From the Game of Thrones showrunners, Netflix’s new series 3 Body Problem is adapted from a bestselling Chinese sci-fi novel that became a huge hit, despite China’s historic censorship of the genre.

One day in Beijing, in 1967, astrophysics student Ye Wenjie witnesses her father being beaten to death by paramilitary forces. Later, she joins a military program in Mongolia as part of an agreement to avoid her own punishment, on the condition that she can never leave the base. At this chilly outpost, beneath a giant parabolic antenna, she loses all faith in mankind. She commits her life to her research, making a scientific breakthrough that leads to the broadcasting of a high-powered radio signal into deep space. This action will have grave consequences, and it all stems from that fateful day in Beijing.

This is merely an overview of the universe-spanning plot of The Three-Body Problem – a science fiction epic that also takes in secret science programs; an alien species in a solar system beyond the stars; and a strange video game depicting the rise and fall of great civilisations over thousands of years. Beijing-born Liu Cixin’s bestselling novel, the first in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, was once thought unadaptable for its brain-rattling time jumps, philosophical dilemmas and dense explorations of scientific theory (a Chinese film adaptation was shelved in 2017). But it now reaches global screens via a Netflix series – the belated comeback project of Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss. Early reviews are split over whether they’ve quite pulled off the gambit.

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