Three-Body Problem

I'm not thoroughly familiar with science fiction as a genre, but I'd imagine this is pretty quintessential hard science fiction. That means that quite a lot of text throughout the novel is devoted to explaining the scientific realities behind the events of the narrative. For example, entire chapters are devoted more or less to detailing the physical minutiae of how messages might be transmitted between Earth and alien civilizations.

In the case of this novel, hard science fiction also means substantially less attention is given to the development of characters and the drama between them. Indeed, I found the book somewhat reminiscent of my experience with Isaac Asimov, where all the important characters are STEM academics and the only interesting thing they could imagine talking about is science in one form or another. So don't expect a very compelling drama from this novel or particularly deep or complex characters. With maybe one exception (the character Ye Wenjie) the stakes of this narrative are all practical, not emotional or relational.

But there is (in my mind) a very clever plot in here. The author does a great job of leveraging a variety of concepts and technologies from various STEM disciplines as plot points and narrative developments, both breakthroughs and setbacks for the protagonists. There's also a fascinating layer of 20th century Chinese history that overlays and informs the narrative. But this is neither a thriller nor a romance, so don't expect some pulse-pounding climax at the book's end that will leave you breathless.

I have a degree in a STEM field (computer science) so I may be biased in this assessment, but I thought the book was pretty readable insofar as the science is presented and detailed. But detractors are not wrong to call the writing in general both dry and wooden. I can't tell if it's a authentic reflection of the original author's personal style or perhaps indicative of Chinese prose generally, but in either case this book's writing is far from poetic.

Bottom line, if people are uncertain that they'll be able to get through this book, the only advice I can offer is this: if & when you find yourself struggling to get through a heavy passage detailing scientific minutiae, not only is the novel not going to "get better" from there, but passages such as those are themselves a great part of why this book's fans love it so much. So pull that ripcord early if you find yourself struggling to enjoy yourself; you'll know if this novel is for you pretty quickly. Even those who do enjoy it might be tempted to line up a romance or other drama-rich novel as a chaser.

Empecé con muchas ganas este ganador del Premio Hugo de 2015. Ciencia ficción "hard", de una cultura un tanto exótica para mí como la china, y con aplauso unánime de la crítica, prometía mucho. Y no es que sea una mala lectura ni mucho menos, pero me ha acabado decepcionando bastante.

Se dice que el autor está muy influido por Asimov, Clarke y similares, y la verdad es que sí: la trama contiene muchos elementos que podían haber sido originales en los años 60, pero que desde luego hoy en día no lo son, al menos en Occidente. El personaje principal es bastante plano; los secundarios, que tenían mimbres para ser interesantes, acaban resultando estereotípicos; el hecho de que la novela acabe en un "continuará" (es el primer libro de una trilogía) no ayuda tampoco a la redondez de la trama.

En otros aspectos donde se ven influencias de otros autores, los extraterrestres, lejanos y enigmáticos pero a la vez muy humanos, me recuerdan poderosamente a los de Los Propios Dioses; el juego de realidad virtual no puede menos de sonarnos a Ender... Pero todo ello con menos fuerza que las referencias originales.

Curiosamente, donde me parece que el libro se vuelve más vivo y brillante es en sus regresiones sobre China, la Revolución Cultural y su evolución posterior. Quizás es simplemente por mi desconocimiento sobre el tema, pero los capítulos centrados en ese tema se me hicieron mucho más interesantes.

El libro se lee bien, entretiene y es de lectura ágil, pero esperaba algo más. No sé si continuaré con los otros dos libros de la trilogía, tocará pensarlo.

SPOILERS THO

The three-body problem in physics states that although it is trivial to model the path of two bodies (e.g. binary stars) revolving around each other, it is currently impossible to create a model that can accurately predict the future positions of three bodies around each other, as minute instabilities add up over time to create a chaotic system. This book postulates that the nearest star to the earth, Alpha Centauri, as a ternary star system, is such a chaotic system; despite its unpredictability, a race of sentient species have evolved to sentience on an immensely inhospitable planet. When they learn of the existence of Earth, and realize it is in a stable solar system with a relatively mild climate, what would such a civilization do?

The book reminds me of Carl Sagan's "Contact" (well, the movie; I haven't read the book) but goes beyond the touchy-feely aspects of Sagan's work. Contact is distinctly American, and therefore, deeply religious; when Arroway finally meets aliens, the interaction is solely a personal one, which occurs without any observable proof that it took place at all. With that experience, Arroway is humanity's messiah, able to spread the message that the promised land is a space paradise of hob-nobbing with other, enlightened spacefaring species — if you have faith. 3BP dispenses with the notion that the space age will be a lovely vacation earned by a well-behaved humanity. I don't know if it's because the author takes a very hard-science approach or it's more of a Chinese cultural influence, but the characters in 3BP don't think of joining the aliens because they believe they're worthy. On the contrary, they invite the (presumably enlightened) aliens to Earth as a corrective measure: we're flawed, we're broken, we need your help, come fix us.

Of course, even that ends up being wildly optimistic, as the aliens don't really care about mentoring humans at all. They just want a planet with an easier difficulty level to live on. The universe is a harsh and unforgiving place, and it turns out that outer space isn't the paradise, Earth is. And the aliens wants it for themselves. So, well, they kind of do the science equivalent of driving down the property values so they can swoop in and buy up all the land at a super low price by the time their moving vans get there. (It'll take about 450 years, at a maximum of 10-percent of the speed of light.)

The book ends there. Not with a proclamation of some glorious, kumbaya future, or even a clear evil to be defeated, just a slowly ticking clock. Earth will be occupied in 450 years by star-hopping alien gentrifiers just trying to find a new backyard in which to raise their alien babies. So what now?

A multiple award-winning science fiction book set in China and translated from Chinese?  That sounds like a perfect book for me.The book starts with the story of woman whose father is killed during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s.  She is sentenced to reeducation but eventually her training as a physicist is determined to be desirable for a new military project.  She is sent to live and work on a base with a large radio antenna.In the present day, there is a wave of murders and suicides of scientists in China.  A man who is researching ways to make fabric from nanoparticles finds that whenever he takes a picture there is a clock embedded in the image.  The clock is counting down.  He doesn't know what is going to happen when the countdown ends.  He is contacted and told to stop his research and the countdown will stop.  It does.He knew a few of the dead scientists.  When visiting the husband of one he is surprised to see a set up for a video game called Three Body.  The dead scientist didn't seem like the kind of person who would enjoy a game.  He decides to play it to see what it is like.  The game is set on a planet where day and night are not set lengths.  They can't be predicted.  In times of extreme cold or heat, civilizations on the planet collapse.  The game then restarts in a different period of time and the goal is the same.  Try to predict the movement of the sun.People who like and are good at this game tend to be scientists and intellectuals.  Once they pass a certain level they are contacted for meetups.  There they are told that the world in the game is real and that aliens from that planet are on their way to Earth.What I didn't realize when I got this book is that it is more about physics than anything else.  Most of the main characters are theoretical physicists and the book is mostly them talking to each other about their research.I'm not good with physics.  I had to take a few classes in college and I hated it.  Here's my hangup.  When they start talking about things like, "We'll smash these particles together and if something bounces back in this direction then we'll know that there was this type of particle there."  My brain says, "No you don't.  You assume that what bounced your particle back was another particle because you are thinking in particles.  But you can't see it.  You don't know what it is.  There could be a force that you don't know about that is repelling particles.  For all you know, there could be a tiny elf with a mirror reflecting particles.  It could be anything.  You don't know!"  Yeah, I'm a biology girl.  I want to actually see what is going on.  When this book got into discussions of what would happen if you unfold a proton in 2 or 1 or 6 dimensions ... ugh.I had to step back from the details of this book to look at the main questions.

• Has humanity become so depraved that you would welcome an alien invasion?  You don't know if they will coexist, destroy humanity, or change humanity.  Do you care?


• Can you cripple a society if you make it sufficiently afraid of scientific investigation?  This one is interesting to me because I read so much about anti-intellectualism in the United States.  (Despite my physics rant in the paragraph above, I think investigating basic sciences is extremely important because there is so much that we don't know.)

An interesting part of the translation of this novel is the fact that so much of it is based in Chinese history and philosophy. There are some footnotes to explain the mindset of the Cultural Revolution and Chinese philosophers to English-reading audiences. There is Chinese wordplay that is explained too. I appreciated that because it helped but it is also a little embarrassing that they knew we would need the help. There are parts of the game where western historical figures are brought in. I wonder if there were footnotes in the Chinese version to explain them.

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A photo posted by @dvmheather on Aug 26, 2015 at 6:28am PDT

This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story