Review | Netflix drama review: 3 Body Problem – Game of Thrones creators adapt Liu Cixin’s sci-fi masterpiece for your latest dose of event television
- After the stunning success of the Game of Thrones franchise, its creators turn to Liu Cixin’s award-winning sci-fi novel The Three Body Problem
- The Netflix drama 3 Body Problem distils this and other parts of Liu’s epic trilogy about alien invasion, starting with events during the Cultural Revolution
4/5 stars
Following the gargantuan success of Game of Thrones, series creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss turn, for their next dose of event television, to one of the most extraordinary literary successes of the 21st century.
Liu Cixin’s 2008 novel The Three-Body Problem has been universally celebrated as one of the most innovative works of science fiction in a generation. After it was translated into English in 2012, it became the first Chinese novel to win science fiction’s prestigious Hugo Award for best novel.
A pair of sequels quickly followed to create what has become known as the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, the epic story of an advancing alien invasion and the efforts of Earth’s foremost scientists to thwart it.
Blending elements of history with advanced theoretical physics in a hugely ambitious thriller that pits science against politics and religion while delivering a searing allegory for humanity’s environmental responsibilities, it seems like a project tailor-made for the creative team that turned George R.R. Martin’s romping, still-incomplete fantasy saga into a cultural phenomenon.
