#AmReading – The Three-Body Problem

 The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (2006) – Set in China during the Cultural Revolution, a military project sends messages into space in an attempt to contact alien life. The race that hears the message desperately needs a new planet, and Earth looks like an inviting target.

George R.R. Martin calls this a “…blend of scientific and philosophical speculation, politics and history, conspiracy theory and cosmology.” That’s a perfect description. The story is complex, nuanced and challenging on many levels. There’s some hard science here, which I struggled with, but I appreciated the footnotes that filled in some gaps along the way.

I struggled with the story through the first half. There were a lot of things that caused that. They ranged from simple things like names to the complex, like trying to understand the three-body problem itself. At the center of the story is a hard science problem involving predicting the motion of three bodies in a planetary system. That kind of science is way above my intellectual pay grade and interest.

Here’s the key point, Liu does a wonderful job of not losing the story in the science. While there were places where I needed to skim through technical discussions, he maintains a steady involvement with characters that kept me reading. It is important that you understand the basic issues of the problem to establish the forces that put the rest of the story in motion. Both cultures, Chinese and Trisolaran, are essential to understand the fate of both planets.

There are lots of questions through the first two-thirds of the book, questions that the reader needs to hold on to, anticipating that the answers are coming.

And they are.

The tempo in the final third of the book is brisk. Now the threads of personal stories, the game of “Three Body”, and the aliens weave together in a fascinating finish. The translator, Ken Liu, talks about the challenges of translating a novel. Trying to balance accessibility to western readers and the author’s voice in more eastern storytelling styles. The result is a wonderful novel. A best-seller and Hugo Award winner.

It is a story that I will turn over in my mind for a while.

Rating **** Recommended