Translated from Chinese into English by Ken Liu (2014)

I’m behind in my book-reviewing this year, if not in my reading! This was the first book I read for this year’s Sibling’s Book Club, and I made it my top pick for three reasons:

1) It’s Chinese—set in China, originally written in Chinese, and by a Chinese author. I love China.

2) It’s sci-fi—for whatever reason, I was on a huge sci-fi kick this whole past year. The feelings has dwindled now (I think Asimov finally burned me out!), but it was fun while it lasted.

3) It’s the first in a trilogy—I thought I might immediately want to read its follow-up, The Dark Forest (2008), after finishing this. That’s not the case, but that’s doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it.

The Storyline (with some spoilers)

The book is set in two separate time periods, China’s Cultural Revolution and modern times. An astrophysicist name Ye Wenjie makes contact with an alien race and essentially invites them to destroy her planet Earth. As time passes, and more people learn of the coming destruction, believers eventually fall into three different camps:

The Adventists would like to destroy the human race by means of an alien power; the Redemptionists worship the alien civilization as a god; the Survivors wish to betray other humans to buy their own survival. (280)

When a scientist named Wang Miao learns of the invasion through a virtual-reality game which alien-supporters have created called The Three Body Problem, he must decide which side he’s on: the aliens’ or humanity’s.

Of God and Aliens

The author very clearly acknowledges in his Postscript that he was not trying to write an allegory about things as they are. This is science fiction, and he just wanted to explore his own imagination in new, wild ways. For that reason, one can’t take too many of his characters’ comments about life and faith to heart. Still, the author’s a human living amongst humanity, and his imagination doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Thus, I think it’s interesting to note his several passages that discuss the possibility of God which are later drowned out by the much more romantic possibility of aliens.

It all begins with a conversation during a violent, Cultural Revolutionary scene:

“The theory leaves open a place to be filled by God.” Shao nodded at the girl.

The young Red Guard, confused by these new thoughts, finally found her footing. She raised her hand, still holding the belt, and pointed at Ye. “You: you’re trying to say that God exists?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I’m saying I don’t know. If by ‘God’ you mean some kind of superconsciousness outside the universe, I don’t know if it exists or not. Science has given no evidence either way.”

Actually, in this nightmarish moment, Ye was leaning toward believing that God did not exist. (13)

Much later in the book, in modern times, he references the possibility again, yet once more from an Agnostic point of view:

Wei smiled contemptuously. “The police are worthless. Even if God were here, it wouldn’t do any good. The entire human race has reached the point where no one is listening to their prayers.” (178)

The entrance of the possibility of aliens comes slowly in this book. In fact, I didn’t really know what the video game scenes were all about for several chapters. They were wild, fantastic, confusing, repetitive, imaginative, gripping—I honestly didn’t know what to do with them! But the longer I read, the more I came to understand their presence in the story and their role in the future of humanity. It didn’t look great. I marked this first early passage as potentially important, and of course in Ye’s case, it absolutely was:

Is it possible that the relationship between humanity and evil is similar to the relationship between the ocean and an iceberg floating on its surface? Both the ocean and the iceberg are made of the same material. That the iceberg seems separate is only because it is in a different form. In reality, it is but a part of the vast ocean.… It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race. This thought determined the entire direction of Ye’s life. (21)

Of the three groups of alien-believers mentioned above—Adventists, Redemptionists, and Survivors—the Redemptionists got the least amount of attention, though I found this passage particularly intriguing:

The Redemptionists developed spiritual feelings toward Trisolaran civilization. Alpha Centauri became Mount Olympus in space, the dwelling place of the gods; and so the Trisolaran religion—which really had nothing to do with religion on Trisolaris—was born. Unlike other human religions, they worshipped something that truly existed. Also unlike other human religions, it was the Lord who was in crisis, and the duty of salvation fell on the shoulders of the believer. (276)

And so this discussion “Of Gods and Aliens” rests in this book. Earth is place where, if God does exist, He doesn’t care; and if aliens exist, they’re put on a much better show than any deity ever could. It’s not a great pool of though in which to soak one’s mind for too long, but again, it’s science fiction. As a Christian, stories like this spark gratitude in my heart for God’s clear revelation of Himself in Scripture. I love to think of 1Corinthians 2:6-11…

6 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written,

                  “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
      nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—

10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

Book Club Responses

As mentioned in my intro, I enjoyed this book and might one day pick up its sequel, though I’ve got way too many other things to read right now. The rough language was moderate, mostly coming from one chain-smoking cop, so it was easy enough to skim through his dialogue. Not everyone in the book club felt as good about the book as me, though.

• One member said: “Very creative. And I enjoyed the fact that the story was set in China. But despite that, I wasn’t really captivated. It was okay.”
  
• Another friend wrote: “I took time to try to read this, but after trying to pick it back up SEVERAL times…I just can’t get into it. In fact, the first couple of chapters were read when I was already pretty down in the depths of despair and this just made me more depressed…Consider me completely done with this book though.” She gave it one star.

Conclusion

As sci-fic books go, this one was uniquely plotted and slow-moving. It doesn’t leave me desperate to read its follow-up, but I’ll admit: I’m interested.

Incidentally, I thought it was pretty cool the author mentioned another title from our Book Club list for this year, A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle (164). Click here to check out what other books we’re working through this year, and happy reading!

©2025 E.T.