What you need to know about The Three-Body Problem before watching 3 Body Problem

polygon.com:

With Netflix’s 3 Body Problem imminent, you might naturally be intrigued by The Three-Body Problem, the science fiction novel by Cixin Liu.

First of all: I cannot explain why the show is 3 Body Problem and the book is The Three-Body Problem. Frankly, this decision drives me bananas. But it does make distinguishing the two in articles like this one easier, and as you’ll soon see, things are going to get complicated enough as is.

The simple version is that it’s a story about humanity’s first contact with an alien species. What makes it special is that it’s a very odd first contact story, centering on a wildly immersive VR video game and how it may be connected to the mysterious deaths of the world’s leading scientists. First contact is the light at the end of the story’s tunnel: read the back of the book and you know it’s coming, but how it happens is something you discover by reading.

First serialized in China in 2006, The Three-Body Problem quickly racked up accolades upon its 2014 English debut, becoming the first Asian novel to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel. But unusually for such a hard sci-fi novel, The Three-Body Problem quickly escaped the orbit of speculative fiction circles and received glowing write-ups in mainstream press outlets like The New York Times, NPR, and, famously, a shoutout from President Barack Obama. Bob’s Burgers even did a Three-Body Problem episode. It was a big thing!

It’s also a work that some would call unadaptable: The Three-Body Problem has some weird shit going on in its VR game and eventually sets up a conflict that may or may not span centuries.

The Three-Body Problem is a brainy book that is very committed to elaborating on the work of a lot of smart characters solving very opaque mysteries. This does not mean it’s impenetrable to people uninterested in becoming conversant in astrophysics, but it does mean there’s quite a bit of what I call “process porn,” focused primarily (but not exclusively) on existing and/or plausible