When a global author makes his or her US debut, there is usually a great deal of preamble. In the case of Cixin Liu, the arrival of The Three-Body Problem was preceded with much fanfare. The novel and the author are recognized in China on the same level that writers like Arthur C. Clarke are recognized in the English-speaking world. The publisher, Tor, prominently featured and promoted the title on their blog and the novel is translated by Ken Liu (no relation), a multiple genre award winner himself. I suppose that’s enough preamble to my review…
The Three-Body Problem is a novel spanning decades, galaxies, and civilizations while also showcasing intimate portraits of people caught up in the first communication between humanity and an alien species. The novel begins during China’s Cultural Revolution; a time of chaos and internal strife wherein Communism takes a stronger grip on China when a fairly prominent scientist is killed for protesting his thoughts. His daughter, Ye Wenjie, is of course affected by his death but moves into a life of science eventually working at Red Coast, a radar station for monitoring extra-terrestrial life in the late 1960s. Red Coast is also the source of many strange occurrences: people have suffered sickness and dizziness in its presence while animals show great anxiety and snow melts to rain when its antenna is extended. To say watching her father murdered before her eyes set her mind down a specific path is an understatement.
Liu jumps the narrative a few decades forward focusing on a scientist Wang Mia, who becomes part of a scientific collective whose members have been dying under mysterious circumstances. As he learns more about the organization, he is invited to log onto 3body.net, which turns out to be a game called The Three-Body Problem and puts the player into a simulation like the game Civilization alongside virtual historical figures. The player must figure out how to push civilization to the next stages of development under many conflicting circumstances. Each session of the game ends with civilization dying out, but with the player unlocking new advancements that allows the player to start the game anew at a more advanced level. Wang is very much a cipher of a character, a stand in for readers and at one point during his character’s journey, sees numbers before his eyes counting down, but to what proves an initial mystery.
Despite the gulf of time between Ye and Wang’s narratives, Liu eventually ties the plot threads of Ye and Wang together in expert fashion. What we learn about salvation through these characters is not what one might expect when presented with a first contact situation. Though both characters seek a certain kind of contact with alien civilization, their goals are not quite aligned with each other. Wang sees his colleagues dying as they get closer to the secret of first contact while Ye sees first contact as an opportunity for purging not only herself, but humanity. Another strange element about the initial contact between humanity and the aliens is that the first message from the aliens to Earth is “Do Not Reply to this Message.” Indeed, between the message and recipient, this does not bode well for humanity. While this conceit isn’t exactly new with first contact novels, Liu’s extrapolation of the potential dire consequences of first contact proves compelling and absorbing.
Liu’s narrative is not exactly linear as it is told from multiple points of view focusing on various points in time, but the whole of it builds a mesmerizing picture. As a Westerner, the world of China presented in the novel was alien in some ways, particularly the conversational patterns and the societal mores that come across from the dialogue as well as the culture on the whole. In effect, this gave a sense of not just one alien culture conversing with Earth across vast distances for the first time, but rather of two alien cultures meeting. What makes this all the more fascinating is that the physical description of the Trisolarians (what the Chinese/humans dub the aliens) is minimal and the fact that humans and Trisolarians don’t actually meet.
The Three-Body Problem is an intriguing look at a culture at odds with itself; a first contact story where aliens make first contact with perhaps one of the most unfortunate souls on earth they meet through this communication. It is a novel where science is at the forefront; physics, game culture, and the societal intersections where, ideologies, science and faith intermix with not always positive results.
I am very interested to see where Liu takes the story next in The Dark Forest.
Highly Recommended
© 2015 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover, November 11, 2014, 352 Pages
ISBN 978-0-765-377-06-7
Excerpts: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/10/read-the-three-body-problem
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Tor
And now a Hugo nominee!
And now a Hugo *winner*
A book that has deserved its high praise
Really exciting thriller, current and contemporary, and educational about Chinese culture.