The Cutting-Edge Reality of The Three-Body Problem Trilogy

Note. Liu Cixin's Three-Body Problem Trilogy. From Bloomsbury Publishing.

Liu Cixin is one of China's most internationally acclaimed science fiction writers. Born in Shanxi province in China, the author has written numerous works of science fiction, including The Three-Body Problem Trilogy. Considered as Liu's most famous masterpiece, two different television series: one created by David Benioff, D. B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo under Netflix (2024), and another by Yang Lei distributed through Tencent Video (2023), were developed from the books.

The trilogy, made up of "The Three-Body Problem” (published in 2017), “The Dark Forest,” and “Death’s End” (both published in 2018), is set on planet Earth (specifically in China) and describes how human beings come into contact with an alien society that will change the fate of the entire world. Human beings discover that the laws of physics no longer apply and begin to lose faith in science and humanity as a whole.

Beyond Narcissism: What Science Fiction Can Offer Literature

“We could say that mainstream literature describes a world created by God, whereas science fiction takes on the role of God, creating worlds and then describing them (Liu, 2013).” 

Liu Cixin's discussion of literature in “Beyond Narcissism: What Science Fiction Can Offer Literature” (2013) is extremely provocative and innovative. In this essay, he argues that literature, which he calls “mainstream” has a peculiar characteristic: being “anthropologically narcissistic.” It is anthropocentric in that it always places the human being at the centre of the narrative and “the Earth is still at the centre of the universe" (Liu, 2013). Science fiction, on the other hand, is the instrument through which it becomes possible to break out of this narcissistic form; it is the telescope (or microscope) that allows one to widen one's gaze and encounter the cosmos. Compared to the 20th-century Chinese literary debate on how far literature should reflect reality, the author states that science fiction is the only literary genre that holds reality. 

While literature, maintaining an unchanged superstructure, focuses on the detail and specifics of characters, science fiction is on another level, building universes based on scientific laws that are closely related to scientific reality. “Science fiction stories are a bridge to beauty (science), freeing it from formulas and allowing everyone to see (Liu, 2013).” It is therefore through what the author calls “macro-details” that science fiction simultaneously achieves the goal of “educating the people” and “popularising science,” allowing humans to break out of a narrow anthropocentric and therefore narcissistic vision. The author underlines how science fiction, which has often been relegated to the genre of children’s literature, should assume a more prominent role in the literary field. Referring to science fiction author Arthur Clarke's epigraph “He never grew up, but he never stopped growing either,” Liu Cixin emphasises the author’s constant literary evolution, but underlining ironically that a science fiction author never grows up and therefore continues to produce literary works for “children.” However, is it not through the eyes of children that the world can be observed from a new and different perspective?

The author's three phases

Liu Cixin divides his literary productions into three phases: “pure science fiction,” “human-environment relationship,” and “social experimentation.” The first phase is “pure science fiction,” which according to the author is closer to “hard science fiction” and maintains a specific focus on astrophysical laws and the close relationship between science and science fiction. In the second phase, the author recognises the importance of the human being in relation to nature and the environment. This is the case in the first book of the trilogy “The Three-Body Problem,” in which the writer compares two worlds: the terrestrial one, set in a future that does not deviate from the contemporary, and that of the “Trisolarians” — which lives on a planet very far away from planet Earth, in a constant struggle for survival and in search of a new galaxy to inhabit. Around their world, Trisolaris, three suns appear cyclically, completely destroying all life on it. A curious fact about these inhabitants is that they communicate through telepathy, so they cannot conceive the concept of “lie.” The author's third phase is the so-called “social experimentation” phase in which Liu Cixin describes an extreme situation that forces all living beings to struggle for survival. This is the case in the second book and third book of the trilogy, in which the inhabitants of the Earth are faced with the possibility of being invaded by Trisolaris and where alien wars start. The author uses this strategy to show how, in the face of such events, all ethical and moral values are lost: “Things that had previously always been accepted as profoundly inviolable can collapse at the first cosmic breath (Liu, 2013).”

Colonialism and the science fiction genre

According to Thieret (2015), an analysis of new works of Chinese science fiction should take into consideration the theoretical discussions of genre or mode, science fiction as a global phenomenon, and the particularities of its Chinese manifestations. The concept of subalternity in the genre was later discussed by Isaacson (2017), who identified that China was dependent on Western discoveries and that the country had to look to the West for matters of technological and scientific development. Although science fiction in China developed from translations of Western authors such as Jules Verne, nevertheless, this literary genre has the opportunity to claim its role outside the Western imperialist dynamic. According to Isaacson (2017), the paradox lies precisely in this: “In order to survive as a nation, China would have had to abandon the epistemological system that defines it; or in other words, in order to defend itself against Western aggressors, China would have had to adopt a substantial portion of the Western view [...] Western science, like science fiction, was rightly regarded as a part of the knowledge it had helped to produce and was produced by Orientalist discourse (Isaacson, 2017).” 

Although science fiction in China developed from translations of Western authors such as Jules Verne, nevertheless, this literary genre has the opportunity to claim its role outside the Western imperialist dynamic.

Developed by anthropologist Edward Said, the “Orientalist discourse” emanated from European and American colonialism and constructed the concept of the Orient, which sees all Oriental countries as one static and fixed reality on the one hand, exotic and magical on the other. Said emphasises how this discourse mainly serves to legitimise Western imperialism in the economic and, above all, cultural spheres. Based on this analysis, why not use science fiction, a genre that was born in the West, as a means through which to combat Orientalist discourse and offer a new vision of China?

Even Liu Cixin, despite being influenced by numerous Western science fiction authors such as Arthur Clarke and Isaac Asimov, claims the importance of China in relation to the United States of America. Emblematic is, for instance, the fact that humans speak a language that is a “mix” of English and Chinese:

"She understood him, yes, but while hearing him speaking, she had to reconsider one point. In the last few days, he had noticed heavy linguistic changes in modern Chinese, which had led him to think that the West exerted a real cultural dominance in that future. Now, however, he was forced to change his mind, because Jonathan's English was riddled with Chinese terms; for example, ‘Project Impenetrable’, he said that in Chinese. From this, he deduced that English, once the most widely used idiom in society, and Chinese, spoken by the most numerous people on Earth, had amalgamated in a balanced way, resulting in the most influential language in the world (Liu, 2018)."

“The most influential language in the world” is thus a hybrid language composed of English and Chinese words. The “cultural power” is thus divided between the two superpowers; in Liu Cixin's future, the Chinese nation dominates the other cultures along with the American nation. However, one should not reduce Liu Cixin’s work to a mere reclaim of China's importance in the economic and cultural spheres, as opposed to the subalternity produced by Orientalist discourse. On the contrary, the science fiction writer, seems to overcome the West-East dichotomy in his trilogy. For instance, in “The Three-Body Problem” he juxtaposes, within a video game simulating the reality of Trisolaris, Chinese mythological figures such as Fuxi and Mozi, with figures of European scientists such as Copernicus and Newton. Moreover, he mentions within the trilogy both Chinese authors such as Qian Zhongshu and American science fiction writers such as Isaac Asimov and Arthur Clarke. With regard to the latter, Liu Cixin has a genuine admiration to the extent that he even quotes the author's masterpiece "2001: A Space Odyssey": 

"More than two centuries earlier, in the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke had described a black monolith left on the moon by an advanced alien civilisation. Experts had measured its dimensions using traditional methods and discovered a ratio of 1:4:9. When the calculations were repeated with the world's most sophisticated precision instruments, the ratio remained unchanged, without error. Clarke described it as a “passive but almost arrogant display of geometrical perfection.” Now, humanity was dealing with an even more arrogant display of power (Liu, 2018)."

In the second book, “The Dark Forest," the contact between human civilization and the Trisolarians does not take place directly but through the so-called “drop,” an indestructible drop-shaped structure whose surface appears as a polished mirror reflecting everything outside it. This “drop” is an even more arrogant display of power than the famous monolith in “A Space Odyssey,” which is so beautiful that it is considered a gift from the Trisolaris civilization to planet Earth.

Between Utopia and Dystopia

The subdivision of Liu Cixin's trilogy into three historically and geographically different landscapes is also very intriguing. The first book is set in China during the Cultural Revolution, the second describes the future of Earth, and the third depicts an even more distant future, recounting in a dystopian key the abandonment of Earth and emigration to interstellar space. Extremely linked to the politics of a transforming China, science fiction today reinforces and complicates the utopian vision of a new and powerful China: it combines nationalism with utopia/dystopia, mixes social criticism with a deep awareness of China for more reform, and inserts political awareness into scientific discourses about the power of technology and the technologies of power.

Extremely linked to the politics of a transforming China, science fiction today reinforces and complicates the utopian vision of a new and powerful China: it combines nationalism with utopia/dystopia, mixes social criticism with a deep awareness of China for more reform, and inserts political awareness into scientific discourses about the power of technology and the technologies of power.

One could say that the protagonist Ye Wenjie in “The Three-Body Problem” takes a diametrically opposite path to the character of Lin Daojing in “Song of Youth,” the famous 20th-century Maoist novel written by Yang Mo (1914-1995). While the latter follows a path that will lead her to total adherence to the Maoist party, Ye Wenjie, after the assassination of her father by the Red Guards, takes on a misanthropic outlook. Liu Cixin shows the extreme poverty caused by the Cultural Revolution: 

"The slender woman exhaled a sigh, her eyes filled with tears. ‘Then we went back to the city, but what difference does it make? We are still poor. The young people who have returned from the countryside do not lead a good life. We can't even find the most menial jobs. No work, no money, no future. We have nothing.’ Ye didn't know what to say. The one with the amputated limb resumed speaking. ‘Recently a movie called Maple came out, I don't know if you've seen it. At the end, an adult and a child stand in front of the grave of a Red Guard who died during the civil wars between factions. The little boy asks the man: ‘are they heroes?’ And the man replies no. ‘Are they enemies, then?’ the child continues. The answer is still no. So, the little one asks: ‘and what are they?’ The adult replies: ‘History.’ ‘Do you understand?’ The robust woman concisely waved an arm in Ye's direction. History! History! It's a new era now. Who will remember us? Who will think of us? You? There will be no one to remember all this, no one (Liu, 2017)!"

The author focuses on the concept of  “history” and harshly criticises the lack of awareness of the events that took place during the Cultural Revolution, caused by Communist Party censorship. Many of the events and victims of the Revolution remained in oblivion, as did Ye Wenjie's father, who died anonymously. Within “The Three-Body Problem," the figure of the protagonist clearly appears as a political dissident. A strong criticism of censorship is evident in this novel, probably also in reference to science fiction itself as a literary genre that came under severe attack at the time. As science fiction author Han Song explains, “During the chaotic and violent Cultural Revolution (1966-76) [...] science fiction authors were silenced because the genre was seen as something from the corrupt Western culture that would lead down the wrong path.” The author also adds that these authors may put the country in "hypothetical extreme situations" to observe how people might react to radical changes and puts China to the test that no mainstream writer could.

This is exactly what is told under "The Dark Forest," in which human beings are confronted with extreme situations, such as the Impenetrable Project and the resolution of the Fermi Paradox. The Impenetrable Project stems from the need to defend mankind from a possible Trisolarian attack. It is an international strategic plan in which four chosen individuals, having access to an unlimited monetary fund, have a legal immunity that allows them to research in any field and act in any way. The Trisolarians communicate through telepathy, so creating strategic plans is the only way to fight Trisolaris. The Impenetrable Project induces the four subjects to develop proposals that go beyond human laws and which deviate from any ethical principle. For example, Bill Hines, one of the impenetrable, proposes the “mental seal.” People who voluntarily submit to this experiment will be convinced for the rest of their existence of victory in the battle against Trisolarians. This project questions free will; is it legitimate to subject men to a treatment that deprives them of the capacity for analysis of reality and which determines a priori an artificial thought, transcending the ability to individual judgement? In many ways, this project recalls the “Amanduo” computer, featured in Han Song's science fiction book "2066: Red Star Over America.” Like Liu Cixin, Han Song also describes a future reality where not only does China become a surpassing economic power of the United States of America but “Amanduo” would operate as an artificial server that “determines what the people perceive, think, and do (Song, 2013)” so as to lead them to happiness, which is clearly fictitious. 

This project questions free will; is it legitimate to subject men to a treatment that deprives them of the capacity for analysis of reality and which determines a priori an artificial thought, transcending the ability to individual judgement?

In both authors, this denial of freedom of thought could be traced back to the spread of Maoist thought and the harsh repressive system implemented during the Cultural Revolution. However, Han Song is an author who focuses more directly on political topics compared to Liu Cixin. According to some literary critics, Liu Cixin differs from other authors of contemporary Chinese science fiction since he does not seem to convey a political message, as much as a message of trust in science. Indeed, he places scientific progress above any other political and social element: “Can humanity survive in a universe that obeys only the inhuman laws of the hard science? (Song, 2013)” Liu Cixin's answer, as argued by Song Mingwei, seems to be very pessimistic. However, it is interesting to focus on the position of the scholar Hua Li regarding Liu Cixin. Li (2015) in fact claims that Liu “has skillfully inserted socio-political criticism into apparently numerous stories focused on science.” Liu indeed places every political reference outside planet Earth, so as to never take sides openly. He seems to use the technique, defined by Darko Suvin as "cognitive estrangement.” In the creation of a world projected into the future and therefore fictitious, the reader is led to a reading that "alienates him from reality (Thieret, 2015).” Through "cognitive estrangement," the authors of science fiction can also expose themselves politically, as the world they describe is situated within the possible, outside of contemporary reality. According to Darko Suvin, science fiction would neither be an escape from reality nor a simple description of the present, but rather a “realistic unreality (Cigarini, 2018).”

Through "cognitive estrangement," the authors of science fiction can also expose themselves politically, as the world they describe is situated within the possible, outside of contemporary reality.

As underlined by the Chinese title of the second book of the trilogy with an evident reference to Dante's comedy, the world is a “dark forest” where it is better to hide than to reveal yourself. In fact, the second book focuses on the Paradox of Fermi, whose hypothesis is the following: if the universe is so vast and has infinite other solar systems, how is it possible that no extraterrestrial society has ever come into contact with human beings? The answer given by Liu Cixin is that the cosmos itself is a “dark forest.” If an extraterrestrial entity attempted to come into contact with planet Earth, it would reveal the coordinates of its location and its presence to other hypothetical forms of life, generating an extremely high risk of invasion by other planets. On one hand, this response to the paradox can be interpreted philosophically, revealing the author's "cosmic pessimism" towards not only humanity but the universe. On the other hand, this dystopian vision could perhaps refer to those traits of Chinese history in which the imposition of thought was so profound that it made the universe seem like one forest within which it would have been better to hide rather than to show.

Conclusion

The three phases into which Liu Cixin divides his literary productions within his essay can be traced back to the different levels at which the analysis of the trilogy. In the "hard science fiction" phase, it is evident how Liu Cixin applies the Maoist perspective using literature as a tool to "educate the people." His “hard science fiction” also indicates a strong belief in the pedagogical nature of science fiction. Indeed, he claims the role of science fiction as the literary genre that most draws on reality.

The second phase is closely related to his discourse on colonialism: the human being is visualised in relation to the surrounding environment just as China stands with the rest of the world. With Isaacson's thoughts on the role of Chinese science fiction in the broader global discussion, it is fundamental to understand some aspects of the trilogy. On one hand, Liu seems to want to reaffirm China's ability to establish itself as a world power equal to other great nations, especially in the technological and scientific fields. On the other hand, the author seems to overcome the West-East dichotomy, uniting aspects of Western culture with others, specifically Chinese culture.

The third phase of social experimentation focuses on the dystopian aspect of the trilogy. The dystopia is a literary genre that highly conveys political discourse and the drastic choice of the protagonist is dictated by a profound distrust of humanity, resulting from the Cultural Revolution. In the second and third books, humanity finds itself faced with extreme situations, in which the fragility of ethical values ​​is shown. While some literary critics argue that Liu Cixin places science and the power of technology above all human principles, others believe that Liu’s narrative provided discourses of nature politics hidden by a scientific veil. Through “cognitive estrangement,” works of science fiction such as The Three-Body Problem Trilogy are able to look backwards through the reworking of a problematic past. 

In addition to the topics covered in this essay, a further analytical study could be envisaged in translation studies. Comparing the original version of the text with the English translations by Ken Liu and Joel Martinsen would be interesting to evaluate the extent by which translation strategies have been capable of creating a bridge between Chinese culture and global science fiction. Furthermore, a comparison between the two different television series developed from Liu's masterpiece, through the lens of cultural studies, would serve as an interesting review for analysing the self-representation of Chinese people and the way they are depicted by American citizens. 

This article represents the views of contributors to STEAR's online digital publication, and not those of STEAR, which takes no institutional positions.

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