Fun Summer Read #1
The Three Body Problem, Liu Cixin
Netflix may have popularized this story with “Three-Body,” a solid but not spectacular adaptation of the The Three Body Problem, by Liu Cixin. But the award winning book is much better– starting slowly and then building into a page turning, mind bending, heart rending story that probes the limits of science, difficult moral questions, and has a lot of insightful things to say about how humans react to events and one another.
Good Stories, Great Reflections
The initial story straddles two time periods–revolutionary and modern day China–with one key character in both. The Maoist paroxysm of political persecution and its miserable consequences in the former is the fulcrum on which history ends up turning.
While first contact narratives often turn into tropes, this one uses it as a backdrop for a series of interesting human stories and wry observations about humanity. Unlike the Netflix adaptation, the original narrative is Sinocentric, and wryly observant of how humans interact with tragedy, one another, and shocking exogenous events.
At times, I felt like a fantastic storyteller was actually smuggling in a lesson on sociology, strongly rooted in game theory. It is as if the author imagined an initial layout of billiard balls, a perturbation, and then gamed out what would happen next, and next, and next, all the way until…well, I don’t want to spoil it–and turned it into a page turner.
Science is Real
Like the hit TV show, the “Expanse” was lauded for, Liu takes the science part of science fiction seriously, something I appreciate. Actually, at times he, takes the science so seriously, particularly in the later books when he attempts to describe the experience of say, space in different dimensions like two and four–that reading it can occasionally feel psychedelic. I once even looked up how scientists speculate space would be experienced in four dimensions, and it turns out Liu did his homework.
Despite all this, none of this feels like homework. It’s just a damn good story. The sequels really run with the science, the sociology, and the development of a kind of galactic game theory that explains why we have never encountered aliens. That said, the translations of the prose in the two later books is a bit repetitive and clipped.
I still loved all of it, and I suspect you will too!
Buy it at Third Place Books or borrow it at Seattle Public Library