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Among science fiction authors there are a few awards which are given out annually to recognize the best novels, novellas, short stories, artists, etc. The most prestigious of these is the Hugo Award named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the magazine Amazing Stories. The first Hugo award was given out in the early 1950s and since that time they form a pretty good guide to the very best the genre has to offer.
In 2015, a Chinese author named Cixin Liu won the Hugo Award for his novel The Three-Body Problem, becoming the first Asian author to ever win the award. The novel was very popular, both in Chinese and in English and last year it was adapted for television as a 30-episode series in China. (I watched a few episodes of the Chinese show and in my opinion it wasn’t very good.) But the show was also adapted for Netflix as an 8-episode show called « 3 Body Problem » which premiered last night. The new show was produced by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, best known as the producers of HBO’s hit fantasy series Game of Thrones.
I’ve only seen the first episode of 3 Body Problem but right away it was a big improvement over the Chinese version in terms of production values. But what really struck me was the way it opened. It starts with a communist struggle session happening in the midst of the cultural revolution. One of the main characters watches as her father is marched out on a stage and presented to the mob as an enemy of the people. Why? Because he was a physics teacher who taught the theories of relativity and the Big Bang to his students. He refuses to kowtow to the student activists and is beaten to death on stage.
Opening scene of the new Nexflix original “3 Body Problem” premiering today.
