Netflix revealed the first full trailer for its much-anticipated series, 3 Body Problem, at CES in Las Vegas on Tuesday. The eight-episode first season is adapted from Cixin Lu’s best-selling science-fiction novel, “The Three Body Problem.” That name is drawn from an astrophysics conundrum that considers what must happen when the gravity of three separate orbiting bodies interfere with each other – such as the Earth, the Moon and the Sun, for example.

The series, which comes from Game of Thrones co-creators and executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and The Terror showrunner Alexander Woo, begins during the Cultural Revolution in 1960s China. At that time, one woman, Ye Wenjie (played by Zine Tseng and Rosalind Chao at different ages) does something that sets off a chain of events that drastically affects the world.

Later, detective Da Shi (Benedict Wong) is investigating a mysterious room filled with numbers drawn in blood. During the investigation he notes that 30 scientists have died in the past few months, and that a countdown seems to be taking place. Another character, Auggie Salazar (Eiza González), one of the series’ so-called “Oxford Five,” is seeing that countdown pop up everywhere she looks. The rest of the Oxford Five include Jin Cheng (Jess Hong), Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo), Jack Rooney (John Bradley) and Will Downing (Alex Sharp).

While the series is based on “The Three Body Problem,” it’s been significantly adapted to television and to serve a global audience.

“The experience of watching a television series is different from watching a feature film, [which] is so different from the experience of reading a novel. What we are hoping to do is to convey the experience — if not necessarily the exact details — of the novel onto the screen,” Woo said on Netflix’s Tudum blog. “What stayed, we hope, is the sense of wonderment and the sense of scope, of scale, where the problems are no longer just the problems of an individual or even a nation, but of an entire species.”

The series also stars Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones) and Jonathan Pryce (Game of Thrones, The Crown).

3 Body Problem premieres on Netflix on March 21.

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