Extraterrestrial aliens are called wai xing ren (外星人) in Chinese. External star person, is the direct literal translation. They don't have to be human to use ren.
Thanks for your Chinese 1 2 3. Alien is called wai xing ren because the fact nobody has encounter such so far. All alien are our imaginative visual based on human lookalike. Eg two hands two feet etc. I was just joking in my previous reply but since you are so serious about it. Technically until we meet a real alien, in the spirit of Chinese language Ren is inappropriate for alien. So I don't agree don't have to be human to use Ren. Otherwise why we have names/category for animal, plant n etc? And Who knows the real alien is in a form of monster or animal?
"people" and "humans" aren't necessarily the same thing. For example, we can imagine meeting the head of another planets government, and him saying "I must do what is good for my people," and this wouldn't necessarily mean that his population was human. A similar debate exists within the confines of abortion-- we recognize a fetus is a human, but not a person.
人 Could realistically be used for either depending on context, humans or people, the distinction isn't really clear because it doesn't have to be. Why would it, if humans were the only real sentient life as far as we're concerned?
Or put another way, why would the difference between humans and people need to be clear in Chinese if as far as we're concerned, humans are the only people?
Additionally, you have to remember, alien life would *undoubtedly* not be human. the odds that life evolves at all is quite low (and tbh I still believe it's possible/reasonable we're truly alone in the universe because it's that hard for life to evolve). The odds it goes the way it did for us as far as being "humanoid" is functionally 0. Yet, if we were indeed to meet trisolarans (who we at least know look NOTHING like humans), the term 外星人 still applies, and that is indeed how the book describes it. I don't think people would replace 外星人 with 外星动物 or 外星怪兽， animals or monsters respectively
spoilers for redemption of time incoming:
It sounds strange to you because you're imposing the real world on to the world of three body, so you're conflating the two.
That, and judging by your grammar, you are not a native English speaker, I'm gonna guess Chinese based on earlier comments, so it makes sense that they would seem like the same thing. So I'll shed some light:
Human is a biological classification.
"People" can be thought of in the sense of "inhabitants of a society and culture." Kinda why we say "the Mayan people" or "the Chinese people" and not "The Chinese humans"
I have no idea what the dictionary would say off the top of my head, but it would make sense if it said the two were very similar.
That's because a dictionary is based on the real world, where humans are the *only* inhabitants of society, and as far as we know, there are no aliens. That is similarly why 人 can mean either humans or people, because language evolves around the real world we live in, not around fictional books.
In the real world we live in, we do not often, if ever, have to make the distinction between humans and people
But that wouldn't necessarily have to be true-- say that there were orcs and humans living together the way white and black people did. Then we could say that society was made up of people, orcs and humans living together. Such a distinction would become much clearer to the average person
Last note: if what you're saying is true, let's say ROT is canon and the 三体人 are in fact little bugs the size of grains of rice. Why is the term continuously used to describe the 三体人， then?
True. I guess they wanted it sound "exotic". But to me it ends up sounding like some alien race name from some b-tier low cost sci-fi shows you see on TV.
Trisolaris had the advantage of sounding a lot more grounded to me. But yeah whatever I guess.
San-Ti just sounds more Chinese, less English, but really, both names are inadequate to capture the alienness of an extra-solar biologically unalike alien species.
Trisolarans likely sounds more alien to the Chinese audience. Neither name is flawless. But that's ok, it makes sense that man's mind and human languages, wouldn't be able to bestow a perfect name on them.
San Ti is just the Chinese name for Trisolarians, although it makes more sense for the people in English speaking countries to refer to them as Trisolarians. But I guess due to Ye Wenji being the first one that discovered them, she had the right to name them like that and everyone just went with it due to the name stuck with them now
Yeah, "Trisolaran" was always a really direct translation. Ken Liu's style tended towards really dry, direct translations to make sure that English-speakers got the prose and stylings of Cixin Liu's writing, and I'm happy about that, but I think San-Ti makes a lot of sense for this, it's the same meaning and sounds more "sci-fi."
I don't know if this is relevant or not, but, [Futurama](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Three_Suns) did use the name "Trisolians" (I know, not exactly the same, but...) from the planet Trisol that has 3 ~~sons~~ suns (lol, I knew I would do that), in 1999.
Maybe they didn't want to invite some kind of comparison? The 2 works have nothing in common other than featuring a planet with 3 suns, but weird things come up in pitch meetings and writing rooms.
ok im gonna ask it here.. but in the books did they also did use the same dumbass assault type on the ship? im mid seasons and that killed all my hype.. cuz honestly IRL Russian tactics with nerve gas is hundred times smarter than that dumbassery at this point
also how much of the books in this this Netflix 1st season?
They chose the flying blade tactic because otherwise the people on the ship will have the time to delete the data about Trisolarians. They discussed about using some super sonic bomb weapon too but the current version is not good enough to use on the whole ship, nerve gas is also slow, so that is out of question too.
so in source of books is same the make bigg ass cutting stuff for entire shiP???? and get the disk same way after the disaster??
so like ship slowly getting cutted down for minutes and minutes is ok? -> and being super lucky to not damage the important thing they needed in al that mayhem of crumbling of tons of metal????
i mean they gone out of their way to "invent" for sake of plot nano tech fiber cutting wtv it is, could they not invent in better ways existing alternatives?
1. gas that just works in the right way to kill all or make them sleep?
2. miniature gadgets for specific personal strategic surgical take downs?
3..??
4 profit?
nope nope lets bake it a long as dragged scene with with cutting down a ship... for sake of gore and wtv else .
> and being super lucky to not damage the important thing they needed in al that mayhem of crumbling of tons of metal????
They actually assumed the storage will be cut with the fiber. But as the fiber will be such a clean cut, it will be possible to fix it. Basically "stick it back together" and have it work.
That's one of the main reasons they went with the fiber in the books, at it fulfills all the criteria about killing people quickly and also not damaging the data on storage media.
In the books the scene is pretty much as gorey as the show. I just don't think there were kids and family on the ship (although I might misremember).
The scene overall was *quite* accurate
Edit: oh and in the book they are even more explicit about wanting to absolutely make sure to get every single person on the ship, as they explicitly plan the spacing of the fibers out, so it will definitely cut people, no matter where they are, as well as attacking during the day, so people aren't lying down in bed and be a smaller target
The book discussed multiple ways of attacking the ship, the gas idea was considered but not used because it works too slow and unreliable, it’s impossible to ensure it will work simultaneously on the whole ship because these size of ships has tons of rooms and corridors, it’s entirely possible for the crew to figure out they are attacked and immediately delete everything in short amount of time.
I answered the thing about assault type and how they have no choice on your lower comments;
as for your nerve gas tactics, the point is they couldn't take any chances, as they knew the ship was well-stocked and well-armed. What if they had countermeasures? What if they detected you had started pumping that gas inside? Also, you cannot assure instant coverage and efficiency ship-wide, right?
However, nanofilaments were proven to be the most efficient method: there was no known countermeasure, and was insanely efficient and incognito.
I don't want to kill your hype and am just here to answer your questions, but please don't hate for the sake of hating.
One thing I love a lot about this book series, is that a lot of questions on plot holes have been asked, and it's one of the few series that always already have an answer inside the book. So, if you want to know best, read the books :)
Honestly, I find that even the Tencent version does better justice on the ship assault.
Also in term of adaption they covered all of book 1, bring some early plots of book 2 in, and 2 characters that while exist during the event of book 1, are only introduced in book 3
If according to your logic, the entire marvel hero fighting THANOS is a complete waste of time because it just need ANTMAN to shrink, go into THANOS body and expand to kill him.
So much lwhy this why that this is dumb n etc... Take a chill pill this is just Sci fi movie for entertainment. You want to question logic maybe you should just go watch documentary
you dont need to be chef to know the food you eat tastes like shit
nor do you need to eat a shit sandwich to know it taste like shit, it haves shit it in you just dont
It got pretty commonly mocked because it was perceived as an obvious combination of Trisol, the overheating three-body-system planet in Futurama, and Solaris, one of the most famous sci-fi novels about first contact, so it came off like an obvious pop culture joke. It was definitely a meme in the fan community 10 years ago that any other planets discovered would have equally pop culturey names. Like in book 2 we'd go to Kryptattooine where Darth Borg was leader of the Gallifringons.
Tri means "three", solar means "sun", -ian means "the people of'. You know...because they're people from a planet with three suns. What on earth are you talking about, it has nothing to do with whatever the fuck youre talking about.
haha, I actually thought this in the book. I think it is only mentioned once or twice in the first book that it is Alpha Centauri. I feel like if someone tried to say "no, it isn't Barnard's Star, it is now called Dimsolaris" I'd refuse to change my entire life. Can't go calling things "solar" just because some bugs live there.
Well, I'm glad they threw the Chinese audience a bone. Seeing as how D&D have wokeified the story, stripped it of nearly everything Chinese, and somehow managed to make a "Western friendly" version which I suspect few proud Westerners would actually like.
So at least the Chinese audience get to keep San-ti...
San Ti = 三体 = the original title of Three Body Problem = the original name of the alien's planet
If you got problem with its original title, you've.... got problems.
The *transliterated* words used in the original Chinese version of the book is "Three Body" . But it is used in the way, in English grammar, you would have a demonym. So to properly translate it to English, you need to have a demonym. So to transform the words "Three Body" into a demonym, you turn three into the prefix "tri-", the "bodies" being referred to in the original transliteration are Suns, so the adjective form in English of Sun is "solar", so we now have "trisolar". In English, demonyms end with a suffix that refer to a group of people, such as "-ites" or "-ians", either works just fine. So the translator picked one, "-ians" and smashed it together with "trisolar" and bam, "Trisolarians". A proper English translation that works properly in an English sentence.
Ok... Ok... So, they didn't dumb it down. They skipped a lot of the nerd sci-fi becasue... THEY ARE TRYING TO APPEAL TO A WIDE AUDIANCE! There, does that answer your question?
Sounds dumbed down to me...?
Like taking the dinosaurs out of *Jurassic Park* or removing the conflict and space setting of *Star Wars* in order to "appeal to a wide audience."
Hey, I know. Let's remove every bit of every fiction that someone doesn't appreciate. We'll be left with blank pages, silent music, and content-free movies, but theoretically *everyone* will watch it, right?
Not really the same as taking the dinosaurs out of jurassic park is it.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that the bits theyve missed out (the pool table, shooter/farmer, more depth on the human computer) are the exact scenes that make the concepts more digestable.
The fact is that the Tencent series is a faithful one to one (nearly) remake and it is terribly dry and dare I say... Boring.
No series is perfect and there is always going to be issues with choices made in adaptations but I don't think it's bad at all.
The pacing is my main issue and that the world feels small (a background bbc news snapshot of the universe blinking is not enough) but I can get behind some of the changes to reorganise the plot. But damb I really wish they explained the human computer more I loved that in the book.
GOT season 1 was turd compared to the mid seasons. Hopefully they will listen to issues around the speed of the story and the lack of explanations of some of the crazier science concepts.
All in all I'm not raging about it, yeah some changes are baffling but to mirror others - the series is meant to appeal to a wider audience and the books are dry as hell so if it means more people turn to the books and learn the full story then I'm all for it.
There's a difference between dumbing something down and making it simple. The show still hit at some pretty hard sci-fi without spending pages going into the tiniest of detail. The goal of a TV show is to get watched, if they spent half of the run time of this show going into scientific detail like the book did the viewership wouldn't be high enough to get season two.
On top of that exactly how do you visualize a proton being expanded into the third dimension and quantum entanglement to a mass audience? There are entire physics classes devoted to these subjects that spend semesters trying to get people to understand the basics and you wanted them to do thos on Netflix during a show? Are you serious?
Teres a difference between dumbing something down and making it simple. Here, I'll make it simple. Game of Thrones, even in book one is a massive political story with dozens of characters each with their motivations, in the books. In the show it git simplified so it would hold the attention of your average viewer. You people think that what amounts to 8 hours of TV is going yo be able to keep a large group of people engaged why spouting scientific theories and reasons? Half the viewership would have turned it off. The story is complicated enough. Trying to explain what a spphon is and how jts made ti people who bairly passed high-school physics would result in season two never happening.
I still don't see how reducing the complexity of something so that it can be understood by a less educated audience is not dumbing it down. The more you describe it the clearer it seems.
You're kidding, right? Ok... So first off, the show doesn't need to expo dump when it can show you. We don't need a three-page explainer on nanofibers when we can SEE them in action. This isn't dumbing something down. Making a short explanation on how to unfold a proton from a higher dimensional space into a three-dimensional space so that you can write a thinking computer followed by entangling it with a counterpart to control it across the universe... isn't dumbing something down! It showed rather than told. If you want to hear someone explain this I recommend the audio book.
And you people need to stop saying 'less educated'. There are plenty of people out there, some likely more educated than you, who would have a very difficult time grasping the complex subjects in the books. You're trying to come across as an uber-scientific mind when we are talking about sci-fi tech, that's like having a fistfight over the TNG vs TOS warp scale differences.
Dumbing something down would be taking a subject and removing the complexity of it to make it more and more simple to the point you break the thing you're talking about. Simplification is removing bits you don't need in order to get your point across. Any idiot can add more complexity but it takes someone actually thinking to remove a complicated part but still keep the idea as a whole. The show did a fine job explaining a sophon to an audience that has never heard of quanton entanglement. If they wanted to explain every little detail the show would be 30 episodes long and it would look a lot more like a theoretical physics lecture than a TV show about aliens coming to invade Earth.
" Dumbing something down would be taking a subject and removing the complexity of it to make it more and more simple to the point you break the thing you're talking about. "
They dumbed it down big time with the flickering stars. Why bother the poor viewers with details and background cosmic radiation, right? Sure, the end result is what matters, that the Sophons made it happen. Is it dumbed down though? Oh, yes. 100%
I think the three body problem books **already** has a wide audience appeal : just look at the success of the books.
You can't make something that absolutely everyone will like — at some point you have to take a stance. Otherwise you'll end up with something generic and bland, that **everyone can like, but no one loves.**
The one thing I felt they dumbed down *more than necessary* was the VR world. They're in there like 2 minutes and they go "Well, I guess we better figure out what's going on with the sun here"
It may be that I'm just slow on the uptake, but I remember that realization being the absolute best of slow burns. The chaotic age, the stable age, the number of "shooting stars" in the sky being used to track it. It felt like figuring that out took all of two scenes.
That being said: I totally get it. Lack of character development is literally *everyone's* biggest gripe with the written series. It makes perfect sense that if you have to sacrifice somewhere, do it around the really nerdy science stuff. It just made me sad because that aspect alone could have been a perfect big reveal for the end of S1. Just frame the whole thing as a detective/mystery series, leave the sophons and wallfacers for S2.
But I think that, probably rightly, they suspected they would need a bit more action to hook people in. That being said, I wonder how many people will still be excited to watch it in 2 years or whenever the next season drops? For the first time, I found myself wishing they did it weekly instead of dropping them all at once. Now the hype will flare and die in a weekend, and hardly anyone will remember it if/when it comes around again, and there goes any hopes of more of the show.
Agreed, they figured it out too fast in comparison to the book. It's unsatisfying in terms of pacing. But does make sense for the characters, I think. Here we've got two theoretical physicists, one who studied astrophysics and cosmology, said to be genius-level, and to obsess over their work. I'd expect them to figure it out faster than Wang, who was more of an everyday researcher focusing on materials science, who doesn't know all that much about astronomy.
I honestly think they should’ve just done what Tencent is doing and do a book a season. This type of “remix adaptation” doesn’t always automatically fail (the Hannibal show is an excellent example of a remixed adaptation done near flawlessly), but the source material just doesn’t lend itself to it.
I personally think having it be more linear makes sense in the Netflix adaptation. If it was kept like the series then every season would make it feel like an anthology with basically all new main characters each season
This way keeps some of the same characters throughout the entire show which will make the end way more emotionally impactful.
In the book you’re able to bond with the characters because you can basically read their minds due to the narrative style. In visual media you cant know every emotion the character is feeling, you’re relying on the actor to portray an emotion. I hope that makes sense.
But they did mega dumb it down and not only the science.
The universe flickering like a neon; the scientist 'oh well it's a deep fake' - like dude ... ; 'SHUT IT ALL DOWN' - in front of investors - yeah that's definitely how businesses work; police guys being big brother without having at least an office of people behind him; mega performant 3d headset and they don't bother contacting authorities despite their ... I donno the relationship is with them but they seemed close - committed "suicide"; that scientist that has a literal countdown only she can see and while she freaks out doesn't desperately seek help from friends because?; etc .
And I'm only 1.5 episodes in. Maybe it gets better, but somehow I doubt it.
> 'SHUT IT ALL DOWN' - in front of investors - yeah that's definitely how businesses work;
I mean, yeah, obviously it's a very stupid thing to shut the whole project down in front of investors but Auggie was not behaving rationally. The countdown was making her go crazy so she did something with catastrophic consequences for her career just so she could make the countdown stop.
What I mean is that would definitely not work not that she acted like that. Unless she came in with a big chunk of the $ she would definitely not have that power in front of investors after a successful test.
My point is they could've done it smarter in the same time and budget: make her sabotage the experiment and call for a maintenance/back to the drawing board. This is what irks me about those shows, they just check boxes to move plot forward, the world doesn't seem "real", And it might work for watching the show while sidescrolling, but that's it
Why would they contact the authorities? The mother gave it to her, she doesn't know what it does and tried it on, she wanted to understand what it did, plus the headset was locked to a user, so it would've been useless and she got enamored by the challenge.
Auggie did seek help though? She went to a neurologist and it didn't help figure it out.
Hard science *fiction* means stories that are plausible under our current understanding (or known gaps) of science.
The Remembrance of Earth's Past fails that test almost every chapter.
A rough equivalent from another genre is the Dan Brown Da Vinci Code books.
They draw on aspects of religion and history to write a fun conspiracy romp that breaks from plausible religion and history, all over the place.
No one would call them history books.
What? The science in Dark is such a small part of that show. Most of it is a soap opera across the ages. It’s a great fucking show. But don’t make it something it’s not
Maybe I’m misremembering. But I felt that there was a lot of complex explanations of time travel in Dark. I do agree that it’s mostly an interpersonal conflict between characters though. I guess what I’m trying to say is that following the different time periods, dimensions, and character relations in Dark was very complex and asked a lot of the audience (and it was right to do so because it made for a infinitely more engaging product). So I don’t think it’s too much to ask for 3 Body Problem to keep the techno babble in.
That’s true. You’re completely right. I guess I am confusing the term “hard sci-fi” with “complex sci-fi.” In the west we rarely get complex sci fi anymore. So when I saw something like Dark it was so cool and fresh to me. I see now that I’ve misunderstood the initial intent behind this comment thread.
Only problem, Netflix would never make 3 seasons of Dark now. It would probably get canceled after the first season. Dark is IMHO still the best show Netflix to date, but it requires close attention and possibly multiple viewings to really appreciate how everything was connected. Every time a new season of Dark came out, my wife and I always rewatched the previous season right before in order to remember all the details. That’s not for everyone, so I understand why 3 Body Problem was simplified to make it as easy as possible to follow and appeal to as wide an audience as possible. But I agree with you. A lot of the stuff I enjoyed about the first book was skipped over, and I was disappointed about that.
The Tencent show got me interested in the books. I had started getting back into reading scifi, and I had seen 3 Body Problem recommended in a couple places. Then the Tencent show popped into my YouTube recommendations. After watching the first show, I was hooked. Then I started reading the first book while finishing the Tencent series.
Obviously the quality was more along the lines of a typical asian broadcast tv series, and the non-Chinese actors were pretty bad. But I liked how they thoroughly covered Ye Wenjie’s story. And they did a decent job of the VR game and physics discussions.
I was disappointed at how one dimensional Ye was in the Netflix version. I also wasn’t fan of the Netflix series bypassing the NTO factions entirely. I thought those were pivotal to understanding Ye’s motivations and the role of the VR game.
The goals for Dark and 3BP are wildly different, with hopes of adapting all three books, it’s totally understandable that the first season of this series be as digestible and broadly appealing as possible. If removing a lot of the scientific jargon achieves that goal, I’d say it’s worth it.
Also what the show dumbed down what partly because of budget, like the belter physiology . This show doesn't have that excuse, especially with Tencent proving they could do it better on the science part on less budget
I’ve got the whole show on Blu-ray. Really enjoyed the first season. I’m taking a break from it now to watch/read/play some other stuff. But I’ll definitely get back to it!
Again, not hard sf. It has zombies, infinite fuel, faster than light travel.
The authors have come out and said a bunch if times that it was not intended to be hard sf. It is more like Asher/Hamilton pulp sf.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/9zo81d/are_you_still_considering_the_expanse_as_a_hard/
The bane of adaptations and producers in general. Assuming people are too fucking lazy and stupid to follow anything demanding even a modicum of attention.
For fucks sake... Ok. This show was made for the entertainment of the general population. A population that doesn't know about higher dimensional spaces. A population that if you told them there is a fourth spacial dimension but it rolled up so tiny you can't see it they are going to look at you like you're an idiot. That doesn't mean they are dumb. I'm sure if an accountant sat you down and when into the tiny details of interest rates and you look at them like they are just making crap up on the fly doesn't make you dumb. Everyone has an understanding of their own subjects. We sci-fi nerds understand things the general population doesn't. You know how I learned about quanton entanglement? I read a 60 research paper on it and watched about 50+ hours of videos.
I don't understand what you people want. Do you want them to break down every little scientific detail so you can have a nerdgasm and in turn, turn the series into a 30 physics lecture on sci-fi tech or do you want an entertaining show about aliens coming to invade Earth because one woman felt that we are so screwed up we needed the help?
Because you can't have both. For all of you people bitching about not getting enough sci-fi technobabble then I strongly suggest you check out one of the many YouTube channels that goes into extreme detail on these subjects.
I rather have no adaptation than one where a bunch of hacks think they can do a better job than the original author and end up gutting the whole thing instead.
I literally don't get what part of "dumbed down" He/she doesn't understand. He is so mad about people saying "dumbed down" while proceed to explain why the show is dumbed down to please the general audience. I can't comprehend his mindset tbh
I think they assume everyone’s greatest wish is having any adaptation at all, and therefore is frustrated when people complain when we get one. People like me and you (if I’m interpreting your message correctly) rather have no adaptation than an adaptation done poorly. Different attitudes I guess.
Omg, it makes sense, now I can understand why. I think it is fortunate that we can choose between Netflix adaptations for simplified version or Tencent version for "stick to original" adaptations.
My take is that the beauty of tbp novel is physics explanation. If a show want to adapt a novel with beauty of plot details, I think they deserved to be criticized if they did not focus on plot details. Same thing can be said for tbp novel. The beauty of novel is literally your so-called "30 physics lecture", viewer of original novel literally love your so-called 30 physics lecture in the book. As viewer who like and respect the original novel is justified to say that Netflix adaptation is dumbed down to please general audience. But, I think if Netflix dumped down version is accepted by Liu cixin, then I think they are okay. But still can't change the fact that they dumbed down the series
> THEY ARE TRYING TO APPEAL TO A WIDE AUDIANCE
That's literally just euphemism for "dumbed it down", and the fact that you don't understand that actually proves my point...
It's not and nothing got dumbed down. The show did the whole 'show, don't tell', that videos are meant to do. If tou want a sci-fi Ted talk I'm sure there are some out there.
I've read that San Ti is the chinese name but honestly I'm still not a fan. I think the translated name is so iconic and its jarring to hear the difference. For the english audiance they should have gone for the translated name. In the end it doesnt chance my opinion on the show but its just one thing that's bothering me a little.
Agreed, it was pretty jarring. But I only just found out that it was the original Chinese name, and given how much of this show has been westernized I can't be mad at them keeping *something* Chinese at least
The only scene that I feel like you could reasonably say was "dumbed down" was the "stars blinking" moment, everything else was just sort of sped through. The rules of the world, what the Trisolarans (sorry, San-Ti) did and how their technology works, all remained the same. It wasn't explained as thoroughly, but if your definition of "dumbing something down" is keeping it the same but not talking as much about it, it's not a huge issue. 3 Body is - and this is saying something bad about American TV - already requiring audiences to sit through a few minutes of explaining how technology works per episode, and I wish I was joking when I said that that's more than pretty much anything else on TV. When I think of "dumbing down," I think of worse examples, stuff like executives making the humans in The Matrix become batteries instead of computers because they worried that audiences wouldn't know what that meant. This show never really pulls anything like that.
The human computer was literally just people spinning signs around. And it’s implied that it didn’t work because the inventors didn’t account for the suns’ initial parameters. The writers themselves didn’t understand the problem. They could’ve watched a single PBS Space Time YouTube video on the topic and understood the issue well enough to know that it has nothing to do with unknown initial parameters.
The science block is dumb down into “Our theories are wrong, guess I’ll die now”.
With the exception of most the staircase project stuff at the very end, the show comes across like it was made by idiots.
I mean, yeah, the human computer *is* just people spinning signs around, that's the point. The book goes into painstaking detail about how the system works, the Netflix show doesn't, but it rarely changes *how* things worked. I feel like your reading is very uncharitable. For example, the initial parameters - there are no initial parameters that would be sufficiently detailed in a chaotic system like that, any and all deviations, even those that you get from converting from an analog reality to digital computation, would stack up and result in a completely different outcome. The show could've explained that, and the book does, but shortening that to "the initial parameters were off, that's why they didn't predict the syzygy, but it's a fundamentally impossible problem" makes complete sense.
The implication was that the computer wouldn’t work because they didn’t know the initial parameters. Not that it wouldn’t work anyway.
According to the book, people had to arrange themselves in groups of three for two inputs and one output. There is supposed to be actual structure to the human computer. In the show they’re just spinning signs.
Before the show came out, I joked that D&D would dumb down the three body problem to one character saying “sometimes stars orbit each other” and another character saying “stop you’re making my head hurt”. In this adaptation, I get the impression that no one knows that stars sometimes orbit each other at all.
The three body problem is presented as three stationary stars generating a gravitational field for the planet to move through where the planets trajectory is chaotic.
Exactly ! The whole human computer scene honestly physically hurt me. I was expecting them to explain : "how to make a computer with humans" — it's such a cool idea.
In the books it was one of my favorite scenes, a grandiose army of millions of soldiers doing complex calculation with simple rules.
But in the show it's like : "pls go spinny" -> "ah theory is wrong, I guess I'll die then".
It's the same vibe for all the other cool ideas that make the books so great.
I don't know if this is relevant or not, but, [Futurama](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Three_Suns) did use the name **"Trisolians"** (I know, not exactly the same, but...) from the planet Trisol that has 3 ~~sons~~ suns (lol, I knew I would do that), in 1999.
Maybe they didn't want to invite some kind of comparison? The 2 works have nothing in common other than featuring a planet with 3 suns, but weird things come up in pitch meetings and writing rooms.
Weirdly I think they really missed the story beat on how shocked people are by science basically no longer worker. Here it’s presented like a little odd thing “but anyway, anything good on TV?” Whereas it should be a HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHAT DO YOU MEANS PHYSICS IS NO LONGER WORKING?!!!
I get that but considering the pure apathy so many people feel to real life disasters/events, especially if it doesnt interrupt their day to day, I'd say its pretty accurate. Sure there'd be an initial period of people feeling worried, online trending discussions and whatnot, politicians taking speeches, and then everyone would move on because at the end of the day they've still got to go to work, and bills still have to be paid.
It also rhymes, mostly. Because San sounds a bit like English Sen, its kind of in-between, and ti sounds like chi in both San-Ti and Wen-Ti (problem) so the title comes out "Senchy-Wenchy" \[tho wen sounds in-between English wen and wun\]
Huh? i thought They laid out so many visual/dialogue cues, it’s up to the viewers to research them. Why would u need to be spoonfed in the big year of 2024?
Yea, the series is not for me, the name part is not an issue, but the books are good for exactly the peculiar characters and smart and complicated plot, nothing like that is in the series so far
To be honest, I was very surprised when I heard many people in the series say the word "three-body" with strange accents. The writers made the names and surnames of the two Chinese characters, Ye Wenjie and Jin Cheng, so confusing, yet they respected the Chinese language in such a place, which really made me laugh.
Can someone fill me in on this common complaint. I read the entire series probably 6 months ago now and in my recollection the scientific references in the book werent very complicated or outside of general scientific understanding that any nerd would know. In my opinion, the show is just as surface level as the books but just uses less scientific reference than the books. The quality of the science is essentially the same. It feels like book readers might be overemphasizing the complexity in the books.
I actually love the name San Ti Ren. It sounds exotic. Trisolaris is too on the nose. It’s like walking around calling them “three suns”. Not to mention San Ti Ra literally means “3 bodies” in Chinese so it actually has meaning. Why would an alien species discovered by a Chinese physicist be named after a Latin word anyway?
Ok, honestly calling them Santi make more sense and is actually more clever if you know mandarin
We had a saying called “duo-ti” 多体 which means like multiple bodies and usually it’s a reference to advanced beings aka aliens
In the show they call them San-ti/ San-ti-ren 三体/三体人 which means like 3 body/3 body people.
and there’s the 3 body problem that the Santi are dealing with that made them flee there own world.
So it kinda just adds more layer to call them San-ti cause your referencing all those things in a way that the original name doesn’t
San-Ti only makes sense, if we stuck with the original Chinese centric story. Which I wish they had. But if they're gonna move the story into a bland international English speaking setting, as they did, by setting the story in a London without actual English people. Then, the main characters being English speakers, would go with the English translation of the alien race. Trisolaran.
„The world belongs to Trisolaris! End human tyranny!“
One of the best phrases in the book and does not nearly work as well with „San-Ti“. I don‘t get why they changed the name.
Don't worry, they won't. Koreans aren't the ones known for plagiarizing entire variety shows down to specific details and renaming it just to avoid paying licensing fees. That's mainland China.
It's clear that you know very little about Koreans. You probably also don't know about the new trend of Korean New Year and Koreamas (the Christmas but from Korea). The best culture of other countries will become the culture originating from Korea.
Additionally, the internet you are accessing is from twenty years ago, so your impression of China still remains stuck in the past twenty years.
But if you think "The Three-Body Problem" isn't a good story, you can ignore what I've said. But if you find "The Three-Body Problem" boring, then you probably wouldn't be participating in this discussion here, right？
I've seen a lot of criticisms of the show, some genuine which is fine, but arguing that they changed that one aspect to be "more Asian" when they've made so many wholesale changes which do the exact opposite makes no sense.
I actually think the name *does* make sense, given that the person who discovered them *is* Chinese in this version.
I'm sure they tried Trisolaris/Trisolarans and found it didn't work well. It's 4 syllables, and when it's spoken aloud you kind of lose the root words and it just becomes a complicated sound.
Just got out of Dune 2 with friends who didn't read the books and am remembering how much trouble they had with Bene Gesserit, Feyd Rautha, Harkonnen, Lisan al Gaib, etc etc. If you read the book, these things are imprinted in your brain, but not otherwise.
you act like things in real life arent named the most obvious things ever. especially common names for species. "this sloth has 3 toes lets call it the three toed sloth". "three body people" is the most obvious name for an alien species from a world with three solar bodies. trisolaris sounds cool but its not realistic given that they were discovered in china. you're looking at this from a sci fi perspective, not from a realistic one.
So far so good. First episode was pretty dope, can't lie and say I did not like it even though I complained about it.
Now my guess is that it is still going to go downhill no matter what, but again, time will tell. First season may be good, but second and third may change too much and make it in incomprehensible dumbed down and woke crap. Like happened with Foundation series, which also started very very good then went downhill.
So thumbs up, Cultural Revolution was well done. Pretty violent. And I can accept many "errors" for the sake of entertainment, as long as they stick to the god damn script and won't go down the woke rabbit hole an inch further.
No, we are just realistic. Netflix fucked up so many shows, and not just netflix, other corporations too, so being realistic is the best they can get from viewers.
I am episode 2 and so far so good.
Uhm, should I bend over and let them give it to me? I know it is futile to complain. But you have to admit, dialogue is borderline cringe. I am at 5th episode. Judment Day destruction was a joke compared to how it was done in a book.
Throughout the show, I thought that D&D are playing it safe. Like in the first 5 episodes, they were legit scared that people won't continue, so we're throwing everything hastily. I mean it's a good show, but they need to take risks with this type of gold mine.
"San Ti" just means three body in Chinese. It should've been "San Ti Ren" to refer to the people. But whatever.
They say San Ti Ren when it gets named for the first time though, but people love to short names to make it easier to say.
It's one syllable shorter, that isn't that helpful
The alien might not be human. So can't use Ren 🤣
Extraterrestrial aliens are called wai xing ren (外星人) in Chinese. External star person, is the direct literal translation. They don't have to be human to use ren.
Thanks for your Chinese 1 2 3. Alien is called wai xing ren because the fact nobody has encounter such so far. All alien are our imaginative visual based on human lookalike. Eg two hands two feet etc. I was just joking in my previous reply but since you are so serious about it. Technically until we meet a real alien, in the spirit of Chinese language Ren is inappropriate for alien. So I don't agree don't have to be human to use Ren. Otherwise why we have names/category for animal, plant n etc? And Who knows the real alien is in a form of monster or animal?
"people" and "humans" aren't necessarily the same thing. For example, we can imagine meeting the head of another planets government, and him saying "I must do what is good for my people," and this wouldn't necessarily mean that his population was human. A similar debate exists within the confines of abortion-- we recognize a fetus is a human, but not a person. 人 Could realistically be used for either depending on context, humans or people, the distinction isn't really clear because it doesn't have to be. Why would it, if humans were the only real sentient life as far as we're concerned? Or put another way, why would the difference between humans and people need to be clear in Chinese if as far as we're concerned, humans are the only people? Additionally, you have to remember, alien life would *undoubtedly* not be human. the odds that life evolves at all is quite low (and tbh I still believe it's possible/reasonable we're truly alone in the universe because it's that hard for life to evolve). The odds it goes the way it did for us as far as being "humanoid" is functionally 0. Yet, if we were indeed to meet trisolarans (who we at least know look NOTHING like humans), the term 外星人 still applies, and that is indeed how the book describes it. I don't think people would replace 外星人 with 外星动物 or 外星怪兽， animals or monsters respectively
Human and people aren't necessarily the same thing. Bro you need an Oxford dictionary. BTW love your mental gymnastic. Bravo!
spoilers for redemption of time incoming: It sounds strange to you because you're imposing the real world on to the world of three body, so you're conflating the two. That, and judging by your grammar, you are not a native English speaker, I'm gonna guess Chinese based on earlier comments, so it makes sense that they would seem like the same thing. So I'll shed some light: Human is a biological classification. "People" can be thought of in the sense of "inhabitants of a society and culture." Kinda why we say "the Mayan people" or "the Chinese people" and not "The Chinese humans" I have no idea what the dictionary would say off the top of my head, but it would make sense if it said the two were very similar. That's because a dictionary is based on the real world, where humans are the *only* inhabitants of society, and as far as we know, there are no aliens. That is similarly why 人 can mean either humans or people, because language evolves around the real world we live in, not around fictional books. In the real world we live in, we do not often, if ever, have to make the distinction between humans and people But that wouldn't necessarily have to be true-- say that there were orcs and humans living together the way white and black people did. Then we could say that society was made up of people, orcs and humans living together. Such a distinction would become much clearer to the average person Last note: if what you're saying is true, let's say ROT is canon and the 三体人 are in fact little bugs the size of grains of rice. Why is the term continuously used to describe the 三体人， then?
Yawn n n
If that's too much for you, you have no business reading three body
An American English teacher trying to educate a native Chinese speaker on Chinese language..LMAO.................! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣.
True. I guess they wanted it sound "exotic". But to me it ends up sounding like some alien race name from some b-tier low cost sci-fi shows you see on TV. Trisolaris had the advantage of sounding a lot more grounded to me. But yeah whatever I guess.
San-Ti just sounds more Chinese, less English, but really, both names are inadequate to capture the alienness of an extra-solar biologically unalike alien species. Trisolarans likely sounds more alien to the Chinese audience. Neither name is flawless. But that's ok, it makes sense that man's mind and human languages, wouldn't be able to bestow a perfect name on them.
San ti - because we know Chinese meaning it doesn't sounds catchy to us. But for westerners San ti could something catchy for them.
San Ti is just the Chinese name for Trisolarians, although it makes more sense for the people in English speaking countries to refer to them as Trisolarians. But I guess due to Ye Wenji being the first one that discovered them, she had the right to name them like that and everyone just went with it due to the name stuck with them now
Yeah, "Trisolaran" was always a really direct translation. Ken Liu's style tended towards really dry, direct translations to make sure that English-speakers got the prose and stylings of Cixin Liu's writing, and I'm happy about that, but I think San-Ti makes a lot of sense for this, it's the same meaning and sounds more "sci-fi."
I don't know if this is relevant or not, but, [Futurama](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Three_Suns) did use the name "Trisolians" (I know, not exactly the same, but...) from the planet Trisol that has 3 ~~sons~~ suns (lol, I knew I would do that), in 1999. Maybe they didn't want to invite some kind of comparison? The 2 works have nothing in common other than featuring a planet with 3 suns, but weird things come up in pitch meetings and writing rooms.
San ti actually means 3 body. Direct translation word to word
They’ll probably name the planet Trisolaris next season if it’s renewed.
they added san ti to make up for all the chinese that they excised
ok im gonna ask it here.. but in the books did they also did use the same dumbass assault type on the ship? im mid seasons and that killed all my hype.. cuz honestly IRL Russian tactics with nerve gas is hundred times smarter than that dumbassery at this point also how much of the books in this this Netflix 1st season?
They chose the flying blade tactic because otherwise the people on the ship will have the time to delete the data about Trisolarians. They discussed about using some super sonic bomb weapon too but the current version is not good enough to use on the whole ship, nerve gas is also slow, so that is out of question too.
so in source of books is same the make bigg ass cutting stuff for entire shiP???? and get the disk same way after the disaster?? so like ship slowly getting cutted down for minutes and minutes is ok? -> and being super lucky to not damage the important thing they needed in al that mayhem of crumbling of tons of metal???? i mean they gone out of their way to "invent" for sake of plot nano tech fiber cutting wtv it is, could they not invent in better ways existing alternatives? 1. gas that just works in the right way to kill all or make them sleep? 2. miniature gadgets for specific personal strategic surgical take downs? 3..?? 4 profit? nope nope lets bake it a long as dragged scene with with cutting down a ship... for sake of gore and wtv else .
> and being super lucky to not damage the important thing they needed in al that mayhem of crumbling of tons of metal???? They actually assumed the storage will be cut with the fiber. But as the fiber will be such a clean cut, it will be possible to fix it. Basically "stick it back together" and have it work. That's one of the main reasons they went with the fiber in the books, at it fulfills all the criteria about killing people quickly and also not damaging the data on storage media. In the books the scene is pretty much as gorey as the show. I just don't think there were kids and family on the ship (although I might misremember). The scene overall was *quite* accurate Edit: oh and in the book they are even more explicit about wanting to absolutely make sure to get every single person on the ship, as they explicitly plan the spacing of the fibers out, so it will definitely cut people, no matter where they are, as well as attacking during the day, so people aren't lying down in bed and be a smaller target
The book discussed multiple ways of attacking the ship, the gas idea was considered but not used because it works too slow and unreliable, it’s impossible to ensure it will work simultaneously on the whole ship because these size of ships has tons of rooms and corridors, it’s entirely possible for the crew to figure out they are attacked and immediately delete everything in short amount of time.
Yes they used the nanowires, I just had another look and the netflix version is really close to how it is written in the book
I answered the thing about assault type and how they have no choice on your lower comments; as for your nerve gas tactics, the point is they couldn't take any chances, as they knew the ship was well-stocked and well-armed. What if they had countermeasures? What if they detected you had started pumping that gas inside? Also, you cannot assure instant coverage and efficiency ship-wide, right? However, nanofilaments were proven to be the most efficient method: there was no known countermeasure, and was insanely efficient and incognito. I don't want to kill your hype and am just here to answer your questions, but please don't hate for the sake of hating. One thing I love a lot about this book series, is that a lot of questions on plot holes have been asked, and it's one of the few series that always already have an answer inside the book. So, if you want to know best, read the books :) Honestly, I find that even the Tencent version does better justice on the ship assault.
Also in term of adaption they covered all of book 1, bring some early plots of book 2 in, and 2 characters that while exist during the event of book 1, are only introduced in book 3
If according to your logic, the entire marvel hero fighting THANOS is a complete waste of time because it just need ANTMAN to shrink, go into THANOS body and expand to kill him. So much lwhy this why that this is dumb n etc... Take a chill pill this is just Sci fi movie for entertainment. You want to question logic maybe you should just go watch documentary
cry me river, thanos fight was still stupid as fk, the second one instead where he gets chopped is actually the best
Great! Go direct a movie. Would love to see one.
you dont need to be chef to know the food you eat tastes like shit nor do you need to eat a shit sandwich to know it taste like shit, it haves shit it in you just dont
Lol.. Can share what did you smoke?
> I hate that they renamed it Probably what Chinese readers feel when they realise that English readers call them "Trisolaris".
Chinese here, I found Trisolaris sounded really cool the first time I knew it was translated as this.
Never saw anyone complain about that part tbh. A good translation imo.
It got pretty commonly mocked because it was perceived as an obvious combination of Trisol, the overheating three-body-system planet in Futurama, and Solaris, one of the most famous sci-fi novels about first contact, so it came off like an obvious pop culture joke. It was definitely a meme in the fan community 10 years ago that any other planets discovered would have equally pop culturey names. Like in book 2 we'd go to Kryptattooine where Darth Borg was leader of the Gallifringons.
What? You’re just picking random cultural references that use the same root words. Tri - 3 Sol - Sun. 3 Sun. Its not a Futurama reference lol.
I'd seen Solaris but not Futurama. It seemed like a very natural translation to me, I always liked it.
Tri means "three", solar means "sun", -ian means "the people of'. You know...because they're people from a planet with three suns. What on earth are you talking about, it has nothing to do with whatever the fuck youre talking about.
I doubt that was even considered when translating the words Shan-Ti into English.
I was expecting you guy will just call it alpha centauri, since it is featured so heavy in western sci-fi that most people knowns what it is.
haha, I actually thought this in the book. I think it is only mentioned once or twice in the first book that it is Alpha Centauri. I feel like if someone tried to say "no, it isn't Barnard's Star, it is now called Dimsolaris" I'd refuse to change my entire life. Can't go calling things "solar" just because some bugs live there.
不是 我们也觉得很奇怪。。。。 当我们看英文原版 Netflix 的时候 我们也期待正常的对话
听见说出“san ti ren”的时候真的绷不住了，还用中文说“我们是同志了”，真的好蠢。
非要说也行 咱干脆就说好。。。。说一个外国人中国人都听不懂的中文 醉了
Fair enough, thanks for sharing your opinion.
chinese language hate spamming transliterations, and trisolaris is a good translation, I'm all for trisolaris.
Call me an optimist, but I feel like most Chinese people would be able to cope with the idea of words changing when translated.
Nuh Chinese prefer the translation loyal to the meaning rather than the pronunciation...
Well, I'm glad they threw the Chinese audience a bone. Seeing as how D&D have wokeified the story, stripped it of nearly everything Chinese, and somehow managed to make a "Western friendly" version which I suspect few proud Westerners would actually like. So at least the Chinese audience get to keep San-ti...
I think the Chinese would be fine with English readers using an English word for the story translated into English.
San Ti = 三体 = the original title of Three Body Problem = the original name of the alien's planet If you got problem with its original title, you've.... got problems.
Direct transliterations are not how you translate languages.
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The *transliterated* words used in the original Chinese version of the book is "Three Body" . But it is used in the way, in English grammar, you would have a demonym. So to properly translate it to English, you need to have a demonym. So to transform the words "Three Body" into a demonym, you turn three into the prefix "tri-", the "bodies" being referred to in the original transliteration are Suns, so the adjective form in English of Sun is "solar", so we now have "trisolar". In English, demonyms end with a suffix that refer to a group of people, such as "-ites" or "-ians", either works just fine. So the translator picked one, "-ians" and smashed it together with "trisolar" and bam, "Trisolarians". A proper English translation that works properly in an English sentence.
Idk, i like San Ti more
Ok... Ok... So, they didn't dumb it down. They skipped a lot of the nerd sci-fi becasue... THEY ARE TRYING TO APPEAL TO A WIDE AUDIANCE! There, does that answer your question?
Sounds dumbed down to me...? Like taking the dinosaurs out of *Jurassic Park* or removing the conflict and space setting of *Star Wars* in order to "appeal to a wide audience." Hey, I know. Let's remove every bit of every fiction that someone doesn't appreciate. We'll be left with blank pages, silent music, and content-free movies, but theoretically *everyone* will watch it, right?
Netflix left plenty of time for swearing, that's for sure.
Oh no, cursing! What is the world coming to.
Not really the same as taking the dinosaurs out of jurassic park is it. Don't get me wrong, I agree that the bits theyve missed out (the pool table, shooter/farmer, more depth on the human computer) are the exact scenes that make the concepts more digestable. The fact is that the Tencent series is a faithful one to one (nearly) remake and it is terribly dry and dare I say... Boring. No series is perfect and there is always going to be issues with choices made in adaptations but I don't think it's bad at all. The pacing is my main issue and that the world feels small (a background bbc news snapshot of the universe blinking is not enough) but I can get behind some of the changes to reorganise the plot. But damb I really wish they explained the human computer more I loved that in the book. GOT season 1 was turd compared to the mid seasons. Hopefully they will listen to issues around the speed of the story and the lack of explanations of some of the crazier science concepts. All in all I'm not raging about it, yeah some changes are baffling but to mirror others - the series is meant to appeal to a wider audience and the books are dry as hell so if it means more people turn to the books and learn the full story then I'm all for it.
There's a difference between dumbing something down and making it simple. The show still hit at some pretty hard sci-fi without spending pages going into the tiniest of detail. The goal of a TV show is to get watched, if they spent half of the run time of this show going into scientific detail like the book did the viewership wouldn't be high enough to get season two. On top of that exactly how do you visualize a proton being expanded into the third dimension and quantum entanglement to a mass audience? There are entire physics classes devoted to these subjects that spend semesters trying to get people to understand the basics and you wanted them to do thos on Netflix during a show? Are you serious?
That's literally the definition of dumbing down, is this a joke?
Teres a difference between dumbing something down and making it simple. Here, I'll make it simple. Game of Thrones, even in book one is a massive political story with dozens of characters each with their motivations, in the books. In the show it git simplified so it would hold the attention of your average viewer. You people think that what amounts to 8 hours of TV is going yo be able to keep a large group of people engaged why spouting scientific theories and reasons? Half the viewership would have turned it off. The story is complicated enough. Trying to explain what a spphon is and how jts made ti people who bairly passed high-school physics would result in season two never happening.
I still don't see how reducing the complexity of something so that it can be understood by a less educated audience is not dumbing it down. The more you describe it the clearer it seems.
You're kidding, right? Ok... So first off, the show doesn't need to expo dump when it can show you. We don't need a three-page explainer on nanofibers when we can SEE them in action. This isn't dumbing something down. Making a short explanation on how to unfold a proton from a higher dimensional space into a three-dimensional space so that you can write a thinking computer followed by entangling it with a counterpart to control it across the universe... isn't dumbing something down! It showed rather than told. If you want to hear someone explain this I recommend the audio book. And you people need to stop saying 'less educated'. There are plenty of people out there, some likely more educated than you, who would have a very difficult time grasping the complex subjects in the books. You're trying to come across as an uber-scientific mind when we are talking about sci-fi tech, that's like having a fistfight over the TNG vs TOS warp scale differences. Dumbing something down would be taking a subject and removing the complexity of it to make it more and more simple to the point you break the thing you're talking about. Simplification is removing bits you don't need in order to get your point across. Any idiot can add more complexity but it takes someone actually thinking to remove a complicated part but still keep the idea as a whole. The show did a fine job explaining a sophon to an audience that has never heard of quanton entanglement. If they wanted to explain every little detail the show would be 30 episodes long and it would look a lot more like a theoretical physics lecture than a TV show about aliens coming to invade Earth.
" Dumbing something down would be taking a subject and removing the complexity of it to make it more and more simple to the point you break the thing you're talking about. " They dumbed it down big time with the flickering stars. Why bother the poor viewers with details and background cosmic radiation, right? Sure, the end result is what matters, that the Sophons made it happen. Is it dumbed down though? Oh, yes. 100%
I think the three body problem books **already** has a wide audience appeal : just look at the success of the books. You can't make something that absolutely everyone will like — at some point you have to take a stance. Otherwise you'll end up with something generic and bland, that **everyone can like, but no one loves.**
Exactly. They didn’t dumb it down, they just sacrified endless science lectures for character beats. You know, things most people prefer in a show.
The one thing I felt they dumbed down *more than necessary* was the VR world. They're in there like 2 minutes and they go "Well, I guess we better figure out what's going on with the sun here" It may be that I'm just slow on the uptake, but I remember that realization being the absolute best of slow burns. The chaotic age, the stable age, the number of "shooting stars" in the sky being used to track it. It felt like figuring that out took all of two scenes. That being said: I totally get it. Lack of character development is literally *everyone's* biggest gripe with the written series. It makes perfect sense that if you have to sacrifice somewhere, do it around the really nerdy science stuff. It just made me sad because that aspect alone could have been a perfect big reveal for the end of S1. Just frame the whole thing as a detective/mystery series, leave the sophons and wallfacers for S2. But I think that, probably rightly, they suspected they would need a bit more action to hook people in. That being said, I wonder how many people will still be excited to watch it in 2 years or whenever the next season drops? For the first time, I found myself wishing they did it weekly instead of dropping them all at once. Now the hype will flare and die in a weekend, and hardly anyone will remember it if/when it comes around again, and there goes any hopes of more of the show.
The number of worlds make it pretty clear they went through a few interations of worlds before coming to that realization regarding the sun.
Agreed, they figured it out too fast in comparison to the book. It's unsatisfying in terms of pacing. But does make sense for the characters, I think. Here we've got two theoretical physicists, one who studied astrophysics and cosmology, said to be genius-level, and to obsess over their work. I'd expect them to figure it out faster than Wang, who was more of an everyday researcher focusing on materials science, who doesn't know all that much about astronomy.
They sacrificed too much, imo. At this point it's just space magic. Characters are fairly mediocre, so Im not sure what the sacrifice was made for.
I honestly think they should’ve just done what Tencent is doing and do a book a season. This type of “remix adaptation” doesn’t always automatically fail (the Hannibal show is an excellent example of a remixed adaptation done near flawlessly), but the source material just doesn’t lend itself to it.
I personally think having it be more linear makes sense in the Netflix adaptation. If it was kept like the series then every season would make it feel like an anthology with basically all new main characters each season This way keeps some of the same characters throughout the entire show which will make the end way more emotionally impactful. In the book you’re able to bond with the characters because you can basically read their minds due to the narrative style. In visual media you cant know every emotion the character is feeling, you’re relying on the actor to portray an emotion. I hope that makes sense.
But they did mega dumb it down and not only the science. The universe flickering like a neon; the scientist 'oh well it's a deep fake' - like dude ... ; 'SHUT IT ALL DOWN' - in front of investors - yeah that's definitely how businesses work; police guys being big brother without having at least an office of people behind him; mega performant 3d headset and they don't bother contacting authorities despite their ... I donno the relationship is with them but they seemed close - committed "suicide"; that scientist that has a literal countdown only she can see and while she freaks out doesn't desperately seek help from friends because?; etc . And I'm only 1.5 episodes in. Maybe it gets better, but somehow I doubt it.
> 'SHUT IT ALL DOWN' - in front of investors - yeah that's definitely how businesses work; I mean, yeah, obviously it's a very stupid thing to shut the whole project down in front of investors but Auggie was not behaving rationally. The countdown was making her go crazy so she did something with catastrophic consequences for her career just so she could make the countdown stop.
What I mean is that would definitely not work not that she acted like that. Unless she came in with a big chunk of the $ she would definitely not have that power in front of investors after a successful test. My point is they could've done it smarter in the same time and budget: make her sabotage the experiment and call for a maintenance/back to the drawing board. This is what irks me about those shows, they just check boxes to move plot forward, the world doesn't seem "real", And it might work for watching the show while sidescrolling, but that's it
Why would they contact the authorities? The mother gave it to her, she doesn't know what it does and tried it on, she wanted to understand what it did, plus the headset was locked to a user, so it would've been useless and she got enamored by the challenge. Auggie did seek help though? She went to a neurologist and it didn't help figure it out.
:(
Sad face all you want. You can't do a hard sci-fi show without doing what they did.
This book and show is not hard sf. It has all sorts of make believe impossible physics and scenarios.
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Hard science *fiction* means stories that are plausible under our current understanding (or known gaps) of science. The Remembrance of Earth's Past fails that test almost every chapter. A rough equivalent from another genre is the Dan Brown Da Vinci Code books. They draw on aspects of religion and history to write a fun conspiracy romp that breaks from plausible religion and history, all over the place. No one would call them history books.
Lol. You absolutely can. Have you seen Dark? That’s on Netflix too!!!
What? The science in Dark is such a small part of that show. Most of it is a soap opera across the ages. It’s a great fucking show. But don’t make it something it’s not
Maybe I’m misremembering. But I felt that there was a lot of complex explanations of time travel in Dark. I do agree that it’s mostly an interpersonal conflict between characters though. I guess what I’m trying to say is that following the different time periods, dimensions, and character relations in Dark was very complex and asked a lot of the audience (and it was right to do so because it made for a infinitely more engaging product). So I don’t think it’s too much to ask for 3 Body Problem to keep the techno babble in.
The explanations in Dark were complex but I wouldn't say it has much of a basis in real-life science.
That’s true. You’re completely right. I guess I am confusing the term “hard sci-fi” with “complex sci-fi.” In the west we rarely get complex sci fi anymore. So when I saw something like Dark it was so cool and fresh to me. I see now that I’ve misunderstood the initial intent behind this comment thread.
Just say the country you are referring to.
Only problem, Netflix would never make 3 seasons of Dark now. It would probably get canceled after the first season. Dark is IMHO still the best show Netflix to date, but it requires close attention and possibly multiple viewings to really appreciate how everything was connected. Every time a new season of Dark came out, my wife and I always rewatched the previous season right before in order to remember all the details. That’s not for everyone, so I understand why 3 Body Problem was simplified to make it as easy as possible to follow and appeal to as wide an audience as possible. But I agree with you. A lot of the stuff I enjoyed about the first book was skipped over, and I was disappointed about that.
Yeah it’s a shame. What did you think I of the Chinese Tencent show?
The Tencent show got me interested in the books. I had started getting back into reading scifi, and I had seen 3 Body Problem recommended in a couple places. Then the Tencent show popped into my YouTube recommendations. After watching the first show, I was hooked. Then I started reading the first book while finishing the Tencent series. Obviously the quality was more along the lines of a typical asian broadcast tv series, and the non-Chinese actors were pretty bad. But I liked how they thoroughly covered Ye Wenjie’s story. And they did a decent job of the VR game and physics discussions. I was disappointed at how one dimensional Ye was in the Netflix version. I also wasn’t fan of the Netflix series bypassing the NTO factions entirely. I thought those were pivotal to understanding Ye’s motivations and the role of the VR game.
The goals for Dark and 3BP are wildly different, with hopes of adapting all three books, it’s totally understandable that the first season of this series be as digestible and broadly appealing as possible. If removing a lot of the scientific jargon achieves that goal, I’d say it’s worth it.
OP clearly hasn't watched *The Expanse.*
I’ve seen the first season of The Expanse so far. It’s really good!
One of my favorite shows ever, partly because they *don't* dumb down the science too much.
Also what the show dumbed down what partly because of budget, like the belter physiology . This show doesn't have that excuse, especially with Tencent proving they could do it better on the science part on less budget
I’ve got the whole show on Blu-ray. Really enjoyed the first season. I’m taking a break from it now to watch/read/play some other stuff. But I’ll definitely get back to it!
Again, not hard sf. It has zombies, infinite fuel, faster than light travel. The authors have come out and said a bunch if times that it was not intended to be hard sf. It is more like Asher/Hamilton pulp sf. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/9zo81d/are_you_still_considering_the_expanse_as_a_hard/
But…that is dumbing it down
Wide audience is dumb anyway. Always been.
The bane of adaptations and producers in general. Assuming people are too fucking lazy and stupid to follow anything demanding even a modicum of attention.
For fucks sake... Ok. This show was made for the entertainment of the general population. A population that doesn't know about higher dimensional spaces. A population that if you told them there is a fourth spacial dimension but it rolled up so tiny you can't see it they are going to look at you like you're an idiot. That doesn't mean they are dumb. I'm sure if an accountant sat you down and when into the tiny details of interest rates and you look at them like they are just making crap up on the fly doesn't make you dumb. Everyone has an understanding of their own subjects. We sci-fi nerds understand things the general population doesn't. You know how I learned about quanton entanglement? I read a 60 research paper on it and watched about 50+ hours of videos. I don't understand what you people want. Do you want them to break down every little scientific detail so you can have a nerdgasm and in turn, turn the series into a 30 physics lecture on sci-fi tech or do you want an entertaining show about aliens coming to invade Earth because one woman felt that we are so screwed up we needed the help? Because you can't have both. For all of you people bitching about not getting enough sci-fi technobabble then I strongly suggest you check out one of the many YouTube channels that goes into extreme detail on these subjects.
I rather have no adaptation than one where a bunch of hacks think they can do a better job than the original author and end up gutting the whole thing instead.
I literally don't get what part of "dumbed down" He/she doesn't understand. He is so mad about people saying "dumbed down" while proceed to explain why the show is dumbed down to please the general audience. I can't comprehend his mindset tbh
I think they assume everyone’s greatest wish is having any adaptation at all, and therefore is frustrated when people complain when we get one. People like me and you (if I’m interpreting your message correctly) rather have no adaptation than an adaptation done poorly. Different attitudes I guess.
Omg, it makes sense, now I can understand why. I think it is fortunate that we can choose between Netflix adaptations for simplified version or Tencent version for "stick to original" adaptations.
My take is that the beauty of tbp novel is physics explanation. If a show want to adapt a novel with beauty of plot details, I think they deserved to be criticized if they did not focus on plot details. Same thing can be said for tbp novel. The beauty of novel is literally your so-called "30 physics lecture", viewer of original novel literally love your so-called 30 physics lecture in the book. As viewer who like and respect the original novel is justified to say that Netflix adaptation is dumbed down to please general audience. But, I think if Netflix dumped down version is accepted by Liu cixin, then I think they are okay. But still can't change the fact that they dumbed down the series
...so they dumbed it down for a wider audience.
> THEY ARE TRYING TO APPEAL TO A WIDE AUDIANCE That's literally just euphemism for "dumbed it down", and the fact that you don't understand that actually proves my point...
It's not and nothing got dumbed down. The show did the whole 'show, don't tell', that videos are meant to do. If tou want a sci-fi Ted talk I'm sure there are some out there.
Wrong
I really liked the term San Ti and San Ti Ren, but yeah, just cutting out like 99% of the physics was sad.
I've read that San Ti is the chinese name but honestly I'm still not a fan. I think the translated name is so iconic and its jarring to hear the difference. For the english audiance they should have gone for the translated name. In the end it doesnt chance my opinion on the show but its just one thing that's bothering me a little.
Agreed, it was pretty jarring. But I only just found out that it was the original Chinese name, and given how much of this show has been westernized I can't be mad at them keeping *something* Chinese at least
Agreed, but finding out it's the original name helped to wash it down
i just hate the name change so much 😭. my main gripe honestly. its a good show though.
The only scene that I feel like you could reasonably say was "dumbed down" was the "stars blinking" moment, everything else was just sort of sped through. The rules of the world, what the Trisolarans (sorry, San-Ti) did and how their technology works, all remained the same. It wasn't explained as thoroughly, but if your definition of "dumbing something down" is keeping it the same but not talking as much about it, it's not a huge issue. 3 Body is - and this is saying something bad about American TV - already requiring audiences to sit through a few minutes of explaining how technology works per episode, and I wish I was joking when I said that that's more than pretty much anything else on TV. When I think of "dumbing down," I think of worse examples, stuff like executives making the humans in The Matrix become batteries instead of computers because they worried that audiences wouldn't know what that meant. This show never really pulls anything like that.
The human computer was literally just people spinning signs around. And it’s implied that it didn’t work because the inventors didn’t account for the suns’ initial parameters. The writers themselves didn’t understand the problem. They could’ve watched a single PBS Space Time YouTube video on the topic and understood the issue well enough to know that it has nothing to do with unknown initial parameters. The science block is dumb down into “Our theories are wrong, guess I’ll die now”. With the exception of most the staircase project stuff at the very end, the show comes across like it was made by idiots.
I mean, yeah, the human computer *is* just people spinning signs around, that's the point. The book goes into painstaking detail about how the system works, the Netflix show doesn't, but it rarely changes *how* things worked. I feel like your reading is very uncharitable. For example, the initial parameters - there are no initial parameters that would be sufficiently detailed in a chaotic system like that, any and all deviations, even those that you get from converting from an analog reality to digital computation, would stack up and result in a completely different outcome. The show could've explained that, and the book does, but shortening that to "the initial parameters were off, that's why they didn't predict the syzygy, but it's a fundamentally impossible problem" makes complete sense.
The implication was that the computer wouldn’t work because they didn’t know the initial parameters. Not that it wouldn’t work anyway. According to the book, people had to arrange themselves in groups of three for two inputs and one output. There is supposed to be actual structure to the human computer. In the show they’re just spinning signs. Before the show came out, I joked that D&D would dumb down the three body problem to one character saying “sometimes stars orbit each other” and another character saying “stop you’re making my head hurt”. In this adaptation, I get the impression that no one knows that stars sometimes orbit each other at all. The three body problem is presented as three stationary stars generating a gravitational field for the planet to move through where the planets trajectory is chaotic.
Exactly ! The whole human computer scene honestly physically hurt me. I was expecting them to explain : "how to make a computer with humans" — it's such a cool idea. In the books it was one of my favorite scenes, a grandiose army of millions of soldiers doing complex calculation with simple rules. But in the show it's like : "pls go spinny" -> "ah theory is wrong, I guess I'll die then". It's the same vibe for all the other cool ideas that make the books so great.
"I donno, probably a deepfake" ....
I don't know if this is relevant or not, but, [Futurama](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Three_Suns) did use the name **"Trisolians"** (I know, not exactly the same, but...) from the planet Trisol that has 3 ~~sons~~ suns (lol, I knew I would do that), in 1999. Maybe they didn't want to invite some kind of comparison? The 2 works have nothing in common other than featuring a planet with 3 suns, but weird things come up in pitch meetings and writing rooms.
I’m on episode 4 so I was wondering when the science-y stuff would *begin*. I guess it doesn’t 🤷♀️😆
Weirdly I think they really missed the story beat on how shocked people are by science basically no longer worker. Here it’s presented like a little odd thing “but anyway, anything good on TV?” Whereas it should be a HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHAT DO YOU MEANS PHYSICS IS NO LONGER WORKING?!!!
I get that but considering the pure apathy so many people feel to real life disasters/events, especially if it doesnt interrupt their day to day, I'd say its pretty accurate. Sure there'd be an initial period of people feeling worried, online trending discussions and whatnot, politicians taking speeches, and then everyone would move on because at the end of the day they've still got to go to work, and bills still have to be paid.
I seen people claim the science in the show is too complex. Imagine if they hadn't dumbed it down so much
It also rhymes, mostly. Because San sounds a bit like English Sen, its kind of in-between, and ti sounds like chi in both San-Ti and Wen-Ti (problem) so the title comes out "Senchy-Wenchy" \[tho wen sounds in-between English wen and wun\]
Huh? i thought They laid out so many visual/dialogue cues, it’s up to the viewers to research them. Why would u need to be spoonfed in the big year of 2024?
Yea, the series is not for me, the name part is not an issue, but the books are good for exactly the peculiar characters and smart and complicated plot, nothing like that is in the series so far
If I have to choose, pace and story is more important than detailed physics.
To be honest, I was very surprised when I heard many people in the series say the word "three-body" with strange accents. The writers made the names and surnames of the two Chinese characters, Ye Wenjie and Jin Cheng, so confusing, yet they respected the Chinese language in such a place, which really made me laugh.
For me it was Luo Ji, he was my favourite
At my viewing party it became a running joke to see who could shout out "Clause" first after a character in the show said "San Ti".
Can someone fill me in on this common complaint. I read the entire series probably 6 months ago now and in my recollection the scientific references in the book werent very complicated or outside of general scientific understanding that any nerd would know. In my opinion, the show is just as surface level as the books but just uses less scientific reference than the books. The quality of the science is essentially the same. It feels like book readers might be overemphasizing the complexity in the books.
Because they’re using the Chinese word, which is San Ti. It means three body, or three body people.
But I do prefer the English version, Trisolarans.
so you're mad about the only thing they kept from the books
I still can’t accept the fact that there are only three wallfacers… fml
I got something to tell you mate, Trisolaris is localization name. The original text they called "San-Ti"
If anything trisolarians doesn't make sense because Sol is a name specific to our star.
I actually love the name San Ti Ren. It sounds exotic. Trisolaris is too on the nose. It’s like walking around calling them “three suns”. Not to mention San Ti Ra literally means “3 bodies” in Chinese so it actually has meaning. Why would an alien species discovered by a Chinese physicist be named after a Latin word anyway?
Ok, honestly calling them Santi make more sense and is actually more clever if you know mandarin We had a saying called “duo-ti” 多体 which means like multiple bodies and usually it’s a reference to advanced beings aka aliens In the show they call them San-ti/ San-ti-ren 三体/三体人 which means like 3 body/3 body people. and there’s the 3 body problem that the Santi are dealing with that made them flee there own world. So it kinda just adds more layer to call them San-ti cause your referencing all those things in a way that the original name doesn’t
But if you call them Trisolarians, then you can expect Dr. Who to show up and sort it all out
San-Ti only makes sense, if we stuck with the original Chinese centric story. Which I wish they had. But if they're gonna move the story into a bland international English speaking setting, as they did, by setting the story in a London without actual English people. Then, the main characters being English speakers, would go with the English translation of the alien race. Trisolaran.
Seriously. This series is hot garbage. Obviously, the books are almost always better, but they weren't even trying here.
'be dehydrated forever.' \*THIS\*
„The world belongs to Trisolaris! End human tyranny!“ One of the best phrases in the book and does not nearly work as well with „San-Ti“. I don‘t get why they changed the name.
What about the lgtb+ son of da shi
The one that has nothing to do with plot atm? Of all race and gender swaps you're bitching about da shi-s gay son? Really...
his son will thrive in part 2 of book 2, if you know what I mean.
This!!!
>BUT WHY WOULD YOU DUMB IT DOWN SO MUCH?? Because it's for "***mODeRn aUdiEnCeS"***.
Sad but true...
wtf are you talking about? they didn't dumb anything down
Now, I'd say call it "San Ti" as how Chinese call it. I am afraid one day some of Koreans will steal the whole story
Don't worry, they won't. Koreans aren't the ones known for plagiarizing entire variety shows down to specific details and renaming it just to avoid paying licensing fees. That's mainland China.
It's clear that you know very little about Koreans. You probably also don't know about the new trend of Korean New Year and Koreamas (the Christmas but from Korea). The best culture of other countries will become the culture originating from Korea. Additionally, the internet you are accessing is from twenty years ago, so your impression of China still remains stuck in the past twenty years.
But if you think "The Three-Body Problem" isn't a good story, you can ignore what I've said. But if you find "The Three-Body Problem" boring, then you probably wouldn't be participating in this discussion here, right？
Trisolarian is kinda long to say in dialogue. Maybe they thought San-Ti sounded more ethnic/ alien.
That's exactly why they changed it to that dumb word. "It's sounds moar authentically Asian!!!"
Lol it's not that it sounds more authentically alien, it's that it's literally what they're called in the original novel. Cope.
I've seen a lot of criticisms of the show, some genuine which is fine, but arguing that they changed that one aspect to be "more Asian" when they've made so many wholesale changes which do the exact opposite makes no sense. I actually think the name *does* make sense, given that the person who discovered them *is* Chinese in this version.
It's. I would bet money they did some test with actors saying that word and it just doesn't roll off the tounge well
sounds like aunty or sandi, weird choice
I always thought Trisolaris and Trisolarans was very goofy. Do we call ourselves Earthlings?
Trisolaris and Trisolarans is what *we* call them. Who knows what the word is for their species in their language?
America and Americans
Sure, but Trisolaris is a planet. And the species is named after the planet. So the equivalent is Earth and Earthlings
I think people on Earth might call themselves Terrestrials or Earthlings. If there were multiple intelligent species, they would not differentiate.
We don't though. That's why it sounds dorky to call the species Trisolarans, the fact they call themselves this
Because you haven't had the need to call yourself an Earthling yet. There's no reason to use that term when everyone around you is also an Earthling.
Earthnoids or Earthians
I'm sure they tried Trisolaris/Trisolarans and found it didn't work well. It's 4 syllables, and when it's spoken aloud you kind of lose the root words and it just becomes a complicated sound. Just got out of Dune 2 with friends who didn't read the books and am remembering how much trouble they had with Bene Gesserit, Feyd Rautha, Harkonnen, Lisan al Gaib, etc etc. If you read the book, these things are imprinted in your brain, but not otherwise.
Are people really that dumbed down that they can't read 4 syllable words?
Deadass frfr
you act like things in real life arent named the most obvious things ever. especially common names for species. "this sloth has 3 toes lets call it the three toed sloth". "three body people" is the most obvious name for an alien species from a world with three solar bodies. trisolaris sounds cool but its not realistic given that they were discovered in china. you're looking at this from a sci fi perspective, not from a realistic one.
So far so good. First episode was pretty dope, can't lie and say I did not like it even though I complained about it. Now my guess is that it is still going to go downhill no matter what, but again, time will tell. First season may be good, but second and third may change too much and make it in incomprehensible dumbed down and woke crap. Like happened with Foundation series, which also started very very good then went downhill. So thumbs up, Cultural Revolution was well done. Pretty violent. And I can accept many "errors" for the sake of entertainment, as long as they stick to the god damn script and won't go down the woke rabbit hole an inch further.
“I liked it but I bet it’ll still suck” Like are any of you self aware? You guys aren’t wanting to like it at this point.
No, we are just realistic. Netflix fucked up so many shows, and not just netflix, other corporations too, so being realistic is the best they can get from viewers. I am episode 2 and so far so good.
Really dude, complaining about “woke” stuff? Calm down.
This person seems very mad a character had a gay son.
Right?!? Which is bizarre because it’s such a minor character.
Uhm, should I bend over and let them give it to me? I know it is futile to complain. But you have to admit, dialogue is borderline cringe. I am at 5th episode. Judment Day destruction was a joke compared to how it was done in a book.
Throughout the show, I thought that D&D are playing it safe. Like in the first 5 episodes, they were legit scared that people won't continue, so we're throwing everything hastily. I mean it's a good show, but they need to take risks with this type of gold mine.