If you haven’t read The Three-Body Problem, the 2008 novel by the Chinese science-fiction writer Cixin Liu, you’ve probably seen or heard of others reading it — people on subways, people in airport terminals, or President Barack Obama, whose endorsement contributed to the book’s popularity in the United States. The book, a heady and dense “hard sci-fi” more interested in scientific theories than characters, was a viral hit in China and again in English translation. Liu wrote two sequels to form the cheekily titled “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” trilogy. 

Following on the heels of a successful Chinese television adaptation, Three-Body, last year, David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo have unveiled a new Netflix adaptation, 3 Body Problem, for the Anglophone world. Benioff and Weiss are most famous for showrunning HBO’s Game of Thrones, also drawn from a complicated book series that seemed both irresistible to adaptation and unadaptable. Their new eight-episode series based on Liu’s books preserves their core while softening the aspects that might limit the audience. Unfortunately, the outcome is middling and forgettable.