ideas from their
| personal perspective in China. Chinese history, politics, and
| culture plays into how the plot unfolds. But it didn't feel to
| me like they're trying to say much about the international
| politics of the situation. Instead the plot marches ahead into
| speculative fiction steeped in some current-day theories about
| the universe. There's certainly a lot of dabbling in human
| emotions and conditions vs aliens who don't share those same
| ideals. But like "how does the USA respond vs China" is like an
| afterthought of the book, can't remember if that even really
| came up.
| luyu_wu wrote:
| Yeah, I would agree. I think the author was trying to force a
| narrative too much (they were trying to compare Trisolarians
| coming to WHAT exactly?). To the counterpoint as well, I
| think much of 3-Body it was actual a motivational tale that
| humanity would set aside its differences and come together in
| times of crisis.
| gs17 wrote:
| Weirdly, they seemed to understand that he wouldn't talk about
| politics out of self-preservation:
|
| > When questioned about stories that seemed to allude to
| Stalinist conformism and paranoia, Lem said the same thing that
| Liu says about geopolitical interpretations of his trilogy--
| that he was not writing a veiled assessment of the present but
| merely making up stories.
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