Did Cixin Liu intend to write the most heartbreaking villain in all of science fiction or is he merely toying with our sense of morality, like a god or a higher intelligence?
After reading the first installment of The Three Body Problem, I can only profoundly say that I'm shook. The book itself is as terror-inducing as it is well-composed, and yet somehow, the quality of its prose is often coolly suspended by its objectivity. There are passages that thrum like a zither, inlaid between others that read like sheetrock or the cold vacuum of space. The book is wondrous, enticing, hair-raising, dizzying, infuriating. I found myself conducting research for deeper understanding, fighting to house the basic tenets of astrophysics, Chinese mythology, and what I know of human nature all in the same breath.
The book's subject matter being about an impending alien invasion meant to wipe out mankind was less unsettling to me than its shifty politics — the terrors invoked by mass hysteria and anti-intellectualism throughout human history paired with the deft dramatization of the burning of Giordano Bruno by the Roman Inquisition, to how the buds of environmentalism can quickly bloom into radicalization. Liu, with brutal cleverness, ties these disparate subjects together until they form a funhouse mirror reflecting all of human nature: our gut wrenching ability to experience love and loss, our tendency to treat scientific reasoning with suspicion or systematic violence, and even most notably, our desperate desire to force our version of utopia upon all of humanity with the click of a button.
At times I found the book too ambitious (perhaps out of envy), but upon its inevitable conclusion, anything disparaging I might have to say evaporated into total awe. Unsurprisingly, the human elements of the story were the most compelling. As the narrative progresses, the character I loved most for their resilience and brilliance became, in generic terms, the supervillain. A person who, were I to meet them in a dive bar, I'd sooner invite to throw hands with rather than settle our differences pragmatically. In another turn of events, the character I disliked the most, an unapologetically brash, maladroit, self-described ignoramus, wound up being the person I most admire from the book. Such is the nature of good writing, I suppose.
At the book's conclusion, the characters still shouting within me, I went out of my way to watch the Netflix series based on Liu's masterpiece. It was… fine. I'm a greedy devourer of stories, so I tend to expect more from adaptations than is perhaps fair. My advice? Read the book. It's well worth it, even if there are chapters that are absolutely mind melting and math heavy.
I just started the prologue of the second book and was moved by it. Half poetry, half dread. I cannot wait to see how the story unfolds.
P.S. I highly recommend learning how to pronounce the names of the characters. When an author names a character, it's world building. It's an art form in and of itself.