PrimeWire

A pretty good watch. It starts off a bit slow, but by episode 4 it starts picking up the pace. If you’ve read the books, it’s a bit of a letdown, though. While it touches on some of the thought-provoking ideas presented in the novels, it does little to flesh them out.

I’ll be the first to admit that the books can be a tough read. Packed with science, paragraphs and even pages can go on about the details of these ideas. The author is actually a power plant engineer and not a trained writer, so while he is strong on the science, his character development leaves much to be desired.

One change I did like is that, unlike the books, the story is presented linearly, making it much easier to follow. Liu Cixin said in an interview that he feared opening the story, like we see here in this adaptation, might have provoked the censors too much.

So while this isn’t the show I hoped it would be, I understand that literary works like these are extremely difficult to adapt to the screen. You want a product that is appealing to as large an audience as possible, while also keeping in mind that you might only have just the one season to tell the story as best as you can. If you don’t mind the science, I highly recommend reading the books.

Let us hope we aren’t children lost in a dark forest, crying out for companionship, but only drawing the attention of wolves.

Now on to the Tencent production. I’m very curious to see how that adaptation compares.