The Three-Body Problem

Would a large but secretive conspiracy use Email to let the conspirators know the address of the location that its next meeting is at? This is an important question. No they would not, not even when this was written 25 odd years back.

Would an alien civilisation know what a bull's eye is? Did they have Walnuts? Just two less than profound and meaningless questions, I suppose. This was the reason I moved away from Sci Fi in my early 20's to rarely come back. That feeling that it dated rapidly. When aliens were involved my then youthful imagination was fast dissipating into a demand for some historical form of what was reality and history became the normal read.

As to Sci Fi, interestingly I have just recently finished a couple of Kurt Vonnegut's very dated Sci Fi's, the difference between him and books such as this was (and not noted in my youth) he was actually making a comment about the human condition using Sci Fi as a trope. The Three Body Problem is purer in the scientific approach and that is where they can fall down rapidly with time I suppose. Things get dated, Email for example.

As to the writing and/or translation, considering how conceptually very good this piece of Sci Fi is, there is an at times clumsiness in the telling of what is essentially a first contact story. The characters can be a dull or even clichéd. Policeman Shi Qiang is one of the most clichéd characters I have read in any form of literature. I also note that this is going to be a TV series soon, and adapted for an English-speaking audience. It almost felt like a film script at times.

Anyway onwards and upwards and as the blurb says “Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilisation on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.” I suppose it the clever mix of Cultural Revolution revenge politics and the consequences make this conceptually very interesting.

Being the first of a trilogy I naturally want to know ‘what happened next' so with that thought in mind I will listen via my Audiobook allowance via Spotify in a couple of months' time.