It's not really anti-communist in the context of a Chinese audience. It can feel that way with all the anti-communist / china bullshit we're surrounded by every day, but the cultural revolution was definitely a very dark and sloppy time for a ton of people who lived through it. Anyway all of the cultural revolution stuff is contained to the exposition iirc so you won't have to deal with it much longer if you choose to keep going.
Remember that the Cultural Revolution was essentially a civil war between competing factions within both the communist party and society at large.. Mao, who by many accounts had one foot out the door of this world (or at least was perceived that way by many in the party, thus bringing up the questions of how the country would be run when he was no longer around) mobilized certain parts of society including students and workers against what he saw as the ossification and bureaucracy of the government. It played out as a struggle for control between the Gang of Four and other factions (which took power after Mao’s death and the overthrow of the Gang of Four) represented by people like Deng (who had been purged during the CR). Many other communist party members and revolutionaries were purged from the party during this time including I believe current president Xi’s own father. It was a time with a lot of suffering, death etc. The CPC since then has cast the era in a more or less negative light. Three Body problem is quite popular within China of course and includes all the same cultural revolution exposition that you’ll find in the English version. It’s meant to explain why somebody who lived through so much chaos might respond to the aliens the way she did.
Yep. I've really liked the first two books after finishing them (will read the third after a detour through Blindsight [thanks to a Hexbear rec] and probably something else in a different genre), but my most cynical take is that the series is stitched together with recycled action movie tropes and forced, smarmy teaching scenes between characters in order to get across a technical point.
I remember when liberals were absolutely fawning over the book and saying it was an allegory for the China-US relations (so of course they claim the genocidal aliens looking to displace entire populations and leave them to die for their own benefit are a metaphor for China and not the US), Disney were even looking to buy the licensing rights to make films which I was pretty hyped.
Then Liu Cixin stated his support for the CPC and that there was no genocide of Uyghur muslims and all the libs immediately pretended he didn't exist.
Speed edit: it turns out it was Netflix looking to do the adaptation and that it was actually five republican senators who wrote an open letter to Netflix accusing them of supporting genocide - literal fucking top-down mcarthyism
Wait did they actually cancel it? I was looking forward to the adaptation, it was supposed to be done with the game of thrones show runners and I never watched GoT but every one talked like it was the best show on TV until towards the end, and that was because they departed significantly from the books, but this is a trilogy that’s already fully published and would have had cooperation of the author. I do remember some lawmakers throwing a fit because the author didn’t toe the American line on Xinjiang lol
You can google how much the messed up the show if you're interested, there's countless videos and articles out there. But the short of it is that they had the full backing of HBO where pretty much everyone around the two showrunners and head writers were top notch, from costuming to acting to directors. And they were able to follow the first 3 books pretty close to the source material, mostly using book dialogue and with a lot of writing assistance from the novel series author, GRRM. The success went to their heads and they refused to listen to anyone's heads but their own, and GRRM never finished the last two books so they ran out of source material to adapt starting around s5. As they started deviating from source material even as early as s2 and 3, the show got proggressively worse. Generally scenes based closely to the source material was top tier, and scenes or plotlines that deviated or went ahead of the published material had mediocre or crappy writing. The last two seasons were some awful writing with terrible implications (i.e. a girl saying her sexual assaulters made her strong), and the final season is pretty universally hailed as awful, by the main actors as well. The effects were always pretty, but their decisions for plot and dialogue revealed them as hacks.
Wow that wasn't very short, sorry I did that to you.
noooo Ye Wenjie don't do it!!
I'm slogging through the first few chapters right now and I'm really looking forward to when the anticommunism stops and the sci-fi kicks in
It's not really anti-communist in the context of a Chinese audience. It can feel that way with all the anti-communist / china bullshit we're surrounded by every day, but the cultural revolution was definitely a very dark and sloppy time for a ton of people who lived through it. Anyway all of the cultural revolution stuff is contained to the exposition iirc so you won't have to deal with it much longer if you choose to keep going.
deleted by creator
thanks, this helps. it's just a little cartoonish
Remember that the Cultural Revolution was essentially a civil war between competing factions within both the communist party and society at large.. Mao, who by many accounts had one foot out the door of this world (or at least was perceived that way by many in the party, thus bringing up the questions of how the country would be run when he was no longer around) mobilized certain parts of society including students and workers against what he saw as the ossification and bureaucracy of the government. It played out as a struggle for control between the Gang of Four and other factions (which took power after Mao’s death and the overthrow of the Gang of Four) represented by people like Deng (who had been purged during the CR). Many other communist party members and revolutionaries were purged from the party during this time including I believe current president Xi’s own father. It was a time with a lot of suffering, death etc. The CPC since then has cast the era in a more or less negative light. Three Body problem is quite popular within China of course and includes all the same cultural revolution exposition that you’ll find in the English version. It’s meant to explain why somebody who lived through so much chaos might respond to the aliens the way she did.
Liu Cixin has a lot of great ideas, but occasionally (regularly?) cartoonish writing is def a fair critique of him
Yep. I've really liked the first two books after finishing them (will read the third after a detour through Blindsight [thanks to a Hexbear rec] and probably something else in a different genre), but my most cynical take is that the series is stitched together with recycled action movie tropes and forced, smarmy teaching scenes between characters in order to get across a technical point.
I remember when liberals were absolutely fawning over the book and saying it was an allegory for the China-US relations (so of course they claim the genocidal aliens looking to displace entire populations and leave them to die for their own benefit are a metaphor for China and not the US), Disney were even looking to buy the licensing rights to make films which I was pretty hyped.
Then Liu Cixin stated his support for the CPC and that there was no genocide of Uyghur muslims and all the libs immediately pretended he didn't exist.
Speed edit: it turns out it was Netflix looking to do the adaptation and that it was actually five republican senators who wrote an open letter to Netflix accusing them of supporting genocide - literal fucking top-down mcarthyism
Wait did they actually cancel it? I was looking forward to the adaptation, it was supposed to be done with the game of thrones show runners and I never watched GoT but every one talked like it was the best show on TV until towards the end, and that was because they departed significantly from the books, but this is a trilogy that’s already fully published and would have had cooperation of the author. I do remember some lawmakers throwing a fit because the author didn’t toe the American line on Xinjiang lol
Please god no, David Benioff and Dan Weiss are failson morons who shouldn't be allowed to run any film project outside of a home movie.
Like I said I never actually watched any of GoT and I don’t really know their work
You can google how much the messed up the show if you're interested, there's countless videos and articles out there. But the short of it is that they had the full backing of HBO where pretty much everyone around the two showrunners and head writers were top notch, from costuming to acting to directors. And they were able to follow the first 3 books pretty close to the source material, mostly using book dialogue and with a lot of writing assistance from the novel series author, GRRM. The success went to their heads and they refused to listen to anyone's heads but their own, and GRRM never finished the last two books so they ran out of source material to adapt starting around s5. As they started deviating from source material even as early as s2 and 3, the show got proggressively worse. Generally scenes based closely to the source material was top tier, and scenes or plotlines that deviated or went ahead of the published material had mediocre or crappy writing. The last two seasons were some awful writing with terrible implications (i.e. a girl saying her sexual assaulters made her strong), and the final season is pretty universally hailed as awful, by the main actors as well. The effects were always pretty, but their decisions for plot and dialogue revealed them as hacks.
Wow that wasn't very short, sorry I did that to you.
I mean, when they were working off source material they kind of did a great job.
I just checked to make sure and it seems that they didn't actually cancel it.
Big reference