The Three body Problem by Cixin Liu

Transcript

G’day. I’m Adam David Collings and today I’m doing a mini review of The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated into English by Ken Liu

The Three Body problem won the Hugo award for best novel in 2015. It explores the idea of a planet in a trinary system, and the erratic orbit the planet has around its three suns. The planet is populated by an intelligent species who constantly have to deal with the unique difficulties of living on a world like this.

The story is seen through the eyes of Wang Miao, a present-day engineer. He experiences the history of the alien world through a virtual reality game. Famous humans from history stand in for the aliens to make their problems relatable. As Wang infiltrates the secret cabal of scientists behind the game, it becomes clear there is a dangerous conspiracy at play which involves the aliens.

The science in this book is really interesting, yet it never overwhelms the story. The planet itself kind of bounces between the various stars. As the stars get closer to each other, they’ll snag the planet. This leads to very unpredictable weather patterns. An intense heat, strong enough to wipe out civilisation, can come upon them with no more than a moment’s notice.

The three-body problem is a real-life mathematical quandary. Throughout the story, the aliens are trying to find a way to predict the orbit of their world, so they can avoid disasters before it’s too late.

One of my favourite parts was when they developed a human-form computer. They got a couple of people together holding flags and made an and gate, and then an or gate. Putting these together they created a CPU, memory, they even wrote software to run on it. As a computer programmer myself, I understood what they were trying to do here, and I thought it was really cool. But I know what you’re thinking. The clock speed of a human-form computer would be so slow that it wouldn’t be worthwhile. Well, they address that in the story as well.

I expected a lot of science in this book, but what I didn’t expect, was that I’d learn so much about Chinese history, in particular, the Chinese cultural revolution. I knew very little about this and found it very informative and fascinating.

If you’re looking for a book that combines human drama, modern-day thriller, and some really interesting science fiction concepts, then you’ll want to check out The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu. It’s quite deserving of its Hugo.

There are two more books in the series, which I haven’t read yet.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it, and what’s one of the coolest science fiction concepts you’ve come across in a book? Let me know in the comments.

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