Cixin
Liu is a multi-award winning science fiction whose works are now available in
English translation. This is the first
in a planned trilogy. The novel begins
during the time of China’s Cultural Revolution.
Academics are being purged and forced to undergo Communist
indoctrination. One area remains
untouched, that of science as China is planning a project to contact aliens
from outer space. Ye Wenjie had watched
her scientist father being beaten to death; yet by a strange series of
circumstances, she is chosen to be part of this new team to reach outer
space. This is truly hard science
fiction. Even though the science of
astrophysics is hard to follow, one can skip some of the scientific
descriptions and still get the gist of the plots herein. At first the problems with the project are
that Wenjie and her colleagues are studying scientific theory, they discover
that eventually all past theories become negated by the new ones. Physics, Biology and Computer Science are
omitted after their use has become negated by technology leaps.
The
Red Coast Project is highly secure with a classified rating. Wang Miao has been invited to be part of the
project even though his field of nanotechnology is totally unrelated to this
problem. Wang has a problem getting
others to answer his questions. What he
learns is mostly from what originally was a virtual reality game called Three
Body which involves discovering and eventually the renunciation of these same
theories by Newton, Von Neumann, the First Zhou Emperor, Syzygy, etc.
Suddenly,
the Three Body game is no longer a game but a connection with Extraterrestrial
beings, the Trisolaran Fleet. Instead of
being excited, the scientists become divided in factions. The proverbial problem is after the
discovery, what are these beings like and can Chinese plans fuse with the
Trisolaran beings? Will the latter
reform human civilization, the goal being the elimination of all human madness
and evil? Will the Earth be
destroyed? Yours to be discovered!
The
author includes a postscript in which he describes how his interest in science
and scientific theory developed which is clear and interesting to follow.
All
in all, this is a difficult text to read but contains ideas about science and
scientists and humanity that is sure to intrigue fans of hard core science
fiction. It certainly will provoke much
dialogue about its theories, plots and plans for future novels in the
series!
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