Adapt, adapt, adapt
Hi all! First, let me say, heartily, THANK YOU for your enthusiastic response to my job news. I’m very excited about this new phase in my career, and to have so many people reach out and send their warm wishes was truly a boost. I have high hopes for great things in my Agenting life 2.0, and I’m so glad you’re all still (or newly?) here with me.
To that end, I’ve put together a Google form to ask questions or propose topics for the newsletter! I figured there might be things you might not want to ask in a comment, and replying to an email might not provide the anonymity you want. Please use the Google form early and often, and I’ll try to make these newsletters as useful and entertaining as possible.
Several folks also mentioned that they were having issues accessing my MSWL last week — I was corresponding with the team over there and they had been having some server issues, but those seem to have been resolved. You can reach my MSWL here. A shorter version is also on the LDLA website. And now, onto the regular content!
I’ve been thinking a lot about how the same work can be changed as it changes medium. Last night my sister and I started watching the Netflix adaptation of Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem. It’s a big, buzzy, high-budget production helmed by the dudes who brought you Game of Thrones. Where Game of Thrones was famously thought to be nearly-unadaptable because of its scale, the world of Three Body Problem is even more difficult to conceptualize: the first book is dense with philosophical and scientific discussions, features long scenes set in an immersive video game played by its characters, has as its emotional center/inciting incident an act of horrific violence during the Cultural Revolution, and has so many competing factions and groups that your eyes begin to cross. I realize I’m making this book sound unreadable, which is certainly not my intent or the reality! 3BP is a propulsive, compelling read, and though there is a fair amount of expository dialogue (something I normally hate with the fiery passion of a thousand suns), the story is emotionally grounded and deeply compelling.
It’s very interesting to note that 3BP has two very high-profile adaptations, and Netflix is not the first to come out. The first was produced by Chinese entertainment juggernaut Tencent Entertainment (and is available to watch right now on Peacock, if you have access to that streaming service.) [Actually, technically, the first adaptation was a feature film version that they spent $100 million on and never released—and also, a dude was allegedly murdered to get the rights to it. But that’s a story for another day.] The Tencent Entertainment version is thirty episodes long, the Netflix version only eight. I haven’t watched the Tencent version yet, and we’re rationing the Netflix version for reasons of needing to sleep and be awake at reasonable hours in the morning.
Quite apart from such a high-profile project having two prestige editions, the difference in length shows that what works in one market may not work in another. Or, conversely, that what producers will gamble on differs from market to market. Netflix is hedging its bets with eight; Tencent is doing the same with thirty. Chinese television has many shows where the first (or only) seasons has upwards of thirty, forty, even fifty episodes. (Favorite of my heart, 2019’s The Untamed, has fifty.) Additionally, Netflix has chhanged the setting—instead of being based almost entirely in China, the Netflix series is based in the UK, with occasional flashbacks that take us to China in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. Without having been in the room when these decisions were being made, I’d bet they thought it wouldn’t have “universal” appeal.
Since I’m enjoying the Netflix adaptation I can’t really say, but I also really enjoyed Squid Game—a genuine global hit, also not in English. Hell, the global insane popularity of The Untamed shows that the audience for a convoluted show that follows a huge cast of characters over fifty episodes is not small.
I’m not really headed to a point with this—I think it’s interesting that they transferred the focus of 3BP to the West and not China; I’m definitely going to be watching the Tencent version when we’re done with the Netflix version; I think it’s great that literature in translation is having this kind of moment on the global stage. I guess I’m also thinking that we have to reframe the idea of where the global stage is—does it start here? Or is the West catching up to what has caught on everywhere else about ten years late?
Either way, the show is fun—some extremely cool visual effects, especially in the immersive VR style video game, and some of the casting choices are genius. (Jess Hong, who I remember fondly from several episodes of kiwi murder show Brokenwood, is a personal highlight, as are Benedict Wong playing a cranky cop and John Bradley as a chips magnate. I promise, it makes sense in the show.)
WHAT I’M READING
I’ve been on a bit of a roll lately. I finished the first in Robert Jackson Bennett’s new trilogy, The Tainted Cup—it started off a bit slow, but an initial small, parochial-feeling mystery expands into something epic and urgent-feeling as the Holmes-and-Watson-esque duo at the book’s center move from the backwater to the Big City. I described it to a friend as being a bit like if Sherlock Holmes were set in Fantasy Thailand, where the real villain is the HOA. I also picked up Esther Yi’s Y/N purely based on reviews and my own love for BTS, but I’m finding it hard going—it’s about a woman living an aimless life in Berlin until the day she encounters the youngest member of a Korean boyband and begins an excruciating one-sided parasocial relationship. (Excruciating for me, not for the character—the writing is really, really good.)
I also am back on my nonfiction kick with a really fabulous book I picked up during my B&N hardcover sale binge after Christmas: Tomorrow Perhaps the Future: Writers, Outsiders, and the Spanish Civil War. Like Adam Hochschild’s masterful Spain In Our Hearts, Tomorrow Perhaps the Future explores the impact the Spanish Civil War had on the political and artistic philosophies of writers and artists of the time. Where Hochschild foregrounds Ernest Hemingway and other Americans who participated in the conflict, author Sarah Waitling follows the more marginalized people drawn to the conflict. It’s a fabulous read.
THIS WEEK IN HOCKEY BASEBALL
I probably won’t bring back This Week in Hockey for a while, but I just do not know what to think about this Shohei Ohtani gambling scandal. Was his interpreter really stealing from him, or was he the patsy for Ohtani’s own gambling? Did his interpreter have a degree from UC Riverside, or did he not even attend? If he was a problem gambler, how did Ohtani play for the Angels for so long without them finding out—and meanwhile the Dodgers find out within about two months? What is the truth??
HOUSEKEEPING
Do you have any questions about the publishing industry? Requests for advice? Thoughts on your recent reads? You can leave them as comments, replies to this email, or fill out this Google form to ask anonymously!
I am open to queries via QueryManager only, which can be found here. Here is my submissions page on the LDLA website, and here is a more detailed MSWL.
My first novel, Marrying In, is available for purchase on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo, and is coming soon to iBooks. If you’ve read it, consider leaving a review—that helps me and the book in the long run!
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