Aliens: The Three-Body Problem and Humanity’s Greatest Test
An extraterrestrial encounter is the greatest uncertainty for humanity. How will humans react if and when we make contact with aliens? Would the encounter mostly divide or unite us?
This big question underpins the science fiction thriller, The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu.
Unfortunately like other science fiction thrillers I have reviewed, this book has far stronger ideas and science than it does character development. Who doesn’t want to contemplate what life will be like should humans meet extraterrestrial life for the first time? It’s simultaneously fascinating and terrifying.
However, the characters created by Liu to carry this story forward are mostly lifeless, cold, and unrelatable. The following essay will discuss the pros and cons of The Three-Body Problem while diving deeper into its bigger question — what will happen if humans encounter aliens?
Overview of The Three-Body Problem
The story is set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution. A secret military project at Red Coast Base in China sends signals into space to attempt contact with aliens. An alien civilization nearing destruction – Trisolaris – receives the signal and decides to invade Earth.
Liu takes the view that humanity will disagree on whether to welcome these aliens as saviors of a corrupt human society or to defend itself against invasion. His story focuses on Ye Wenjie, a Chinese astrophysicist who as a young girl witnesses the murder of her father by Cultural Revolution extremists. This traumatic experience leads Ye down a dark road where she loses hope for humanity.
“How many other acts of humankind that had seemed normal or even righteous were, in reality, evil?” – Ye Wenjie
On the other side is Wang Miao, a nanotechnologist and physics professor. He agrees to help investigate the mysterious deaths and disappearances of other academics. This leads him to discover a video game that other intellectuals are playing, The Three-Body Problem. The game brings him to the epicenter of the story’s conflict between segments of society (filled with social elites) who want to embrace the alien invasion and those who want to defend against it at all costs.
The characters are very bland and unsympathetic
Ye Wenjie and Wang Miao are both bland and unsympathetic characters. They are empty vessels whose sole purpose is to advance the story and deliver information.
While we at least learn some of Ye’s background and development, we learn almost nothing of Wang Miao. There is a single scene with his wife and son, but they disappear from the book afterward. We never learn about his personality traits, hopes, fears, and goals. Wang simply serves as an information portal, which is ironic because he’s supposed to be on the side of saving humanity, yet there’s almost no humanity to his character.
Possibly the most interesting character is a policeman who recruits Wang to investigate the dead and disappearing academics. His name is She Qiang (nicknamed “Da Shi”). Liu portrays him as an ignorant but streetsmart police officer who at least has quirks and personality.
Overall, the characters and plot are subordinate to the book’s ideas. Thankfully for the book, those ideas are powerful and intriguing, but they made me long for a story that could have had all of the above.
Fascinating ideas and science, but written more like nonfiction than fiction
The Three-Body Problem is far more than alien encounters. The book’s name derives from a classic problem in physics for which there is still no equation or solution. This problem afflicts the Trisolaris alien race that suffers from a terribly unpredictable world, hence why they’re desperate to find a home with relative stability, like Earth.
The book also raises intriguing questions about physics and science more broadly. Imagine if future scientific discoveries question the very underpinning of Newton’s laws or Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Consider the societal implications of physics being turned on its head almost overnight.
The Three-Body Problem also serves as a useful warning. Have humans planned sufficiently for an encounter with aliens? Obviously it’s impossible to know what shape, form, or approach an alien species would have, but it’s at least conservative to assume they would not be friendly.
How would we govern the world population in response to such an encounter? How would we organize resistance? Shouldn’t this threat, no matter how remote, inspire us to prioritize becoming a multi-planetary species? We need an escape plan or alternative to Earth should we need to evacuate in the near future, whether due to threats from climate change, nuclear war, or an alien invasion.
These considerations and threats may sound crazy now, but that’s the great purpose of books like The Three-Body Problem. Despite the narrative and character development shortcomings, it’s asking serious questions about the future of humanity in a universe where we discover that we’re not alone.
Was Cixin Liu censored when writing this?
Liu is celebrated in China as one of its great modern authors. In an autocratic society like China, that comes at a free speech cost.
This was in the back of my mind while reading The Three-Body Problem. It came to the forefront when I read passages about China’s Cultural Revolution, which didn’t give sufficient context, as one might receive from books like Mao’s Great Famine.
Censorship is also a consideration when reading about Trisolaran culture in the book (how the alien society is organized). Their culture has almost no respect for the individual. Anything that can lead to spiritual weakness is banned, which means that Trisolarans are restricted from certain forms of literature, art, and the pursuit of beauty and enjoyment.
That doesn’t sound too far off from modern China.
So while Liu paints a compelling portrait of an encounter between humans and aliens, the country where he is writing from and its accompanying controls are relevant factors when assessing this book and how it narrates big questions.
The Three-Body Problem and the future of humans and aliens
The main point that Liu gets right is chaos. If and when humans ever make contact with aliens, it will be a shapeshifting event on a scale we have never seen. It will make news of the first nuclear weapon exploding seem inconsequential. It will make the first moonwalk trivial.
Governments may try to hide the fact contact was made with aliens for fear of societal implications. Liu is probably right that large portions of society – who view humanity as inherently corrupt – may welcome humanity’s demise. Some people will happily volunteer to be traitors. Others will organize resistance as the biological drive to live and fight attempts to overcome the Benedict Arnolds of society.
Overall, Liu is probably correct that finding alien life will be bad for humanity. It will be more divisive than uniting. Extraterrestrial life, as Liu said in his postscript, “will be the greatest source of uncertainty for humanity’s future.”
The second we encounter aliens, concerns about climate change and ecological disaster will slide to the back burner. And unlike those threats that lack immediacy, contact between humans and aliens can occur at any time. It would be the first time humans, an apex predator, are forced to confront something potentially far more advanced and dangerous.
I was not a huge fan of the character development or narration of The Three-Body Problem, and overall would give it 3 out of 5 stars, but the big ideas save it. Liu’s framing of certain facts about humanity is especially intriguing. How, for example, the Trisolaran alien civilization is concerned about the recent speed of human progress; how humanity has enhanced its speed of progress significantly with each innovation age, from hunter-gatherer to the industrial, atomic, and information ages.
The book implants big questions about what we could or should be doing now to prepare for alien uncertainty. The mere possibility should inspire us to reach for the stars faster; to channel the crazy lunacy of the Elon Musks of the world and push to become multi-planetary sooner.
In conclusion, I will leave you with one parting thought. No spoilers. But towards the end of the book, the Trisolaran alien civilization sends a message to humans saying, “You’re bugs!”
The statement is likely referencing the vast evolutionary and technology gap between Trisolarans and humans, equating it to the gap between humans and bugs on Earth. The Trisolarans forgot one key fact about bugs though.
They have never been defeated.
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