Resenhas - The Three-Body Problem

Lary 28/03/2024

3 Body Problem
Uma instigante narrativa que mistura investigação e ficção científica de forma única, com diversos personagens memoráveis.

mrnakashima 27/03/2024

Just read it!
A long post to talk about the best science fiction work I've ever read. And it's certainly among the best things I've ever read, period.

It's a hard sci-fi trilogy called "Remembrance of Earth's Past," but, like "The Chronicles of Ice and Fire" ?? "Game of Thrones," it's better known by the title of the first book, "The Three-Body Problem." I read the English translation because it was assisted by the author. I'm not sure if the Brazilian version is translated directly from Chinese or is a translation of the translation.

If my excitement + science fiction is enough for you, buy the books and stop reading here. If you want to know what it's about, I'll make a short synopsis/review with the general context and minimal spoilers, because it's very hard to attract someone to reading without giving anything away. I'll try not to go beyond what's described in the book's synopsis on Amazon. If you've already read it and want to talk about it, please make sure to clearly mark spoilers in the comments.

Like:

???SPOILERS???

The warning is important because the trilogy will be turned into a Netflix series next year, produced by Benioff and Weiss, the guys from Game of Thrones, and it's one of the platform's main bets. As we know, the duo did very well with George R. R. Martin's series while there was written material, so it promises a lot. It will hardly be possible to translate all the material to TV, so, if you want to enjoy it before it becomes a trend, now is the time.

Blatant appeal to authority: among the fans of the series are, besides me, GRRM, Adam Savage, and Obama. It also won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015, the oldest award for science fiction works. Let's go:

The trilogy was written by Liu Cixin, considered the greatest science fiction author in China. He's the same author of the terrible movie "The Wandering Earth," which I couldn't even finish watching. Perhaps it's a matter of scripting, production, and direction (in short, everything), because it's hard to believe that the two things came from the same mind judging by the cinematic product.

The fact that the books were written by a Chinese author adds an extra layer of originality, from the Western point of view. Most of the characters are Chinese, and I confess I had a bit of difficulty remembering the names of the characters while reading. I ended up printing the list provided at the beginning of the books to mitigate the issue. Anyway, the Chinese perspective on the cultural issues involved makes the story even more alien.

Here's my synopsis:

The story begins during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It's a time of great oppression, and the new government tries to impose a communist vision on its population in all aspects of life, including science. Physics teachers are prevented from teaching fundamental things by referring to them by their correct names and terms. Einstein is seen as an agent of American imperialism, so teaching the Theory of Relativity is considered a subversive act and, therefore, censored.

Years later, the US starts the SETI project, which seeks to identify transmissions from extraterrestrial civilizations - the book dialogues, up to a certain point, with "Contact" by Carl Sagan, another of my favorites. By the way, a good starting point: imagine what "Contact" would be like if Ellie (who was played by Jodie Foster in the movie) instead of being raised in a democracy had grown up during the establishment of a very violent dictatorship.

The Chinese government, fearing being left behind, launches a similar project. Eventually, the US starts METI, which aims to send messages into space, and China follows suit. The discussion about what kind of message to send is very interesting and involves the conflict of worldview of the Cold War.

The project doesn't lead to much for many years until, one night, a certain Chinese scientist receives a message clearly produced by a technological civilization. But, instead of a business card, the content is a warning: "We have received your message. You're lucky because I am a pacifist, but my civilization is not. If you respond to this message, we will know not only the direction from where the message comes, but also the distance. DO NOT RESPOND!" I'm only telling you that we respond because the synopsis already says we will be invaded, but it will take more than 400 years.

Going back to the comparison with "Contact": the civilization that responded in that book wanted to include us in the galactic society. In this book, they want to eliminate us from the universe.

And the story goes from there and covers (mainly) several centuries of history. And, eventually, billions of years.

The most important thing about the book is the fact that the author presents a solution to the Fermi paradox, possibly the best one, in a way that seems to have philosophical-scientific relevance. I'll briefly explain what the paradox is about:

In 1961, Frank Drake proposed an equation to estimate the number of technological civilizations in the Milky Way. It's a simple probabilistic argument: multiply the number of stars in the galaxy by the fraction of those stars that have planets; by the fraction of those planets that would be viable for the emergence of life; by the fraction that would actually develop life; by the fraction of those planets that would develop intelligent life; by the fraction of those that would develop civilizations capable of communicating across space and by the lifespan of those civilizations.

The result predicted a number of up to 100 million technological civilizations in the galaxy. Detail: we hadn't discovered a single exoplanet at that time and estimated then that maybe 1 in every 1 million stars had planets. With the advancement of detection methods, we know today that the occurrence of planets is very common and, according to the most current estimates, at least 1 in every 6 stars have planets. It's estimated that 17% of stars have Earth-sized planets (at least 17 billion in our galaxy). Including gas giants in distant orbits, the number could reach 70 billion planets. As we also know that life on Earth is made of the most common elements of the universe and emerged as soon as environmental conditions allowed, less than 1 billion years after the planet's formation, it's assumed that life can't be such a rare event. No one with a minimum of scientific knowledge can reasonably assume that life emerged ONLY on Earth. Applying the most current data to Drake's equation, the number of technological civilizations in the Milky Way could be in the billions.

The Fermi paradox is the following: "if technological civilizations are so common in the galaxy, where is everybody?" There are a number of possible answers to this question. The most popular to date are 1) the hypothesis of the great filters, which says that technological civilizations tend to reach a point at which self-destruction is inevitable (environmental disasters, nuclear wars, etc.), and 2) that even with a high number of civilizations, the average distance between them is so great that it would never be crossed, either because it wouldn't be economically viable or because it's not possible to travel at speeds high enough to enable galactic colonization - the Milky Way is 100,000 light-years in diameter. There are other possible solutions, but none of them appeal to me much. Of those I mentioned, the first seems the least likely because it's hard to imagine that among billions, no civilization would have been able to avoid disasters or wars. The second because even traveling at speeds much lower than light (but much higher than what we achieve today with our fuel tubes) a lot could be done. It's estimated that at 1% of the speed of light it would be possible to colonize the Milky Way in 100 million years - a relatively short period of time for a universe that's 13.8 billion years old.

Liu Cixin's trilogy proposes a solution that seems to me the best we've thought of so far, and I won't tell it now. It's good because it's natural, elegant, Darwinian, and consistent with what we already know about the dynamics of life - things like "the selfish gene," for example. This solution stems from just two axioms and two principles established by the author, through one of the characters in the books who inaugurates a field of study called "cosmic sociology."

Given these premises, the book can be summarized as follows: what would happen if we discovered the existence of another civilization AND also that this civilization is hostile and much more advanced than us?

Other very intriguing questions raised by the work:

Can our observations of the universe, considering the short scientific lifespan of humanity, be extrapolated to the entire existence of the universe?

Would a universe in which life is common present itself to an observer in the same way as a universe devoid of life would?

The genre might be "hard sci-fi horror." It's scary, very scary...and a real existential fear because, if the premises I mentioned above are correct, we have plenty of reasons to live in fear. And perhaps what happens in the story is inevitable unless we take very specific care (which requires not just a huge technological leap, but also a cultural-social change that is not on the horizon.

This book disrupted my life. It's almost 1500 pages: 400 in the first book, 500 in the second, and 600 in the third. The first book is fantastic and ends at a point where the story is just beginning. The second is better than the first and has such a good, so satisfying ending that if it ended there, it would already be among the best things I've ever read. It leaves you wondering why there is a third book, even larger...and then comes a blow.

It disrupted me because I couldn't stop reading this thing and altered my routine to read. I finished it in about 15 days. For some supernatural reason, at 2:30 AM, there was always something that prevented me from stopping. And it also disrupted me because, wow, the thing is too gloomy!

The story, as I said, can be classified as hard sci-fi: it's scientifically accurate - almost all the time. For those who don't have a PhD in Physics, like Carlos Bonin, it's not bothersome. From what we discussed, there are few things that simply don't make sense according to what we know. The author also proposes things that we have no way of knowing whether they will be possible (and therefore plausible) and does so brilliantly. All the concepts used are well explained with metaphors, analogies, and allegories... Problems and solutions are created from concepts such as higher dimensions, nanotechnologies, Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, etc.

It's fascinating, I swear to you!

I take this opportunity to thank my friends Vítor Queijo and Carlos Bonin for the tip. I've already talked with the latter about the books; I await Vítor here to discuss with a drink. Cheese and wines...ha! ?

Mariana 03/12/2023

A história é muito bem construída e flui com muita naturalidade, as reflexões de cunho mais filosófico enriquecem muito os personagens e te convidam a pensar também. A pluralidade de narradores e linhas temporais deixam a história dinâmica e, por mais inacreditável que isso seja, não te deixa confuso, já que a escrita é maravilhosa: clara e precisa, mas de forma alguma simplista.

Mariana 03/12/2023

A história é muito bem construída e flui com muita naturalidade, as reflexões de cunho mais filosófico enriquecem muito os personagens e te convidam a pensar também. A pluralidade de narradores e linhas temporais deixam a história dinâmica e, por mais inacreditável que isso seja, não te deixa confuso, já que a escrita é maravilhosa: clara e precisa, mas de forma alguma simplista.

Yuri van Dorp 21/07/2023

Estou sentindo só o vazio depois de terminar esse livro, da maneira que eu já imaginava que iria acontecer.
Já vi que a sequência é ainda melhor e agora vou esperar voltar das férias pra continuar a série.

Whoama 24/03/2023

Meh
Fiquei bem decepcionada com esse livro. Como uma boa amante de sci-fi, a premissa me chamou bastante atenção, a parte científica é interessante (meio massa te as vezes), mas quando introduziu aquele "jogo" no meio eu achei bem chato. O mistério inicial foi intrigante, mas não conseguiu me manter tão interessada. Demorei horrores pra terminar ele, e sendo sincera, minha motivação para continar após os 60% foi para marcar ele como lido, porque já tinha investido muito tempo para colocar como abandonado kkkkk e também queria ver se ia melhorar no final, mas ficou na mesma.

MaurAcio.Garrido 03/08/2022

O problema de quem lê..
Já te agarra no início...
Eu só tinha que largar o livro por causa do cansaço do dia-a-dia corrido. Tenho que acordar cedo...

Vale a leitura!

Já me organizei pro ano que vem ler a segunda parte!

Carlos.Bonin 12/04/2022

A cosmic horror
I guess this is the most satisfying science-fiction book I've read since Forward's Dragon Egg. It's beautiful because we can perceive the Chinese culture in the translation. It's also hard- syfy cosmic horror. It is written by an engineer, and it shows. But even so, it is satisfying.

Anderson 26/12/2021

Ficção científica de ideias
Uma das mais densas e instigantes obras de ficção científica dos últimos tempos. Gosto da maneira como mistura história, política, física e mudança climática. Aliás, nesse último aspecto não sei se concordo com alguns pontos de vista apresentados, mas não dá pra negar que o livro faz pensar bastante.

Lhyz 10/05/2021

"In the face of madness, rationality was powerless."
Esse livro é diferente de tudo que eu já li, não só por ser ficção científica (gênero que ainda leio pouco), ele é escrito por um autor chinês renomado. Finalmente me deparei com um livro que não seja uma visão ocidental dos fatos.

Uma das maiores críticas à essa obra é a construção de personagens e, na verdade, eu NÃO acho que o autor é ausente de habilidades para tal, mas apenas - por não seguir modelos ocidentais de criação de personagens - difere. Aqui, para mim, os personagens são apenas olhos e um "corpo" para você, leitor, viver esse história complexa.

Trabalhar com alienígenas parace algo óbvio, mas não aqui. Como o autor construiu relação e encontro dos humanos com os trisolarians foi muito inusitada.
Esse livro tem muitas camadas e reflexões sobre a humanidade.

Vale a pena.

Andre 18/11/2020

Eu gostei bastante desse livro, uma ficção científica de primeira e diferente. Quase foi cinco estrelas, só não foi por umas coisinhas que eu não gosto, do tipo acontecer coisas meio forçadas pra história andar. Vale muito a pena.

JuBarros_ 13/10/2020

Uma história intrigante
Eu gostei muito desse livro, mas entendo que não é para todo mundo. Em vários momentos ele me lembrou O Enigma de Andrômeda por envolver diversos conceitos científicos na trama, se você não gosta desse estilo de história, este livro provavelmente não é pra você. Ele é plot driven, os personagens não são unidimensionais, mas não são extremamente desenvolvidos.

Esse livro levanta diversos questionamentos sobre como o primeiro contato com uma civilização extraterrestre seria, sobre como isso afetaria a própria natureza da humanidade. Muitas dessas questões nunca tinham passado pela minha mente, o que fez a leitura ainda mais interessante. A história é fascinante e me deixou extremamente animada para os próximos livros da trilogia.

CisoS 15/12/2019

Ups and downs
O 1º capítulo, sobre a revolução cultural, começa difícil e acaba sendo ótimo, o melhor do livro. Depois disso ele vira realme ficção científica, com altos e baixos.
A cena num mundo *medieval* em que um computador é criado com bandeiras no lugar de bits e pessoas organizadas como circuitos lógicos e genial.
Tri-solaris é muito exótico para se conectar, boas ideias, mas...
Fico curioso pelos próximos livros, mas não sei se estou disposto a lê-los.

Ninguem 28/08/2016

O problema e problemas
O Liu Cixin consegue utilizar um dos problemas em aberto no campo da matemática para criar uma narrativa empolgante: O problema dos três corpos. O autor nos prestigia com a visão de como seria viver num sistema planetário onde há não um sol, mas três deles.

E a surpresa não para por aí. Com o pano de fundo da revolução cultural chinesa, a expansão do desmatamento e alguns fatos da guerra fria é elaborado uma história conectada com a realidade, que também nos conta uma não ficção. Ao contrário do que o posfácio diz, o escritor diz muito sobre a nossa realidade, e sem fazer um julgamento do certo e do errado, nos deixa a vontade para avaliarmos as questões levantadas, desde a esquizofrenia do politicamente correto (esta expressão surgiu na China maoista com todo o medo do que é certo e errado para o partido - o revolucionário em oposição ao reacionário), desprezo pela conservação ambiental, até os movimentos extremistas contra o avança tecnológico.

Um livro que certamente vale a leitura, mesmo que o seu forte não seja ficção científica.