I liked the books too much to watch season 1. Should I reconsider?
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2025
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I guess that depends why you liked the books.
For my part, I had issues with both the show and the books, but very different issues.
Cixin Liu, in my opinion, exhibits all the best and worst elements of Isaac Asimov. His books are big on themes and complex scientific and philosophical ideas, but lack even the most basic elements of character and story structure. These are elements that lend themselves well to short form fiction and poorly to longer narratives, which is why I love the robot stories, but really don't care for Foundation all that much.
The series swings too hard in the other direction, IMO, downplaying the big ideas in favour of much more focus on characters and structure. In doing so it often demands that we spend a lot of time focusing on ordinary human drama when - in my experience - we really want to be focusing on the really cool scifi shit that's going on. Granted, this wouldn't be a problem if the characters were more interesting, but I found most of them fairly dull and unlikeable, even if they are at least more fleshed out than in the original books. The structural changes are also a mixed bag, with a lot of elements being presented in a more chronological order, with the unfortunate result that it becomes quite unclear what the point of a lot of this stuff is actually meant to be. Liu's narrative is less constrained by a need for strict chronology and this gives him more ability to put events together in context.
Thank you, this is very aligned with how I have been thinking of the books. It's really interesting to me, because the "Cixin Liu can't write characters" critique is legitimate, but I honestly didn't notice it that much while reading and more heard about it from others after.
I think the reason why is that I am very sensitive to "lazy" plot and character conflict - e.g., a character makes a stupid irrational decision and we spend 200 pages resolving it. That is not a trope that Cixin Liu ever engages in - his characters may make decisions I disagree with (like the misanthropic decision to respond to the alien signal that underlies the entire trilogy), but they are always coherent and not "cheap" plot devices.
So in fact, the Cixin Liu style of "character" creation, where characters are basically stand-ins for different pluralistic archetypal motives and "model" humans rather than believable humans with their own dramatic arcs, I actually strongly prefer, because it not only doesn't impede the sci-fi ideas, but elevates them.
So yeah...It actually sounds like I'd hate the show! The characters are the part I care about the least, and sounds like are spent more time/attention on, whereas the ideas sound like they're deemphasized.
I haven't read the books but I did enjoy season 1.
My main concern though is that the show is being run by the same fuckups who ruined Game of Thrones, so it would not surprise me if they end up just really biffing the conclusion.
To be fair, they were fine when adapting the books. It's when there was no source material for the ending and they had to do their own writing that they failed.
Well, "fine."
"Your sister" and "Bad poosey" are lines that still stick with me despite still being in "book territory" at the time.
A lot of the other things, like some very important dropped characters, made the experience that much worse. They really bungled up Dorne, because they left out half of the Dornish.
In some ways the series is actually better than the books. I loved the books, but let's be honest the characters are not very well written and the plot doesn't flow very well.
I think the comparison with Asimov is apt in that both writers make sci-fi masterpieces, but are ass at writing people.
The TV series attempts to make the plot coherent and give the characters human personalities and plausible backstories. It does this while telling the whole story in a sort of linear fashion. If you like the book, give the (American) series a try. It's fucking great.
The Chinese version drags on too long and censors out too much of the plot to make a coherent show IMO. FFS how do you censor the Chinese cultural revolution? Like what is left of the message without that?
I responded to a similar comment above, but just thanking you for the response - I actually am taking what you say to reach the opposite conclusion (that I personally would probably hate the show because of the re-focus on the characters), but that's why it's so helpful that you explained why you liked it.
I liked the books and I liked the show.
If there's one thing I've learned as a fan, it's to accept that no adaptation is going to be exactly my version of the work. Everyone notices different details.
I hated the movie 'Starship Troopers' because it eviscerated the book; now I have come to like it on its own terms.
The Starship Troopers movie is basically satire of the book, which was Heinlein devolving into a full-throated fascist.
By that logic, Robert DeNiro is head of the Mafia.
Heinlein also wrote 'Stranger In a strange Land' a book that was revered by the hippies, and one of the first stories to feature a transman. He wrote all kinds of stories about all kinds of wild ideas.
Was he perfect about everything? Hell no, but at the time he was writing a lot of African Americans thought that Malcom X was a dangerous radical.
Heinlein's life story is fascinating and well documented. Stranger in a Strange Land was just one of his many influential works, and the world of literature is fuller because of his creations.
Starship Troopers was published after his marriage to a woman, Virginia, who significantly affected his political and social worldviews. That's not speculation, that's from the man himself. By the end of his life, he had reversed almost all of his early progressive opinions in his writings, which often included arguments in favor of xenophobia, eugenics, and fascism. If you read his writings in chronological order, it's like watching a brilliant brain rot with age.
It was Heinlein taking the "only veterans should be able to vote" to a logical end. A society that's always at war because the ruling class are all military.
The opening pages tell you the reality - land on planets and nuke the bugs, even if there's intelligent life there. And use all those nukes, we don't want to bring those back to the ship. It's heavy and inefficient.
After that, we step into the eyes of a high school student being indoctrinated.
Heinlein wrote the book extremely well, but many fail to see the whole picture. He didn't approve nor disapprove. He just took a stance his father had always held and crafted a world where that was the reality.
I disliked the books too much to watch it. So I guess they're screwed.
I am curious too. I could not make it past the fourth epi when it first came out.
I did enjoy the Chinese production, warts and all.