The Three-Body Problem

Award winning Chinese science fiction author Cixin Liu has said, “Science fiction is a literature that belongs to all humankind. It portrays events of interest to all humanity, and thus science fiction should be the literary genre most accessible to readers of different nations.” I think this is true, or at least it can be. For science fiction to appeal to everyone on the planet it is necessary that its stories portray situations that are relevant to everyone, that they are written about in a way that doesn’t exclude those whose cultural or societal beliefs fall into one political camp or another, and, most of all, it requires a literate world in which everyone has enough of their basic needs met that they have time for leisure reading. We are a long way from the ideal state described above, but some books are a movement toward it. Cixin Liu’s “The Three-Body Problem “represents a step in that direction. Liu lives in the People’s Republic of China. When I think of science fiction audiences, China doesn’t come immediately to mind, but that is because of my ignorance, not reality. “The Three-Body Problem” not only won the Hugo Award after its translation into English in 2014, but it also won China’s Galaxy Award for best science fiction in 2006, the year of its publication in China. Cixin Liu has won the Galaxy Award, which I didn’t even know existed, 9 times. “The Three-Body Problem “is hard science fiction, meaning that it is literally filled with science, some of it real, much of it speculative with kernels of real science leading to wildly fantastic consequences. One of its themes is the overturning of the basic principles of modern physics, or at least the apparent overturning of them, since another theme is the deliberate undermining of belief in those principles. The underlying plot of the novel is the mutual discovery of another race in our galaxy, mutual in the sense that we discover them at the same time that they discover us. The ideas contained in this novel are mind-boggling. What appears fanciful becomes less and less so, as more science behind it is revealed, although the science too, get stretched until everything seems fanciful, but I as a reader, was never sure if it was based on realistic science or not. That’s part of the entertaining quality of the book. The extraordinary discoveries come one after another, gradually unfolding the true plot that is determining the characters’ actions. There are political criticisms in “The Three-Body Problem,” almost entirely of China’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s and 70’s. As such, they are a criticism of constraining science because of political or philosophical reasons. The author himself has made some political statements, almost entirely in favor of Chinese government policies, which have earned him enough suspicion in the U.S. that several Republican Congressmen objected when they heard that Netflix was creating a film version of his work. But modern Chinese politics are not an issue in the novel. Liu’s comments at the end of the English translation of the book make it clear that he hopes science fiction such as his can bring the world together. A word about character development in “The Three-Body Problem.” The early portions of the book cover several years and skip from one character to another, many of them who die. Finally, the story settles down to a small set of regular characters. Some Western critics have complained that the characters are “shallow,” which may be valid when comparing the novel to many Western ones. I suspect that this reflects a difference between Western and Eastern cultures, as well as difference between science fiction as a genre (at least old-style science fiction) and other fiction genres. Our Western mindset is to attribute the causes of a person’s behavior to elements of their personality. They are adventurous, courageous, lazy, lackadaisical, psychopathic, etc. Sociological research has suggested that many Eastern cultures tend to see the causes of behavior as due to events and circumstance or even luck, rather than to ongoing personality characteristics (it is a more vs less difference, rather than an either-or difference). Liu’s novel takes the latter approach, giving a detailed description of the circumstances leading characters to do what they do in the novel. It is not a lack of depth of characters so much as it represents a different approach to character motivation that is reflective of the overall culture of the writer. In the case of “The Three-Body Problem,” this results in the novel gradually providing the basis for different characters’ otherwise puzzling behavior by providing after-the-fact stories of what happened in their lives to cause them to behave as they do. I found this book to be absolutely intriguing and impossible to put down until I got to its end. I am eager to read the two novels that are its sequels. It is science fiction at its very best

I'm told there is a lot of great science fiction being produced in non-English speaking countries. Like most readers my age, I grew up on stuff that was written in the United States, and occasionally Great Britain, by white males. That's just the way it was back in those days. I'm guessing that most readers in the U.S. today still default to reading English language novels written by English speaking writers. We are typically not exposed to fiction from other countries and cultures, and even if a book is translated into English, we need to be made aware of that book before we'll pick it up and read it. I honestly can't tell you how many translated science fiction and fantasy books are sitting on bookstore shelves waiting to be purchased and read. Short of looking at every last one of them - and I'm not going to do that - I don't know how I would find out. But in 2014, a book from whom I understand is arguably China's most beloved science fiction author, Cixin Liu, received the translation treatment by Ken Liu (no relation), and was published by Tor. Before the book started getting some advance notice from folks in the field (I heard about it for the first time on The Coode Street Podcast last year), I'd never heard of Cixin Liu. I *had* heard of Ken Liu. Ken Liu is one of the most talented short fiction writers in the field today, with multiple Hugo awards already under his belt, as well as a Nebula, among others. However, I know absolutely nothing about the book translation process and how well the resulting work represents the original. Thus, I'll talk about what I do know, which is the story. And what a story it is. It's a throwback to 70s science fiction, a first encounter and alien invasion story all rolled into one (and that's not even true, since it's the first book of a trilogy, the second of which, THE DARK FOREST, hits our shores this year, translated by Joel Martinsen). It's got science - lots of science - and a bit of what looks like hand wavium going on at one point (until I started reading some articles in a magazine that were discussing something similar to what the hand waving was about - I think). It's grand in scope, has some terrific ideas, and really can make us stop and think about whether we're all alone out here. The story begins during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and uses it as a launching pad for all that goes forward. A young woman, who sees her father killed during the revolution, is assigned to a military base in a remote part of China. The more time she spends there, the more she becomes trusted, and eventually she learns the true nature of the project - to send signals into space to contact alien life. The young woman, Ye Wenjie (thank goodness for the list of characters at the beginning of the book), learns of a way to amplify the signals that are being sent. She sends a signal into deep space - and hence the trouble begins. Over the course of the book we learn about the Trisolarans, an alien race that lives in a planetary system that has three suns. Trisolaran society is dying because of those three suns. Cixin Liu comes up with the clever idea of the Three Body game, wherein players are challenged to find solutions to the Three Body Problem (hence the name of the book) by interacting with characters from history in societies that keep dying off because of the unpredictability of the cycles of the three suns. (I should note that there really is something called the Three Body Problem; from wikipedia: In its traditional sense, the three-body problem is the problem of taking an initial set of data that specifies the positions, masses and velocities of three bodies for some particular point in time and then determining the motions of the three bodies, in accordance with the laws of classical mechanics (Newton's laws of motion and of universal gravitation).). The Three Body game is more than just a game - it is a gateway into a group of people who are working together to plan for the coming of the Trisolarans. I don't want to give too many more details, as I could start getting into spoiler territory, and I think the rest needs to be discovered by the reader. What I can say, however, is that book not only chronicles how and why this group of individuals came together, but it also explores how the Trisolarans plan to come to earth to take over. Yes, it's a hostile takeover, and there are no financial personnel involved, although this is where the hand-waving comes in and, in reality, I don't mind it in the least. Whether a super-intelligent computer can be made by unfolding a proton into two dimensions is not the point. Just thinking about the possibilities of being able to do that is the point, and indeed in a larger sense has been how science fiction has gone about its business since the field began. You know, "wow, wouldn't it be neat if we could do THAT?". The other thing I enjoyed about this book is the peek it gives to the reader into Chinese civilization around the time of the Chines Cultural Revolution going forward. Granted, it is just a peek, but I'd never given much thought to political, military, and academic life as well as the social status one acquires depending on who and where one was at any given time during that period of Chinese history. With regard to the translation, as I stated earlier, there's not much I can say about it. It's hard to be able to judge how well a book is translated when you don't know the original. I *can* tell you that I've enjoyed Ken Liu's writing style when I have read his short fiction, and I think that style comes through here. I can tell it was a good, fast paced, and interesting read. I was never bored, and actually looked forward to reading the footnotes as I was reading the main text. I did NOT have same eagerness while I was reading JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORELL. If foreign language science fiction is like this, I need to read more. Even if it's not, I do look forward to the remaining two books in the trilogy, and hopefully there will be more translations of Cixin Liu's work coming our way in the future.

Fun and yet thought provoking. Very philosophically deep. Great story line, easily followed. Very enjoyable and intriguing with a definite voice on humanity.

It’s been a few days since I finished this book, and after digesting the novel, I think I’m ready to share some thoughts. First, I freely admit that part of the appeal of this book comes from the novelty of reading a translated Chinese novel - it did not disappoint. The Translation Before I start talking about the book, I need to point out that the translator, Ken Liu, did beautifully. The prose is quite good, and Ken Liu did a marvelous job of retaining the differences in style and sentence construction between Chinese and American writing. I always appreciate metaphors, similes, analogies, etc. that are written by someone from another part of the world. We Americans have our preferred methods of explaining ideas, but reading these new voice from across the Pacific Ocean was quite refreshing. The Novel The basic plot of The Three-Body Problem is relatively simple and is set against the backdrop of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. (Talk about a moment in history that gets glossed over here in ‘Murica. I knew nothing about this period in Chinese history. It's totally fascinating.) The action centers around several scientists who gaze at both the very large and the very small. Through a series of discoveries, deaths and mysteries, the problem of the three-body system presents itself as a big dumb object plot ...well, kinda - but it works very well. It’s unfortunate that the dust-jacket blrubs all spoil the fact that aliens are involved - it’s a rather neat moment when it happens, and it would have been even niftier if I hadn’t known it was going to happen. Stupid publishers. (But not so stupid that we want you to stop publishing! Just clarifying…) The science behind the titular three-body problem is also totally cool and mind-bendy (if you just run to Wikipedia and search for “three-body problem” it’ll kick back a basic overview of the concept), and one that I have never read about before. But Cixin Liu uses a sleek virtual reality video game to show slowly explain to the reader the erratic effects of a three-body solar system and how such a system would affect an orbiting planet, and the result is simple to understand and quite brilliant. To be fair, the plot does move very quickly, and the pacing occasionally feels uneven. Certainly most Western readers would balk at this, but I wonder if the novel's pacing is just part of the cultural differences between us and the Chinese. In addition, some reviewers have commented on the fact that Cixin Liu does a lot of telling rather than showing, and I agree, however, again I wonder how much of this is a difference between Western and Eastern expectations. If you’re looking for an American comparison, I would compare the novel’s pace and scope and the author’s writing style to Robert Charles Wilson, Greg Bear, or a long-winded Arthur C. Clarke, all of whom write about huge physics ideas using engaging plots, but no one would ever claim that their plots are “super exciting.” Overall, this is a fantastic novel, and a fantastic beginning to an already successful trilogy. The Three-Body Problem deserves a place on the bookshelf of Science Fiction Awesome alongside other classics such as Eon, Spin, and A Fire Upon the Deep. If this novel is indicative of the SciFi hiding in the East, then publishers, start hiring more translators and bringing these gems to the States. China’s first imported SciFi novel is a jewel indeed. P.S. Dear publisher, The dust jacket blurb claims that The Three-Body Problem contains the “scope of Dune and the rousing action of Independence Day.” So...you're saying it’s like...Star Wars? Yeah, no - not even close. The trilogy might reach the scope of Dune eventually, but it barely leaves Earth in the the first novel. And as far as the “rousing action” of ID4, not by a long shot. This is a very slowly paced novel that focuses not on rousing action scenes, but on the aftermaths of action scenes, and conversations, and explanations. Will Smith it is not. Every once in a while a bullet will fly, but not very often at all. Surely you can come up with better ways to call this novel a classic and hook people rather than comparing it to Dune or ID4. Just sayin.’

First, please note that this book is really just part 1 of a longer story. Its cost is a third of what you will spend to find out what the finale holds. I think I'll wait for the price to drop. The Three Body Problem is a Science Fi Who-done-it thriller in which the reader first follows an inexplicable mystery--who or what is causing many valuable scientists to commit suicide. A malevolent alien species has focused on Earth as its McGuffin and needs our science to stop if they hope to exterminate us. Before the book's end, the mystery collapses when an explicit download of enemy plans falls into the Earthling's hands, and the aliens show us how bad and all-powerful they are. The story is interesting from the angle that all the important characters are Chinese, and the driving issue that causes the major human antagonist to make a fateful decision is Mao's Cultural Revolution. The destructive, brutalizing, and vitiating horror of this event in China's history is well fleshed out in the novel and is the cause of her becoming a traitor to humanity. The advancement of China itself since that time is shown by the the novel's and author's fame there rather than suppression. My feeling is that the author also used China's incomparable history as a template for the alien enemy he created--a race forever beset with periods of chaos that punctuate the rise of their civilization and often force them to start it all over. Thus it is a race inured to draconian existence and authoritarian ascendancy. It is a good story to get the Chinese view of life, which appears not all that different from the West, but certainly unique in many details. Except for the main antagonist, character development is not great. The other Chinese characters are interesting people but change little. The few Western characters are wooden and even the main Western antagonist is given a bit part and then disposed. My eyes are now opened to how Western Science Fi writers do this with Chinese characters. Some, such as Pournelle and Niven even pattern their alien baddies after Asians--"The Mote in God's Eye." This is hard Sci-Fi--no FTL and has no plot facilitators to get characters where the action is before lunch. The author shows that he has read and digested most of the popular non-fiction books out there on Cosmology, QM, and high energy physics. Mostly it helps make the story real, but to a knowledgable eye the flum-tech put in to move the plot forward is awkward at times. I suspect that to the layman, the slough through pages of flum-tech to create a new indefatigable weapon just gets mystifying and boring. Compare Liu's many pages of specification for making a 'Sophon' with the simplicity of a Transporter, which merely scrambles one's molecules and then reassembles Kirk down where he can get it on. By the way, the sophon, as described seems so all-powerful that I must wonder why the aliens can't just use their tech to put their own planet right by nudging it all the time into stable eras, rather than attacking us. There is definitely a difficulty inherent in creating too much power by messing with all eleven dimensions and tying a Gordian knot with string theory.

The book arrived, no problem. I like sci-fi and this book was good, not great, until the last chapters where got hard to follow what the author was talking about. I still haven't finished, as I lost interest. This happened at the 90%+ point. The characters were under developed vs the concepts being conveyed, which some folks might really like. I wonder whether it's a cultural preference to focus on society vs the individual. I don't know, it could've been the translation.

I loved this book! The first couple of chapters didn't grab me and pull me in, there was much history of China being explained. However, am I glad I stuck with it. As I turned each page I was drawn deeper and deeper into this world. I was pleasantly surprised that the book focused on some science facts to tell the story. The combination of fact and fiction made this an incredible adventure. The Author has made it so that you are fully pulled into the story and can visualize the reality of our world changing am becoming the reality of the the world between the pages! Not an easy feat! kudos to the author. Other than a slow beginning, this book has little in cons and falls completely on the pro side for reading. I highly recommend this book. Those who might enjoy it the most would have some familiarity with current theories with physics/quantum Physics. However, such knowledge is not necessary to enjoy the book. The Author did an amazing job of providing metaphors, analogies, and easy to visualize demonstrations of certain principles through the dialogue amongst characters, it is easy to follow. But there is so much more to this book, philosophic ideas are dispersed throughout the book. Psychological and sociological ideas are mingled in as well. So who might enjoy this book the most? Anyone! This is one of those rare books that if 10 people read the book then discussed what fascinated them the most, well, you would get 10 different answers and question if they all even read the same book. This book is most certainly science fiction, excellent science fiction. So if your a SciFi geek, check this book out! You won't regret it! I gave this book a 5 star rating for the fact that this novel will appeal to a multitude of SciFi fans on many different levels. The author has created a world that is rich with detail, easy to visualize. With such great detail, it is easy to get swept up into the story and believe it is possible, too feel like this could be happening in present times. A novel which can not only completely suspend disbelief but go beyond by making you "feel" the events are really happening at this very moment deserves 5 star rating. Give this book a try, you will not be disappointed!

So Wikipedia tells me this book was originally published in 2006, translated to English in 2014 because it was so popular in China, then went on to win the Hugo Award in 2015. So, yeah, safe to say it's established itself as a pretty good novel. And I'd have to say this novel earned it. Although it may seem that nothing can be considered truly original in this day and age, The Three-Body Problem comes fairly close. I'm not even sure how to describe this novel in this review because I feel like there's nothing I can compare its storyline to. Perhaps I just haven't read enough? So here we go, brief summary: The Three-Body Problem, at its core, is yet another novel about the first human contact with an intelligent, alien species, and that alien species harbors ill-intent for our race because, as usual, we live in a very desirable place in the galaxy. However, all similarities with other novels stops there. Because lo and behold, it was US that established contact first! Us that invited them! And some of us that welcome them! And this is hard scifi, with details and history from the past, taking place in real time, using the effects and realities of actual space and science progression, and it's all so beautifully described and vastly entertaining, and just well done overall, and yeah, I don't want to go on or go into any detail because I don't want to spoil anything. I will say this, though. The author, Liu Cixin, is a big fan of metaphors and similes. Luckily, so am I. Also, Liu Cixin has no problems with long sections of exposition. Luckily, neither do I. So perhaps I'm biased? I'll also say this, that the second quarter of this novel drags pretty badly, and I was hovering somewhere between 3 and 4 stars at that time, but the last half made up for it. I think that well and truly covers nothing, so sorry about that. I'm not sure I'm excited enough to actually continue the series, though, because I think from here on out there will be more fiction than science, and I really just enjoyed the science more than the fiction in this book, especially the history bits that are sure to never occur again.

great

I loved this book, so much so that I think it's probably some of the finest science fiction I've read in some time. As I've said before, my love of the genre comes primarily from its exploration of big ideas and there are some fascinating concepts explored in this book. The most obvious of which is first contact, and although this is far from an original topic, it does have some novel nuances here. Beyond that we have the puzzle of why two protons are fired into the Solar System, and the discovery of why and how is truly fascinating. There is clearly a wealth of research and knowledge in this story. And some of it I found quite challenging, and I love that it in a book. Some of the science is so esoteric that I had to pause my reading to contemplate an idea. There is considerable depth here, that some might find off-putting, but don't let it be. This is a wonderful exploration of complex concepts and philosophy, and is all the more rewarding because of it. Of course a story isn't carried by grand ideas alone. There is a balanced cast of characters that allows for the tale to be told in a more comprehensible manner. There's also a curious transformation of the characters at play here as well. You start off with sympathies for some, and loathing for others, and their roles switch as you learn more of the truth. That in itself makes this an interesting read. The Chinese history and perspective of the story also casts a layer of fascination, and some novelty - for me at least. The circumstances of the characters lives added an attraction to the story, and here as well there were discoveries to be made. The historical and cultural differences allowed the slow (but steady) build up to have an interest that might have otherwise be lacking. Finally we come to the writing itself. It's always difficult with a translated work to determine whether the fault, or the praise is due to the original author, or the translator. For the reader I suppose it makes little difference, it is the end product that counts. The writing is quite dry which doesn't carry the emotion well, although there were a few exceptions. However this does carry the discovery in the story in a robust fashion. As I said at the beginning I loved this book. It's not perfect (but what is?), but it is an incredible read, and a must read for those who enjoy science fiction with some depth.

Very nice edition for those who prefer hardcover books

Excelente livro. Ótima leitura e trama bem esteuturada.

A classic by now and a great read.