Stars in the sky blink on and off. Physicists mysteriously die by suicide. Experiments reveal that all recent scientific research has been wrong. Scared yet? This is a taste of 3 Body Problem, a new Netflix adaptation of Liu Cixin’s celebrated novel. The story begins during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, when a decision is made that changes the fate of the planet, forcing present-day scientists to face humanity’s greatest threat. Written by the Game of Thrones co-creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss in partnership with Alexander Woo, the show stays true to the book, aside from taking place mainly in Britain instead of China and featuring a racially diverse cast rather than an exclusively Chinese one—one of the reasons it has received negative criticism from Chinese audiences. As the character Clarence Da Shi says, “Usually when people with more advanced technology encounter people with more primitive technology, doesn’t work out well for the primitives.” —Jeanne Malle