TTBP: Book vs Show

[Meredith Quill]

Compare Here!

[Fukui San]

I've read the books and have yet to watch the show. I'm interested in seeing people's reactions to it. It seems like such an impossible adaptation, and the dudes who effed up Game of Thrones would not have been my first choice to attempt it, lol.

When you get into it as the story picks up momentum it feels like every fifty pages or so you're in a completely different sci-fi story all rolled together into one dense glob like a story version of Katamari Damacy.

[Fukui San]

I'm highly enjoying your rants in the episode threads, PurpleTentacle. Having not seen these yet, but having read the books, I can tell you that all the plot points you're shouting at are from the book. Not once have I said "Well, that sounds like it was completely invented for the show" while reading your screeds. I come from scifi from a more pop culture level than you, I think. More Star Trek than Heinlen, so the possible lack of rigorousness in the Hard Sci Fi claim doesn't both me. I kind of think you won't like the books much either. There are lots of ideas and concepts, and I like some and others are whatever. And this overall grim point of view of humanity in which the only ones who are realistic are the ones manically ruthless enough to sacrifice everyone else for the chance at peace and survival.  Perhaps they haven't conveyed and explained the plot points from the books well, but they seem to be trying earnestly to hew to the book's plot.

[PurpleTentacle]

7 minutes ago, Fukui San said:

I'm highly enjoying your rants in the episode threads, PurpleTentacle. Having not seen these yet, but having read the books, I can tell you that all the plot points you're shouting at are from the book. Not once have I said "Well, that sounds like it was completely invented for the show" while reading your screeds.

Good to know somebody enjoys it. 😄 I was kinda afraid I'd just annoy everybody, but I just had to get the stuff off my chest.

Interesting that it's all from the books.

9 minutes ago, Fukui San said:

I come from scifi from a more pop culture level than you, I think. More Star Trek than Heinlen, so the possible lack of rigorousness in the Hard Sci Fi claim doesn't both me. I kind of think you won't like the books much either.

Oh I love Star Trek (at least classic Trek, new Trek is half good and half horrible).

I think I was going into this with the wrong expectations. For years people have been shouting at me how this is "hard scifi" and how great of a "hard scifi" it was and then I watch it and it is about the softest scifi I've ever seen. Like I'm not joking, this is more Star Wars than Star Trek. At least Star Trek invents things to make their tech plausible, like Subspace, which makes FTL communication and flight a thing. This show just pretends actual science works like magic.

Though thinking about it, even without the wrong expectations I probably would have had a problem with it:

- Just straight up magic in a scifi mask (Star Wars): fine with me

- Making up some plausible technobabble (Star Trek): totally fine with me

- Completely misrepresenting actual science (3 body problem): ah hell nah!

I think it's about staying consistent with the world you built. Star Trek does that (in its good shows). 3 body problem purports to be taking place in our universe with our universal laws, but can't stay consistent with them for 5 minutes...

But the wrong expectations certainly didn't help.

26 minutes ago, Fukui San said:

I kind of think you won't like the books much either. There are lots of ideas and concepts, and I like some and others are whatever. And this overall grim point of view of humanity in which the only ones who are realistic are the ones manically ruthless enough to sacrifice everyone else for the chance at peace and survival.  Perhaps they haven't conveyed and explained the plot points from the books well, but they seem to be trying earnestly to hew to the book's plot.

Thanks for the primer. It will help me keep my expectations in check and maybe that will make it a better experience. If the show really stuck close to the book in the major points (I know locations were obviously moved) it probably won't be for me, but at this point I feel like I ought to give it a try.

I will report back either way... eventually. 😆

[Fukui San]

I think I was most entertained by the ballsiness of the authorial tactic of having the story grow so exponentially that 80% of the story becomes obsolete every 50 pages. Oh now we’re introducing cryosleep to this important character… and now we’re living in underground sentient tree world 500’years later. Oh, now it’s 200 years later and we’re in a space ghetto.  

And I found the authors view of psychology fairly one note, with the most psychotic character usually being right in any dispute, but having a significant portion of humanity align with alien invaders out to destroy humanity for the LOLs rang truer watching the stupidity of people in the pandemic. 

[shrewd.buddha]

Liu Cixin also wrote The Wandering Earth.  I saw the move, also on Netflix, and reevaluated any expectations of hard science fiction. It was pretty bonkers - more like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas than 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

 I get the impression that his novels have a lot of interesting scientific concepts but things go pretty far off the rails. 

[Anela]

I’ve just read about the books on Wikipedia, and it’s *a lot*. It’s kind of exhausting, just reading a summary. 

[Fukui San]

Do y'all want spoilers from the upcoming books? I could lay out some that stick in my mind, though not a comprehensive list.