The Three-Body Problem

“The Three-Body Problem” is out on Netflix. Some Chinese critics are reportedly angered by the TV series, including its depiction of China. I can see why.

The Three-Body Problem: in a nutshell

Cixin Liu’s book The Three-Body Problem first appeared in China in 2006, and in English in 2014. It’s the first volume in The Three-Body Trilogy, also known as Remembrance of Earth’s Past.

That first volume is itself a sprawling sci-fi epic with existential ambitions. It describes a “first contact” with an alien civilisation, known as the Trisolarans in the English translation but the San Ti in the Netflix series. The story is set against the background of the Chinese Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. I found the book flawed but fascinating, as much for its depiction of China and its history as for its sci-fi elements.

I was intrigued to see The Three-Body Problem turned into a Netflix series of the same name. The first season of the series contains elements of the whole Three-Body trilogy, although another season is coming. According to some reports, the Netflix version has met a dismal response in China itself. Compared with the magnificent first volume of the book, the Netflix adaptation is, by comparison, routine and shallow.

WARNING: the rest of this review contains spoilers.

The Cultural Revolution

The Three-Body Problem begins in the midst of the Cultural Revolution. I’ve written about the Cultural Revolution in my book Lessons in Diplomacy. With hindsight, it’s easy to see it as a crazed pulse of chaos in Chinese history. A battle for power between different factions of the Communist leadership drove millions of Chinese to their deaths, and caused terrible, avoidable suffering for millions more. For many caught up in the chaos, it was a grim struggle for survival.

The Cultural Revolution is central to The Three-Body Problem. The inhumanity of 1960s China disgusts central character Ye Wenjie, an astrophysicist. Author Cixin Liu repeatedly returns to the vindictiveness and betrayals of party cadres and the absurdity of the ideological battles that resulted:

• In the opening pages of the book, Ye sees her scientist father beaten to death by Red Guard teenagers for arguing in favour of “reactionary” scientific concepts such as the Big Bang theory. This leads to Ye, as his daughter, being targeted: “The political instructor picked up the theme. “I’ve always said that I thought [Ye] had a deep-rooted resentment of the Cultural Revolution.”“
• Later, Ye and another scientist are criticised for wanting to aim a superpowerful radio beam at the sun, on the bizarre grounds that propagandists often compared Chairman Mao to the “red sun” “Yang and Ye were both utterly stunned, but they did not think Lei’s objection ridiculous. Just the opposite: They were horrified that they themselves had not thought of it. During those years, finding political symbolism in everything had reached absurd levels.”
• The book highlights that intra-family denunciations were common during the Cultural Revolution: “As one of the most radical Red Guards, Wenzue [Ye Wenjie’s younger sister] had always been proactive in exposing their father, and had composed numerous reports detailing his supposed sins. Some of the material she provided had ultimately led to his death.”

When, years later, Ye meets the four young Red Guards who murdered her father, she finds three middle-aged women broken by the turbulence of the Cultural Revolution. The fourth has been killed purposelessly trying to prove her revolutionary zeal to the authorities. The characters in The Three-Body Problem are mostly relieved when the Cultural Revolution is over:

• Ye felt spring was everywhere. The cold winter of the Cultural Revolution really was over, and everything was springing back to life.

The Three-Body Problem is truly epic

Setting a book against big historical events can give it resonance and grandeur. The Three-Body Problem does this brilliantly. When Ye Wenjie is betrayed and banished in 1969, the author comments:

• Half a century later, historians would all agree that this event in 1969 was a turning point in humankind’s history.

Half a century later! How cool is that? Later, a character muses on an equally epic scale, about civilisations:

• “Soviet astrophysicist Nicolai Kardashev once proposed that civilizations can be divided into three types based on the power they can command – for communication purposes, let’s say. A Type I civilization can muster an amount of energy equivalent to the total energy output of the earth… A Type II civilization can marshal the energy equivalent to the output of a typical star… A Type III civilization… the energy output of a galaxy.”

In an existential aside, Cixin Liu observes in an author’s note:

• Each era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains.

This is big, thoughtful stuff. As in other epic tales such as “Dune”, “Lord of the Rings” or “The Warlord Chronicles“, the scale of the canvas is breathtaking. That’s even before you read the second and third volumes of the trilogy.

The Three-Body Problem is thrilling

There’s a lot to like about the first volume of Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem. In addition to debating huge themes, it toys with scientific theory; builds up superb characters; and has plenty of stunning set-piece action sequences. Take this moment when Ye Wenjie first makes contact with the alien civilisation:

• Ye opened the resulting document, and, for the first time, a human read a message from another world. The content was not what anyone had imagined. It was a warning repeated three times. Do not answer! Do not answer!! Do not answer!!!

Another thrilling set-piece (spoiler alert) comes when the authorities seek to capture computer data on a giant tanker containing activists supporting the extermination of humanity. Fearing that those on board will delete the data if they launch a conventional assault, they wait until the ship passes through the Panama Canal. They then set up a grid of nanofilaments developed by scientist Wang Miao across the canal. As the tanker moves forwards, the filaments slice it, and everyone inside, into half-metre segments. This is actually one of the few scenes from the book reproduced faithfully in the Netflix series, where its brutality jars with the anodyne love-affairs and relationship-driven blandness of the rest of the show.

We’ve known about Wang Miao’s research into nanofilaments from early in the book, but this is the first time we’ve seen them in action. It’s a beautiful example of the Chekhov’s Gun principle: that if you introduce something at the beginning of a story, it must have a role later on.

The Three-Body Problem: Ye Wenjie

The Three-Body Problem has splendid characters. I particularly like central character Ye Wenjie. Traumatised by the Cultural Revolution, Ye is magnificent and indomitable. Take when she must choose between a lifetime of service in a mysterious scientific installation or returning home:

• “I don’t want to go back. Let’s go in.” Ye’s voice remained soft, but there was a determination in her tone that was harder than steel.

Later, to conceal evidence of her having betrayed the human race, Ye murders both political commissar Lei Zhicheng and her own husband, Yang Weining – the latter because he happens to show up at the wrong time. Asked later how she felt about it, she replies:

• Calm. I did it without feeling anything. I had finally found a goal [i.e. inviting aliens to conquer the earth] to which I could devote myself. I didn’t care what price had to be paid, either by me or by others. I also knew that the entire human race would pay an unprecedented price for this goal. This was a very insignificant beginning.

Ye’s certainty, and cruelty, is shocking. One can debate whether it makes her as bad as the Cultural Revolution zealots she abhors.

The Three-Body Problem: Da Shi

Among many other fine characters I’d single out the cop, Da Shi. Chinese, like nearly everyone else in the book except arch-baddy Mike Evans, he is witty and phlegmatic and, like all the best fictional cops, near-omniscient. Faced by a nuclear-bomb-wielding terrorist, he tells her without missing a beat that “her mother has been found”. She is distracted enough to be shot. Someone asks him later who the woman’s mother was:

• Da Shi grinned. “Fucked if I know. Just a guess. A girl like that most likely has mother issues. After doing this for more than twenty years, I’m pretty good at reading people.”

Unfortunately, there are few such vivid and memorable characters in the Netflix adaptation of The Three-Body Problem. Most of the main TV characters are anguished young people straight from central casting – although the Da Shi figure, transformed into a no-nonsense Mancunian, is a notable exception.

Why does Ye Wenjie betray the human race?

My biggest problem with Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem is why Ye Wenjie decides to send her message inviting aliens to Earth – whatever the risks:

• The message [from Ye Wenjie] that was winging its way… said, “come here! I will help you conquer this world. Our civilization is no longer capable of solving its own problems. We need your force to intervene.”

Ye sends this message even though, perhaps improbably, the first alien to receive her message warns her that she should on no account reply, because if she does so her world will be located, invaded and conquered.

Ye’s motivation seems to be partly her experience of humankind destroying nature. She has been shaken by Rachel Carson’s seminal 1962 environmental work Silent Spring: “Ye’s rational consideration of humanity’s evil side began the day she read Silent Spring.” The horrors of the Cultural Revolution, too, seem to have played a role in convincing her that humankind is fundamentally evil.

Ye is clear on what she has done. She asks herself:

• Did that blood-hued morning, when she had betrayed the entire human race, really happen?

• Later, we learn that: “[Ye’s] tiny sense of doubt about her supreme act of betrayal had… disappeared without a trace. Ye finally had her unshakable ideal: to bring superior civilisation from elsewhere in the universe into the human world.“

Three reasons to betray the human race?

Cixin Liu seems to suggest three reasons why Ye might have betrayed humanity. I couldn’t quite work out which was right – I’d welcome enlightenment or thoughts from anyone who has understood the book better than me.

a) Ye hopes the aliens will make humans behave better.

At one point Ye says of the aliens: “Their science must have developed to a very advanced stage. A society with such advanced science must also have more advanced moral standards.” Similarly, Mike Evans, the mastermind who supports the alien invasion, says: “Our ideal is to invite Trisolaran civilization to reform human civilization, to curb human madness and evil, so that the Earth can once again become a harmonious, prosperous, sinless world.”

b) Ye believes humanity is so awful it deserves to be destroyed

Elsewhere, Mike Evans argues:

• “Why does one have to save people to be considered a hero? Why is saving other species considered insignificant?”

Evans considers humans as dispensable as any other species. Others agree:

• The most surprising aspect of the Earth-Trisolaris Movement was that so many people had abandoned all hope in human civilisation, hated and were willing to betray their own species, and even cherished as their highest ideal the elimination of the entire human race, including themselves and their children…. Mike Evans gave the Adventists their motto: We don’t know what extraterrestrial civilization is like, but we know humanity.

At times, Ye Wenjie seems to share these goals.

The idea of humankind driven to despair, either by its own uselessness or by the superiority of the aliens, appears briefly in the Netflix adaptation. A row of bodies hanging from lampposts implies that many people have taken their own lives rather than wait for the San Ti invasion. It’s one of the most striking images in the Netflix series; and fits nicely with the existential angst about humankind’s future that many young people share today (although I disagree). But blink, and you’ll miss it.

c) Ye simply invites the aliens impetuously

Ye says: “I started the fire, but I couldn’t control how it burnt.” Browsing the Internet, I have seen several people argue that Ye betrays humanity out of pure impetuosity.

The Three-Body Problem: why humanity deserves to die

In the book, Cixin Liu reflects the uncertainty over the motivation of Ye Wenjie by grouping the scientists and others who support the alien invasion into two groups. The “Adventists” advocate the extinction of the human race by aliens. Mike Evans seems to be one of their number. The “Redemptionists” want the aliens to help renew the human race. Ye, initially at least, seems to belong to the latter group. When she learns that the Trisolarans are aggressive, she seems shocked:

• After learning the truth of Trisolaran civilization, Ye had become silent.

But given how little Ye knows about Trisolaris when she invites the invasion, her confidence that they will be benign seem odd. Meanwhile, discussions on Trisolaris itself make it seem clear the Trisolarans want to destroy earth:

• “We cannot share the Earth with the people of that world. We could only destroy Earth civilization and completely take over that solar system…” “Yes. But there is another reason for destroying Earth civilization. They’re also a warlike race. Very dangerous.”

My conclusion? Ye Wenjie’s decision is taken in a fit of rage and frustration at humankind’s undoubted failings. She decides simply to wipe the slate clean – just like the zealots of the Cultural Revolution. It doesn’t really make sense. The suffering of humankind if conquered by the Trisolarans may be worse than anything brought about by the Cultural Revolution. And why should the Trisolarans treat the rest of nature – the “other species” Mike Evans talks about – any better than humankind has done? But Ye isn’t acting according to reason – it’s a moment of rage. In the words of Lessons in Diplomacy, “shit happens”.

The Three-Body Problem problems

Unfortunately, although I loved the first volume of The Three-Body Problem, I found some bits unintentionally comic. For example, when the aliens send their invasion fleet towards earth:

• “The great Trisolaran Fleet has already set sail. Their target is this solar system, and they will arrive in four hundred and fifty years.”

On the one hand, the enormous timescale feels epic. On the other hand, it is reminiscent of the attack of the Vl’hurgs and the G’Gugvuntts on humankind in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

• For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across – which happened to be the Earth – where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.

Similarly, I like the scene in The Three-Body Problem where historic scientists assemble a 36-kilometre square computer motherboard made of thirty million soldiers, which operates for a year and four months to produce its (wrong) forecast. I suspect Cixin Liu intended this to be a bit comic. But it reminds me of Garrison Keillor’s “living flag” in Lake Wobegon Days, where all the citizens of the imaginary Minnesota town wear red, white or blue hats so that, seen from the a tall building, they form the stars and stripes. The trouble is, only one person at a time can view the flag without breaking up the display. As hours pass, both participants and flag fade away.

Finally, the idea of unpredictable suns is not new. It is the foundation of one of the most famous sci-fi short stories of all time, “Nightfall”, by Isaac Asimov, where the planet of Lagash is illuminated by six suns who ensure perpetual light. Civilisation collapses every 2,049 years when darkness falls due to a lengthy eclipse. Similarly, the short story “Placet is a Crazy Place”, by Frederic Brown, is set on a tiny planet that revolves around twin suns in a figure-of-eight pattern, causing a range of hallucinations and other catastrophic problems.

What is the role of the game “Three Body”?

The role of the game of Three Body in the book puzzled me. Wang Miao and other top scientists immerse themselves in the game using body suits to try and solve the problem of predicting the movement of the three suns of Trisolaris. This is rich, entertaining stuff, although it seemed odd that whereas nearly everyone in the book is Chinese, all the players use avatars depicting famous historical Europeans: Pope Gregory, Aristotle, Copernicus, Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton and so on. More seriously, since the Trisolaran spaceships are en route to Earth by this point, I can’t quite see the point of the game, unless it’s a complicated way of saying that Trisolaris is doomed. Explanations and comments welcome!

The Three-Body Problem: the Netflix adaptation

The Financial Times reports that audiences in China disliked the Netflix series of The Three-Body Problem. They argued that it was too western-centric: the main villain is Chinese while westerners play most other characters. They quote a concerned Chinese citizen:

• “Netflix seems to want to convey a frightening message to its global audience: it is the Chinese who brought aliens to [Earth]”.

The FT also quote Kenny Ng, a film academic, as saying that the original novel “strives to break away from binary narratives, but the Netflix adaptation leans towards a more simplified and entertaining approach, dividing characters into clear categories of good and evil”. There’s a lot of truth in this.

Cindy Yu, an assistant editor at The Spectator, also criticises the Netflix series. I agree with her criticism of the wholesale conversion of most of the Chinese characters in the book into non-Chinese characters for the series. Netflix may have felt that a show based almost entirely in China would not appeal to global audiences. But it robs the story, and its characters, of much depth.

Overall, having watched the first season of the Netflix adaption of The Three-Body Problem to the end, I was disappointed. It is too saccharine, too much painting-by-numbers, and too Euro- or even UK-centric. Plus, the reported Chinese criticism feels well-founded.

In 2023 Chinese company Tencent released its own version of The Three-Body Problem, entitled “Three Body”. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube. I haven’t seen it yet but some people swear by this version.

The Netflix adaptation and China

The introduction of so many non-Chinese characters in the Netflix series has another unfortunate side-effect. In the book of The Three-Body Problem, Ye’s decision to invite aliens to invade the Earth does not look particularly “Chinese” because nearly everyone in the story is Chinese. In the series, Ye is one of the only Chinese characters. This does, indeed, risk making it look as if it is the Chinese have caused the problem – and the rest of the world must sort it out.

In conclusion

The book The Three-Body Problem, the first volume of the Three-Body Trilogy, is a great read. If you like epic sci-fi or simply fancy trying something utterly different from China, have a go. It’s world class. The Netflix adaptation is perhaps less world class.

My own sci-fi novel, or speculative fiction, is “Eternal Life“. It, too, looks at some big issues, like what it would be like if we could all live forever. Is it world class? Do have a look.