Delve deep enough into the story behind the new Netflix show 3 Body Problem, and you'll soon find yourself with a three-book problem.
That's because the show draws on elements found in all three books that comprise the "Remembrance of Earth's Past" trilogy by Chinese sci-fi author Cixin Liu: The Three Body Problem, its sequel The Dark Forest, and the final book in the trilogy, Death's End. If you're looking for the group of friends at the center of the show, you'll find that most are based on characters who never meet.
Of the main characters in the show, only two are taken from the first book, and only one of those retains his name. One character is drawn from The Dark Forest, and the rest can be found in Death's End — which comes after what is very likely to be the show's dramatic finale, in The Dark Forest (Death's End mostly takes place on a timeline that runs alongside the first two books).
That means if you decide to dive into the books after watching all eight episodes, it's very hard to see what the show characters look like in their original (mostly Chinese) versions without getting what is probably a ton of spoilers for future series. Meanwhile, the Wallfacer storyline, introduced in episode eight, takes us into the first third of the second book.
But don't worry. In this roundup that contains only spoilers for the show (and none for the books past the points of the plot covered in the show), we've got you.
So let's strap on our futuristic VR headsets, which in the book are full-body "V-suits," and dive in — starting with the one part of the show's narrative that is most like the books.
A big yes to Ye Wenjie
The story of the woman who sent the fateful message to the San-Ti (the alien race who, in the book translation by U.S. science fiction author Ken Liu, are called "Trisolarans" after their three suns) made it to the screen condensed but almost entirely unaltered.
Both book and show open with the public humiliation of Ye Wenjie's father during the Cultural Revolution in China, when the teaching of western science came under brutal repression from zealous (and mostly young) supporters of Mao Zedong. Looking back on this shameful moment in history is a big deal; when published in China, the original version of Liu's novel hid those events in the middle of the story. (A serialized online manga version by Chinese artists is currently "on hiatus" at this very point in the book.) The author has confirmed that he originally intended it to be the opening.
Ye gets in trouble with the authorities for possessing a copy of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring at a labor camp, and is sent to join the secret sun-based message project at Red Coast Base. The show has failed to mention it, but in the book Ye also marries and then kills a man she meets there in order to keep the message she sent a secret. She is later revealed as the head of the ETO (Earth-Trisolaran Organization), and has a crucial discussion with the Wallfacer character in the second book (see below).
Ye also has a daughter who dies by suicide, as in the show, though the reasoning behind this is only revealed in Death's End.
Augustina 'Auggie' Salazar and Da Shi
The gruff, skeptical, chain-smoking detective known as Da Shi (Benedict Wong) makes just as big an impression in the books (where he is Chinese rather than from Manchester, but still). He appears both in the first and second books, and initially is more of a freelance investigator rather than working for Wade's shadowy government organization. He's also a former officer in the Chinese military.
The nanotechnology expert Da Shi works with — Auggie (Eiza Gonzalez), the French scientist who sees the countdown in her field of vision — is a man named Wang Miao, who only appears in the first book. Both Auggie and Wang are being hounded by the San-Ti/Trisolarans until they stop their cutting-edge (pun intended) research.
Both see the stars flicker due to the Sophons faking the apparent level of background radiation in the universe, although Wang has to go to a remote scientific facility to do so. (Which makes more sense than seeing them in a college in Oxford, a city where it's very hard to see the stars at night.)
And yes, both characters see their nanofiber filaments used in a gruesome attack in the Panama Canal on the ETO ship, Judgment Day (an attack which, in the book, is Da Shi's idea). The show contains more grisly details, but the book doesn't skimp on the fact that the ship has been sliced open by 40 invisible wires.
ETO leader Mike Evans (Jonathan Pryce) is the same character in the book, also shares fairy tales over the radio with his "Lord", and is likewise killed in the Judgment Day attack. The biggest addition in the books is that when Ye first meets him in the logging camp, Evans espouses a philosophy called "pan-species Communism" that treats all flora and fauna as having rights equal to human rights.
Jack Rooney and the '3 Body' game
You won't find the book version of Jack Rooney (John Bradley) until Death's End, and you might miss him if you blink. He's called Hu Wen, and he became wealthy by mass-producing "Green Tempest," a herbal soda based on something his cancer-stricken friend from school once concocted on a class trip. He does not participate in the "3 Body" game — and nor does any main character in the trilogy other than Wang Miao the nanotech expert.
The game itself is very similar, though it contains several more levels than the ones seen in the show. Wang calls himself Copernicus in the game, and encounters many more historical figures that we assume to be NPCs. One level contains Pope Gregory, Galileo, and Aristotle, and deals with a pre-computer technical solution to the three-body problem.
Another level that Wang plays after the giant human computer features Einstein, who points to a large moon that was created when the gravitational effect of the three suns ripped it out of the planet itself. The eventual destruction of the Trisolaran world is made clear, and in other flashback chapters we meet the pacifist Trisolaran who sent the reply to Ye begging her to be silent.
As in the show, the book's version of the game leads its few successful players to a meetup where they are inducted into the ETO or banished from the game — although the meetup contains more players, most of them highly successful in their fields (including a businessman, a politician and a famous avant garde author). Wang goes undercover with the help of Da Shi, and the ETO is infiltrated by the Chinese army as a result.
A character called Pan Han, a known environmental activist in league with the ETO, is responsible for the murder of a 3 Body player named Shen Yufei, which is the closest analog to the killing of Rooney in the show.
Will, Wade, and the Wallfacer
Here's where the show's connection to the book trilogy gets really tangled. Will Downing (Alex Sharp) is drawn from Yun Tianming, a cancer patient with a fatal diagnosis in Death's End. Tianming is in love with a former classmate he has barely seen, Cheng Xin (in the show she's Jin Cheng, played by Jess Hong). They once shared a meet-cute moment over an origami boat.
Flush with cash from his soda-selling friend Hu Wen, the dying Tianming buys his old crush the rights to a star via the Stars Our Destination project (administered by the UN in the book, rather than being a private organization, which makes more sense in terms of the star purchases being official).
Then, at a much earlier point than Will, Tianming decides to end his life via a new law that introduces government-sanctioned euthanasia: this features the failsafe "answer five times with different numbers" process seen in the show. (We learn that his sister is concerned about the amount of money his cancer treatment is costing, though the scene in the show where she blatantly asks for an inheritance is an invention.)
In the book, Tianming's assisted suicide is interrupted by Cheng. She's a rocket expert who has been working with the UN's Planetary Defense Council (or more precisely, the PDC's intelligence arm, the PIA) on sending a spy probe to intercept the Trisolaran fleet.
As in the show, Cheng proposes the "staircase" nuclear-bombs-in-space project, which will accelerate the probe to more than one percent of lightspeed, to a character named Wade (Liam Cunningham). Wade suggests sending the frozen head of a dying patient on the probe, which is when Cheng learns about her old classmate's condition. (Unlike in the show, they don't hang out on the regular.)
In the books, Wade is Thomas Wade, a young and apparently "handsome" American, rather than a gruff old Irishman. He appears only in relation to the Staircase project; in the first book, Three Body Problem, the roles filled by Wade in the show are given to various government officials and generals. (Likewise, Cheng's British naval officer boyfriend Raj Varma, played by Sameer Usmani, is a composite character invented for the show.)
Wade doesn't ask Tianming to sign an oath of loyalty to humanity, but there is an oath administered by the UN Secretary General to the six finalists for the project, all patients with a terminal diagnosis. Tianming isn't the only one to refuse the oath — which is the correct response, the entire ceremony being an elaborate ruse — but he is the only one to survive long enough to have his live head frozen and put aboard the probe.
As in the show, the probe is blasted off course thanks to a fault on one of the hooks on its solar sail. And in a concession by Wade, Tianming is packed off with some seeds to provide the aliens with examples of Earth food, though these are seeds selected by the Staircase team's experts rather than the specific seeds Cheng requested.
And then there's the Wallfacer: Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo) in the show, sociology professor Luo Ji in the second book. If you thought Saul didn't have much to do in the show until the final episode other than sit around getting stoned, that's because Luo Ji doesn't enter the trilogy until book two, The Dark Forest.
Luo Ji (the fact that his name sounds like "logic" is no coincidence) is as flummoxed as Saul by his Wallfacer nomination at the UN. But given the fact that Luo Ji is an expert in what he calls "cosmic sociology," the pick makes a lot more sense to the reader. He has a girlfriend, rather than a one-night stand, who breaks up with him prior to the nomination, and she isn't killed in the suspicious car crash that targets Luo Ji.
The Wallfacer announcement at the UN features three other Wallfacers whose names differ from the book. Afterwards, Luo Ji also tries to shirk his role, and is again made a target of assassination by the Sophons.
After that attempt, Da Shi becomes Luo Ji's chief bodyguard and closest companion (that is, if you don't count a curious character who is probably a spoiler for season 2).
Sophons, so good
As in the show, the Sophons of the book are super-intelligent computers constructed from a single proton. The Trisolarans have learned to unfold this tiny subatomic particle in higher dimensions, which is why they're so keen to stop advanced physics research on Earth.
It's a lot clearer in the books that this is the main goal of the Sophons that have arrived on Earth: They hang around in particle accelerators so humans can't get clear results from atom-smashing experiments. But they can also intercept and control our communications, such as the worldwide "you are bugs" message (which lasts for three seconds in the book). Here's how Cixin Liu describes their power in Dark Forest:
A sophon is just a microscopic particle which, despite possessing a high intelligence, has the potential for only a limited effect on the macroscopic world due to its microscopic scale. The primary threats they pose to humanity lie in their erroneous and random interference to high-energy physics experiments, and in the quantum entanglement network that monitors Earth.
In its microscopic state, a sophon cannot kill, and it cannot engage in any other offensive attack. If a sophon wants to produce a larger effect on the macroscopic world, it can only do so in a lower-dimensional unfolded state. And even in that situation, its effects are highly limited, because a sophon unfolded in lower dimensions on a macroscopic scale is very weak.
Regardless, in the books, the Sophons seem very keen on assassinating Luo Ji in particular. They use their allies in the ETO to nominate "Wallbreakers" whose goal is to outline and publish the secret long-term strategies that are supposed to exist in the Wallfacers' heads.
How the showrunners will play out the Wallfacer-versus-Wallbreaker battles of Dark Forest remains to be seen. Though as co-showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss found with their previous hit Game of Thrones, changes you make from the original books in the early episodes of a TV adaptation will affect so many of your future decisions that the show and the books start to look completely different.
So far, however, Benioff and Weiss and their co-showrunner Alexander Woo have threaded a needle as delicate as those invisible nanofibers: the show is a gripping adaptation that remains as close to the spirit of the original as it can be with a more international cast of characters.
As author George R.R. Martin did with Game of Thrones, Cixin Liu has given his blessing to the TV version; unlike GRRM, Liu actually has a complete set of books for the showrunners to finish adapting. We can only hope later seasons are this successful — but so far, so good.
How to watch: 3 Body Problem is now streaming on Netflix.
