3 Body Problem: Thinky sci-fi meets TV spectacle

THE controversial opening scene of Netflix’s new sci-fi series 3 Body Problem is set in 1960s China during the Cultural Revolution, where a group of young Maoists are beating a Beijing physicist to death for his resolute belief in the Big Bang Theory. This scene has reportedly angered Chinese viewers – just as they were in February by HBO’s Hong Kong-based series Expats – because they feel that the scene puts China in a bad light.

The show is based on the 2006 Chinese novel The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, which has already sold millions of copies in China, making it one of the biggest science-fiction bestsellers in Chinese history. The novel contains the exact same scene, faithfully recreated in the TV show – although the difference is, the scene in the book is buried in a later chapter, so as not to attract Chinese censorship.

The novel was later translated into English in 2014 by American author Ken Liu. Ken Liu asked Liu Cixin for permission to put the Cultural Revolution scene at the start of the English version, because he felt it made more sense chronologically – and Liu Cixin gave his blessing. It is this version that producer-writers David Benioff and DB Weiss – the famous duo behind the TV juggernaut Game Of Thrones – and fellow producer-writer Alexander Woo (True Blood) relied on to turn the novel into Netflix’s smartest, most dizzying sci-fi series in recent history.