I finished reading “The Three-Body Problem” by Liu Cixin. It all started with Netflix—after watching three episodes, I stopped and ordered the book. It turns out, they had significantly reinterpreted everything. Netflix’s scriptwriters eliminated the main character of “The Three-Body Problem,” or rather, split Professor Wang Miao into three characters—an African American, a strong Brazilian woman, and an Indian named Raj. That’s the solution they came up with for the “three-body problem.”
Overall, the book is quite good, but if I were the author, I wouldn’t attach, let’s say, Morse code to the communication between aliens and earthlings. It smacks of comics for teenagers. For instance, they could have made the communication occur non-verbally—perhaps through dreams. While not more scientific, it would have been at least less naive. What’s more, the depiction of events on Trisolaris is somewhat anthropocentric. The author does not describe what Trisolarans look like, but logically, their society can’t have anything in common with ours. If I were the author, I would have highlighted that. What we know about the Trisolarans is just our fantasies stretched to fit our language abilities and familiar concepts, but on their planet, everything is so different that no parallel can principally be drawn.
But credit must be given where it’s due—the author’s imagination is limitless. The book is packed with details that could suffice for 2-3 works.
I read it in English. The English translation is highly praised—I’m very pleased with it, and so is the author, despite the translator (who is, by the way, a science fiction writer himself) admitting that he occasionally had to retell large portions in his own words because all other options worsened the outcome. Indeed, the Chinese language is quite unique.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 