3 Body Problem: where to start reading
Adapts Remembrance of Earth's Past by Liu Cixin. Say how far you watched, and pick the book up exactly there.
at The Three-Body Problem.
The first season is built mainly on the first novel, so read that. But be aware the show pulls some ideas and characters forward from the second and third books and moves much of the setting to Britain, so a few things you saw belong to later volumes.
Season 1 draws on this book. Read the full story:
The Three-Body Problem
What the show changed here
- MovedThe present-day story is relocated from China to London; only the historical Ye Wenjie thread stays in China.
- CombinedThe book's lone investigator Wang Miao is replaced by an ensemble of friends, the Oxford Five, invented for the show.
- ChangedWang Miao's arc is split: Auggie carries the nanotech and countdown, Jin the mysterious VR game.
- ChangedDetective Shi Qiang becomes Clarence Shi, an intelligence-agency man working under Thomas Wade.
- InventedIdeas and characters are pulled forward from the two later novels rather than kept to book one.
Netflix's series draws its first season mainly from the first novel, The Three-Body Problem, but pulls characters and plot elements forward from the later two books (The Dark Forest and Death's End) and relocates much of the story from China to the United Kingdom with new characters. The showrunners expect three or four seasons to cover the whole trilogy.
Rate it from where you are. No account, and nothing here says a word about what happens next.
