'Three-Body Problem' Animation Sci-Fi Series Starts Next Month (gizmodo.com) 46
"Cixin Liu's sci-fi novel The Three-Body Problem can't stop jumping to other formats," reports Gizmodo:
In addition to next year's Netflix series from The Terror: Infamy's Alexander Woo and Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and DB Weiss, last year saw the release of a serialized podcast (different from the audiobook version).
And for 2022, we've got an animated series that's premiering actually pretty soon.
Come December 3, an anime version of The Three-Body Problem will release on the Chinese streaming platform Bilibili. This series was originally announced in 2019 with a trailer, but things have been fairly quiet on that front up until now. Developed by CG studio YHTK Entertainment in partnership with The Three-Body Universe, a studio built specifically for the purpose of managing the franchise, a new trailer for the upcoming anime was released earlier in the week during a Bilibili anime showcase.
"Having enjoyed the book, I think it looks promising," writes Slashdot reader Camembert. The 2008 book was the first in Liu's hard sci-fi series Remembrance of Earth's Past — and according to Gizmodo, this is just the beginning: Bilibili's adaptation is the first of a larger initiative called the Three-Body Global Creator Project. Per the press release, animation studios across the world are permitted to explore the Remembrance franchise to showcase its global potential through various art and animation styles....
And if animation or Netflix aren't your bag, Tencent Video has made a live action version of The Three-Body Problem, though that version has yet to receive a release date.
And for 2022, we've got an animated series that's premiering actually pretty soon.
Come December 3, an anime version of The Three-Body Problem will release on the Chinese streaming platform Bilibili. This series was originally announced in 2019 with a trailer, but things have been fairly quiet on that front up until now. Developed by CG studio YHTK Entertainment in partnership with The Three-Body Universe, a studio built specifically for the purpose of managing the franchise, a new trailer for the upcoming anime was released earlier in the week during a Bilibili anime showcase.
"Having enjoyed the book, I think it looks promising," writes Slashdot reader Camembert. The 2008 book was the first in Liu's hard sci-fi series Remembrance of Earth's Past — and according to Gizmodo, this is just the beginning: Bilibili's adaptation is the first of a larger initiative called the Three-Body Global Creator Project. Per the press release, animation studios across the world are permitted to explore the Remembrance franchise to showcase its global potential through various art and animation styles....
And if animation or Netflix aren't your bag, Tencent Video has made a live action version of The Three-Body Problem, though that version has yet to receive a release date.
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Oh, don't worry about fiction... (Score:5, Informative)
Author is on the record for his other problematic beliefs. [wikipedia.org]
According to a June 2019 interview and profile article by The New Yorker, Liu avoids talking about politics.
In the same article, Liu argued that democracy was not appropriate for modern China, and individual liberty and freedom of governance is "not what Chinese people care about", adding "If you were to loosen up the country a bit, the consequences would be terrifying."
He expressed support for policies such as the one-child policy and the Xinjiang re-education camps, saying "the government is helping their economy and trying to lift them out of poverty".[30]
And that's just him being rah-rah-regime, unrelated to his work.
There you'll find stuff like wonders of benevolent government surveillance finding you a trad-waifu of your dreams - you just have to ask your friendly neighborhood policeman.
Also, some very bad string-theory SciFi and a VERY dark outlook on intelligent life, human or otherwise - i.e. his universe is populated by complete morons.
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This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who actually read the book. The pro-China stuff is very blatant if not exactly unexpected. It's one of the reasons I decided not to read the entire series (the other reason being I just didn't enjoy the story).
Re:Oh, don't worry about fiction... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously? I found it much more international than the typical Hollywood action movie (which my wife all lumps together as "Americans saving the world" as in "is it another Americans saving the world movie?").
Of course a book written by a chinese author for a chinese audience will feature China prominently. And it's not a surprise that it shows it in a positive light. Most US movies are blatant propaganda for the US military. Compared to that, China takes a small role in these books (and pretty much disappears completely after book one).
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Huh? I thought his depictions of the cultural revolution and its effects were blatant criticism. Its atrocity was even the cause of the start of the entire story.
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If you live and work in China, what exactly do you think people are going to say? Of COURSE Chinese people don't value freedom or democracy. They're COMPLETELY HAPPY with their wonderful government and heartily approve of EVERYTHING it does. Have you seen what happens to ordinary people who accidentally let something the government does approve slip in a live stream? They disappear for a day or two, then reappear, ashen-faced and sobbing apologies.
Don't take such sentiments too seriously until that pers
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Americans (and most Western countries) are brought up to value freedom and self-determination. China preaches self-sacrifice for the good of society, no matter how distasteful the sacrifice. Until that sacrifice becomes too bitter a pill to swallow for those with power, and the majority of the urban population, they'll keep gagging it down.
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TBF he has no choice.
Take a look at what goes on over there, they are welding people into their apartment blocks in Shanghai.
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Re: Oh, don't worry about fiction... (Score:3)
I read the trilogy. It was grandiose, but ultimately it was just OK. I'm not a literary critic, but the pacing, drama building, drama resolution, etcetera is not great. It's not going to win a Nobel.
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Re:Mediocre Sci-Fi, anti-GMO and anti-autistic. (Score:4, Informative)
And pretty bad fiction. I'll grant some leeway because of translation, but the prose is dreckworthy. I fought to finish it and at the end I couldn't believe it was a best seller.
Re:Mediocre Sci-Fi, anti-GMO and anti-autistic. (Score:4, Informative)
Well, unless you read it in Chinese...you read a translation. I read the whole series...it was just ok...and yeah, the way it was written/translated, did make some things seem a bit "off".
I didn't get real worked up about the politics...I knew what (nationality) audience it was written for. Honestly, I don't even remember the points you mentioned. As for his interviews...what do you expect him to say? You can't expect everyone to be "Tank Man". I'm not defending anything...it just is, what it is.
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Wish I had mod points. Thought I was the only one out there who thought his work was mediocre and incredibly derivative.
It's funny because I enjoy Chinese fiction because it's doing things that haven't been done for 70 years or so here but in the case of science fiction you really do need a new take on things. Now give me a Shaungwen novel or a Quick Transmigration and you have the best of both worlds.
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It is strongly anti-science in general.
Spoilers: The key conflict of the book is caused by scientists disocovering they were wrong. Of course scientists can not handle this (??) so they either commit suicide or start a plan for the great replacement, to replace current inhabitants to be replaced by (illegal) aliens.
Re: Mediocre Sci-Fi, anti-GMO and anti-autistic. (Score:2)
Huh? Did you read the book? The scientists commit suicide because the Trisolarians make it impossible to do science by making the results of anything particle-related basically random. What the scientists canâ(TM)t bear is the impossibility of scientific progress. Thatâ(TM)s hardly anti-science.
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Ehmm.. Making anything particle related random, is what quantum physics does.. It is the fucking status quo in our world!. And yes the book is heavily anti-science, every single subject, including the titular three body problem, the author misunderstand and misapplies horribly in the book. On the level of a particular dumb highschooler having read just the introductionary paragraph on the wikipedia article on the subject.
Let's see how it goes (Score:3)
It's visually interesting and it's not shy to represent asian charachters as asian, something that even Japanese anime often neglects.
The trailer seems to cover a lot. It shows the Judgement Day ship and the Wallfacers, which aren't even in the same book. It doesn't seem to contain anything from the third book though. It's still a lot of plot to fit in a single series, I hope they don't cut too much, especially the parts during the Cultural Revolution that kickstart the whole story.
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It's visually interesting and it's not shy to represent asian charachters as asian, something that even Japanese anime often neglects.
Japanese anime doesn't neglect that, is an intentional choice
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It's visually interesting and it's not shy to represent asian charachters as asian, something that even Japanese anime often neglects.
What? Anime series simply often have foreign characters, ostensibly because they had a character design they liked and don't really have a problem with representation in Japan, which is 97.9% Japanese.
I'll be honest... (Score:3)
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It still touched you enough to bother writing a comment about it here.
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He just wanted us all to know that he's a slow reader. A fast one can read literally the whole series in a day.
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Try reading Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle...that'll give you a new #1 most boring. I've read a good chunk of his other stuff, but I just haven't been able to get myself to start the second book in that series.
Scifi that got me interested in China (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it was how the characters were bugging me because they didn't react in ways I was expecting. But then I realised that I was expecting them to behave like the egocentric "I'm the hero of my own story" kind of characters western scifi writers create, whereas in the books the characters behaved like they were supporting cast in a bigger story.
Dark Forest (Score:3)
We haven't seen aliens because they know to stay hidden lest the dominant power take them out.
Kind of like offensive realism taken to the galactic scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Kurzgesagt made a video [youtu.be] on that exact topic about a year ago...
not really that great (Score:1)
I thought the first book was interesting, and it held my attention.
Then i read the 2nd book, and i barely remember reading it. I'm not even sure i finished it. Totally lost interest.
I don't get it (Score:3)
That book was boring as hell. I could not finish it. My conclusing back when I tried to read it was recycling of ideas long since established in SF for a more general audience and dumbed down.
torn (Score:4, Insightful)
So torn about this one. I love the books, really amazing stuff. But will it translate into a movie? There's so much that is left to fill in by your own imagination, which you can't do in a visual medium. For example, the main aliens, the Trisolarans, are never described in detail in the books. I still have no idea what they're supposed to look like. And that's perfectly fine. Their exact biology (how many legs and arms?) never matters to the story. I'm not sure I want to have that blank in my head filled with anything.
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There is a fourth book, written by a fan, which has been at least partially accepted by Liu, published and is for sale.
It's quite good, for what is essentially fan fiction, and also attempts to describe the Trisolarians.
The Redemption of Time.
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I have it and started reading the first few pages. For some reason, it didn't catch me so far, but we'll see.
Praises Maoism and mocks the West (Score:1)
The book was written to unite Chinese people against foreign powers and to praise Mao Zedong and the Communist party. As a bonus, blue-haired weenies in the West, living with their parents, get white-washed ideas about how wonderful Socialism is. This is the new Cold War.
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You have no idea. I read it in Chinese when I lived in China. It is obvious why the book was not banned in China - it is very strongly patriotic, favoring the current regime and blaming the old for problems in the past. This fits the current narrative of CCP perfectly. From the point of view of a Chinese citizen, the original Chinese version tries to rally them against the "evil" West. It's subtle, but you can get the same feeling from the English version, it just doesn't have the same effect on people