The Three-Body Problem Video

Published in 2008, Liu Cixin’s The Three Body Problem is a science fiction novel and the first in the author’s popular Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. The book spans from the Chinese Cultural Revolution to the present day and alternates chiefly between the perspectives of its two main characters: Ye Wenjie an astrophysicist who attempts to bring about Earth’s destruction at the hands of an extraterrestrial race, the Trisolarans; and Wang Miao the nanomaterials scientist determined to stop her.

Cixin’s novel opens in 1960s Beijing, where Wenjie, one of the novel’s central characters, watches her father get beaten to death during a struggle session at Tsinghua University. This event, combined with her treatment as a political outsider over the next few years, radicalizes Wenjie, who grows to believe that it’s impossible for humanity to save itself—and that an outside force must redeem it.

After her father’s death, Wenjie is labeled a traitor and taken to the mysterious Red Coast Base, a labor camp in Inner Mongolia. When she is accused of colluding with a journalist on the base, Wenjie is punished and loses consciousness. She wakes up on a helicopter and is told she is being taken to Radar Peak, a nearby base where she will consult on a weapons research project that will require her expertise in astrophysics. Eventually, Wenjie learns the Red Coast Base’s true mission: to seek out alien life. She uses the base’s radio waves to contact an alien race. To her surprise, she receives a message back from an extraterrestrial race called the Trisolarans and encourages them to conquer Earth. Wenjie kills her husband and boss, the military physicists that brought her to Radar Peak, to keep her contact with the Trisolarans a secret. She gives birth to a daughter, Yang Dong, who eventually becomes a theoretical physicist.

Wenjie leaves the Red Coast Base for her old teaching job at Tsinghua University but never fully restores her faith in humanity. Some time later, Wenjie meets Mike Evans, an extremely wealthy Westerner who has also lost faith in humankind. Wenjie shares her knowledge of the upcoming alien invasion, and she and Evans form the Earth-Trisolaris Organization (or ETO) to prepare for further Trisolaran contact.

This brings the novel up to the present, where Wang Miao, a nanomaterials researcher and the novel’s main protagonist, faces a series of mysterious incidents. First, he is contacted by the enigmatic Battle Command Center, where he’s badgered by Shi Qiang, a rude but effective police captain. Shi Qiang informs Wang Miao that many scientists—including Ye Wenjie’s daughter, Yang Dong—have taken their own lives, convinced that physics is a lie.

Soon, Wang Miao begins seeing a mysterious countdown, first in his photographs, and then in his vision—it only stops when he pauses his scientific research. He discovers that these incidents are connected to the Frontiers of Science, a group of scientists, academics, and theorists. Wang Miao decides to join the Frontiers of Science as a spy for the Battle Command Center, determined to solve the mystery of these events with Shi Qiang. Through the Frontiers of Science, Wang Miao begins playing the video game Three Body, an immersive virtual reality game designed by the ETO to recruit people to understand the Trisolaran plight. In the game, Wang Miao learns that the Trisolaran’s planet is in a system with three suns, which will soon destroy their planet and species. As a result, the Trisolarans are looking for a new home—and they believe that Earth is a perfect fit.

Wang Miao only grasps the reality of the countdown, and the Trisolarans’ power more broadly, when the entire universe flickers before his eyes. He interprets this as proof of Trisolaris’s influence and suffers from a breakdown, but he’s comforted by Shi Qiang, who encourages Wang Miao to recommit himself and try to save humanity.

Decades after its foundation, the ETO has fractured into three factions—Adventists, Redemptionists, and Survivors—with Ye Wenjie as its commander-in-chief, or spiritual leader. When the Battle Command Center arrests and questions Wenjie, she reveals that Mike Evans has been in secret communication with Trisolaris. The records of these communications are kept on his ship, Judgment Day, and even Wenjie doesn’t know their contents.

Using Wang Miao’s nanomaterials, the Battle Command Center destroys the Judgment Day and retrieves its files, which reveal many things. First, Trisolaran culture is harsh and not as morally advanced as Wenjie believes. Second, the Trisolaran fleet designed to invade Earth has already left but will not arrive for 450 years.

Finally, the Battle Command Center learns that the Trisolarans have been using "sophons," or extremely advanced particles, to interrupt Earth’s scientific progress for years, halting research so that Earth cannot develop the technology to fight Trisolaris when they invade. These sophons inspired Yang Dong and the other scientists to kill themselves and are responsible for Wang Miao’s mysterious countdown.

Finally exposed, the Trisolarans reveal their presence to the Battle Command Center, calling the people there “bugs.” Wang Miao is shaken at the threat of humanity’s extermination, but he and Shi Qiang take heart in the notion that, for all of humanity’s advancements, they’ve never succeeded in eradicating bugs. Meanwhile, an elderly Ye Wenjie climbs to the Red Coast Base, where she first contacted the Trisolarans. Watching the sunset, she compares it to the impending “sunset for humanity.”