I've finally finished the 2015 Hugo Award winning novel "The Three-Body Problem" by Liu Cixin (translated by Ken Liu), and it was totally worth the read! I have so much to say... but I'm not the best at book reviews without being spoilery... so as is my usual M.O., I'll just throw out some spaghetti:
Flat Characters but Science- and Plot-Focused
I will say that character development was not a particular strength of this book. Told in third person, the characters are mainly used as a medium for the alternate realities imagined in this book. However, now that I think about it, this commonly happens in many science-fiction novels. I find a lot of thrill in complex character development but when it comes to sci-fi, if I'm too engaged in the imaginative science, I think that's a win. But it's certainly not for everyone. The Three-Body Problem definitely captured me in many ways: (a) it appealed to my budding interest in history, (b) its science fiction had a strong basis in physics, and in particularly astronomy, and (c) it was a deep dive into what "first contact" with extraterrestrial life would really mean for the fate of humanity.
Historical Setting
The backdrop of the 3BP story begins during the Cultural Revolution in China. I learned quite a lot about the Cultural Revolution in China; it had quite a rounded collection of perspectives, ranging from reactionaries, the Red Guard, and the political elite. A great portion of the book is spent setting up the world and exploring the condition of humanity during this time. After a slow start to reading through the set-up, things (finally) started to get weird: the "fiction" part is an imaginative (and yet tenable) spin on China's race for the search of extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) at Red Coast Base. Here, the main character, discovers a method of amplifying outgoing and inbound signals and secretly sends the first successful "first contact" message out into the universe.
Human history is indeed filled with horrors and wars and atrocities, and the characters of the book are products of those. Their actions are motivated by formative experiences. The characters are subjected to the tyranny of humanity and it feels outside of their control. It's hard to agree that this is a world where positive experiences greatly outweigh negative ones in the human psyche. In the current political sphere and historically, humans have paid forward fear (the basis of hate and anger and self-preservation) in seemingly limitless amounts. Despite the ideals and smaller experiences of kindnesses experienced by the characters, often the educated elite, they hang on to a cold and cynical ideal. Maybe we don't pay forward kindness or love enough. Maybe ideals are simply not enough (if it were true, communism would actually work.) Just something to think about...
Physics
Having not taken a physics class for several years, I found the physics topics largely educational. Besides the obvious staging of SETI technology, The Three-Body Problem explores in-depth the classical three body problem in physics, with which there currently is no known computational solution. This problem is crucial to world-building for the alien civilization (my favorite visualization is on page 238 of the Tor translated publication) of the closest triple star system to our solar system (Alpha Centauri AB and Proxima Centauri). Imagine a civilization's (the Trisolarans) planet whose orbit was affected by THREE suns -- now that's a thought exercise! -- and Liu Cixin brazenly dives deep into what that might look like.
Other scientific concepts touched on in this book:
- astronomy (obviously)
- special vs general relativity
- artificial intelligence
- computing technology
- dimensional folding
The Fermi Paradox
- there are billions of stars in the galaxy and many are billions of years older than our solar system
- it is highly probably that some of these stars have Earth-like planets that support intelligent life
- some of these civilizations have developed interstellar travel
- even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way could easily be traversed in a few million years
... so why have we not heard from anyone yet?
Many theories try to answer this question. But the upstanding theory that 3BP alludes to is the dark forest theory. In this theory, we know so little of the civilizations out there and the potential technologies they may possess that it is dangerous to communicate with them. Any contact would risk revealing our location in the galaxy and thus leave us vulnerable to destruction.
3BP also explores, with Asimov-like echoes, the general progression of science and technology towards interstellar exploration. And do we really want that? What does society look like once we've established mastery over subatomic particles or antimatter? We might just blow each other up and there might be nothing left. Indeed, an overwhelming motif of 3BP is that the human civilization is self-destructive and "undeserving" of continuation. Judgment day is coming for Earth - in what form? Alien invasion or our own demise? 3BP asks the question: what do we really mean in the grand scheme of the universe? Can we, as a whole civilization, really be redeemed? Do our actions really matter? Who - are - we?
3BP also explores, with Asimov-like echoes, the general progression of science and technology towards interstellar exploration. And do we really want that? What does society look like once we've established mastery over subatomic particles or antimatter? We might just blow each other up and there might be nothing left. Indeed, an overwhelming motif of 3BP is that the human civilization is self-destructive and "undeserving" of continuation. Judgment day is coming for Earth - in what form? Alien invasion or our own demise? 3BP asks the question: what do we really mean in the grand scheme of the universe? Can we, as a whole civilization, really be redeemed? Do our actions really matter? Who - are - we?
Conclusions
Ultimately, since the book is the first of a trilogy, it is largely world development. We don't meet the Trisolarans in person but we have communicated with them. 3BP asks us to look up at the sky and imagine the possibility of extraterrestrial life and how it would ultimately change the face of the Earth and how we understand the universe should we make contact with them. It asks us to think about our political climate and how poorly we treat one another, both individually, as larger organizations or countries, and even within the groups we identify with. What ideals are you driven by, if any?
My next question is... should I read the next two books of the trilogy?
I think I've racked my brain enough in this space (hah!)... I've still got a long queue of other books to get through but I'm putting The Dark Forest somewhere on there. :)
Other Interesting Reads:
What Happens if China Makes First Contact?
Next Reads: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Timothy Snyder), A General Theory of Love (Thomas Lewis, M.D. Fair Amini, M.D., Richard Lannon, M.D.)
