Hardcover, 400 pages
English language
Published Sept. 12, 2014 by Tor Books.
Within the context of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a military project sends messages to alien worlds. A nearby alien society receives these messages and makes plans to invade Earth.
ciencia ficcion, puray dura, profunda investigacion fisica, matematica, social, geopolitica, para crear a partir de un problema de modelo matematico, ( los tres cuerpos) una novela innovadora, un salto cuantico en la ciencia ficción
Content warning And I loved violin playing Albert
It was an interesting read. Somewhat hard to get into the story, but then it was making me turn pages and I could barely put it down. I loved some of the sci-fi ideas presented there.
Content warning Discusses elements of the plot
We haven't read the other books in the trilogy. How to describe? Liu has a very pessimistic perception of humanity and the nature of the universe. Not only does it science what kind of beings might evolve in a three-body solar system, but he also engages the Fermi Paradox, a very pessimistic theory about intelligent life. Be prepared to deal with frustration and disappointment.
That said, it is an important book and should be read.
Interesting premise but could get a bit wordy at times and once i read all three I couldn’t help but think back to the implied/embedded nationalism and misogyny. Or how being a historian of China ruins everything 😅
Set my imagination off, but felt like a stream of ideas.
This was a little too weird for me and I can’t say I really bought the premise of the story fully…
Content warning This book is intensely political.
Everyone loves this, but I can't understand why nobody seems to be put off, or at least puzzled, but the way that every human individual or organization in the book is just relentlessly awful, ranging from suicidal to genocidal, and everything in-between, without respite.
Most of them, given any chance at all, are trying hard to selfishly save their own skins, with not a moment's regard for the fact that their plans will immediately doom the rest of the human race. Those not intent on self preservation at any cost are instead committed to bitter nihilism, such as the ultimate eco-terrorists, who feel that to save the Earth's biosphere they must collaborate with alien forces to bring about humanity's defeat, and likely annihilation.
These characters and groups are not depicted as outliers. They represent the human race in its entirety. The only thing that holds back this tide of destructive behavior is the government, who keeps everyone in line.
I can't tell how much of this bizarrely one-sided depiction of humanity is a deliberate choice by the author, versus simply being an unplanned exposure of their worldview, shaped as it is by their native Chinese immersion in authoritarianism. Does that form a subconscious backdrop to everything they wrote here, or are they consciously making a deliberate point that strong government is absolutely necessary?
The author Liu Cixin has since gone on record in support of the Chinese government's internment of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang. There, people have been rounded up, because of their ethnicity, into over 400 internment camps. The camps administer cultural and religious re-education, forced labor, involuntary sterilization and abortion. This is something Liu Cixin is openly in favor of.
It makes my skin crawl to read that, and then carry on blithely with this story book of theirs, which seems to be an unapologetic justification for an authoritarian government's impositions on its populate. I did finish it, but have no desire to read the sequels - and not just because I don't agree with the politics. I genuinely found the behavior of all the characters to be intrusively bewildering, demented and incessantly frustrating.
Spannend aufgebaut mit verschiedenen Handlungssträngen, die sich irgendwann zusammenfügen. Technische / physikalische Grundprinzipien auch für mich als Laien verständlich dargestellt. Und die Frage nach dem "First Contact" mit all ihren Implikationen wurde toll beackert. Zusätzlich erfährt von noch etwas über die jüngere chinesische Geschichte.
The first few chapters had me darting to and from Wikipedia to help add some context to a story that is deeply set in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It',s a triviality to call the story complex, a mystery than unfolds through the book. Be warned this is the first in a trilogy and a very much sets itself up this way, which was a little frustrating in the last few chapters.
Es el primero de una trilogía. Me ha gustado, aunque hay algunas cosas "científicas" que me han parecido muy simplonas. De cualquier forma, estoy leyendo el segundo, y creo que también leeré el tercero. Lo recomiendo.
A good hard fiction novel that explores the question of making first contact. It's a quick read that has decent character development, a smooth flowing plot, and asks deep philosophical science questions.
Ich hab innerhalb von zwei Tagen "Die Drei Sonnen" von Cixin Liu gelesen. Das hatte ich schon sehr lange auf meiner Liste und erfreulicherweise waren alle drei Bände der Trilogie in der Stadtbücherei vorrätig.
Die knapp 550 Seiten haben sich schnell und angenehm gelesen. Das Meisterwerkgefühl bliebt bei mir jedoch leider aus.
Die Geschichte ist nett, aber jetzt nichts neues, vieles wirkt eher konstruiert und anstatt Entdeckung wird eher präsentiert.
SPOILERS THO
The three-body problem in physics states that although it is trivial to model the path of two bodies (e.g. binary stars) revolving around each other, it is currently impossible to create a model that can accurately predict the future positions of three bodies around each other, as minute instabilities add up over time to create a chaotic system. This book postulates that the nearest star to the earth, Alpha Centauri, as a ternary star system, is such a chaotic system; despite its unpredictability, a race of sentient species have evolved to sentience on an immensely inhospitable planet. When they learn of the existence of Earth, and realize it is in a stable solar system with a relatively mild climate, what would such a civilization do?
The book reminds me of Carl Sagan's "Contact" (well, the movie; I haven't read the book) but goes beyond the touchy-feely aspects of …
SPOILERS THO
The three-body problem in physics states that although it is trivial to model the path of two bodies (e.g. binary stars) revolving around each other, it is currently impossible to create a model that can accurately predict the future positions of three bodies around each other, as minute instabilities add up over time to create a chaotic system. This book postulates that the nearest star to the earth, Alpha Centauri, as a ternary star system, is such a chaotic system; despite its unpredictability, a race of sentient species have evolved to sentience on an immensely inhospitable planet. When they learn of the existence of Earth, and realize it is in a stable solar system with a relatively mild climate, what would such a civilization do?
The book reminds me of Carl Sagan's "Contact" (well, the movie; I haven't read the book) but goes beyond the touchy-feely aspects of Sagan's work. Contact is distinctly American, and therefore, deeply religious; when Arroway finally meets aliens, the interaction is solely a personal one, which occurs without any observable proof that it took place at all. With that experience, Arroway is humanity's messiah, able to spread the message that the promised land is a space paradise of hob-nobbing with other, enlightened spacefaring species — if you have faith. 3BP dispenses with the notion that the space age will be a lovely vacation earned by a well-behaved humanity. I don't know if it's because the author takes a very hard-science approach or it's more of a Chinese cultural influence, but the characters in 3BP don't think of joining the aliens because they believe they're worthy. On the contrary, they invite the (presumably enlightened) aliens to Earth as a corrective measure: we're flawed, we're broken, we need your help, come fix us.
Of course, even that ends up being wildly optimistic, as the aliens don't really care about mentoring humans at all. They just want a planet with an easier difficulty level to live on. The universe is a harsh and unforgiving place, and it turns out that outer space isn't the paradise, Earth is. And the aliens wants it for themselves. So, well, they kind of do the science equivalent of driving down the property values so they can swoop in and buy up all the land at a super low price by the time their moving vans get there. (It'll take about 450 years, at a maximum of 10-percent of the speed of light.)
The book ends there. Not with a proclamation of some glorious, kumbaya future, or even a clear evil to be defeated, just a slowly ticking clock. Earth will be occupied in 450 years by star-hopping alien gentrifiers just trying to find a new backyard in which to raise their alien babies. So what now?
