The Three-Body Problem

Enduring sci-fi reads usually contain insightful commentary on the human condition, and this book delivered that in an unexpected way with devastating effect.

I was fascinated by how the Chinese Cultural Revolution changed the novel’s characters. This period of history shaped their perspectives on mankind’s nature, which leads them to take rather intriguing actions against it. The three-body problem, which is a physics problem, was also explained in an accessible way that makes you feel smarter.

This Hugo Award winning story is one of the most unique that I’ve read.

This book is set in motion in the cultural revolution in China—a background that profoundly shapes the main characters’ choices and destinies.

A young scientist who has witnessed her father’s persecution ends up at a science center looking for radio-wave evidence of extra-terrestrial life. Not only does she find it, but she figures out how to communicate with it.

Couple the scientist’s views of humanity with those of a disillusioned heir to an oil fortune, and the stage is set for an epic novel with a unique take on first contact. This book—the first of a trilogy—… show more.

Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem is an imaginative and engaging sci-fi novel that seamlessly blends real science and history with a riveting story.

The novel is densely packed with details of China’s Cultural Revolution and its aftereffects and plenty of hard science from physics, astronomy, and computer science. Yet it’s also compulsively readable. I’m currently reading the second book in the series (The Dark Forest) and loving it just as much, if not more.

I'm cheating, in that there are three volumes in Cixin Liu's Remembrance of Things Past, but it's in a good cause, because the first title, The Three Body Problem, turns out to be the opener to a mighty saga, and if you find The Three Body Problem grimly gripping, as I did, I assure you you're going to be fascinated by the whole epic, from the weird struggle to identify the first ever aliens to make contact with humanity, in The Three Body Problem, set not long after China's devastating “Cultural Revolution”, to the bizarre worlds of the far, far… show more.

I’m awed by Chinese sci-fi author Liu Cixin’s imaginative daring in depicting barely conceivable challenges to humanity. Cixin takes us from a China making first contact with an alien civilization through an increasingly bewildering series challengings into a barely comprehensible future.

Humanity has faced some nasty surprises of late. Cixin’s series is a breathtakingly imagined depiction of futures in which the real challenges are not those we’ve been expecting and preparing for, but barely imagined ones. One of the themes of my book is that we must make the most of our species’ imaginative resources if we are to cope… show more.

This book is an imaginative, complex, and engaging sci-fi novel that blends real science and history into a riveting story.

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 receives the signal and plans to invade Earth. Their strategy to engage Earth is incredible.

Moral dilemmas arise that resonate beyond nationality and cerebral physics. What would it mean for the human race to come in contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence? What is the worth of humanity? Do we have a… show more.

This book is so good it is insane. That being said, it will definitely mess with your head. Picture it, you’re a political prisoner doing forced labor and stumble on secret communications with aliens. Your planet is Earth. Present-day Earth. Your government is regressive and your family is all but gone because of them. The aliens only need an invitation to come. Except, there’s a possibility they might not come in peace. What would you do? I know what I would do. Not what the main character of this book did. I won’t spoil it for you as it is… show more.

I admire how this trilogy, which is wide-ranging and complex, remains accessible while posing original problems and quests for solutions.

Ye Wenjie, an astrophysicist, is recruited into a covert military group searching for extraterrestrial life. Independently, she discovers a new method of sending interstellar messages. One of her messages is responded to by an inhabitant of a dying planet. She ignores the warning not to respond, prompting the aliens to locate Earth and launch an invasion. 

The invasion divides humanity into three factions. One group welcomes the threat of the annihilation of the world’s population. A second proposes assisting the… show more.

This book surprised me in many ways. The female point of view is compellingly written, and Liu does a great job of not villainizing her even when she makes morally questionable decisions. This is a character whose qualities, both positive and negative, are a direct result of her environment: China during the Cultural Revolution. As an immigrant myself, I loved reading a non-American-centered tale that not only uses a different setting, but integrates it into the heart of the story to explain how cultural trauma shapes character.

The Three-Body Problem is on the one hand a science fiction novel, one that imagines a distant race that would (literally) kill to have a home world as stable as our little earth. But it's also a historical novel (it begins during China's Cultural Revolution), and an anthropological exploration. It seems to study the human race from a vast distance, and to severely judge our myopia and hubris. This is something I’ve always been interested in as a writer… getting above it all and trying to recontextualize our species within the vastness of the cosmos.