The Three-Body Problem

The Three-Body Problem (The Three-Body Problem Book 1) by Cixin Liu

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The problem with cold-calling aliens is that you don't know what you will call up. There are various kinds of first contact fiction scenarios. The most popular kind since the early 1970s is the least plausible. In that version, aliens are a God substitute. They are wiser and more powerful than we are and more than willing to solve our problems if we don't screw things up with our fallen natures. The far more likely scenario is that aliens are more like us and would treat us the same way we treated the natives of North America.

This book is fascinating in that it is by a Chinese author who places his story in mainland China. The epoch of the Red Terror plays a defining role in shaping his characters. I found that aspect of the story historically fascinating. Liu pulls no punches in describing that awful period with its waste of talent, torture, fanaticism, and stagnation. I was a little surprised to find a mainland Chinese author so openly critical of Chinese history. As a reader, it was a different setting from that which I was familiar with so it offered an engaging dimension to the story.

Ye Wenjie watches the Red Guard kill her astrophysicist father. She is exiled to a work brigade and then makes her way to Red Coast Base, which is a super-secret Chinese SETI facility. When she makes a revolutionary discovery and makes contact with an alien civilization, she ignores a warning from a rebellious alien and betrays the human race.

Despite this fact, Wenjie is a sympathetic character. We wonder how she could do such a thing, but it seems to me that she has been brutalized by history. Her answer does not seem irrational in light of that history, particularly since she assumes that the aliens must be wiser than the humans she knows.

The story is in fact presented as a mystery with historical flashbacks. The mystery is that leading scientists are killing themselves. The further mystery is that someone seems to be in control of the fundamental forces of the universe. The mystery aspect brings in two characters - Wang Miao, a nanoparticle researcher, and Shi Quiang, a police detective. Some reviewers found the character to be two-dimensional, but I thought Quiang was delightful as a profane, down-to-earth, but surprisingly insightful detective. Miao was also well-developed as an academic nerd who finds his world coming apart.

SPOILER. The McGuffin is, of course, that the first contact is with an alien civilization that must leave its solar system (the Trisolarian system) or face extinction. The Trisolarians are on their way. When they arrive in 400 years, they threaten to eradicate human beings like bugs, particularly since they have injected a “bug” into human reality that can defeat human scientific progress.

At least, humanity knows what is coming, having uncovered the network of traitors, some of whom think that the aliens are saviors, while others think that the alien plan to exterminate humanity is good. While that seems like an unlikely motivation, there are certainly human extinction movements and it may reflect Liu's view of Western decadence.

Liu has created a story filled with Lovecraftian existential terror. The universe is filled with malevolent powers whose attention humanity must not attract. We know about the Trisolarians, but what else is out there. Thus, Liu offers an answer to the Great Silence that has defeated the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The Great Silence exists because wise alien races know better than to send out an invitation to feast on them.

The book ends at that point. I am sufficiently intrigued to follow up on the next book.