The Bizarre Chinese Murder Plot Behind Netflix’s ‘3 Body Problem’ (2024)

FAQs

The Bizarre Chinese Murder Plot Behind Netflix’s ‘3 Body Problem’? ›

The Bizarre Chinese Murder Plot Behind Netflix's '3 Body Problem' Lin Qi, a billionaire who helped produce the science-fiction hit, was poisoned to death by a disgruntled executive. His attacker now faces the death penalty. Lin Qi was a billionaire with a dream.

But on March 22, the day after the long-awaited adaptation of Liu Cixin's Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novel The Three-Body Problem premiered, Xu Yao—a lawyer and former gaming company executive—was sentenced to death in China for the murder of his 39-year-old billionaire boss Lin Qi.

The series portrays a fictional past, present, and future wherein Earth encounters an alien civilization from a nearby system of three Sun-like stars orbiting one another, a representative example of the three-body problem in orbital mechanics.

On Chinese social media platforms, commenters objected that the series is not set entirely in China; that the main characters are not all Chinese but instead racially diverse; that one of the main characters has been switched from a man to a woman and, in their eyes, the actress was not pretty enough.

The series, set primarily in the United Kingdom and China, follows a diverse cast of scientists who all come into contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, leading to various threats and humanity-wide changes.

Unlike mathematical predictions of the motions of two-body systems, such as Earth-Moon or Earth-Sun, the three-body problem does not have an analytic solution.

Xu Yao began poisoning colleagues over business dispute

The demotion, paired with a dispute over the running of the busines, is reportedly what motivated Xu to begin poisoning his colleagues three months after the Netflix deal was brokered, according to reports.

Unlike the two-body problem, the three-body problem has no general closed-form solution. When three bodies orbit each other, the resulting dynamical system is chaotic for most initial conditions, and the only way to predict the motions of the bodies is to calculate them using numerical methods.

If you're worried about a near future that looks like the storyline of 3 Body Problem, fear not. “Although the idea of planets in three-body stellar systems is plausible, most of what happens in the show is completely fictional - and it wouldn't be a very good story otherwise,” says Kate.

How does 3 Body Problem Season 1 end? While drinking their woes away by a motel pool, Jin tells Saul it will be millions of years before Will leaves the Milky Way. Not exactly comforting. Then Da Shi shows up and calls them “the two saddest-looking bastards” he's ever seen.

Is Netflix 3 Body Problem banned in China? ›

The scenes -- omitted from a homegrown adaptation of Liu's books produced by Tencent -- are likely one of the reasons that the show is officially blocked in China. But viewers in China still discussed it widely after using circumvention tools to get around the “Great Firewall” of government censorship.

This year, “3 Body Problem” does the same for Maoist China — but this time emphasizing its atheistic character. READ: Should Sci-Fi Hits Like 'Dune' And 'Rebel Moon' Be Considered Faith-Based Films?

The problem can be solved for some special cases—for example, those in which the mass of one body, as a spacecraft, can be considered infinitely small; the Lagrangian case, in which the three bodies form an equilateral triangle; and the Eulerian case, in which two bodies are motionless.

The central conceit of 3 Body Problem is exactly this scenario — an alien species on a distant planet has evolved the capacity to become a technologically advanced civilization — but its planet exists within a solar system with three different suns.

The “Three Body Problem” trilogy explores the concept of the unknown and uncertain future. Cixin Liu challenges readers to embrace the unpredictability of life and find strength in navigating the unknown. - Characters in the trilogy face an uncertain future, grappling with existential threats and unanswered questions.

In simple terms, a three-body problem exists when three celestial objects (planets, stars, or suns) with similar mass are in close proximity and therefore exerting force on each other. Normally when two objects exert force on each other, it's easier to predict the objects' rotation.

Broadcast Era

One of Trisolaris's three suns is struck by a relativistic "photoid" launched by unspecified aliens, destroying both it and the Trisolaran homeworld.

Will agrees to Jin's plan. Thanks to marvels in medical technology, his brain will be removed and preserved while the rest of his body dies. Once he catches up to the ship, the humans assume the San Ti will have the capability to revive him, since they're so technologically advanced.

At least five toxins were detected in Lin's body, including mercury and tetrodotoxin – an extremely potent poison found in pufferfish, Chinese financial magazine Caixin reported, citing people close to the video game tycoon.