The Three Body Problem: Beleive the Hype

The Book's Cover Features the Pyramid
from the Novel's VR Game.

It seems like people can’t stop talking about The Three Body Problem.  Winner of the 2016 Hugo Award, this book details the well-trod topic of humanity’s first contact with aliens.  The book courted controversy from many outspoken science fiction authors and critics.  Many felt that the book simply won awards because of organizations shoehorning in diversity instead of its merit.  While I can’t speak to the other nominees for these awards, I can say that The Three Body Problem deserves great praise for its originality and scientific concepts.  Yes, the “diversity is super good and necessary” thing has probably gone too far, but this book deserves the recognition. 

The book’s author is Chinese and all of the main characters are too.  Thankfully this saves us the trouble of reading/watching aliens destroy New York City for 4,000,000^th time.  The story opens during the restless days of the Cultural Revolution.  According to the translator, who was featured on the Sinica podcast, the book’s publisher altered the progression of the story so that the flashbacks appeared toward the middle of the book. They though publishing a book on the 50^th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution and featuring the period as a backdrop might result in undue scrutiny.  Frankly, it’s amazing these parts made it into the book at all.  I’d bet that if the book was published today, just a few short years later, some of these flashbacks would have been cut. 

I enjoyed reading a book that approaches such a common plot from a new perspective.   In some ways it’s a retread of Childhood’s End and other similar stories, but the book is never held back by this.  The book’s true originality comes from the computer game featured in the story and the alien world.  The parts of the book set in these two settings stand head-and-shoulders above anything I have read recently.  The sections set in the “real world” are less interesting.  The characters are two dimensional and even China itself seems flat.  I understand not including things that might date the novel, but there is almost nothing that fleshes out the setting.  Other than a passing reference to the CCTV Building and Tiananmen Square, this novel could take place anywhere.  The main character, Wang Miao, passively observes the story.  We learn very little about him.

       

If the Chinese characters in the story are two dimensional, then the foreign characters are simply lines.  The stereotypical dialogue makes them laughable.  A British military officer who appears at a meeting utters only one line, “To be or not to be.”  This line caused me to laugh while I read the book.  It’s interesting that the author of the novel writes dialogue for extraterrestrials more realistically than foreigners. 

Despite some literal shortcomings, no reader should miss this book.  The ideas and interpretations in the novel never fail to amaze.  I think the ideas in this book will keep readers talking about it for decades to come, just like the works of Phillip K. Dick and Arthur C. Clarke.  It’s less about character development and prose and more about thinking of humanity in a new light.  And in the end, it’s the ideas that make a story worthwhile.  

P.S. - the second book in the series isn't good.  Don't waste your time on it.  Just read the Wikipedia page and move on to book three.