Take a photo of a barcode or cover
mburnamfink 's review for:
The Three-Body Problem
by Cixin Liu
The Three Body Problem is the first translated work to win the Hugo. Liu Cixin is a titan in Chinese science-fiction, having won 9 out of 27 Galaxy awards, the Chinese equivalent of the Hugo. Ken Liu's translation adds context for American readers. While the stilted style may be an artifact of translation, I think a lot of my disagreements with the novel are deeper and more structural.
The story presents two parallel timelines. In one, Ye Wenjie is a young astrophysicist in the tumult of the Cultural Revolution. She witnesses her mother denounce her father in front of a mob, her father murdered for the crime of teaching Einstein's theory of relativity. Ye is sent to Inner Mongolia in a construction battalion, where after being denounced for opposing clear cutting the ancient forests, she is saved by Yang, the head of a secret space warfare and radio astronomy facility. The traumatized Ye restores some balance to her life, but when a Chinese SETI broadcast receives a reply and warning from aliens, she makes a snap decision: Humanity's crimes mean that they do not deserve to rule Earth. The aliens need to invade and save us from ourselves.
Meanwhile, in the present (2007, but it still feels current) Wang Miao is a cutting edge nanotech researcher who is contacted by a strange international military organization that asks him to infiltrate a group called the Frontiers of Science, which may be connected to the suicide of several leading physicists. Through a virtual reality video game called 3body, Wang learns of the strange Trisolarian system, where a chaotic orbit around three suns creates incredibly harsh conditions for life. It turns out that the 3body game is a recruitment tool for the Earth-Trisolarian Organization, a group set up by Ye Wenjie and billionaire environmentalist Mike Evans to prepare to Earth for a very real Trisolarian interstellar invasion. Meanwhile, in order to ensure that the Earth will be vulnerable when the 0.1 lightspeed invasion fleet arrives, the Trisolarians have sent Sophonts, AIs inscribed in the hidden dimensions of protons, to scramble the results of scientific experiments and gaslight physicists. The book ends with Wang and the military aware that the invasion is coming, as the Sophonts mock humans as bugs, and humanity prepares to resist.
If there's one word to describe this book, it's overstuffed: First contact, human fifth columnists, evolution on a planet that orbits multiple suns, virtual reality, quantum AIs, the use of models in science, astrophysics... The Three-Body Problem is packed with dense infodumps. Unfortunately, this means that there's not really time to develop the implications of any of these ideas, which are just present as fait accomplai, or to round out any character aside from Ye Wenjie. Wang, for all the indications that he should be the protagonist, is particularly a blank slate. His partner, rogue cop Shi Qiang, is a bag of stereotypes, but is at least an amusing bag.
And for all the density of ideas in this book, Cixin misses out on the most interesting one. Are aliens just people in different bodies, or are they really aliens? What does it take to bridge cultures that don't share any evolutionary history. The Trisolarians grasp human culture very quickly, and come up with a very precise plan for how to destroy it. Their motives of "kill them and take their biosphere" seem, well, not very exotic for a space-faring species from a very strange planet.
The idea that sticks with me most out of The Three-Body Problem are the number of people who have simply given up on humanity: the environmentalists, scientists, philosophers, and artists in the Earth-Trisolarian Organization who have decided that humanity is worthless, and that the aliens can save us, all on the flimsiest of messages from space. There's a real darkness here about the integrity of self-proclaimed elites and prophets.
****
(original review from December 7, 2014)
I picked up the The Three Body Problem with very high expectations. Someone (tor.com, IEET?) advertised it as the first modern classic of Chinese science fiction. That may be true, but its not the strongest book. The story is fascinating, but painted in very broad, almost operatic strokes. Ye Wenije is a traumatized survivor of the Cultural Revolution, who winds up assigned to a top secret radio astronomy station. There she makes a discover-mankind is not along in the universe, and a decision-that we cannot take care of ourselves, and that an alien power will set Earth to rights. Her story is paralleled by a much less interesting contemporary investigation of the movement she founded to welcome the aliens, and the strange society that develops on a planet orbiting three suns (Alpha Centauri?)
First contact stories are a staple of science fiction, and the reaction that 'humanity doesn't deserve to survive' and the formation of a pro-alien 5th column are pretty standard responses. There's not enough fidelity or realism in the story to lift it above average. It's enjoyable enough for fiction in translation, but it's far from a must read, and I'll probably skip the sequels.
The story presents two parallel timelines. In one, Ye Wenjie is a young astrophysicist in the tumult of the Cultural Revolution. She witnesses her mother denounce her father in front of a mob, her father murdered for the crime of teaching Einstein's theory of relativity. Ye is sent to Inner Mongolia in a construction battalion, where after being denounced for opposing clear cutting the ancient forests, she is saved by Yang, the head of a secret space warfare and radio astronomy facility. The traumatized Ye restores some balance to her life, but when a Chinese SETI broadcast receives a reply and warning from aliens, she makes a snap decision: Humanity's crimes mean that they do not deserve to rule Earth. The aliens need to invade and save us from ourselves.
Meanwhile, in the present (2007, but it still feels current) Wang Miao is a cutting edge nanotech researcher who is contacted by a strange international military organization that asks him to infiltrate a group called the Frontiers of Science, which may be connected to the suicide of several leading physicists. Through a virtual reality video game called 3body, Wang learns of the strange Trisolarian system, where a chaotic orbit around three suns creates incredibly harsh conditions for life. It turns out that the 3body game is a recruitment tool for the Earth-Trisolarian Organization, a group set up by Ye Wenjie and billionaire environmentalist Mike Evans to prepare to Earth for a very real Trisolarian interstellar invasion. Meanwhile, in order to ensure that the Earth will be vulnerable when the 0.1 lightspeed invasion fleet arrives, the Trisolarians have sent Sophonts, AIs inscribed in the hidden dimensions of protons, to scramble the results of scientific experiments and gaslight physicists. The book ends with Wang and the military aware that the invasion is coming, as the Sophonts mock humans as bugs, and humanity prepares to resist.
If there's one word to describe this book, it's overstuffed: First contact, human fifth columnists, evolution on a planet that orbits multiple suns, virtual reality, quantum AIs, the use of models in science, astrophysics... The Three-Body Problem is packed with dense infodumps. Unfortunately, this means that there's not really time to develop the implications of any of these ideas, which are just present as fait accomplai, or to round out any character aside from Ye Wenjie. Wang, for all the indications that he should be the protagonist, is particularly a blank slate. His partner, rogue cop Shi Qiang, is a bag of stereotypes, but is at least an amusing bag.
And for all the density of ideas in this book, Cixin misses out on the most interesting one. Are aliens just people in different bodies, or are they really aliens? What does it take to bridge cultures that don't share any evolutionary history. The Trisolarians grasp human culture very quickly, and come up with a very precise plan for how to destroy it. Their motives of "kill them and take their biosphere" seem, well, not very exotic for a space-faring species from a very strange planet.
The idea that sticks with me most out of The Three-Body Problem are the number of people who have simply given up on humanity: the environmentalists, scientists, philosophers, and artists in the Earth-Trisolarian Organization who have decided that humanity is worthless, and that the aliens can save us, all on the flimsiest of messages from space. There's a real darkness here about the integrity of self-proclaimed elites and prophets.
****
(original review from December 7, 2014)
I picked up the The Three Body Problem with very high expectations. Someone (tor.com, IEET?) advertised it as the first modern classic of Chinese science fiction. That may be true, but its not the strongest book. The story is fascinating, but painted in very broad, almost operatic strokes. Ye Wenije is a traumatized survivor of the Cultural Revolution, who winds up assigned to a top secret radio astronomy station. There she makes a discover-mankind is not along in the universe, and a decision-that we cannot take care of ourselves, and that an alien power will set Earth to rights. Her story is paralleled by a much less interesting contemporary investigation of the movement she founded to welcome the aliens, and the strange society that develops on a planet orbiting three suns (Alpha Centauri?)
First contact stories are a staple of science fiction, and the reaction that 'humanity doesn't deserve to survive' and the formation of a pro-alien 5th column are pretty standard responses. There's not enough fidelity or realism in the story to lift it above average. It's enjoyable enough for fiction in translation, but it's far from a must read, and I'll probably skip the sequels.