The Three-Body Problem Review

This week's novel is The Three-Body Problem, sci-fi and the Chinese Cultural Revolution by Liu Cixin.

In order to investigate a series of odd suicides in the scientific community, a mysterious government group convinces Wang Mia, a nanotech engineer, to join the Frontiers of Science, an elite group who philosophize about the nature of the universe.  His investigation leads him into an apparently supernatural countdown, into a virtual reality game set on a world with three suns, and through the history of the Red Coast project (the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence).  It all leads back to Ye Wenjie, an astrophysicist, who witnessed her father's public torture and murder during the Cultural Revolution, an event that leads to the end of mankind. 

This is some hard-core science fiction.  It goes deep into the science, to the point where I started to worry that it would say something incorrect about the cosmic microwave background radiation and I would have to get irrationally upset and this post would be all about how angry I am about inaccuracies in the portrayal of black body radiation.  Thankfully that didn't happen.  In the book, the cosmic microwave background radiation does behave differently than it does in real life, but the line between the real science and the fictional stretch of that science is clear, and I appreciate that. 

It tickles me that the book talks smack about COBE the way scientists talk smack about COBE.  In fact, the portrayal of the culture around scientific research as a whole fits with my experiences, even given the difference in culture between China and the US.

Though the big thing that I like in this book is a point when Lui describes the radio telescope in Puerto Rico, and I got this chill of possibility.  Yes.  I could work at a radio telescope.  That.  I want to work for SETI.  That's what I want to do with my life.
...
Oh wait.
Because, you see, first of all I'm an adult and second of all I tried doing that with my life and disliked it.  But that feeling of opportunity, the excitement of exploration was familiar.  It was the feeling I got looking at images from the Hubble or watching Contact for the first time.  I haven't felt that feeling in a decade and that feeling alone would make me recommend this book.

There's an abundance of neat ideas here.  Maybe too many, but they're all fun.  Lui talks about science in the Cultural Revolution and what kind of political grammatical gymnastics they had to do to keep research alive.  Lui talks about a system with three suns and all the different ways the suns can align themselves to destroy an orbiting planet.  Lui talks about collapsing a proton into two dimensions and how a sentient proton could wreak havoc.  Then there are the parables of the shooter and the farmer:

In the shooter hypothesis, a good marksman shoots at a target, creating a hole every ten centimeters.  Now suppose the surface of the target is inhabited by intelligent, two-dimensional creatures.  Their scientists, after observing the universe, discover a great law: "There exists a hole in the universe every ten centimeters." They have mistaken the result of the marksman's momentary whim for an unalterable law of the universe.

The farmer hypothesis, on the other hand, has the flavor of a horror story: Every morning on a turkey farm, the farmer comes to feed the turkeys.  A scientist turkey, having observed this pattern to hold without change for almost over a year, makes the following discovery: "Every morning at eleven, food arrives." On the morning of Thanksgiving, the scientist announces this law to the other turkeys.  But that morning at eleven, food doesn't arrive; instead, the farmer comes and kills the entire flock.

I don't have much to add to these ideas, nothing to wax poetic about or relate in any meaningful way to other aspects of my life, but they're fun to chew on.

My skepticism comes, strangely, not from the misappropriation of science, but from the reactions of the characters.  I'm skeptical of how many people would turn on the whole human race.  Even though the book is set up that I completely believe that Ye would do it, I don't get the same level of background to explain the motivations of the background characters, so any understanding I have for her disappears for anyone else.  I just can't buy it.  I'm also skeptical that an alien society repeatedly destroyed--to the point where intelligent species have to evolve--would retain any history from previous cultures.

As a warning, this is translated from Chinese and you can tell.  It's kind of like reading subtitles, complete with a bunch of "Do not misunderstand me"s.  I found it amusing.  The writing is definitely more focused on the science than on the prose.

***

Next week: Bone Gap, small town Illinois corn fantasy by Laura Ruby.