The Three-Body Problem

I’ve not seen the show or read the sequels; I’ve read only the first book. It was originally serialized eighteen years ago, so not only am I not flying in with an urgent hot take, I assume this ground has been covered before. Nevertheless I wanted to share a few thoughts about Liu Cixin’s marvelous novel. (Spoilers galore, caveat lector.)

1. I was shocked by two things: first, how openly he writes about the madness and violence of the Cultural Revolution; and second, how spiritual the book is, from start to finish. I understand that Liu is an atheist, but it doesn’t show in the text; both the story and the way it’s told beg to be interpreted theologically.

2. A friend observed that the three-body problem itself—not least when it is pictured, as it is in the book, as three suns dancing around each other in an infinite, unpredictable, dangerous yet beautiful celestial choreography—is as obvious an image of the Trinity as you could imagine. Yet I’m not aware of ever having encountered it as an analogy or illustration before. Three-body perichoresis, anyone? Paging Saint Augustine.

3. I was worried, when Silent Spring appeared early, that the book would adopt an easy eco-radical, misanthropic posture. I was wrong. The narrative is bookended by the late appearance of another book, Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, and its explicit citation alerts the reader to one of the major themes of the book: the way that sincere and legitimate concern for anthropogenic harms or, more broadly, for the misadventures and evils of humanity—its deep-rooted inhumanity, toward itself and all else—can so easily bleed into hatred for humanity as such, a hatred that justifies far greater inhumane activities than the original offenses that first troubled the conscience. Philanthropy curdles into misanthropy and finally terminates in betrayal of all one ever loved or held dear.

4. This process, which Liu narrates with precision and compassion, is itself a mirror reflection of every totalitarianism, Marxism-Leninism above all. The book, in other words, and whatever Liu’s intentions, is a science-fiction allegory of Chinese communism. Ye Wenjie, the catalyst of every major event in the book, goes from witness and victim of the brutalities of the Cultural Revolution to exhausted, listless, post-ideological grudging participant in the regime’s scientific research, to a desperate woman willing to place her hopes in the potential of radical transformation from beyond the capacities of decadent and immoral human civilization, to true-believing Trisolarian ideologist, liar, and remorseless murderer. When she finally meets some of the women who, decades prior, participated in the crazed struggle session and fatal beating of her father, and their soulless eyes and defensive words reveal only pain, not apology, she is looking at her own reflection. The chapter’s title, “No One Repents,” is the perfect summation of where total revolution ends, having begun with wide-eyed good intentions but now drawn, inexorably, to hatred, deceit, madness, and murder—with no regrets.

5. The name Mike Evans gives to his invented ideology—or “maybe you can call it a faith”—is “Pan-Species Communism.” Bingo. It is “a natural continuation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” but in actuality (as he admits) of the French Revolution, which “we haven’t even take a step beyond.” The name of Evans’ ship is Judgment Day, and its single aim is “to invite Trisolarian civilization to reform human civilization, to curb human madness and evil, so that the Earth can once again become a harmonious, prosperous, sinless world.” The ETO’s goal, in short, is a return to Eden and a redemption from sin via otherworldly powers. Once their prayers are answered, they will usher humanity into a utopia, with help from a manufactured exogenous event (=alien invasion). As ever, the advent of utopia cannot come without secrecy, deception, and untold bloodshed. As ever, too, it is not the weak or the powerless who are the agents of utopia’s arrival: it is, as Liu insists over and over again, the elites of academia, technological industry, and the media. (“To betray the human race as a whole was unimaginable for [common people]. But intellectual elites were different: Most of them had already begun to consider issues from a perspective outside the human race. Human civilization had finally given birth to a strong force of alienation.”) These elites are the authors, the Red Vanguard, of a new and greater interstellar cultural revolution.

6. The vaguely named “Lord” heeded, obeyed, revered, and worshiped by members of the ETO is, it seems to me, a stand-in for Mao. An alien Mao, but Mao nonetheless—a conclusion supported by the late chapter offering a kind of window onto Trisolarian civilization and the role of the autocratic “princeps,” his consuls, their top-down control of the planet, and the immediate unsentimental “dehydration” and death penalty for anyone who makes even the smallest of mistakes.

7. Liu includes the following answer in response to an interrogator asking Ye Wenjie why she had such hope for the Trisolarians coming to earth: “If they can cross the distance between the stars to come to our world, their science must have developed to a very advanced stage. A society with such advanced science must also have more advanced moral standards.” To which the interrogator replies: “Do you think this conclusion you drew is scientific?” Ye: “…”

8. The single proton unfolded into three dimensions that swiftly reveals itself to be a kind of hyper-intelligent microcosmic civilization—a universal tao or logos embedded in all the logoi of creation, down to subatomic particles—that in turn seeks to destroy Trisolaris but is destroyed first … let’s just say I didn’t expect that scene, and I found it both frightening and sublime. Liu is a theologian, I’m telling you!

9. I’m well aware that Liu “believes in science” and that one reading of this book is that we ought to place our faith in scientific knowledge and development by using it, with true philanthropy, to benefit the whole human race (while remaining pessimistic and prepared for extraterrestrial visitors). This is not the only reading the book is patient of, though, and it’s not mine.

10. I’m eager to read the next two books. I’m also told that Ken Liu’s canonical books within the same world and story are worth reading. I hear that the Netflix adaptation is excellent, but a part of me wants to hold onto the text as text for a while before I allow Benioff and Weiss to replace my imagination with theirs. I’m particularly interested to learn why the Trisolarians don’t use the sophon to make all human beings simply go insane, as Wang Miao almost does within mere hours of seeing the countdown appear in his field of vision. Wouldn’t this remove the problem of human civilization and self-defense a full four centuries before the Trisolarians’ arrival? Just drive everyone mad, let them all die (like the “bugs” they are), then inherit the earth circa AD 2450? What am I missing?

To be clear, I’m sure it’s me. This is a brilliant novelist who deserves every benefit of the doubt. I can’t wait to keep reading.

Aliens

Last month Ezra Klein wrote a refreshing column on the UFO revelations of the last few months (and years).* It was refreshing because it not only carefully distinguished between alien and supernatural but also avoided the silly trope that the existence of alien life would undermine, transform, or even substantially affect the doctrines or practices of major world religions like Christianity. Here’s the money graf:

There is a thick literature on how evidence of alien life would shake the world’s religions, but I think Brother Guy Consolmagno, director of the Vatican Observatory, is quite likely right when he suggests that many people would simply say, “of course.” The materialist worldview that positions humanity as an island of intelligence in a potentially empty cosmos — my worldview, in other words — is the aberration. Most people believe, and have always believed, that we share both the Earth and the cosmos with other beings — gods, spirits, angels, ghosts, ancestors. The norm throughout human history has been a crowded universe where other intelligences are interested in our comings and goings, and even shape them. The whole of human civilization is testament to the fact that we can believe we are not alone and still obsess over earthly concerns.

This is exactly right. At least for Christians, while the discovery of alien life would be momentous as a discovery, and while it would certainly raise theological questions, it would not in the least threaten or even disturb faith in the gospel. Whatever exists in the cosmos—indeed, whatever exists outside of time and space that is not God—is a fellow creature, just like us, created by the God of Abraham from nothing, just like us. Read C. S. Lewis or Mary Doria Russell or Michel Faber or any other science fiction author from the last century who has imagined intergalactic missions to meet or learn from or evangelize non-terrestrial rational species. Lewis in particular loved to speculate that Jesus’s comments about “other sheep, not of this fold” in John 10:16 applied not only to gentiles but, potentially, to intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Who knows?

Whatever the answer, the collective response from Christians to the demonstrable existence of alien life will and should comprise four options: doxology; wonder at the mysteries of creation; desire, with appropriate caution and within limits, to learn more about and form some relationship with these fellow creatures; and, for the most part, getting on with the business of life.

Kudos to Klein for seeing that, and cutting through the nonsense.

*In my own mind, there are five possible interpretations of the seemingly physics-defying happenings recorded and witnessed by the pilots (and their flight cameras): (1) human technology; (2) alien technology; (3) natural occurrences; (4) supernatural phenomena; (5) nothing—a trick of the light, a fault of the eyes, a mistake of the video, or some other similar explanation. It seems to me the only frightening option is the first, though perhaps I should be more fearful of the second.