The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you have a reasonable level of scientific literacy and if you are fascinated by mathematics and physics, then you will love this book. On the other hand, if you are not so turned on by science this may not be the best read for you.

The first part of the story deals with the Cultural Revolution. Clearly, the author has been personally affected by this phase of Chinese history and is a bit preoccupied with it. If you are not particularly interested in history, persevere and read through these introductory chapters. They do provide context that assists in understanding the rest of the narrative.

This novel has several themes that are revealed as the story unfolds. I think its better to not know too much about the story at the beginning, so that you will be surprised and intrigued as events occur. And this is a surprising narrative.

While an alien civilisation will ultimately be revealed as a key protagonist, most of the novel deals with events and characters in China over several decades. Strange behaviour, unexplained events and human motivation drive the narrative forward and the reader feels compelled to continue reading to discover the truth.

An overriding theme is the significance of scientific thought and the threat from anti-scientific influences. Another, related theme is the threat to the environment posed by human behaviour. both of these themes have particular resonance in the contemporary political context. This illustrates that the differences between western democratic societies and Communist Chinese society are not as great as you might have anticipated.

No novel is perfect, and novels translated into English from other languages are particularly problematic. There will always be sentences that seem to jar, phrases that do not seem quite right, and here and there clumsy use of words. Having made that precautionary statement, I nonetheless feel that this translation compares well to other translated novels I have read in recent years. There were very few points at which the language distracted me from the narrative. However, if you are not from a North American background you may find some of the phrasing suffers from seeming too noticeably American in tone and grammar. But this is a minor quibble. This is a novel of ideas and plot, linguistic aesthetics is not the raison d'être.

At the heart of the Three Body Problem is hard science. For those of readers who are less geeky, the three body problem is not about inhabiting three different human corpses. The three body problem is a real mathematical problem which concerns the difficulty of predicting where in space a body (such as a star or planet) will be at any point in time. There are many such scientific motifs which arise in the course of the narrative, and references to real people, such as Peter Singer. You may find yourself consulting Wikipedia.

The only point of the novel where I really reacted skeptically was the point at which it was revealed to a number of characters that aliens truly did exist. Not one character expressed any doubt about this revelation. I think most people would at least say "What! You're kidding?". I think the next edition should at least include a sentence or two demonstrating that the audience had some response apart from just accepting the news without at least raising an eyebrow.

Overall, this is a great book in the tradition of speculative fiction written by a scientifically astute author for a scientifically literate audience.


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