Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem, a science-fiction novel, mixes cultural history, theoretical physics and philosophical ponderings to create a gripping space thriller. Read its review below.
Imagine this: Only four light-years away from our solar system lives another species, and they have heard humanity’s klaxon ringing in the vacuum of space. They are the Trisolarans, and they have fixed their eyes on Earth and launched their ships in its direction.
Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem is a little bit of everything, and the sum total of its parts is far greater than each individual part. At its core, the book is a first-contact and alien-invasion tale, except the alien invasion isn’t here yet because they are constrained by the speed of light. It is also a conspiracy thriller, with the central three-body problem being the clue to the entire narrative. The first book of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, The Three-Body Problem, was published originally in Chinese in 2008. It was translated into English by Ken Liu in 2014, which won a Hugo Award for best novel.
The Premise of The Three-Body Problem
It’s a daunting task to try and explain the plot of the book because of the sheer scope of what it is attempting. The book has a large cast of characters and spans decades, but focuses primarily on two characters and narratives: Ye Wenjie and Wang Miao, both scientists, both embroiled in a grand conspiracy that connects solar systems and spans light-years.
It begins in 1967 during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. Ye Wenjie, an astrophysics graduate, watches her father being beaten to death by the Red Guards—young student revolutionaries—for the crime of teaching the “reactionary” theory of General Relativity in a physics course. Officially branded a traitor and sent into political exile, she is later recruited to a covert military project because of her scientific expertise. She is taken to a secret satellite installation called the Red Coast Base, where she will eventually uncover the true purpose of the base—to search for and communicate with extraterrestrial life.
Decades later, nanotechnology engineer Wang Miao is asked to investigate a series of inexplicable suicides committed by scientists. As Wang Miao collaborates with police officer Shi Qiang to solve the case, he gets drawn into a conspiracy involving a secret cabal of scientists, world governments and an online video game called Three Body. The game is set on a planet ruled by the unpredictable movements of its three suns. In the virtual world of the Three Body game, Miao confronts bizarre but rigorously scientific conundrums and philosophical considerations.
Initially, the reader is left confused about how these two wildly different narratives could possibly work together. The moment the two lines of the thread come together and fall into place, the reader is left struck by the story’s bleakness as well as its inventiveness. The truth of the cosmic expanse of the video game, once revealed, resonates with not only the possibility of human extinction but also a potential strike to the very fundaments of physics. A note left behind by one of the scientists who committed suicide reads, “All the evidence points to a single conclusion: Physics has never existed and will never exist. I know what I’m doing is irresponsible. But I have no choice.” It is not just about the threat of the alien invasion that is real; the underlying threat is perhaps that our reality isn’t what is real at all. It is an undoing of the threads of fundamental laws of our universe. The law is not the law because it is not constant.
The cosmic terror is in hitting the limits of science, the true end of knowledge. The planet Trisolaris and its inhabiting Trisolarans draw an interesting parallel with Earth. Trisolaris is a planet on which it is difficult, if not impossible, to develop any scientific concepts because, in our world, they were originally inspired by the regularity of celestial motion. Even the more esoteric branches of physics ultimately deal with deterministic chaos. Trisolaris, on the other hand, suffers from complex and non-periodic celestial movements, and this real chaos repeatedly sets back their civilization with every unfavorable orbit of its suns.
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Analysis of the Themes and Style of The Three-Body Problem
The central conceit around which the narratives revolve is the titular three-body problem. What is the three-body problem? Imagine three free bodies in space. The interaction of their gravitational attraction sets them moving in a mesmerizing and chaotic motion. First recognized by Isaac Newton, the problem is deceptively simple: Can you mathematically predict the orbits of these three gravitational bodies? Newton was never able to find a solution, and scientists have been attempting to solve it ever since. The dynamics of this three-body system relate directly to the novel’s narrative. The chaotic movement of the three suns of the planet gives rise to unpredictable extremes of heat and cold. Errors in calculating a stable paradigm for its motion doom entire civilizations on the alien planet repeatedly. It quite literally tears the planet apart.
This digression into science will give a sense of how the book is written. The influence of the golden age of sci-fi writers like Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov is evident. Lengthy passages are grappling with metaphysical questions and ideas, such as what would it mean for the human race to come into contact with extraterrestrial beings? The motifs transcend the scope of much of modern sci-fi. Here, keeping in line with old-school sci-fi narratives, it rests on the power of ideas. Errors while dealing with this idea dooms civilisation. The book begins with a man being beaten to death for believing in and advocating for “counter-revolutionary” ideas, the wrong kind of scientific ideas. Unravelling the boilerplate mystery takes the shape of long expository passages on historical, natural and scientific advances. From Asimov, he borrows a long-form view of history, where centuries are summed up in two lines. From Lovecraft, he deduces humanity’s poignant terror at the unknown blackness of space.
All of this, however, is anchored in a deeply cultural story – the heady mixture of potential realities, speculative possibilities, and historical and cultural occurrences gives readers a sense of time and space within which to orient themselves when faced with this cosmic dilemma. The major plot points connect to the particularity of the Chinese backdrop and require some cursory knowledge. One clever little example would be an experiment proposed by Ye Wenjie at the secret base, which is almost stopped because it required aiming a powerful radio beam at the sun because of the political symbolism of the act; it might be construed as an attack on the revolutionaries and Chairman Mao. Ken Liu, the translator, provides us with a series of helpful footnotes with the puns and references that are lost in linguistic and cultural translations. The notes include meanings of names, references to significant people and places, minor cultural references, and events of the Cultural Revolution. The final result is only a more immersive experience. The reader can trace the progress of the narrative with the environmental change in China’s geography, each little incremental change in the fictional narrative supported by a real place, a real event, and a real and irreversible change in human history that drives the sense of helplessness. What can any individual do in the face of so great and terrible a thing as its own species?
All this leads to more existential questions for the future of the human race but the very fabric of physics as we have come to understand it, as well as far grimmer ponderings about the meaning of the universe and humanity’s place in it. Why is the universe so deathly silent? Is it possible that the silence is simply a lack of comprehension, an inability of the human species to wrap its head around ideas of cosmic manipulation? Is that not a more frightening prospect than the utter lifelessness of the universe? The search for extraterrestrial life and an attempt to communicate with them turns out to be a less-than-stellar idea. It lays bare the utter contradiction at the heart of humanity. This secret war, this baffling threat that humanity faces, is the final horizon at the end of a path riddled with secrecy, sabotage and violence. On the one hand, Liu juggles a cold, hard and dangerous universe that is absent of purpose; there is no hope, no escape. The aliens aren’t here on Earth yet and won’t be for many hundreds of years, but their presence is predetermined. The reader spends the book figuring out why the alien civilization is making its way intractably toward Earth. By the time the pieces fall into place, enough is revealed about the stakes that there is nothing to feel except terror at the impending doom.
On the other hand, there is the wonder of science given literary expression. What glorious and outlandish science he presents us with! It is a science that borders on the psychedelic. The way the alien race plans to dominate Earth is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Some of the more mystical scientific elements include a supercomputer being turned into a dimension-hopping proton, ultra-strong nano-filaments, giant reflective spheres, threads, numbers blinking in and out of existence to fill the sky, like something out of a Stanisław Lem novel. This is cerebral, hard sci-fi; it combines dense, exposition-heavy, and often existential scientific theory with the bizarre harshness of human experience, utilizing the infinite cosmos to transcend human experiences.
Sometimes, Cixin Liu digresses into a few pages of scientific exposition. He peppers in equally interesting speculative points, leaving us confused whether – at the level of science involved – these things may truly be possible.
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Why Should You Read The Three-Body Problem
This is a book for someone who enjoys vast and expansive stories. The sheer inventiveness and the lucid prose propel the plot forward at a breathtaking pace. Admittedly, I know very little of the science mentioned here, but it had me figuratively cracking open a PDF of an introductory book on physics.
As the first book of a trilogy, it is an utter success. That is not to say it is without its weaknesses: The book’s questions of cosmic sociology come towards the end, which is also where it hits its peak. It leaves one feeling that the meat of the story has not yet been delved into, and that the central thematic questions are only now being revealed. Because it is a trilogy, the book ends before any resolution to these stakes.
The Three-Body Problem initially flounders, not because of any failings of the plot or Liu as a writer, but because it takes a while to untangle the focal points. Once the two lines of narratives intersect, the book finds its footing. None of this is a problem during a re-read, of course. In fact, it’s one of those books that’s more rewarding the second time around.
It also becomes evident as the story progresses that the true characters in this book are Humanity and Trisolaris. Humans are often representations of ideas. They are necessities for the plot. The idea is, after all, far too big to be conceived by a single human character: humanity’s place in the universe. We come to realize these are the blind gropings of Humanity in the dark of space. It is character development at the level of species. The trajectory is of Trisolaris and Humanity reacting to and with each other. It is fascinating to see how these two organisms act through but beyond any individual. It is incredibly engaging, combining the inventiveness of 50s sci-fi with the paranoia and pessimism of the 70s. It works as a perfect hook, line, and sinker for readers to explore the rest of the series. I, for one, can’t wait to finish the trilogy.
