Book 5: The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu
Cixin Liu is a popular, award-winning science fiction author in China. Translated from Chinese by Ken Liu, The Three-Body Problem blends a science fiction story about earth’s first contact with an alien civilization with the historical setting of China’s Cultural Revolution. The translation provides useful footnotes about the pertinent historical points that enhance and direct the narrative of the story, which proves helpful for readers such as myself that lack knowledge of this historical time.
Characters in the book learn about the existence of the alien race through an on-line video game which places the players on an alien world locked in rotational chaos within a 3-sun system, and they move through levels by discovering partial solutions to the classical three-body problem of motion to help predict Stable eras when the video game civilization can survive and develop. Meanwhile, the world’s top scientists are dying in vast numbers, and it is the job of Wang Miao to determine why, and what role the three-body game plays in the events that are taking place.
The book is a rich story, that tackles the issue of whether humanity is capable of working together to solve the global environmental and social problems it has created, or whether we would be better off putting ourselves in the hands of an alien race with unknown intentions.
Rating; Buy it.