Book review: ‘The Three-Body Problem’

When Netflix began advertising its “3 Body Problem” TV series, I became interested and looked into the show. I soon discovered that the series was based on Cixin Liu’s book trilogy “Remembrance of Earth’s Past.” Curious, I fell down the BookTok rabbit hole and knew I had to read the series’ Hugo Award winning first book, “The Three-Body Problem.”

The book is apparently in popular demand and it took over a week to find a copy. According to the BBC, around nine million copies have been sold between the three books in the series. I eventually landed the first book at the Wasilla Public Library. I began reading right away, becoming enthralled page after page. This sci-fi story is both creative and enormously captivating.

It begins in the darkest days of China’s Cultural Revolution — a period of time from 1966 to 1976 that saw brutal conflict in which revolutionaries changed Chinese thought and governance for decades to come. This being a sci-fi novel, the main focus was the effect that the revolution had on academics in China. Liu paints a picture of widespread persecution of scientists and professors who supposedly abandoned Chinese culture and interests in favor of Western science.

Early in the book, one of the main characters, Ye Wenjie, loses her father, who is a professor, to revolutionary fanatics who decry him as a traitor to their cause.

The book then follows Ye through her life as she copes with her father’s death and as she herself becomes a target of revolutionary fervor. She is spared by the revolutionary government due to her training in physics, as her skills are needed at the secretive Red Coast Base.

At Red Coast, Ye learns that humans have attempted contact with extraterrestrials by sending radio waves into space — a fictional portrayal of undertakings by real-world scientists. Ye spends years as little more than a political prisoner at the base, but slowly builds trust with those around her and is eventually allowed to directly help with the project.

What unfolds next is the story of contact with an alien race that is bold and unlike any other that I have watched or read.

While monitoring the base’s receiver, Ye watches as a transmission from beyond Earth comes in: “Do not answer,” it says. 

The transmission is from a member of a highly intelligent alien civilization; a warning in response to a human signal that made its way to that civilization. The transmission explains that the sender is a dissident of a hostile civilization in search of a new home. The message warns that any attempts to communicate would spell doom for the human race.

Having lost faith in humanity, Ye responds to the transmission — putting Earth’s future in the balance.

I will not spoil anymore, but between what follows after Ye’s decision and the details I left out, expect an exciting sci-fi tale.

The book receives a 9/10 from me and I cannot wait to begin reading the next in the series. I found Liu’s story to be intelligently crafted and accessible even at its most technical points. 

This book falls in the category of “hard” sci-fi as it uses true scientific principles to explain certain events within the story. Even the more “out there” aspects of the book are made to feel real — at least for the average reader — with Liu’s seemingly sound knowledge of physics and astrophysics.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys science fiction or is looking for a read that can spark deep contemplation.