The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a book that has been on my radar since I first started rekindling my love of reading in 2022, but it wasn't until I watched the Netflix adaptation of this story earlier this year that I was finally pushed to actually pick it up. And I'm glad I did, because this book delivered so much of what I love about science fiction.
After reading around the sci-fi genre, I'm coming to find that I have a special place in my heart for hard sci-fi. As someone who was born and raised in a family of scientists, I have always been fascinated by nature and technology in our real world, and I find the speculative sciences backed by real research and concepts to be some of the best things that the science fiction genre has to offer. All of this is to say, I think that The Three-Body Problem has one of coolest executions of this concept that I have seen so far. This book is packed with very dense concepts about physics and astronomy, and it pushes these concepts to their absolute limits and beyond, intertwining science and fiction beautifully. And to add to the sense that everything presented in the book could be possible, there are regular footnotes throughout the book citing real research papers that you can look up and read that cover the things being discussed by the characters in the book. It's just so cool, and I often had to remind myself that this still was a fictional story and not an actual textbook on real technology.
But if you aren't as big of a nerd for theoretical physics as I am, this book also delivers a really compelling mystery that unfolds over the course of its story and culminates in a really exciting reveal that sets the stage for the two books that follow. Unfortunately I had this reveal spoiled for me years ago when I first heard about the book, and if you have seen the Netflix show then you will already know as well, but I don't think that detracts from the story itself. More than anything, I enjoyed this book and its story as a vessel to deliver more interesting scientific and philosophical concepts. I'm excited to see where the story goes from here, since I finished this book and immediately started reading the next one.
Follow me on Goodreads!