The 3 Body Problem

The 3 Body Problem

By Cixin Liu

Translated by Ken Liu

Published 2008 (Chinese)

Published 2014 (English Translation)

Read Feb 2024

Netflix series season one launched and viewed March 2024

This reader’s son recommended this book.  He had completed Liu’s trilogy, Remembrance of Earth’s Past, and thought this reader would find this book interesting.  He was right.  As a trip to see our son was imminent, this reader and her husband viewed the very recently released Netflix series based on Liu’s trilogy.  This essay will discuss both the book and the first season of the Netflix series. 

The setting of the book and series moves between the present and the era of the Cultural Revolution in China.  

The book’s first chapter and the opening scene of the Netflix series introduces us to a primary character, Ye Wenjie, as she watches her father, Ye Zhetai, a professor of physics, beaten to death by high school girls as part of a public demonstration as the Cultural Revolution worked to wipe out “Monsters and Demons”.  Ye Wenjie’s mother, Shao Lin, another physicist, publicly denounces her husband as counterrevolutionary at that demonstration because he is teaching about the theory of relativity in his classes.  This reader was surprised this scene would be at the beginning of a book originally published in China and it turns out that it wasn’t.  The translator, Ken Liu, suggested to the author that this chapter be moved from the middle of the novel to the beginning.  The author readily agreed as he originally intended this chapter to be at the beginning of the novel, but the chapter was moved to the interior of the novel to avoid issues with the government.

The reader or viewer next encounters Ye Wenjie as a member of a work crew that is clear cutting a forest near a government facility with an unusual antenna.  After she is discovered with the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson in her possession, she is arrested and given the opportunity to go to work at that government station with the likelihood of never leaving it, or to suffer other unnamed consequences.  She goes to work at the facility, known as Red Coast Base.  She eventually learns that the base is seeking to interact with other worlds through its sophisticated antenna.   Ye Wenjie’s contributions as an astrophysicist aid the work and take it in a direction that is not fully known by her superiors.

In present times, a police detective is engaged to discover what is leading famous scientists around the world to commit suicide.  The book’s setting is present day China, and a nanomaterials scientist is the main character involved with the detective to understand the situation.  The Netflix series sets the modern-day story in and around London and uses five friends who were students together in physics at Oxford to drive the story.  At first this reader was somewhat dismayed by this but later decided it was a good move—this approach will engage a broader audience than the much more “hard-core science fiction” novel. 

In both the novel and the series, an ultra-realistic “videogame” is “played” by various scientists.  In the novel, the author spends much time on the details of what the nanomaterials scientist encounters in the story each time he plays the videogame and what he is learning.  In the Netflix series, there is less time spent on the content of the game aside from comments on the vividness of the setting and adds a young girl to the videogame story that again is designed to engage a broad audience. 

This reader greatly enjoyed the “hard core science fiction” aspect of the novel.  Details of the technologies being described and the math behind the 3-body problem were quite engaging.  The details of the forty million strong human “computer” were especially fascinating.  The Netflix series adaptation touches on some of these interesting technologies but not deeply and focuses more on the human relationships very appropriate for engaging an audience well outside of, but including, the “hard core science fiction” audience. 

Both the novel and the series force us to question a prevailing attitude — that if there is life out there somewhere beyond Earth, we should engage with them because we will learn from them and be better for it.  We’ve certainly been shaped to believe this by the frankly short Star Trek series of the sixties and the various series it spawned as well as by some science fiction.  This novel blatantly challenges us to consider the opposite. 

This first book of a trilogy ends on a somber note.  The Netflix series extends beyond the first book into later parts of the series which again will engage the audience to watch to the end of the first season and look forward to more of it.  This reader applauds this approach as the questions posed are important ones. 

A bit on the history of the novel: 

The author was born in Beijing, China in 1963.  He is described as a computer scientist and author.  This book is the first part of a trilogy, Remembrance of Earth’s Past.   This novel is the recipient of the Hugo Award for best novel (2015), the first time a Chinese author has won this award and the first time a translation has won the award. A China based publishing company approached Ken Lui and Joel Martinsen to translate the three books in the series.  Ken Lui translated books 1 and 3 while Martinsen translated book 2.  Ken Lui was born in China but came to the US with his parents in 1987 at age 11.  He received a BA in English Literature and Computer Science from Harvard, worked as a computer scientist for Microsoft, obtained a JD from Harvard Law School (2004) and worked as a high-tech litigation consultant.  He began publishing science fiction in 2002.  His work has been highly decorated with various awards and has been translated into Chinese.  He has translated the work of several Chinese science fiction writers from Chinese into English which has enabled a broader audience of Chinese science fiction.  Joel Martinsen is a free-lance translator who has much experience translating Chinese works into English.