It’s taken a little bit longer (about six months) to arrive here in the UK than with my colleagues in the USA, but I’m pleased to finally get to read The Three-Body Problem (3BP).
From the publisher: “With the scope of Dune and the commercial action of Independence Day, this near-future trilogy is the first chance for English-speaking readers to experience this multiple-award-winning phenomenon from China’s most beloved science fiction author. Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.”
Putting it simply, The Three-Body Problem examines the big ol’ SF question – “Is there anything else out there, and if so, are they friendly?” as the main focus of the book.
The novel starts though with the Cultural Revolution of China, in the 1960’s, which was, by all accounts, an event of genocide on an enormous scale. Cixin doesn’t duck from the gruesomeness of this historical event, but uses it to show how his characters are melded into their future destinies. The first chapter shockingly shows University student Ye Wenjie witnessing Red Guards beat her father to death during the Cultural Revolution because he wouldn’t recant his belief in science. (There’s a good reason for the first chapter being named “The Madness Years”.) Most of the first part of the book (“Silent Spring”) is about science gone bad, or a belief in ‘anti-science’ in China after the Cultural Revolution. This leads to Ye being falsely accused of studying science in the Production and Construction Corps and then sent to work at the mysterious Red Coast Base.
Bringing the story into the 21st century, forty years later we see what seems to be a suicide of a major scientist, but over the course of the book we realise that his death is only one of a series. There is a reason for their deaths, but it is up to Captain Shi Qiang, under the direction of General Chang Weisi, to work out a reason. Shi brings in nanotech engineer Wang Miao to get to the cause. By being involved, Wang has to infiltrate a secretive cabal of international scientists, one that seems based around solving the problems within a computer programme, Three Body. In this virtual world, Wang finds himself in some sort of simulation that involves civilisation uplift but is ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of three suns.
Part 2 of the novel (“Three Body”) finds Wang finds deeper and deeper into the computer simulation, and him realising that it is more than just a game – that the scientists involved and the answers the game produces may have a damning message for the human race.
Part 3 deals with the discovery of Trisolaris and how China and the rest of civilisation deal with an impending event. Ye is closely involved, as both a cause of action and with the effect of actions taken.
The Three-Body Problem is a Hugo Award nominee for Best Novel in 2015, albeit a last minute one. I think I can see why. The translation by Ken Liu does help, as it is a first-class result, making the understanding of at-time quite difficult concepts accurate and accessible. Most of all though, where 3BP scores is that it has a perspective that is relatively distinctive in genre circles – a view on Science and SF that is not Western-world or capitalist-economy orientated. This is quite refreshing, and different enough to be entertaining even when dealing with well-known tropes. Europe and the USA are barely mentioned, the book being set in a China that is, for the most part, isolated from the bigger world. This leads to ideas and solutions that are not as typically Western as we have come to expect in such tales.
There’s some nice little other touches too. The Three Body computer programme, to which Wang becomes obsessed, allows a certain flight of fantasy, invention and humour – at one point we have Sir Isaac Newton sword-fighting mathematician Gottfried Liebnitz over calculus, for example. The idea of Wang (known as ‘Copernicus’ in the programme), Newton and Von Neumann creating a human architecture computer with thirty million Chinese soldiers and flags to calculate the complex orbits of three suns, is inspired, even when the consequences of error may lead to the soldiers being brutally decapitated.
However, at its heart 3BP mostly scores in that it is a resolutely old-fashioned SF story in both style and tone, based on some relatively hard Science and Mathematics. 3BP is a book about big ideas, about problems created by these ideas and then creating or solving them. This is a well-known approach in SF circles – to my mind, it is all rather Campbellian Analog-style in such matters, and in my opinion would not feel out of place with any stories recently or previously published in that long-running magazine.
This has a downside in that you can find that there are parts that are a little prone to info-dumping and the characterisation can be rather at the Arthur C Clarke level of complexity – that is to say, not very deep. Personally I don’t have a problem with that, because it is dealing with issues that are much bigger than mere individuals, and on a cosmic or galactic scale it scores highly. But it can mean that following all the characters has to be done carefully at times.
It’s a book that builds slowly and carefully over the course of the plot. Not all of the events may make immediate sense at first, but as revelation after revelation is made, it does all come together in the end. The ending of the novel is where things pick up a pace and broaden to an epic scale. The conclusion is an interesting one, in that it may not be what you expect, nor even what you want. But it does lead us to contemplate what can happen next as a consequence of the revelations in 3BP. And I, for one, can’t wait to read the next book in this trilogy series to find out what.
As I type this, it is the day before the announcement of the Hugo Awards winners. Obviously I wish this book and its author all the best, but it is up against some tough opposition. I think I can see why it is in the running, but I’m not sure it is for everyone. *
Nevertheless, for a book that makes you think, and holds true to some of the traditional values of SF, this one can’t be beat. Let’s hope that, if nothing else, this heralds the development of a wider spectrum of SF to the community.
The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu
Translated by Ken Liu
Published by Head of Zeus (UK), July 2015,
Published by Tor (US), November 2014,
First published in China in 2006.
400 pages
ISBN: 978-178 497 1557
Review by Mark Yon
*And with my usual inability to choose winners, I’m happy to say that The Three -Body Problem won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Congratulations to Cixin.
