The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu

[Parson]

@Christine Wheelwright .... I was listening to a podcast last week and one of the main thoughts agrees with what I hear you saying. I don't remember the details well, but the idea that was being presented was that rather than looking at evolution as a "survival of the fittest" it would be perhaps more correct to look at it as "survival of the friendliest." The two examples that were mentioned were humans, where without "friends" humans do not thrive and probably don't survive over any measurable period and the other example was the wolf. It was the friendliest wolves who built their relationship with humans and are one of the most wide spread and largest numbered large species on the planet, while their wild cousins struggle in spite of their many predatory advantages.

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

I read the trilogy a few years ago. My reaction in short "Fantastic! but depressing. But fantastic! but depressing." Still haven't felt up to re-reading them.

One quibble about the plot of The Three Body Problem I did notice:

Spoiler

In the story, I was given the impression that the 3 suns of Trisolaris were effectively equal in effect and intensity. However, Alpha Centauri is a binary star system, with a red dwarf (Proxima Centauri) in a very distant orbit around them (anywhere between 4,000-13,000 AU). I struggle to imagine Proxima having any significant effect on the planet, and even if the planet were thrown out toward it, I would have thought the change from yellow suns to a small red sun would have been significant - but I don't recall any mention of that.

I was also left surprised that a planet experiencing such extreme conditions would be stable enough to support any civilization, left alone such an advanced one.

That bothered me too - the effect seemed way too exaggerated for the real-world situation it's based on. I'd expect it to take place more gradually over thousands of years.

 

[Vertigo]

I read the trilogy a few years ago. My reaction in short "Fantastic! but depressing. But fantastic! but depressing." Still haven't felt up to re-reading them.


That bothered me too - the effect seemed way too exaggerated for the real-world situation it's based on. I'd expect it to take place more gradually over thousands of years.

I wouldn't say that aspect bothered me particularly. The book goes into some depth exploring how it would work and there is the well known unpredictability of the three body problem. So I think it would be hard to predict effects. My impression was that the extremes happened quite rarely when you either got equal effect from all stars resulting in overheating and the opposite effect when away from all of them. Regarding the time frames; I had the impression they were meant to be huge. Civilisations rose got destroyed, rose again, and got destroyed again, many times before they managed to find a way to kick start the next civilisation. So my impression was that the cycles were indeed over thousands of years. The game was just that a game to illustrate their history rather than being a literal representation of it.

I loved the books and I'm afraid I support the pessimistic view. If life is common out there then it's inevitable that it's very common and if travel between star systems became practical then new real estate would be at a premium and the sensible civilisation would do well to keep its head down! Evolution might favour cooperation but based on the one and only example of technological civilisation that we know of civilisations are likely to be significantly more aggressively territorial and acquisitive than the individuals that make them up.

I would add that I can fully understand how some people will dislike the writing style. I've read a few translated Chinese book and find they approach fictional narration quite differently to us. Strangely, maybe, I haven't found this quite so much with translated Japanese authors, though culturally they are also very different to what we are used to in the West.

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

I read the trilogy a few years ago. My reaction in short "Fantastic! but depressing. But fantastic! but depressing." Still haven't felt up to re-reading them.


That bothered me too - the effect seemed way too exaggerated for the real-world situation it's based on. I'd expect it to take place more gradually over thousands of years.

Yes, the "three body problem" was given massive exposure in the novel (even providing the title). But really it should have been something of a sideshow. I wondered if it was to be used as an extreme motivation for a technically advanced civilization taking the aggressive step of attacking a neighbor. But this was never really examined in depth (as it should have been). The pacifist Trisolaran foot soldier trying to warn Earth was a nice touch, but ultimately it wasn't pursued as a key topic. Anyway, the use of a deadly asteroid as a plot development might have made more sense than an inhospitable and unstable world (solving @Brian G Turner 's quibble). But I guess the author has an interest in the three body problem and wanted it in his book. I agree that the problem relates more to the motion of the suns than to the conditions on a planet orbiting one of them (which is even more speculative).

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

Evolution might favour cooperation but based on the one and only example of technological civilisation that we know of civilisations are likely to be significantly more aggressively territorial and acquisitive than the individuals that make them up.

I was listening to a podcast last week and one of the main thoughts agrees with what I hear you saying. I don't remember the details well, but the idea that was being presented was that rather than looking at evolution as a "survival of the fittest" it would be perhaps more correct to look at it as "survival of the friendliest." The two examples that were mentioned were humans, where without "friends" humans do not thrive and probably don't survive over any measurable period and the other example was the wolf. It was the friendliest wolves who built their relationship with humans and are one of the most wide spread and largest numbered large species on the planet, while their wild cousins struggle in spite of their many predatory advantages.

I tend to disagree with @Vertigo and I think @Parson 's podcast is on the right track. As our society becomes more educated, cooperative and enlightened, it also becomes more civilized, more responsible, more ethical. It is always a work in progress though. Two hundred years ago we exhibited patterns of behavior that would be abhorred now. And I think in another two hundred years there will be widespread disgust at practices we consider acceptable at present. I mentioned pollution earlier, and perhaps I might add factory farming of animals. It is a guessing game we can all play.

So, the question is; can a society advanced enough to have mastered interstellar travel be so callous as to exterminate a neighboring intelligent species? Surely they would be better than that (their technological development would depend upon it).

This is speculation of course. An alien species might be so different from us that it is somehow possible for them to develop without the moral base that I describe (which might be uniquely human). The question might be rephrased; are love and empathy universal concepts (or are they meaningful only on Earth).

The question of whether we should announce ourselves to the Universe is still very valid. It has to be examined on a risk vs return basis.

I should also emphasize that I see this as an interesting thought exercise rather than a practical question. I don't for one moment think there is an alien civilization in a neighboring star system. That is an interesting discussion in its own right.

 

[AllanR]

announce ourselves to the Universe

I suspect that any being that has the ability to travel to our solar system doesn't require an announcement to know we are here.

 

[Venusian Broon]

I loved the books and I'm afraid I support the pessimistic view. If life is common out there then it's inevitable that it's very common and if travel between star systems became practical then new real estate would be at a premium and the sensible civilisation would do well to keep its head down! Evolution might favour cooperation but based on the one and only example of technological civilisation that we know of civilisations are likely to be significantly more aggressively territorial and acquisitive than the individuals that make them up.

I disagree with the real estate argument. There is so much material out there to be constructing Dyson swarms around practically every star. You could increase the amount of liveable space around a star to billions the land area of Earth. (Sure it would take some time to build all your O'Neil Cylinders and other megastructure objects, but once you've figured out the first ones, and sort out your energy sources, it could grow exponentially from there.)

I think the problem arises if interstellar travel is possible. Currently for us the idea of even getting a couple of people to the next star is very daunting. We just don't have good engines to make the journey in a 'reasonable' length of time. Will we have a civilisation long enough for us to actually develop all the tech required?

If it does turn out that interstellar travel can be eventually constructed so that sentient beings would want to make the journey then other risks are there and I think one could be pessimistic. Expecting the universe to be a jolly happy club of federated planets, or like the Culture...I mean one can hope for that, but there is no reason to expect that another intelligent civilisation would even treat us as equals, adhere to our morals, or even see intelligence present here. They could be so alien, older and more developed than us, that they view us, the same way we view ants. Maybe they'd treat us like vermin and wipe us out before we got out of our home system and polluted the rest of the galaxy, with the same feeling we have when we get rid of an ant nest that is bothering us?

 

[Vertigo]

I suspect that any being that has the ability to travel to our solar system doesn't require an announcement to know we are here.

Actually most of the radio signals we have been scattering around for the last century are pretty much all omnidirectional and as such fall off in power a lot more rapidly than most people seem to realise. Almost all of our signals will be pretty much indistinguishable from the background radiation well before they've reached even the nearest star. Military radar has much greater range but that, of course, is not omnidirectional so would require someone to be looking in just the right direction at the moment a radar pulse happens to reach them.

In other words it's about as likely for any other civilisations out there to have detected us as it is for our SETI project to have detected them.

 

[AllanR]

radio signals

I doubt they will need anything like this.
There is a massive tech jump needed in numerous areas for us to even consider going to the closest star, let alone one much much further. Anything that can reach us would also need those tech jumps. With that comes, almost certainly, sensors that would give the ability to have intricatlly mapped their neighbourhood in a large radius of LY from their home. They would be able to read hundred amd hundred of tell tail signs from us to determine there is a tech civ here.

In other words, their SETI program would also have taken equivalent tech jumps as their rocket program.

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

Actually most of the radio signals we have been scattering around for the last century are pretty much all omnidirectional and as such fall off in power a lot more rapidly than most people seem to realise. Almost all of our signals will be pretty much indistinguishable from the background radiation well before they've reached even the nearest star. Military radar has much greater range but that, of course, is not omnidirectional so would require someone to be looking in just the right direction at the moment a radar pulse happens to reach them.

In other words it's about as likely for any other civilisations out there to have detected us as it is for our SETI project to have detected them.

Indeed. It has been estimated (based on observations of star systems close to us) that there may be about 300 million 'habitable' planets in our galaxy. Which sounds like a lot. But the probability of detecting a radio signal from any of them is incredibly low. This is partly because, as you say, the signal would be very weak. But also consider the following: The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, but has only been home to a species capable of sending electromagnetic signals into space for about 100. In a few hundred more we will either transcend the use of radio, or revert to pre-industrial levels due to our own stupidity. Alien civilizations may follow a similar pattern, which could also explain why we don't see a galaxy teeming with life, even with 300 million potential home worlds. The odds of us searching at the right point in time are incredibly low.

 

[Vertigo]

Indeed. It has been estimated (based on observations of star systems close to us) that there may be about 300 million 'habitable' planets in our galaxy. Which sounds like a lot. But the probability of detecting a radio signal from any of them is incredibly low. This is partly because, as you say, the signal would be very weak. But also consider the following: The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, but has only been home to a species capable of sending electromagnetic signals into space for about 100. In a few hundred more we will either transcend the use of radio, or revert to pre-industrial levels due to our own stupidity. Alien civilizations may follow a similar pattern, which could also explain why we don't see a galaxy teeming with life, even with 300 million potential home worlds. The odds of us searching at the right point in time are incredibly low.

I tend to be with you on both those possibilities. I've never really considered the Fermi 'Paradox' to be much of a paradox; I can think of numerous reasons for the lack of evidence of other life.

 

[Parson]

Indeed, the Femi Paradox only becomes problematic if there is something like a jump drive or warp technology. Any sub-light movement between stars probably makes for decades if not centuries from one star to a near-by star. That amount of time makes touching of any significant fraction of available planets problematic.

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

I could be wrong, but the Fermi paradox has never made sense to me intuitively. "Why haven't we seen them?" Well, why would we have seen them? The assumption seems to be that one civilisation or another will inevitably end up saturating the Galaxy with Von Neumann probes. But only a finite and specific number of spacefaring civilisations can have arisen in the history of the Galaxy so far. And there are any number of possible reasons why none of those individual civilisations have bothered to do such a thing yet. I mean, we're a spacefaring civilisation, but we're not exactly going all out with it.

I don't know if Stephen Jay Gould ever weighed in on the Fermi Paradox, but he argued strongly for the role of contingency in history and evolution. Not everything is driven by grand overarching trends: the detailed facts on the ground have effects that cannot be ignored. Specific alien civilisations will have their own priorities, physical needs, ethical beliefs, practical considerations, and motivations. I find it very plausible that none of them have yet had reason to attract our attention.

 

[CultureCitizen]

I have seen some mixed reviews of The Three Body Problem but I simply loved it in so many ways. It is a first contact book with a major twist and I don’t mean an ending with a twist but rather a major twist on the normal first contact trope and it asks the question do we really want any other civilisations out there to know about and be able to find us? A question that can be answered very differently depending on each person’s personal politics and beliefs.

The story begins in 1967 during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and it addresses that revolution in pretty condemning terms (the first chapter is titled “The Madness Years”); a fact I found rather surprising considering it was written as early as 2006 when I, in my probable ignorance, would have thought some of Liu’s criticisms might have verged on the dangerous. A second thread runs in the near future and has a very different feel; more prosaic where the earlier thread is slightly dreamlike, which is in itself strange in that it somehow retains that dreamlike feel even when dealing with issues closer to nightmare in nature. One of the notable aspects of the writing is this juxtaposition between the almost surreal past and the very down to earth future, particularly embodied by the cynical, chain smoking detective, Da Shi.

This is fairly hard science fiction with a significant amount of theory presented, and one of the real pleasures was how hard it was to tell quite where the line between real and speculative science lies; all felt plausible. The way the alien stellar system is introduced and explored through a “computer game” very neatly presented the potential problems of living in the orbital unpredictability of a tri-solar system; a fascinating issue that I have never previously considered. However I never felt that the science became inaccessible, though my own great fondness of hard SF may have something to do with that!

For the most part this is not a high action book and frequently has a rather more contemplative feel to it and yet it always kept me turning the pages. I’m very much looking forward to reading the next book.

5/5 stars

The book is good, but one core aspect where I could not hold my suspension of disbelief was the way in which they messed up with all the physics experiments. Come on , ok they sent a tiny ( atom sized) ship to find the location of all physics facilities and mess them up. So far, so good.
So, what happens if they build a new facility? How will it pull out the trick?
Maybe that part is better explained in the sequels. The general explanation in the first book seemed too lousy.