The Three-Body Problem

During China's cultural revolution, a physics professor is killed because he refuses to apologize for teaching scientific theories with supposedly reactionary content. Years later, his daughter is recruited to join a secret military base. And forty years after that? Scientists are killing themselves, and the military, along with representatives from NATO, claim there's a war going on. A scientist working with nanomaterials is asked to dig for information without being given the full story. The investigation leads him to a strange video game, a mysterious group, and the understanding of why so many of his colleagues have been taking their own lives. As it turns out, the fate of the entire world is at stake.

The Three-Body Problem is a show more science fiction novel that starts in a way entirely different from what I expected based on the description I read. The one I gave above is more accurate to what you'll find in the book's opening chapters, although I've failed to convey just how violent the first chapter is. I imagine those familiar with China's history, and in particular with the cultural revolution seen here, might find it less shocking, but I'm sure it is meant to leave a strong impression. The purpose of which won't be understood until far into the novel.

This is one of those books you have to be patient with. In my case, I had to read far beyond the point at which I'm usually hooked to see how all the pieces were coming together and finally get it. There is a purpose to the first chapter, and the whole first section that doesn't include the main character of the novel. The early parts of his investigation, which seemed inconsequential to me at first, turn out to be anything but.

It's also the type of sci-fi that seems to depend on the reader having a certain amount of scientific knowledge. If you don't understand at least the basics of particle colliders, for instance, you'll likely be confused about a major plot point. I, with my background in computer science, particularly enjoyed seeing concepts I studied play out as part of a unique and (to me) fascinating solution to a particular problem. On the other hand, the book started to lose me near the very end, when it either exceeded what I'd learned through high school physics and a handful of documentaries, or it introduced concepts that the author invented. Due to my lack of expertise, I unfortunately can't tell the difference.

The book also suffered in my estimation because of certain character portrayals. For example, the main character agrees to join the investigation partially because of a female scientist who turns out to be among those who killed themselves. Did he know her? Well, he thinks he did. He saw her from a distance once and found himself attracted to her, so now he's upset enough to be inspired to act. Upon first reading this, I of course interpreted it as a classic case of an entire female scientist being invented just to be reduced to the object of a man's affections, a woman who wasn't strong enough to handle the difficult truth that I predicted the main character was surely going to. As I continued reading, I began to suspect that this may be more emblematic of a different problem, but it didn't help that the main character ignores his wife almost entirely and even has a scene where he actively avoids her rather than explain what's going on after she becomes frightened to the point of tears. He never tells her what's he's gotten involved with or asks for her opinion on anything despite the fact that she's a doctor and therefore presumably has a different set of expertise that could be relevant for all he knows. And none of this is presented as if they have a problematic relationship.

But the bigger problem I hinted at seems to be just a classic case of the author pushing the characters where the plot needs them to go, then propping it up with explanations that don't fully track. The death of the female scientist turns out to be the main character's connection to another female scientist, and she actually is important to the story. Vitally important, in fact. But the way the main character connects with her involves a second link, which is even more tenuous than a married man acting out of attraction towards a woman he never even spoke to. Throughout the story, many things he does seem to be just... things he's doing. If explanations were given, they weren't ones I picked up on.

I can't rule out the possibility that I'm misunderstanding character actions and motivations due to the cultural differences at play, however. Maybe he sometimes is doing the expected thing for people in China, which simply isn't expected where I live. You absolutely shouldn't be taking this review as an expert opinion. It's just my experience with the book as a woman from the US reading in translation. If you have a similar background, your experience may be similar to mine. If you don't, it would be great for you to write your own review!

Regardless, when the pieces of the puzzle come together, this book does start to shine. I don't think this is the type of book you read for the characters so much as for the science-based concepts and the exploration of some big ideas about the world and the nature of humanity and what sort of future we might have. It's a book that requires your patience but rewards you for your focus and concentration as it builds and builds up to its big reveals. If you like that kind of sci-fi, you'll find this book a treat. Just go into it with the understanding that such rewards require a long and detailed setup. show less

***GENERAL PLOT SPOILERS***
This is a rather unusual book, that starts with a Cultural Revolution and ends with an impeding alien invasion and meets people from different generations and various personal backgrounds. I liked the story very much - it has a strong internal logic, it is nicely told and it is "Chinese" enough to be just a little bit strange. But even more than that I loved the subtlety in rising all sorts of moral questions: what's a betrayal and who is the betrayer, what's the purpose of person's life and is there one to human existence. While at the end the heroes know for sure the alien invasion will come, they see the future outcome differently and in complete consistency with their previous actions and believes.

I had this one on the TBR list for a while. After reading few reviews I was wandering whether or not I am in for some heavy SF, and thus I kept delaying. Until three days ago when I said lets give it a go.

First....... I have to remember and I need to remind myself all the time that reading other people's reviews is never good thing to do. I mean in reviews I came across everything - too wooden structure, two dimensional characters, etc. After reading the book I can only say that it is interesting how people like to treat some works as philosophical and inspirational, instead of just pure interesting and funny. Does everything needs to be awesome and life changing 24/7?

As a matter of fact good portion of the book is about these urges, show more need to be seen as enlightening person or vengeful one, but never ..... normal?

From this point onward it is all possible spoiler so beware......

Book is about revenge and how emotional instability can cause destruction of everything, to such a degree that it endangers entire humankind.

Main protagonist of the story is born into scientific family, which also propels her into scientific waters - she starts her career of astrophysicist. Unfortunately Cultural Revolution in China will declare all intellectuals as enemies of the state - some would be killed, some would denounce everybody around them to save their own lives [and thus cripple themselves for life], especially since almost everyone from academia (or how it is popular to say intelligentsia) will end up in re-educational work camps. Our protagonist finds herself witnessing the cruel public murder of her own father, her own mother turning against her husband and piling accusation after accusation against him in order to save her own life. This hollows our heroine so much that she no longer sees anything good in humankind at large.

Work in the labor camp in one of the wast areas China, where secret military base gets also happens to be built, just deepens the chasm. Living in constant fear of betrayal by anyone around her in this correction camp, in already horrendous living conditions, and witnessing industrial level de-forestation and destruction of nature, just amplifies the overall disgust she feels toward her fellow humans. It does not even help that she gets mobilized to work in the secret base where she becomes more and more crucial part of the technical personnel, and where she finds out that main role of the base is search for the extraterrestrial life forms.

And here, for this bitter woman, breaking point is reached when she comes across the incoming message, response to one sent from the base years before. Message is a warning not to repeat the transmission because government of this remote civilization will react only in anger and conquest. Our heroine acts in pure spite and sends another message and thus seals the faith of the world.

Everything that happens from this point onward is result of this. This feeling of hate towards humanity will lead to loss of everything our protagonist holds dear (or so we assume) - her own child, husband, friends, and her own future. All of this proves that life lived in hate is wasted one. Only element worth of respect here is consistency, she never faltered for a second.

What her hate creates is several movements that have single aim - allowing aliens to conquer Earth - with only difference being how they want to achieve their goals - one party looking forward to eradication of humanity, and others looking toward these aliens to bless the humanity (after I expect to be required culling of human herd) and lead us to better future.

Aliens work with both of these movements using high-tech devices for long range communication, and after a while decide to concentrate only on the group that wants humanity to be eradicated. Reason you might ask? Simple, aliens want humanity gone. Using high technology as advance party, aliens prepare the public opinion with help of the collaborators with aim to basically spread depression, anxiety and hate towards everything and anything that can bring the advancement of the human species.

And here I see horrible parallels with our times. These collaborators are not ordinary citizens but elites, with influence. They are highly intelligent and capable, but also prone to act in the way elites always react - masses are the filth that needs to be washed because they just dirty up the world and are insufferable. There is no talk how to fix the overall existing situation (as billionaire ally of our protagonist says - no matter the amount of effort nothing works with humanity...... but did they try?). There is just a decision - everyone else is irredeemable.

Basically these intellectuals actually prove to be most prone to emotional damage - instead of using brain, trying to work on solutions for their society, plan ahead a bit, they all decide to become fanatics, either after-me-flood-type-of-doomers or believers into notion that developed alien societies are expected to be benevolent by default (which just shows sheer mismatch with reality because the opposite is visible not only for humans but also when one observes animals in entire nature to be clear - benevolence might exist within the species but when it comes to survival no competition is ever treated as anything but outright competition, if for no other reason than because teaching others about cooperation is very, very difficult and in general unrewarding, so why start with it, it is much easier to erase them).

It is not that these idiots try to save themselves - doomers definitely act like kamikaze - it is just that these people are for all means and purposes completely useless for their species, not just nations. They pick the easiest way out and then push everybody else down into the chasm.

Isn't this so much like epidemic years, where we were taught human is other human's most dangerous foe, where people like Jared Leto walked out of some elite hideaway with no idea what is going on, or those meme emotional outbursts when it comes to politic life. These people fly so high that they have no further connection with rest of the world. Thousands of very loud echo chambers that do not allow for any cooperation.

I see lots of parallels here with Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, group of "saints" working on waking up the humanity through sacrifice/culling. As in Clancy's novel collaborators use all sorts of terror tactics and for all means and purposes variety of self-defeating actions for the humankind, all with goal of softening the ground for the invasion.

This brings national governments into play because they see non-government but highly influential powers causing havoc. This creates what amounts to XCOM like resistance movement that plans the long fight.

Book also shows that it is ordinary folks - not dumb-wits mind you, but ordinary, working people, not dreamers or visionaries but grounded-ones - who come up with actual proposals and plans to defeat the invasion force. Which again is paradox of sorts but something that happens very often. Future usually depends on whether these ordinary folk give back control to elites (which for example happened during the French Revolution, where kingdom became republic(of sorts, for all means and purposes terror republic) and everything ends up as an empire, back to square one). It clearly shows that relying on intellectual or governmental power alone at times of crisis is sure path to doom (AI anyone, cult figures almost venerated as idols, gaslighting of prosperous future/destruction tonight/tomorrow/any-time-now etc).

As can be seen this is not novel about characters. Cast is too large and not everyone is that important (even shady billionaire - which might surprise everyone but his role is just that, money-man subverting Earth to fall quicker ..... when I think about it nothing more is required, he is in because he is radical, messianic idiot who thinks he knows the best; to flesh him out more is to gain nothing).

This is not novel about technology (no decisive flashy devices/super weapons, although a lot of very cool tech tools, that act as tools only not as engines of the story). It is a historical type of novel in vein of Asimov's Foundation. People come and go, they play their role for one or other side and step down. No superheroes here. This is species level story - in such times individuals are just a small lights flickering in the night, leaving their mark but acting as just one additional building block for prosperity of their species.

In other words to look for detailed lives and labors of all actors involved is completely wrong for this type of novel. What characters we are given, are fleshed out enough considering the events themselves. Especially our vengeful antihero, up to the point where we see her finally figuring out she was tricked and used to doom her own kind, but it remains completely unclear if she feels any remorse. As such she remains unredeemed, at least to me. Her hate is just too big. One has to wonder if she recognizing her own actions, and everything she despises in humanity, in aliens authority actions, as described in alien messages sent to the doomer faction.

All in all I truly enjoyed it very much. Prose was very clear and up to point, and while parts describing bored-to-death engineers in a secret base are slightly too long everything else is well paced. If you compare it to the TV adaptation I have to admit that TV adaptation was as faithful as possible - only thing they decided to skip is to structure of alien collaborators. And I understand why, too many parallels to our times.

Very interesting book, definitely on the lookout for sequels.
Highly recommended to all SF fans. show less

Following the death of her physicist father because of the cultural revolution, Ye Wenjie, after naively performing a favour for a journalist that nearly lands her in jail, finds herself confined to an isolated radio transmitter/receiver station, possibly for the rest of her life. Disillusioned with humanity, but still fascinated by astrophysics, she becomes increasingly central to the running of the secret station, ostensibly set up to track and potentially destroy US satellites. She discovers, though, that she can transmit messages, bounced off the sun, vast distances. One such message finds an alien race trapped on a terribly unstable planet, looking for another. The alien race respond, and Ye Wenjie faces a choice - to ignore them, show more or invite them here, potentially to invade and destroy the human race. She chooses an invitation, triggering the most dramatic and potentially catastrophic set of events that humanity has ever faced. But they have over four centuries to prepare.

Cut to about 40 years later, scientists all over the globe are committing suicide, or having strange, seemingly supernatural events, happen to them, such as a countdown happening on every photo they take, or even before their eyes. Are these events linked? And if so, how?

The novel is exciting, rich, scientifically deep, with a wonderfully imaginative streak, especially when it comes to the aliens and the way they survive, in very different ways to humanity. There are strong ideas about nihilism and the inherently self-destructive nature of humanity here, and even moments of poetry, through top-notch writing. One of the best, most original science fiction novels of recent years. show less

I watched the Netflix series and was very much intrigued by the premise. While the show was far from perfect, this book pretty much is (for me). For the intersecting subset of both science and science fiction enthusiasts, this book is like a dream realized. Even though it seems to take a lot of inspiration from many sci-fi classics, the story comes across as unique and quite daring. There are deep philosophical and existential undertones embedded. The main focus is the science and how the author doesn't shy away from fully going into the details and speculations of different possibilities and scenarios. It is both creative and logically makes sense. I was equally drawn into the Chinese history and culture that is very integral to the show more story. The setup done is great and I am eager to read the sequels. show less

There’s something old-school-retro about The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu. This owes much to the evident love the author has for Golden Age science fiction most associated with writers like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. So, when reading The Three-Body Problem, expect traditional, sometimes boilerplate story elements.

And yet Liu takes that basic story template and turns out a story that is deceptively intriguing and fresh, the most obvious difference being how those science fiction premises of first-contact and interstellar travel are embedded in a historical and cultural context we rarely see in the genre. How familiar are most westerners to the machinations of China’s purges and Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s? show more Probably not too familiar. I had an inkling, but only in general terms, and I had no idea there was systemic targeting of scientists as well as the scientific theories themselves (Einstein is regarded as reactionary and the Theory of Relatively as counter revolutionary!). It was riveting to see this re-education/censorship process play out. The Chinese historical context isn’t merely background or circumstantial either; it plays a critical role. In fact, the fate of humanity is basically decided by Ye Wenjie, the young physicist who harbors a bitterness and alienation that can be traced neatly back to the trauma and violence of the Cultural Revolution that took her father’s life and practically brainwashed her mother and sister.

With that kind of past, Ye Wenjie is a compelling character and I wish we had stayed with her the whole way instead of slipping into the viewpoint of Wang Miao, who is as bland and unconvincing as they come. Miao’s main purpose seemed to be to act as a sounding board for other, more interesting characters in the book and to be our hook into the virtual reality video game that later dominates the middle chapters.

There is a lot of hard science here, though nothing like what you would be served on a plate from an author like Neal Stephenson. But where Three-Body really soars is in the philosophical quandaries that it asks us to ponder in the context of real human history.

“Is it possible that the relationship between humanity and evil is similar to the relationship between the ocean and an iceberg floating on its surface? Both the ocean and the iceberg are made of the same material. That the iceberg seems separate is only because it is in a different form. In reality, it is but a part of the vast ocean.”

Liu spends a lot of time planting several mysteries at the beginning of the book that unfold in riveting ways: scientists are disappearing or committing suicide en masse; there are strange signals being picked up (something going awry with cosmic radiation readings) on a military installation in the mountains; and a slew of people are becoming obsessed with a video game called ‘Three Body.’ Of course, it’s all related, but how? Like stone blocks being used to build a pyramid, each little mystery is a structural element that forms the bigger, wider mystery: Contact with the aliens has been forced as a kind of judgment on humanity, so now what? What can we expect from that encounter? Does humanity deserve its fate?

Learning about the existence of the Trisolarians isn’t the big reveal, see. A greater revelation is the evolution of the Earth-Trisolaria Movement bent on opening the way for the invasion/arrival of these alien interlopers. The movement itself breaks into various factions, with their own dueling philosophies. Liu’s speculative sociological what-if thought experiment in the book elegantly echoes the real-life warring factions that erupted during the Cultural Revolution. Liu cleverly uses history to prefigure this speculative future.

This is an idea-driven novel. The science is sound, or at least the theoretical underpinnings appear well-researched and clearly explained. The title itself comes from a classic physics problem that has never been solved and directly informs the plot and basic story structure. But like all good sci-fi novels, the big ideas aren’t just there to stonewall laypersons but to let the characters (and the reader) mull them over introspectively over a cold beer. Theoretical physics as the new Philosophy? Perhaps it is, as Liu himself argues in the postscript of the novel: “I’ve always felt that the greatest and most beautiful stories in the history of humanity were not sung by wandering bards or written by playwrights or novelists, but told by science. The stories of science are by far more magnificent, grand, involved, profound, thrilling, strange, terrifying, mysterious, and even emotional to the stories told by literature.” Books like Three Body show that there is, indeed, a golden vein of poetry in ideas like the Big Bang—nothing that any creationist myth or religion can touch. Three billion years of evolution of life on our planet? The ultimate epic. Space and time and relativity and quantum mechanics? Visionary set pieces. Man’s imagination is great but pales in comparison to the universe’s greatest mysteries.

Liu’s translated prose style isn’t that impressive, but it is tight and clean in its plainness, a perfect conduit for getting those big, philosophical ideas and scientific concepts across. Character development is probably the weakest aspect of the book, but the unique, imaginative ideas and the fact that we hardly ever see translations of sci-fi traditions that developed separately from western ideals make this a fascinating read. It’s interesting to read a book that was such a runaway bestseller in China (especially considering how pathetic some of our own bestsellers are in the U.S.; case-in-point: 50 Shades). show less

It's hard enough to write a very good work of fiction in English. Given that this book was written in Chinese, for a Chinese audience, it's absolutely amazing how simply wonderful it is.

Liu Cixin won many many awards in China for this work. It's easy to see why. The science is real, and completely believable. The characters are richly drawn, and several are individually fascinating. But the poetry of Liu's writing is what truly makes this book stand apart from the average "good" work of fiction. He writes with an eye that captures, and somehow turns even small moments into intertwining pieces of the whole. Liu makes you think about difficult subjects, and he has the talent to make you not recognize how deeply he is taking you into those show more thoughts.

It's a special treat to read the back history in Liu's story - how events in the Cultural Revolution appeared to those who lived through it, how those times feel and are remembered by Chinese themselves. This wasn't a work designed for Western audiences, so it gives us a glimpse into a world, a time, a history that is otherwise closed to us except by outside observation.

The translation is a masterful work in it's own right. It's hard enough to do a good translation of a book - a skill far beyond just knowing both languages well. Ken Lui not only recreates the beautiful prose of Cixin's original work, but he carefully chooses where to let his english audience in on cultural references via footnotes - and where to let the text speak for itself.

One of the best works of science fiction I've ever read. I can't wait for the next two volumes to be translated and printed in English. show less