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Month: March 2024

3 Body Problem

3 Body Problem

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3 Body Problem (2024) – Netflix

I was surprised to learn that there was going to be a Netflix adaptation of one of my favorite books. There had already been a Chinese adaptation announced and a Chinese animated series of The Dark Forest announced. It’s weird that so many adaptions of the same books would get made so soon one after the other. Learning that the directors were going to be the same two people that left a poor impressions on everyone after what happened with Game of Thrones I was disappointed. However, I was cautiously optimistic knowing thinking that they could do a reasonably good job given a complete source material so they weren’t responsible for crafting the events themselves. After the first trailer was released it looked decent, but unfortunately I was still greatly disappointed with this adaptation overall in the end.

3 Body Problem the Netflix series suffers from poor pacing and a lack of understanding of what made the book fascinating. It takes the concepts and thought provoking events and place them as a backdrop to the drama of individuals. The story of Three Body Problem the book is so grand and of such scale that mere individuals and their feelings about modern issues with society are nearly irrelevant. Yet that appears to be the primary focus of this adaptation. In the book the characters are more akin to chess pieces to move the story along or lenses to view the events from and to give perspective to the much grander story taking place. Reducing the book to the petty drama of individuals makes it feel like any other sitcom of no consequence. The tone at times was also almost comical rather than the deadly seriousness that the book had that made is so compelling. The constant mentioning of aliens and the one time the Fermi paradox was brought up felt nearly fourth wall breaking like the characters knew that they were in a story. Almost like if the characters in a zombie apocalypse kept bringing up how annoying it is that they were in a zombie apocalypse like all those zombie apocalypse movies they saw. The book up to the point of this adaptation very sparsely brought up the word “alien” as nobody in such a situation would actually believe such a thing so readily and the reader isn’t meant to believe it so readily either until the very end.

Halfway through it had already reached the climax of the of the first book. The pacing greatly suffers from being limited to only 8 episodes, but they had already exhausted the contents of the first book by 4 episodes. Instead they decided to pull content from the second and even the third book. These events do take place chronologically at the same time, but don’t really make sense to be told in this order. I find this to be poor delivery of these events because they make more sense as flashbacks once you fully understand the weight of what is occurring in the future. Not putting proper emphasis on the moments that matter and giving too much emphasis on the moments that don’t matter is a common theme among this adaptation.

The one aspect of this adaptation that I found to be well done was the events of the Chinese cultural revolution. Which ironically was one of the parts that the Chinese Tencent adaptations did poorly and quickly glossed over. The scenery, the costumes, the actors felt well done and authentic in these scenes and it almost feels like these parts were handled by a completely different studio and director to the rest of the show.

It is possible that there could be a season 2 considering where the story leaves off, but based on how focused on people and with almost everything taking place in 21st century locations I have little hope for a season 2 to do the events of The Dark Forest any justice. Nothing that we have seen in season 1 shows that they are capable of show a world nearly 400 years into the future and all the events that take place in space.

Revelation Space

Revelation Space

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Revelation Space (2000) – Alastair Reynolds

One of my favorite themes in a science fiction space opera is the wildly imaginative solutions to the Fermi paradox. Another book that I found to have a similar feeling of a bleak and hopeless future is The Dark Forest, the sequel to Three Body Problem. Both ultimately deal with the Fermi paradox and why we as humans have never encountered any intelligent life outside of Earth. Revelation Space takes place long after humanity has left Earth and in a society where humans have achieved near immortality alongside all manner of body and mind modifications. In a way it feels more cyberpunk in that regard that anything else I have read. Another fascinatingly unique aspect is that the balance of power is heavily in favor of small groups of what are essentially technology pirates rather than any larger military or government. Entire worlds are essentially at the mercy of these individuals and their whims due to their vastly superior technology and firepower. The scale of the universe and its usage of relativistic speeds through space and its effects on time and the characters were brilliant. The only other book that I recall that used the concept of relativistic speeds was Project Hail Mary and we never actually get to see the impact that this has on time between people that have their frame of reference in time become vastly different. The scale of time and the scale of death and destruction are also difficult to fathom.

“The human capacity for grief. It just isn’t capable of providing an adequate emotional response once the dead exceed a few dozen in number. And it doesn’t just level off—it just gives up, resets itself to zero.”

The book starts off slow and takes a long time to pick up pace and have the pieces of the galaxy spanning mystery fall into place. The main protagonist is an arrogant archeologist whom is attempting excavate a world that was discovered to have had sentient life that suddenly got wiped out more than nine hundred thousand years ago. I never got the impression that there was any characters that were morally just in their actions. Everyone seemed to be devious to downright evil at times, but that is part of what I found to be compelling. There doesn’t appear to be any inherently good course of action to take and ultimately there is no telling whether the events that occurred were for better or worse.

I am looking forward to reading Chasm City next which is a prequel or at least occurs chronologically prior to the events of Revelation Space so I can move on to Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap. These books are very long and I found the narrator of the audiobook to be subpar so I am reading through them slowly.

Scavengers Reign

Scavengers Reign

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Scavengers Reign (2023) – Joe Bennett · Charles Huettner

It’s been awhile since I have seen a show like this and it makes me wish more animated science fiction was produced. Animation is expensive to produce so a show like this is a big risk to take. I am not certain at how this particular show was received, but I hope it does well so we can see more like this in the future. There seems to be an unfortunate stigma around animation in the western world as being mostly for children. I believe this bad reputation has been improving over the last decade as the new generation starts having more influence over the creation of shows such as this.

The immediate thing that stands out to about this show is how beautiful it is. It’s colorful and soft yet still manages to be mysterious and even creepy at times. The animation felt a little strange to me. It might be a stylistic choice or maybe even a money saving measure, but it felt as if the frame rate was lower than it should have been. It makes it look a bit jerky, but it is consistent so I got used to it quickly. The voice acting felt a bit dull as well. It might have also been an intentional decision as the whole show was quite somber. There were a few situations that had more emotive voice acting, but in general everyone’s speech was mellow and sometimes even monotone. My only other gripe is the sheer ridiculousness of some of the biological horrors as well as the solutions the characters find to particular problems. It is presumed that they haven’t been on this planet for a very long time, but even in the first episode they found solutions to problems that involves several extremely improbable chances of finding in a row. It was interesting for demonstrating the uniqueness of the world but it made it difficult to continue my suspension of disbelief that what they were doing could ever occur.

Overall I enjoyed this show more than I did not. I hope to see more shows like this in the future and possibly a sequel. I think there is still a lot that can be explored about the world of scavengers reign. However, instead of relying on shock value of biological body horror and violence I hope to see something with more critical thinking such as a mystery and fleshed out story.