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The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
Sep. 27th, 2022 10:49 pmThe Blurb On The Back:
1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China’s Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.
Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang’s investigation will lead him to a mysterious virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns.
This is the Three-body Problem and it is the key to everything: the key to the scientists’ death, the key to a conspiracy that spans light years and the key to the extinction-level threat humanity now faces.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Cixin Liu’s award winning SF novel (the first in a trilogy) rises above dull characterisation and inconsistencies in plotting in part due to excellent translation by Ken Liu (who provides some context via footnotes), but also by the way the story uses both the horrors of the Cultural Revolution and the three-body problem from orbital mechanics to ground the rest of the plot. It held my attention but I don’t know if I would automatically read on.
1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China’s Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.
Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang’s investigation will lead him to a mysterious virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns.
This is the Three-body Problem and it is the key to everything: the key to the scientists’ death, the key to a conspiracy that spans light years and the key to the extinction-level threat humanity now faces.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Cixin Liu’s award winning SF novel (the first in a trilogy) rises above dull characterisation and inconsistencies in plotting in part due to excellent translation by Ken Liu (who provides some context via footnotes), but also by the way the story uses both the horrors of the Cultural Revolution and the three-body problem from orbital mechanics to ground the rest of the plot. It held my attention but I don’t know if I would automatically read on.
