History Literature / ThreeBodyProblem

[[quoteright:230:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/3d9bbdb6574c184fda2836e01d942dd1.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:230:Engage in physics at your own risk.]]

''The Three Body Problem'' (三体) is a science fiction novel by Chinese author Liu Cixin. First serialized in 2006, it was published as a novel in 2008, and quickly became one of the most popular science fiction novels in China. An English translation by Ken Liu was published in 2014 and also became a breakout success, garnering a [[UsefulNotes/NebulaAward Nebula]] nomination in 2014 and winning the 2015 Best Novel [[HugoAward Hugo]]. There are two sequels, ''The Dark Forest'' (黑暗森林) and ''Death's End'' (死神永生), collectively known as the ''Remembrance of Earth's Past'' (地球往事) trilogy. The second book has been translated and published in 2015, and the third translation has been published in 2016.

In modern day China, Wang Miao is facing a problem: all the foremost physicists in his speciality, nanomaterials, are committing suicide, leaving behind extremely cryptic suicide notes. He's assigned to join a mysterious secret society that may have some answers, but keeps getting distracted by a revolutionary new MMORPG called "Three Body"... and also by the mysterious numbers that appear only in his vision, counting down to a date about fifty days away.

Many years into the past, Ye Wenjie is having a problem: though a brilliant physicist, she was branded a political dissident back during the Cultural Revolution, and was exiled to a lonely military station called Red Coast. However, Red Coast harbors goals far beyond the scopes of the earth, and Ye's personal struggles will have lasting impacts on the fate of the whole world...

See also ''Literature/BallLightning'', a pseudo-prequel to the series also written by Liu Cixin.

!!Tropes

* AliensAreBastards: The Trisolarans' history bred everything out of their culture except the desperate need to survive at all costs... though there seem to be individual exceptions.
** By the third book, [[spoiler: they have mastered human deception by feeding humans false science to hamper humanity's technological boom, embracing their culture only to deceive and enslave them later, and refusing to give them the means to escape dark forest strike.]]
* AlienInvasion: Already launched, and due in about 450 years.
** [[spoiler: They have mastered lightspeed travel in the third book and can reach Earth in a few years, but invasion is narrowly averted by the dark forest broadcast.]]
* AndYouThoughtItWasAGame: "Three Body" is a covert recruitment tool for the ETO.
* ApocalypseHow: [[spoiler: The end of (most) life on earth is narrowly averted when the Trisolarans call off their invasion just in time for humanity not to have to eat itself. Then later played straight on a 'Total Extinction' scale when the Solar System is converted to two dimensions. The universe itself is implied to be on the way to a universal, metaphysical annihilation if galactic warfare is allowed to continue.]]
* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: Inverted. [[spoiler: Due to dimensional warfare, the universe will keep being reduced to lower dimensions. So higher civilizations must be able to project themselves to lower dimensions to survive.]]
* BizarreAlienBiology: Downplayed; the narrative is careful to say that no one knows what Trisolarans look like, only that they have the unusual ability to enter a state of suspended animation at will. And readers still know nothing beyond that after reading the following two books.
* BoringButPractical: Photoids, projectiles used to carry out dark forest strikes. It's very destructive and also very cheap and boring because it's just a bullet thrown at (near-)lightspeed, which gives it enough power to tear apart a star.
** Not that cheap as readers calculated that accelerating one Photoid will consume energy that equals the output of a star.
* ButForMeItWasTuesday: [[spoiler: Singer's role in the Solar System's destruction,]] reinforcing the hypothesis that most dark forest strikes are economical and mundane.
* CosmicHorrorStory: The book has strong parallels with the cosmic horror genre by putting humans in a universe where everyone is an enemy, and every enemy is magnitudes upon magnitudes more powerful than they could ever become.
* CrapsackWorld: Trisolaris, with its extremely unpredictable environment. The second and third book reveal that the whole universe is also this.
* CurbStompBattle: In order to make a statement, Earth deploys hundreds of powerful warships to engage the first small automated Trisolaran probe which enters our Solar System. [[spoiler: Unfortunately for Earth, the probe easily destroys the entire fleet in a matter of minutes while taking no damage; the only Earth ships that survive were nowhere near there.]]
* CuteAndPsycho: [[spoiler: Sophon]] by the third book, depending on the situation.
* FlatWorld: [[spoiler: The Solar System by the third book, reduced to 2D (which kills everyone in it). Also the eventual fate of the universe due to dimensional warfare.]]
* GoodIsNotNice: [[spoiler: Officer "Big" Shi.]]
* GoodIsImpotent: The Resetters, [[spoiler: they seek to return the universe to its original state before being damaged by the endless warfare. They broadcast a message in every possible language encouraging people to return mass from their pocket universes to the greater universe to avoid its mass going below some lower threshold that will prevent it from collapsing into a new singularity. Whether they succeed is left open.]]
* GoodWithNumbers: Wei Cheng is a child genius and mathematics who has special talent in dealing with numbers, which helps him to solve the threebody problem later.
* TheGreatPoliticsMessUp: ''The Dark Forest'', originally published in 2008, has a meeting TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture between a former American secretary of defense and an aged Islamic fundamentalist hiding out in Afghanistan who is clearly intended to be — but not named as — Osama bin Laden. The English translation of the book didn't appear until 2015, meaning that the mess-up was baked into it from the start.
* HumansNeedAliens: Both main ETO factions, for different reasons. [[spoiler: One believes humanity can't be trusted to rule itself, and should be subservient to Trisolarian rulers; the other faction believes that humans have mismanaged the planet we should be lucky to have ''and should be annihilated''.]]
* InscrutableAliens: The basis of Dark Forest theory. [[spoiler: All civilizations in the universe destroy all other civilizations they meet because they can't establish trust. Most likely due to communication difficulty because of the extreme distance, completely different physiology, or maybe it's just not economical to deal with cultural differences and subsequent wars arising from it. The Trisolarans are unique in this regard because their home world is so inhospitable they need a new home so they don't destroy the Earth outright.]]
* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: And disposable too due to the massive time span of the series.
* MagicalComputer: The sophons, SufficientlyAdvanced computers packed into a space the size of a proton.
* MakeAnExampleOfThem: Apparently a key part of Trisolarian culture, though the humans go there too.
* ModernStasis: The sophons' purpose is to halt human technological development so that they won't be able to halt the Trisolarian invasion when it lands.
* MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness: Easily a 5. The work is on par with anything written by ArthurCClarke or Creator/CarlSagan; fortunately Liu Cixin's writing and Ken Liu's translation make understanding the [[BuffySpeak quantummy things]] manageable.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Wenjie and her counterpart on Trisol.
* NotSoDifferent: Emphasized, at least in the English translation; the passages describing Ye Wenjie's receiving the first message from Trisolaris and her Trisolaran counterpart's first detection of her message are virtually identical.
* PunyEarthlings: The Trisolarians view humans as this.
** [[spoiler: Strangely, averted by Singer from a greater civilization who sees humanity as greater threat despite being not very advanced technologically. He put a little bit of extra measure to destroy the Solar System instead of using the cheapest photoid projectile.]]
* RazorFloss: The nanofilament, as spectacularly demonstrated with the ''Judgment Day''.
* RingWorldPlanet: Many of these types of cities are built behind the shadows of the solar system's gas giants during the Bunker Era to protect against a Dark Forest strike.
* SchmuckBait: An inverted version. The message Wenjie receives from the Trisolaran Red Coast equivalent is a sincere warning; however, she's sufficiently disgusted with humanity that she deliberately ignores the warning anyway.
* ScienceFictionWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: Strongly averted; [[spoiler: the Trisolarians correctly estimate that in the time it will take them to reach Earth, Earth will have far surpassed Trisolarian technology and will easily crush the invasion force... unless stopped by - ]]
** ''The Dark Forest'' theory is based on an assumption that all civilizations suffers cosmic-level energy crysis. Yet they frequently spend star-level energy on Photoid strike and cosmic-level energy on dimensional folding.
* SinisterSurveillance: The sophons.
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: The first book is very cynical, the second book drives it all the way into despair-inducing dog-eat-dog hopelessness on a cosmic scale, and the third book takes the scale up ''even higher'' by turning the book into a hard-science CosmicHorrorStory where all hope in the universe is gone.
* SmallSecludedWorld: [[spoiler:Universe 647, the gift universe from Yun Tianming that Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan spend some time in toward the end of the book.]]
* StarCrossedLovers: Though not exactly lovers, Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming. After learning that it was Yun Tianming that had bought the star for her, she rushes to see him only for her to find that his brain had already been removed. Later, when they talk long distance, they promise to meet each other at that star. Much later, when she hears from 艾 AA that Yun has arrived in her solar system, she tries to reach him [[spoiler:only to be stuck in the rupture of a [[TimeStandsStill death]] [[YearOutsideHourInside line]].]]
* StoryWithinAStory: Yun Tianming's three interconnected fairy tales which he tells to Cheng Xin to covertly pass important information to Earth.
* SubspaceAnsible: Sophons One and Two, on Earth, can communicate instantaneously with Sophons Three and Four, on Trisolaris, via quantum entanglement.
* SummonBiggerFish: [[spoiler:Dark Forest broadcast.]]
* UnspokenPlanGuarantee: Averted. The plan is explained in great detail and then goes off exactly as planned.
** Then invoked quite explicitly in the sequel; the sophons can eavesdrop on any spoken or written communication anywhere in the world. The four people tasked with resisting the Trisolarians have to put their plans into effect without explaining the meaning of their orders or giving instructions which make their plan obvious, or the Trisolarians will simply counter them. [[spoiler: Two of the four fail in relatively short order, the third one have his own goal other than resisting the Trisolarians, but the fourth succeeds.]]
* UnusualUserInterface: "Three Body" only supports interface via haptic (full body force-feedback) suit.
** A computer made out of 30 million people was made in the game, which the Trisolarans actually did for real.
* WeAreStrugglingTogether: Both ETO factions spend considerable resources hunting each other. [[spoiler: The Trisolarians engage in a bit of this as well]].
* YearOutsideHourInside: The area in the wake of a light-speed jump slows down the speed of light considerably, so anyone within will feel time like this. This is how one can signal to the rest of the universe that a planet/solar system is "safe." [[spoiler:Cheng Xin gets trapped in one, spending 12 days in one while millions of years pass outside.]]

''The Three Body Problem'' (三体) is a science fiction novel by Chinese author Liu Cixi. First serialized in 2006, it was published as a novel in 2008, and quickly became one of the most popular science fiction novels in China. An English translation by Ken Liu was published in 2014 and also became a breakout success, garnering a [[UsefulNotes/NebulaAward Nebula]] nomination in 2014 and winning the 2015 Best Novel [[HugoAward Hugo]]. There are two sequels, ''The Dark Forest'' (黑暗森林) and ''Death's End'' (死神永生), collectively known as the ''Remembrance of Earth's Past'' (地球往事) trilogy. The second book has been translated and published in 2015, and the third translation has been published in 2016.

In modern day China, Miao Wang is facing a problem: all the foremost physicists in his speciality, nanomaterials, are committing suicide, leaving behind extremely cryptic suicide notes. He's assigned to join a mysterious secret society that may have some answers, but keeps getting distracted by a revolutionary new MMORPG called "Three Body"... and also by the mysterious numbers that appear only in his vision, counting down to a date about fifty days away.

Many years into the past, Wenjie Ye is having a problem: though a brilliant physicist, she was branded a political dissident back during the Cultural Revolution, and was exiled to a lonely military station called Red Coast. However, Red Coast harbors goals far beyond the scopes of the earth, and Ye's personal struggles will have lasting impacts on the fate of the whole world...

* NotSoDifferent: Emphasized, at least in the English translation; the passages describing Wenjie Ye's receiving the first message from Trisolaris and her Trisolaran counterpart's first detection of her message are virtually identical.

n.b. This article follows Western convention in placing the personal name first, followed by the family name.

''The Three Body Problem'' (三体) is a science fiction novel by Chinese author Cixin Liu. First serialized in 2006, it was published as a novel in 2008, and quickly became one of the most popular science fiction novels in China. An English translation by Ken Liu was published in 2014 and also became a breakout success, garnering a [[UsefulNotes/NebulaAward Nebula]] nomination in 2014 and winning the 2015 Best Novel [[HugoAward Hugo]]. There are two sequels, ''The Dark Forest'' (黑暗森林) and ''Death's End'' (死神永生), collectively known as the ''Remembrance of Earth's Past'' (地球往事) trilogy. The second book has been translated and published in 2015, and the third translation has been published in 2016.

See also ''Literature/BallLightning'', a pseudo-prequel to the series also written by Cixin Liu.

* MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness: Easily a 5. The work is on par with anything written by ArthurCClarke or Creator/CarlSagan; fortunately Cixin Liu's writing and Ken Liu's translation make understanding the [[BuffySpeak quantummy things]] manageable.

* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: The first book is very cynical, the second book drives it all the way into despair-inducing dog-eat-dog hopelessness on a cosmic scale, and the third book takes the scale up ''even higher'' by turning the book into a hard-science CosmicHorrorStory.