The Three Body Problem

This book was unique to me in two primary ways. First, Cixin Liu took (and more broadly, embodies) a tract that is not often the goal of a science fiction author — not basing the book on the “reality” of current societal conditions, but rather writing about a fully separate and parallel universe. He of course admits that it is not possible to do this without subconsciously returning to lived reality, but hearing this from the author after reading The Three-Body Problem is surprising, considering the deep historical and political allusions it makes throughout.

But when you really pay close attention, it is true — Liu writes a fiction that I could only describe as truly (at least for myself) “new.” The storyline is brilliant, expansive across vast amounts of time, across modalities of science, dimensionally itself, and covering topics ranging from the Chinese cultural revolution to the underpinnings of civilization itself. It is hard to summarize the scope of the book in just a few paragraphs, other than to just state that this book is highly worth reading.

The second unique quality was the strength of the translation. It is so damn good. Ken Liu that his goal is not to make the book read as if it was “originally written in English” but rather arranged “in such a way that the reader sees a glimpse of another culture’s patterns of thinking, hears an echo of another languages’ rhythms and cadences, and feels a tremor of another peoples’ gestures and movements.” He didn’t need to state this, of course — his success in achieving this level of translation bleeds through every page. In a small way, reading this as an American gives a small portal into an alternate way of thinking.