(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Three Body Problem- Chinese TV Show [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-11 Welcome to a diary to introduce the Chinese Television production of Cixin Liu’s sprawling Sc-iFi trilogy- ‘The Three Body Problem”. I first heard of the books because President Obama included them on his 2017 Reading List and then read some of his comments about the series… Barack Obama, avid reader of science fiction and fantasy during his two terms as president, recently sat down with the New York Times’ chief book critic Michiko Kakutani to discuss the impact that books have had on him throughout his lifetime. It started at a young age, he explained: “I loved reading when I was a kid, partly because I was traveling so much, and there were times where I’d be displaced, I’d be the outsider. […] And so the idea of having these worlds that were portable, that were yours, that you could enter into, was appealing to me.” Obama, author of the memoir Dreams from My Father, The Audacity of Hope, and the children’s book Of Thee I Sing, began by writing short stories during his time doing organizing work in New York City: “not a lot of Jack Kerouac, open-road, young kid on the make discovering stuff,” he told Kakutani. “It’s more melancholy and reflective.” While his eight years as president did not afford him much time for writing fiction, he nonetheless found a creative outlet through journaling and speechwriting: “The main writing that I’ve done during the presidency has been my speeches, the ones at least that were important to me.” The two discussed a number of books that have stuck with Obama, including Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem (translated by Ken Liu), and the transporting power of reading: And then there’s been the occasion where I just want to get out of my own head. [Laughter] Sometimes you read fiction just because you want to be someplace else. What are some of those books? It’s interesting, the stuff I read just to escape ends up being a mix of things — some science fiction. For a while, there was a three-volume science-fiction novel, the “Three-Body Problem” series — Oh, Liu Cixin, who won the Hugo Award. — which was just wildly imaginative, really interesting. It wasn’t so much sort of character studies as it was just this sweeping — It’s really about the fate of the universe. Exactly. The scope of it was immense. So that was fun to read, partly because my day-to-day problems with Congress seem fairly petty — not something to worry about. Aliens are about to invade. [Laughter] I admire President Obama for many things and his inquiring intellect is one of them, so I tried to read the first book- ‘ The Three Body Problem’, but I found it a little dense and slow at the same time- and just sped thru it. I liked the premise, but did not pursue the other books in the series. Now I have come across a television adaptation by Chinese Television of a 34 episode version of the book and it is excellent! The adaptation is on YouTube and is free. Link to the trailer here: Netflix is also developing an adaptation coming this year, I think, but i am enjoying the Chinese version because of the political implications of the story and how this is handled in an environment of controlled information. A small spoiler describes what I am talking about. In the book a character who is an astrophysicist is sent to a work camp as part of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Her family has suffered because of this political move as well. It was interesting to see how much criticism would be allowed in the series of this time in Chinese history. One interesting thing is they refer to The Party as ‘The Organization’ which I thought was strange, but it may be the translation. The show is in Mandarin with Chinese subtitles and English subtitles hard coded in. As you can see by the trailer, the production quality is first rate so this is definitely a well supported project. I encourage all Kossacks who have an interest in Sci-Fi or China to give this a watch and would love to discuss it with you! Here’s the link to Episode 1: You do not need to join, but free episodes are released more slowly...I think they are up over episode 12 though so I am just free-watching. Enjoy and let’s discuss! Namaste [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/11/2152445/-The-Three-Body-Problem-Chinese-TV-Show Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/