The Three-Body Problem (novel)

The Three-Body Problem (Chinese: 三体; lit. 'three body') is a 2008 novel by the Chinese hard science fiction author Liu Cixin. It is the first novel in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. The series portrays a fictional past, present, and future wherein Earth encounters an alien civilization from a nearby system of three Sun-like stars orbiting one another, a representative example of the three-body problem in orbital mechanics.
The story was originally serialized in Science Fiction World in 2006 before it was published as a standalone book in 2008. In 2006, it received the Galaxy Award for Chinese science fiction. In 2012, it was described as one of China's most successful full-length novels of the past two decades. The English translation by Ken Liu was published by Tor Books in 2014. That translation was the first novel by an Asian writer to win a Hugo Award for Best Novel; it was also nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel.
The book has been adapted into other media. In 2015, a Chinese film adaptation of the same name was in production, but it was never released. A Chinese TV series, Three-Body, released in early 2023 to critical success locally. An English-language Netflix series adaptation, 3 Body Problem, was released in March 2024.
Liu Cixin was born in Beijing in June 1963. Before beginning his career as an author, he was a senior engineer working at a power plant in Shanxi province. In 1989, he wrote Supernova Era and China 2185, but neither book was published at that time. His first published short story, Whale Song, was published in Science Fiction World in June 1999. The same year, his novel With Her Eyes won the Galaxy Award. In 2000, he wrote The Wandering Earth, which also received the Galaxy Award and was adapted into a film in 2019. When the short story Mountain appeared in January 2006, many readers wrote that they hoped Liu would write a novel. He decided to concentrate on novel-length texts rather than short stories. Outside of Remembrance of Earth's Past, Liu's novels include Supernova Era and Ball Lightning. When not otherwise busy, Liu wrote 3,000–5,000 words a day; each of his books reportedly took about one year to complete.
During China's Cultural Revolution, astrophysicist Ye Wenjie witnesses her father be beaten to death during a struggle session. A political outcast, Ye is initially sentenced to a labor camp but is then recruited to "Red Coast", a secret military initiative attempting to search for and communicate with extraterrestrial life.
At Red Coast, Ye discovers a method to amplify radio frequency transmissions using the Sun, with which she secretly broadcasts a message. Eight years later, she receives a reply from the alien planet Trisolaris. Disillusioned by humanity's inability to live harmoniously with itself and nature, Ye invites the Trisolarans to Earth to settle its problems.
After China's reforms, Ye encounters Mike Evans, heir to the world's largest oil company but also a radical environmentalist who shares Ye's hatred of humanity. Ye discloses Trisolaris' existence to Evans, who founds and finances the secret Earth-Trisolaris Organization (ETO) as a militant fifth column for Trisolaris, with Ye as the ETO's leader.
Through Trisolaris-ETO communications, Trisolaris is revealed to be a planet orbiting the ternary star system of Alpha Centauri. Because of the three-body problem, the three stars' movements (and Trisolaris' position relative to them) are chaotic and unpredictable. As a result, Trisolaris experiences great climate extremes, alternating between temperate "Stable Eras" during which civilization thrives, and "Chaotic Eras" of climate catastrophes. The worst such catastrophes are civilization-ending. Hundreds of Trisolaran civilizations have risen and fallen, each attempting but failing to develop an accurate calendar that can predict and help prepare for Chaotic Eras.
Upon reception of Ye's broadcasts, the current and technologically advanced Trisolaran civilization identifies Earth as a colonization target, which will permit the Trisolaran civilization to escape their inhospitable and ultimately-doomed home planet. It dispatches an invasion force on a 450-year journey to Earth.
However, the Trisolaran leadership is concerned that Earth's accelerating technological developments will outmatch the invasion force by the time of its arrival. Therefore, Trisolaris develops "sophons" (minuscule supercomputers embedded in single protons) in order to arrest Earth's technological development by interfering with its scientific experiments.
By the late-2000s/early-2010s, the sophon-induced apparent breakdown of science on Earth has prompted the suicides of prominent scientists. This alarms Earth's governments, who form an international task force to investigate, recruiting nanotechnologist Wang Miao and detective Shi Qiang. As part of his investigation, Wang plays the virtual reality video game Three Body, which is a simulation of Trisolaris created by the ETO to identify potential recruits and to garner sympathy for the Trisolaran plight.
Wang's successes in Three Body result in his induction into the ETO, where Ye reveals to Wang the full extent of the conspiracy. Wang also witnesses the schism between the "Adventist" faction of the ETO, which views humanity as irredeemable and promotes its complete destruction by Trisolaris, and the "Redemptionist" faction, which aims to save the Trisolaran civilization by developing a solution to the three-body problem and producing an accurate calendar.
Tipped-off by Wang, Shi and the People's Liberation Army raid the meeting, arresting Ye. An international military force then seizes the converted oil tanker housing ETO's communications with Trisolaris. From these actions, Earth's governments directly learn of Trisolaris' existence and the approaching invasion force. Wang and his colleagues resolve to fight in Humanity's defense.
In 2012, Chinese-American science-fiction author Ken Liu and translator Joel Martinsen were commissioned by the China Educational Publications Import and Export Corporation (CEPIEC) to produce an English translation of The Three-Body Problem, with Liu translating the first and last volumes, and Martinsen translating the second. In 2013, it was announced that the series would be published by Tor in the United States and by Head of Zeus in the United Kingdom.
Liu and Martinsen's translations contain footnotes explaining references to Chinese history that may be unfamiliar to international audiences. There are also some changes in the order of the chapters for the first volume. In the translated version, chapters which take place during the Cultural Revolution appear at the beginning of the novel rather than in the middle, as they were serialized in 2006 and appeared in the 2008 novel. According to the author, these chapters were originally intended as the opening, but were moved by his publishers to avoid attracting the attention of government censors.
In Liu's early childhood, when he was three years old his family moved from the Beijing Coal Design Institute to Yangquan in Shanxi, due to his father changing jobs. He also spent a part of his childhood in the countryside around ancestral hometown of Luoshan, Henan. On 25 April 1970, Dong Fang Hong 1—China's first satellite—was launched. Liu remembered the launch as a pivotal event in his life, recalling a deep sense of longing on witnessing it.
Several years later, Liu found a box of books under his bed in Yangquan, which included an anthology of Tolstoy, Moby-Dick, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Silent Spring. Upon beginning to read Journey to the Center of the Earth, his father told him: "It's called science fiction, it's a creative writing based on science". This was his first encounter with the genre, and he later remarked: "My persistence stems from the words of my father." At that time, such books could only be safely read privately by individuals: "I felt like being alone on an island, it is a very lonely state".
Reverence and fear of the universe is one of the main themes of Liu's writing. According to him, as humans we will stand in awe of the scale and depth of the universe. His novels also focus on curiosity about the unknown. Liu says he cannot help thinking about the future world and lifestyle of human beings, and he tries to invoke readers' curiosity with his books. He also believes that humans should be treated as an entirety. Liu tried to answer the existential dilemma of "where should mankind go from here" through various efforts.
The book structure was originally influenced by concerns of Liu Cixin's Chinese publisher; the initial draft's opening scenes were seen as "too politically charged" by the publisher, and moved deeper into the book, to avoid attracting criticism by Chinese government censors. Several interpretations of the novels and related film adaptations were presented by Ross Douthat of The New York Times in April 2024.
In December 2019, The New York Times cited The Three-Body Problem as having helped to popularize Chinese science fiction internationally, crediting the quality of Ken Liu's English translation, as well as endorsements of the book by George R. R. Martin, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and former U.S. president Barack Obama. George R. R. Martin wrote a blog about the novel, personally expressing its worthiness of the Hugo Award. Obama said the book had "immense" scope, and that it was "fun to read, partly because my day-to-day problems with United States Congress seem fairly petty".
Kirkus Reviews wrote that "in concept and development, it resembles top-notch Arthur C. Clarke or Larry Niven but with a perspective—plots, mysteries, conspiracies, murders, revelations and all—embedded in a culture and politic dramatically unfamiliar to most readers in the West, conveniently illuminated with footnotes courtesy of translator Liu." Joshua Rothman of The New Yorker also called Liu Cixin "China's Arthur C. Clarke", and similarly observed that in "American science fiction ... humanity's imagined future often looks a lot like America's past. For an American reader, one of the pleasures of reading Liu is that his stories draw on entirely different resources", citing his use of themes relating to Chinese history and politics.
Matthew A. Morrison wrote that the novel could "evoke a response all but unique to the genre: an awe at nature and the universe [which] SF readers call a 'sense of wonder'".
American streaming service Netflix announced in 2020 that Game of Thrones writers David Benioff and D. B. Weiss would be adapting the series into a sci-fi TV drama, making it one of the few originally non-English books adapted by Netflix. On the 18 June 2023, Netflix uploaded a teaser for the upcoming release.