The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

Since the series is releasing on Netflix in late March, it’s the perfect time to share what I think about the book, and what I expect from the series.

It all started from a colleague of mine who wanted this book as her Christmas gift, and I was her Secret Santa. I brought it up to my colleagues as I was packing my bag the other night, about to head to Bookazine to purchase this book, arousing this heated conversation among ourselves, talking about how great and exciting it was, about aliens reaching out to humans via some signals, etc.

The hype started there. We even created a book club group which has now died down. I eventually kept the book to myself.

I had high hopes at how the story was going to turn out. When there’s expectation, obviously, there’s disappointment.

The build-up of the storyline took longer than I expected, probably because of the discussion I had with my colleagues. I was looking forward to a direct contact between humans and aliens, which ended up in very subtle ways.

I wasn’t impressed.

The Three-Body Problem is the first book of the Remembrance of Earth's Past series by Liu Cixin. It’s a science fiction novel that follows the story of Ye Wenjie, a physicist during China's Cultural Revolution, and Wang Miao, a nanomaterials researcher in modern-day China. Ye Wenjie sends a message to outer space after a tragic event, unknowingly contacting an alien civilization. While the government prepares for a potential alien invasion, Wang Miao gets entangled in a virtual reality game, Three Body, that reveals disturbing truths about humanity's future.

The book is filled with scientific explanations and physics knowledge which was a subject that I failed back in high school. It felt like a lecture that I was so lost in and didn’t understand what’s going on.

With the mystery of alien civilization, the novel is still a thought-provoking one as it blends with philosophical questions about the universe and humanity.

‘Everyone likes to reminisce, but no one wants to listen, and everyone feels annoyed when someone else tells a story.’

As the world progresses and becomes more and more advanced with technology and human intelligence, the days of having alien encounters might be sooner than we imagine, it made me wonder. Are people going to listen when others tell stories about the good old days, before getting destroyed by whatever it is?

Technology has given efficiency to our world, undeniably, so much and so fast that it blinds the complexity behind, leading us to reminisce to what we used to have.

Instead of fighting against whatever comes in our way, maybe it’s time to find peace with it.

While the government prepares for a potential alien invasion in the book, it makes me think that beings fight to protect themselves, so to create peace for themselves in the long run.

On the other hand, maybe it’s better to welcome it and make peace with it. In humans nature, with all the languages we can speak, we still refuse to understand one another, while hoping and expecting others to understand you. Everything is mutual. Whatever that’s coming to our way in the near future, I hope we don’t let it destroy us.

Sharing one of the paragraphs that I adore in the book:

‘Oh, I didn’t go to become a monk. Too lazy for that. I just wanted to find a truly peaceful place to live for a while. The abbot there was my father’s old friend — very intellectual, but became a monk in his old age. The way my father told it, at his level, this was about the only way out. The abbot asked me to stay. I told him, “I wanted to find a peaceful, easy way to just muddle through the rest of my life.” The abbot said, “This place isn’t really peaceful. There are lots of tourits, and many pilgrims too. The truly peaceful can find peace in a bustling city. And to attain that state, you need to empty yourself.” I said, “I’m empty enough. Fame and fortune are nothing to me. Many of the monks in this temple are wordlier tahn me.” The abbot shook his head and said, “No, emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness is a type of existence. You must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself.”’

Or as another quote in the books says, once you reach certain age, ‘everything you once thought mattered so much turns out to mean very little’.

I enjoyed the philosophical part of the book, but if you’re a fan of science fiction, you’d probably enjoy the book way more than I did. There are still two more books in the series for me to find out more. Let’s see.

I’m looking forward to the Netflix show that’s coming in late March. I wonder how they’ll plot the storytelling, and how much of an impact it’ll make to human thinking on alien invasion, or, I shall put it as new species encounters.