The Three-Body Problem

## Publication Chronology

**The Three-Body Problem** (三体 *Santi*) is the first novel in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy written by Liu Cixin. The story was originally serialized in the Chinese sci-fi magazine *Science Fiction World* between May and December of 2006, and received the prestigious Galaxy Award in the same year. It was then published as a novel in January 2008 by Chongqing Press and quickly became one of the best-selling science fiction works in mainland China. The English translation by Ken Liu was published by Tor Books in November 2014. Thereafter, it became the first Asian novel ever to win a Hugo Award for Best Novel, and was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel.

## Translation

In the fall of 2012, Ken Liu received a commission from China Educational Publications Import and Export Corporation, Ltd. It was seeking an English-language translator for The Three-Body Problem. As he began translating, Liu was confronted by what seemed like a more fundamental problem: The narrative structure didn’t make sense. The story careered around in time, bouncing between present-day China and Beijing in 1967, near the start of the Cultural Revolution. Studying the novel’s chaotic timeline, Liu pinpointed what he felt was the story’s natural beginning: the scenes of political violence and oppression during the Cultural Revolution, a traumatic moment that triggers the interstellar clash that follows. In a move that was unusually invasive for a translator, he suggested pulling up the historical flashback, which was buried in the middle of the narrative, and turning it into the novel’s beginning.

When Liu proposed this radical change to the author he was prepared to be overruled. Instead, the author instantly agreed. The author confessed, the brutality of Mao Zedong’s revolution was also central to the story he wanted to tell, but his Chinese publisher worried that the opening scenes were too politically charged and would never make it past government censors, so they were placed later in the narrative to make them less conspicuous. Liu reluctantly agreed to the change, but felt the novel was diminished. Now, Liu Cixin says, he recommends that Chinese sci-fi fans who speak English read Ken Liu’s translation of The Three-Body Problem rather than the Chinese version because Ken Liu brought his original vision to life.

## Synopsis

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 captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.

## Plot

During the Cultural Revolution, Ye Wenjie, an astrophysics graduate from Tsinghua University, witnesses her father get beaten to death during a struggle session by Red Guards from Tsinghua High School, who were supported by Ye's mother and younger sister. Ye is officially branded a traitor and is forced to join a labor brigade in Inner Mongolia, where she befriends a government journalist who enlists Ye's help in transcribing a letter to the government. The letter details policy suggestions based on the book Silent Spring, which Ye read. However, the journalist betrays Ye, who is sentenced to prison after the letter is viewed as seditious by the government. In prison, Ye is recruited by Yang Weining and Lei Zhicheng, two military physicists working under Red Coast, a secret Chinese initiative to use high-powered radio waves to damage spy satellites.

After working with them for some time, she learns that the stated purpose is a front for Red Coast's true intention: the search for extraterrestrial life. Ye discovers the possibility of amplifying outgoing radio waves by using microwave cavities within the sun and sends an interstellar message. Eight years later, now in a loveless marriage with Yang, Ye receives a message from a concerned alien pacifist from the planet Trisolaris, warning her not to respond or else the inhabitants of Trisolaris will find and invade Earth. The alien describes Trisolaris's environmental conditions and societal history. Disillusioned by the political chaos and having come to despise humankind, Ye responds anyway, inviting them to come to Earth to settle its problems. She murders Yang and Lei to keep the alien message secret.

Some time later, with the end of the Cultural Revolution and Ye's return to Tsinghua as a professor, Ye encounters Mike Evans, a hermit and the son of the CEO of the world's largest oil company. Evans is also a radical environmentalist and antispeciesist. Seeing that Evans is direly angry at humanity as well, Ye confides in him and tells him about the events at Red Coast. Evans uses his inherited financial power to hire men and purchases a giant ship – Judgement Day – which he converts into a mobile colony and listening post. Upon receiving messages from Trisolaris, validating Ye's story, Evans announces the creation of the militant and semi-secret Earth-Trisolaris Organization (ETO) as a fifth column for Trisolaris and appoints Ye its leader. According to the messages, the Trisolaran invasion force has departed, but will not reach Earth for 450 years.

The society attracts numerous scientists, minor government officials, and other educated people who are disappointed with world affairs. They assemble a private army and build small nuclear weapons. However, Evans retains control of most resources and starts to alter and withhold alien messages from Ye and others. Furthermore, the society splits into factions, with the Adventists (led by Evans) seeking complete destruction of humanity by the Trisolarans, and the Redemptionists (led by Shen Yufei) seeking to help the Trisolarans to find a computational solution to the three-body problem, which plagues their planet. A third, smaller faction, the Survivors, intend to help the Trisolarans in exchange for their own descendants' lives while the rest of humanity dies.

In the present day, Wang Miao, a nanotechnology professor, is asked to work with Shi Qiang, a cunning detective, to investigate the mysterious deaths of several scientists, including Ye Wenjie's daughter Yang Dong. The two of them notice that the world's governments are communicating closely with each other and have put aside their traditional rivalries to prepare for war. Over the next few days, Wang experiences strange hallucinations and meets with Ye. Wang sees people playing a sophisticated virtual-reality video game called Three Body (which was created by the ETO as a recruitment tool) and begins to play himself. The game portrays a planet whose climate randomly flips between Stable and Chaotic Eras. During Chaotic Eras, the weather oscillates unpredictably between extreme cold and extreme heat, sometimes within minutes.

The inhabitants (who are represented as having human bodies) seek ways to predict Chaotic Eras so they can better survive. Unlike humans, they have evolved the special ability to 'dehydrate', turning themselves into a roll of canvas. They do this in order to lie dormant when the Chaotic Eras occur, requiring another person to rehydrate them. Characters resembling Aristotle, Mozi, Newton, and others try and fail to model the climate as multiple civilizations grow and are wiped out by large-scale disasters. Wang wins acclaim by figuring out how the climate works: (1) the planet Trisolaris has three suns; (2) the suns have different kinds of compositions, and when they are far away from the planet's surface only the core of the sun can penetrate to the surface, appearing in the sky as a flying star; (3) Stable Eras occur when two suns are far away and Trisolaris orbits the third; (4) Chaotic Eras occur when Trisolaris is pulled by more than one sun; (5) firestorms happen when two or three suns are close to the planet's surface; (6) three flying stars causes intense cold because it means all three suns are far away; and (7) eventually the three suns will align and Trisolaris will plunge into the nearest one and be consumed. The game shows the Trisolarans building and launching colony ships to invade Earth, believing that the stable orbit will allow unprecedented prosperity and let them escape the destruction of their planet.

Wang is inducted into the ETO, and informs Shi of one of their meetings. This leads to a battle between the PLA and the society's soldiers, as well as Ye's arrest. The PLA works with the Americans, led by Colonel Stanton, to ambush Judgement Day as it passes through the Panama Canal. To prevent the crew from destroying their communications with the Trisolarans, the team follows Shi's suggestion to use Wang's nano-material filament in a fence to quickly cut the ship apart and kill everyone aboard. However, documents and computers cut by the filament could be reassembled after. Some revelations emerge from the Trisolaran communications: (1) The aliens have extremely advanced picotechnology that allows them to create 11-dimensional supercomputers called sophons which, when viewed in three dimensions, occupy the volume of a proton. (2) Two of these sophons have been laboriously manufactured and sent to Earth, having the power to cause hallucinations, spy on any corner of the Earth, transmit the information gathered to Trisolaris using quantum entanglement, and disrupt all of Earth's particle accelerators. The Trisolarans fear humanity will develop technology advanced enough to fight off the invasion, and decide that disrupting the accelerators to give random results will paralyze Earth's technological advancement until the Trisolarans arrive.

Once several sophons have arrived, they plan to fabricate visual miracles and other hallucinations on a massive scale to make humanity distrust its own scientists. The Trisolarans detect humanity's revelation via sophons and beam to the eyes of the PLA one final message, "You're bugs!", then cease all communications. Now in custody, Ye is allowed to visit the old Red Coast base, and reflects upon her past choices, noting that humanity from now on will never be the same. Shi Qiang finds Wang Miao and his colleagues in a depressed drinking binge, and sobers them up by driving them to his hometown village in Northeastern China. Shi reflects on how despite all the advances humanity has made with pesticides, the simple-minded locust still manages to survive and thrive. With renewed hope, Wang and Shi return to Beijing to help plan the war against the Trisolarans.

## Characters

* Ye family
	+ **Ye Zhetai** (叶哲泰) – physicist, professor at Tsinghua University, killed during a struggle session in the Cultural Revolution
	+ **Shao Lin** (绍琳) – physicist, Ye Zhetai's wife
	+ **Ye Wenjie** (叶文洁) – astrophysicist, daughter of Ye Zhetai, first person to establish contact with the Trisolarans, later spiritual leader of ETO
	+ **Ye Wenxue** (叶文雪) – Ye Wenjie's younger sister, a Tsinghua High School student and a zealous Red Guard, killed during factional violence
* Red Coast Base
	+ **Lei Zhicheng** (雷志成) – political commissar at Red Coast Base, who recruited Wenjie, later murdered by Ye
	+ **Yang Weining** (杨卫宁) – chief engineer at Red Coast Base, once a student of Ye Zhetai, later Ye Wenjie's husband, murdered by Ye
* The present
	+ **Wang Miao** (汪淼) – nanomaterials researcher, academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences
	+ **Yang Dong** (杨冬) – string theorist and daughter of Ye Wenjie and Yang Weining, later committed suicide
	+ **Ding Yi** (丁仪) – theoretical physicist, Yang Dong's boyfriend
	+ **Shi Qiang** (史强) – police detective and counter-terrorism specialist, nicknamed "Da Shi" (大史), ("Big Shi")
	+ **Chang Weisi** (常伟思) – major-general of the People’s Liberation Army
	+ **Shen Yufei** (申玉菲) – Chinese-Japanese physicist and member of the Frontiers of Science
	+ **Wei Cheng** (魏成) – math prodigy and recluse, Shen Yufei's husband
	+ **Pan Han** (潘寒) – biologist, friend/acquaintance of Shen Yufei and Wei Cheng, and member of the Frontiers of Science
	+ **Sha Ruishan** (沙瑞山) – astronomer, one of Ye Wenjie's students
	+ **Mike Evans** (麦克·伊文斯) – son of an oil magnate, main source of funding of the ETO
	+ **Colonel Stanton** (斯坦顿) – officer of U.S. Marine Corps, commander of Operation Guzheng

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## Trivia

* The "three-body problem" refers to a special case of the n-body problem in classical mechanics, where the goal is to calculate the motion of three celestial bodies moving under no influence other than that of their mutual gravitation. No general solution of this problem is possible, as the motion of the bodies quickly becomes chaotic. Also see Three Body Problem (celestial mechanics).

## References

1. ↑ How Chinese Sci-Fi Conquered America. The New York Times Magazine.