The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu

The first part of Cixin Liu’s epic Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy first appeared in China some 15 years ago and ten years ago in English translation, and since then the Chinese author has been shaping up to be one of the most interesting and original of science-fiction writers, heralding perhaps a new wave of Chinese SF. Judging from the first volume of the trilogy, The Three-Body Problem, his work inevitably shows some classic influences and traditional themes, preparing the ground for an alien first contact/invasion idea, but in other respects, in his blending of hard SF and pulp adventure with political and sociological ideas, he has a unique spin on those familiar themes.

The Three-Body Problem opens in China during the Cultural Revolution in the years 1967-68. Ye Wenjie witnesses the prosecution of her father, an astrophysicist, resisting charges of anti-revolutionary intellectualism mounted against him and suffering the consequences. Ye Wenjie is also an astrophysicist, and is sent to work in what amounts to heavy deforestation in the Greater Khingan Mountains in Inner Mongolia. Even there however she can't escape new charges being falsely brought against her that she is also unable to resist. One of the charges, the reading of a banned book on environmentalism - 'Silent Spring' by Rachel Carson - brings her however to the realisation that the human race can only be brought to a moral awakening through a force from outside.

She gets her chance to influence this 'awakening' when she is rescued from captivity and punishment by the secret services and taken to the Red Coast Base operating in the nearby Radar Peak, which appears to be conducting unusual experiments. At first she is led to believe that there is a military objective but later the truth becomes apparent that they are exploring space for extraterrestrial life. It is believed that any discovery in this field will give the necessary push needed to make grand breakthroughs in technology and knowledge, but even getting a message far enough out there to even have any likelihood of a response is beyond current capabilities. 

40 or so years later Wang Miao, a scientist working in nanotechnology research, is introduced to some of those concepts that will change human thinking and rock the world of physics. He discovers that a significant number of high-profile scientists have actually committed suicide at the discovery that physics as it is traditionally known "does not exist" and, trying to find out what is going on, he is encouraged to accept an invitation to join a working group known as Frontiers of Science. One of those scientists who died after their discoveries, was Yang Dong, the daughter of Ye Wenjie. Wang Miao himself starts to experience strange phenomena, some kind of countdown appearing that only he can see, but it is while he investigates an online game called The Three-Body that is is introduced truly into a world where chaos reigns.

In the field of classic SF, there are several major influences that it is hard to avoid, one of which is Arthur C Clarke, the other that is hard to avoid when it comes to the human response to a dystopian world is Philip K Dick. It's hard to avoid comparisons to Blade Runner when it comes to movies in this field, but elements of the Three-Body game reminded me more of Mercerism in Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? In a world of environmental destruction, people search for spiritual redemption, or perhaps just empathic connection that doesn't exist any longer. The aims of the game, as well as whether it offers any redemption or solution, is similarly ambiguous. Here the even more pessimistic looming environmental catastrophe presents Ye Wenjie with no other possibility of a solution than by hoping for and accepting an intervention from outside the human race. The question however is whether that is to reform or destroy.

Cixin Liu uses a lot of hard science to back up the concepts, but it is put in terms that are relatively easy to follow and done - mostly - without feeling too much like it is lecturing or bogged down in physics. The Three-Body Problem covers a lot of ground, from the political, social and environmental questions that initiate social progress and regression, taking in the vast learning of humankind over its brief span on the planet, and areas around where science development and exploration might go. And, of course, thrown into that the unknown impact of a first contact situation on the horizon that is only four light years away. That translates as 450 years until invasion, so none of the figures involved here are expected to be around, but I'll definitely not be waiting that long to take in Volume 2, The Dark Forest.

Reading notes: he Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu is published by Head of Zeus. I read an eBook download from Amazon. The first part of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, this has been on my radar for a while now, but it's taken the Netflix series to finally push me towards it. I didn't want the series to influence how I read and see the work, so decided I'd better get around to reading it before watching the Netflix adaptation. I try not to introduce spoilers in my reviews (I deleted a paragraph about the Three-Body game), but it's difficult to avoid when you are setting up the concept of a three-volume series. Volume 1 definitely lays the groundwork however - quite compellingly - and there is clearly a lot more involved in the two subsequent volumes, so I don't think there is too much given away here.