Jojo Hu - Book Talk:

The Three-Body Problem

by Cixin Liu

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/books/liu-cixins-the-three-body-problem-is-published-in-us.html

the author

Cixin Liu

  • Born in June 1963 and raised in Shanxi, China ("Summary Bibilography: Cixin Liu")
  • Worked as a computer engineer at a power plant in Shanxi (Lam; Richardson)
  • Began publishing SF in the 1990s (Lam)

context and influence

  • The Cultural Revolution began when Liu was 3 years old ("The Cultural Revolution, 1966–76")
    • It continued into his teenage years
    • Could have influenced The Three-Body Problem
    • His father was sent to work in the coal mines during the Cultural Revolution and he was sent to live with his grandparents (Fan)
  • He read Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne at a young age (Fan)
  • Influenced by (Fan)
    • Vonnegut, Bradbury, Pynchon, and Orwell
    • His experiences during China's economic transformation

https://theobserver-qiaa.org/the-cultural-revolution-has-come-to-the-west

https://www.amazon.ca/Three-Body-Problem-Cixin-Liu/dp/0765382032

the book

  • First available in 2006 (Yeung)
  • Won the Galaxy Award in 2006 (Yeung)
  • Translated to English in 2014 by Ken Liu (Yeung)
  • Won the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel ("2015 Hugo Awards")
  • Made Liu the first Asian writer to receive a Hugo award (Richardson)
  • Praised by Obama (Yeung)

synopsis

  • Begins in the Cultural Revolution
  • On earth, many feel hopeless about the human race
  • A few scientists discovers that they are not alone in the universe
  • Another civilization is on the way to Earth from a tri-solar star system

themes

  • Coexistence of different intelligent lifeforms
  • Is human nature actually the nature of intelligent life?
  • Morals of extraterrestrials: better or worse than humans?
  • Is survival the motivation for conflict? Is it justified?

what I liked

subjects
  • science
  • technology
  • virtual reality
  • conflict and warfare
  • human nature/the nature of intelligent life
Science (and technological speculation)
  • Named after and involves the three-body problem as a plot device
  • Considered hard sci-fi (although sometimes speculative and not accurate)
history
  • Both covers some human history & explains the background of the aliens through a VR game
  • Many characters in the guise of historical figures appeared in the game
    • King When of Zhou, Qin Shi Huang
    • Newton, Copernicus, Galileo
    • von Neumann, Einstein
    • etc.
  • Cultural Revolution is also an effective hook

what I didn't like as much

  • Liu's characters aren't very complex (a bit flat)
  • There's only one (or maybe a few) relatively deeply developed character
  • Writing is more focused on the plot than the characters

philosophy

author's beliefs

  • Liu gave his own pessimistic views on extraterrestrial life
  • "We should be ever vigilant" (Liu 395)
  • "Turn the kindness we show toward the stars to members of the human race" (Liu 392)
  • Aliens won't necessarily have higher moral standards than us

what can we take away?

  • Conflicts have always been present
  • Improvements to be made
    • By learning how to coexist with humans, we might learn to coexist with other life
    • First contact with extraterrestrials could show us what we're doing wrong as a species
  • Our technology needs to be applied for the benefit of the human race as a whole
  • Do higher beings have higher moral standards?
    • Can be difficult to imagine
    • I think it's likely that the answer is no
  • If we can't coexist with other species, we should at least coexist with ourselves

thanks for listening!

credits:

background image modified from https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-reveals-a-river-of-star-formation/

thanks to the Everforest colourscheme (https://github.com/sainnhe/everforest) for defining my entire aesthetic 🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲

works cited

"2015 Hugo Awards." The Hugo Awards, www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2015-hugo-awards/.


"Publication: The Three-Body Problem." The Internet Speculative Fiction Database, isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?485294.


"Summary Bibliography: Cixin Liu." The Internet Speculative Fiction Database, isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?208409.


"The Cultural Revolution, 1966-76." Encyclopædia Britannica.


Fan, Jiayang. "Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds." The New Yorker, 17 June 2019, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/24/liu-cixins-war-of-the-worlds.

Lam, Adam. "Liu Cixin (刘慈欣)." The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_238-1.


Liu, Cixin. The Three-Body Problem. Translated by Ken Liu, Tor Books, 2014.


Manthorpe, Rowland. "Cixin Liu Is the Author of Your Next Favourite Sci-Fi Novel." Wired UK, Condé Nast, 29 Oct. 2016, www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-sci-fi-writer-cixin-liu.


Richardson, Nick. "Even What Doesn't Happen Is Epic." London Review of Books, 8 Feb. 2018, www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n03/nick-richardson/even-what-doesn-t-happen-is-epic.


Yeung, Jessie. "Game of Thrones Producers to Adapt Chinese Sci-fi 'The Three-Body Problem' for Netflix." CNN Style, Cable News Network, 1 Sept. 2020, edition.cnn.com/style/article/netflix-three-body-problem-adaptation-intl-hnk-scli/index.html.