The Three-Body Problem

by Liu Cixin

Book Overview

The inspiration for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem

WINNER OF THE HUGO AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL

Over 1 million copies sold in North America

"A mind-bending epic."--The New York Times - "War of the Worlds for the 21st century."--The Wall Street Journal - "Fascinating."--TIME - "Extraordinary."--The New Yorker - "Wildly imaginative."--Barack...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765382032
• ISBN13: 9780765382030
• Release Date: January 2016
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Prioritization of concept over substance destroys potential for an exceptional story or series

A concept driven story is one where characters, plot, good writing, and action all take a back seat to the concept of the book. "The Three-Body Problem" is an apotheosis of a concept driven narrative and shows how it can fall flat despite interesting subject matter. The problem looming over the novel, and from which pretty much every other problem springs, is the inelegant way in which the concept is handled. Yes, the core ideas of the book are complex and, yes, people with a stronger scientific background (especially in astrophysics) will have an easier time understanding them; however, the author appears to labor under the impression that the average person will need a great deal of help grasping these concepts. Fair enough. Other books have this problem and handle it well. "Three-Body" does not. As though readers are not intelligent enough to make connections themselves or recognize nuanced explanations, the author feels the need to explain everything to the nth degree. While a lot of this is downloaded via exposition dumps, some of it comes in the form of a video game which hardly qualifies as a video game. It mainly involves walking around for long periods of time and having high concept conversations with NPCs. And then dying for no reason. I understand its goal is educational and that it has a lot of ground to cover, but it would probably have worked better as an interactive novel than a video game. The issue is that because of the structure of the game, the information provided via its interface is also a lot of explaining. The worst part is when the dissemination of information is handled relatively expertly, providing the reader everything they need to know about a topic, and then the book uses the next chapter to painstakingly explain all of it again. This book does a lot of telling with precious little showing, breaking the cardinal rule of storytelling. There are also a lot of extended sequences which could be drastically shortened while losing nothing. For example, there is a scene which involves a character seeing specific things (cryptic to avoid spoilers) both with his eyes and when he takes pictures. The author spends six pages detailing how this character took pictures with different cameras, digital and film, old and new, in different locations and eventually arrives at the conclusion that the things aren’t going away. There was absolutely no need to drag this sequence on for so long. These problems destroy the pacing of the book. It is one thing if a story is a slow burn, that can be used to good effect, but this book simply drags. You could remove the repetition and shorten the story by 100 to 200 pages without losing anything of value. I do not believe it disingenuous to purport that all this book’s problems stem from repetition and an over-reliance on the concept. Because this takes up so many pages, there is no time to develop characters who are consequently flat and dull, and barely time to progress the plot. Despite these faults, I must give credit where credit is due and that is in the world created for this book. I appreciated the alien world explored in the above mentioned “video game.” It is truly unique compared with settings common in science fiction. There is also an organization in the book (the ETO) which is a lot more nuanced than secret organizations in most books. It has factions, dissenters, proponents, and hierarchical problems which give it a depth not often seen in this volume. Nevertheless, the good parts of the book are too small to save it, making this one story I recommend leaving at the bookstore.

The best science fiction trilogy that I’ve ever read

It’s a slow burn, but very interesting. Then it blows your mind. Great mix of theoretical science and story.

An amazing book

An amazing book that leaves you thinking deeply at the end. it explores it's world using science and scientific thinking as its fulcrum

Stunning and Provoking

This book is worth reading!!!!!!!! Like physics? Like fiction that tackles the big questions and gives you a view into another culture and another world. This is that book!