Monday, May 27, 2019

The Three-body Problem


This is a brilliant book. It tackles hard science in a manner that one associates with Isaac Asimov. And it weaves the story with incidents from the Cultural Revolution.

But I wish it had more emotion in its characters. The main character faces all life with the same repressed self that she faced the murder of her father, enacted in front of her young eyes by fanatical revolutionaries. A similar stolidness sustains her through her decades under suspicion.

When she replies to a radio signal from the Trisolaris world - despite the clear warning NOT to do so, it appears to this reader to be with a similar sullenness, a flatness of spirit that defies reason.

One feels a need to be "fair" to the author. He has already stretched his art to include consideration of the three body problem - the random periods of hot and cold on the Trisolaris world is perhaps the best way to "show" and not tell about the problem. Their climate changes require that the inhabitants prepare themselves for indeterminate storage each time an emergency is announced. I will only say that the author managed to make getting one's body prepared fantastic and believable. He also discusses with aplomb possible states of certain substances in alternative universes with one, two, and many others more than three dimensions.

But the main character goes on to dispose of others who perhaps get too close to her. Her thin-lipped lack of remorse over these pages chilled my veins. It left an aching emptiness as I followed the author through his story. Perhaps we are from Mars and the author is from Vulcan.

Our Story

This review first appeared in Goodreads ,  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2491467631 Rao Pingru wrote this charming "graphic nov...