It’s like someone asked ChatGPT to turn the book into a dumb anglo sitcom.
-Every character is emotionally immature, spiteful, and sassy. None of the ‘friends’ act like friends. None of the characters talk like real people. They’re constantly insulting or hitting each other. It’s just embarrassing. The actors have nothing to work with.
-All the major twists/reveals are shown in the first two episodes. No suspense, no build-up, no pay-off. Rushed is an understatement.
-Single characters from the book have been unnecessarily split into multiple new characters adding nothing to the story.
-The story is a cosmic horror but comedy and romance have been forced in for no reason whatsoever except as filler, which is even more mind-boggling because they’ve essentially rushed all of the good stuff in the book to make room for unfunny jokes.
-Apparently they could barely afford any sets and extras, so scenes and locations that are supposed to be bristling with sights and people just feel oddly empty. Even the special effects feel muted. The budget is just weirdly limited, and the show looks much cheaper than the Tencent series.
-Almost all of the science (which is the interesting stuff) has been gutted from this science fiction.
I hate anglo slop. Where is the kino. Tencent pls adapt The Dark Forest.
I’m sorry, this turned in to a diatribe. I’m really, really, really frightened and it mostly stays buried under a layer of cynicism and irony and distraction, but it broke through here. I’m terrified of this awful country.
Original post follows;
It is essential to victory to understand what your enemy is doing, why they are doing it, and why they think they are doing it.
America’s aggression is not based in what most people would consider rational thought. Americans are so utterly, blindly, deludedly convinced of their natural and divine superiority that most of them are not able to conceive of “military parity”. MAD was only barely able to contain US aggression and avert a general nuclear exchange. If even a few dozen government and military positions had been occupied by different men America would have committed to a full launch and considered the destruction of most of America’s population and much of the world an acceptable price for destroying the Soviets and Chinese.
America cannot accurately perceive China’s defensive capabilities. It cannot accurately perceive it’s own vulnerabilities. It will launch in to a war it can’t win out of sheer arrogance and bloodlust. Normally an enemy like that would be easily defeated, but America’s second strike capability and outright insanity makes defeating America in open combat suicidal. China might reach a point where they could destroy the us carrier fleet, there’s a good chance they already can. But if they can’t kill the entire nuclear triad in an overwhelming first strike they’re flipping coins on annihilation.
America is something new in history - the blind mad bloodlust of fascism armed with a nuclear second strike capability that could destroy every major population center in china.
So that’s what i don’t understand. How any of the attitudes and actions in tbp could constitute a defense against America. I get that this is an old book, and with Obama coming on to the stage at that time it was easy to be misled about the beast and maybe think that change was possible, but it seems hopelessly naive. America doesn’t kill for self defense, or for resources. Killing is what America is. It’s a self sharpening weapon with no master that destroys because that is it’s nature. You can’t hide from that, or turtle up behind walls. If defense is even possible you must infect it with something that will cause it to rot from inside and collapse, and hope that in collapsing it doesn’t crush the whole world, or else kill it completely in a single moment of overwhelming violence that leaves nothing left alive to retaliate. I don’t see any wisdom or strategy in what Liu Cixin is discussing. It’s all premised on game theory, rational self interest, and that does not apply to America. This is a strategy for dealing with a wolf, but they’re facing a rabid dog.
I don’t know if you live here, or deal with Americans, but the thrill and the joy in their voices when they, unprompted, begin talking about how many hundreds of millions or billions they could kill if only they could destroy the Three Gorges Dam or interdict the Malacca Strait is horrifying. I don’t have words for it and I’m terrified that the rest of the world doesn’t understand what we are.
Yes, very good, except that I don’t think the sci-fi author is directing foreign policy here, he’s just writing about his own fears of the future of his country into his fiction.
If this were true we’d all be radioactive dust right now. Ask yourself: what would China going to war with America achieve? Especially at any point in history prior to the present day, when China had less military and economic capabilities than it does now? Is China’s continued existence as an independent nation not, at the very least, a nod to the efficacy of Deng’s “keep a low profile” foreign policy, at that particular historical context? Is it so strange that Liu Cixin would want a continuation of that?
Being a leftist means you believe that a better world is possible. Americans are just like everyone else: people bound by their material conditions. Which means that when those material conditions change, people can change too. Any other belief is hyperbolic idealism and not historical materialism.
I don’t live in America, and I don’t deal with Americans in my day to day life. But it seems to me that you’re the one who doesn’t understand the rest of the world, of it’s resilience and bravery.
Very good points, thank you for replying. I suppose I need to go pick up some of the CPC’s publicatons and Xi’s books.
Saw your edit. Hey, it’s ok. I get it. We live in the middle of the coin flip of history and not knowing which side it’ll land on is scary.
All we can do is do what we can.
Thank you for being kind.