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Netflix’s 3 Body Problem Is a Grandiose, Compelling Sci-Fi Yarn You Don’t Want to Miss
(www.pastemagazine.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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Science Fiction
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Anyone who has read the books want to chime in? I read the books and they had a "painting in a museum" type quality to them, where each chapter was a well described static scene. Fun concepts (in particular, the Dark Forest concept), but really dry prose...
They’re pretty good. The quality of the writing, for me as an English speaker, was in the translation work by Ken Liu who did a phenomenal job.
I can’t imagine it’s easy to convey idioms/ideas that native speakers take for granted in a concise way.
I think he didn’t do the second book or third and it shows. Still good but more stilted.
All that is to say that the incongruity and style may be a side effect of the translation process itself.
I think there are some editions of the second book done by Ken Liu, aren't there? I haven't read it yet, but I got a copy from a used book shop, and remember thinking that it was the same translator. At least, I thought I thought it was...now I've gotta go home and check
I am personally wondering how they will pull it off. My guess is that the story/plot/pacing will be based on the book, but I'm sure they'll add in more characters and drama. Probably heavily rearrange the order too.
Oh I hope they don't rearrange the order. That first book's timeline-hopping narration was fantastic.
I haven't read the other two, tbf
The ideas were mostly neat but I just couldn't abide the plot being driven by absurdly stupid actions over and over.
I had the exact same impression. Excellent ideas but need more fleshing out
It's just a massive time scale that it happens on, but yes that gives way to feeling like that. Read the first 2, put the last one down halfway through after it started shitting all over the first 2 books with a certain character's actions.
The second book has a really cool few pages that helped visualize what experiencing the 4th dimension could be like.
The series is more interesting for its concepts than it is for plot or any one character imo
I put the third one down as well, it just got too far into horror. I didn't really have a problem with any of the dialogue or character development and really liked the first two. I do tend to be very uncritical of novels in that respect though. I was just not at a time in my life where I wanted to read horror in my leisure time. I went from that to Terry Pratchett's Discworld series and was ever so delighted.
I read a lot of SF and I really enjoyed it because of the ideas and scope of the story. The ending of the third book is really lovely and unique, but getting there can be a little rough. I think the format of a TV series is the perfect way to retell this story.