The Three-Body Problem

By: Cixin Liu

Narrated by: Luke Daniels

Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

Soon to be a Netflix Original series!

“War of the Worlds for the 21st century.” (Wall Street Journal)

The Three-Body Problem is the first chance for English-speaking listeners to experience the Hugo Award-winning phenomenon from China's most beloved science fiction author, Liu Cixin.

Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.

The Remembrance of Earth's Past Trilogy:

The Three-Body Problem

The Dark Forest

Death's End

Other books:

Ball Lightning Supernova Era

To Hold Up The Sky (forthcoming)

©2006 Liu Cixin (P)2014 Macmillan Audio

Learn what science is while being entertained

This is the kind of book that Science Fiction should always be like. The author gives a history of science (through the game embedded in the book) and shows science is not what most people think it is. Science and its theories are always under-determined. There is never a unique right answer to how we can explain the universe from the finite evidence we have at our disposal. There are multiple ways of explaining what we think we know (auxiliary hypothesis are always lurking around) . Induction and a scientific method only gives us partial peeks into reality as a whole, but ultimately seems to lead to real understanding.

In the book, the author asks the questions: "Do you believe we live in a Shooter (S) or a Farmer (U) universe"? That is did a shooter continuously move and fired a gun on a regular basis and created a hole as he moved through out creation or are we like Betrand Russel's turkeys the day before thanksgiving who are certain that they will be feed because all their previous data points indicated they will be feed and not end up as Thanksgiving dinner. For the S, the laws of nature differ in different places, for the F the laws are always constant but have the problem of induction.

String theorist think of the universe as an S and it plays a big part in the second half of the book. The background of the Cultural Revolution showed how the progress of science is often depended on its contextual background. All my heroes are featured in the game, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, von Neumann, and Einstein, and he'll explain how they each had a way of looking at the universe in such a way that the previous reference frames before them were nothing more than mystical thought. I always like it when an author uses 'entanglement' the same way as I would if I were writing science fiction.

One can read a long book on the history of science and what is its true nature, or one can be completely entertained by reading this science fiction story. It's always nice to learn while being entertained.

Best Book Since Ender’s Game

Best book since I read Enders game in 1992. Until I read the second book in this series which was somehow better. Unbelievable.

Fascinating

This title was very engaging, though it spends a lot of time looping its plot, so I eventually increased the narration speed to help me stay more engaged and finish quicker. Narrator Luke Daniels did an amazing job with pronunciation of Chinese and performance of so many voices.

Deliciously Technical & Fresh!

Let me start by saying this was an excellent read. It was deliciously technical, and what I would consider plausible sci-fi rooted in our current understanding of physics (i.e right up my alley!!).

Certain parts about halfway through gave me chills. I had a delightful time in between listens unpacking and contemplating the possibility of certain ideas brought up in the book.

I possess enough particle physics knowledge to be dangerous, but am not a scientist. I would say some is required to really enjoy this book, or at least have enough interest to research as you go. However, that is what made it so great for me, and it definitely isn’t so technical that it is inaccessible.

It was a fresh take, and about 25% through I was still guessing as to where it was going to go (which was a great thing).

The ending was perfect and really left me pondering.

For me, this was best listened to in short bursts of 25-30 minutes, with lots of enjoyable rewinds to make sure I got it all.

The narration was excellent, and I really appreciated the lack of Chinese accents from Luke Daniels. You would never know this book was translated, which is good because that would have detracted from what is a great story.

Dull Narrator

Narrator completely ruins the experience.

I cannot get into the book at all, really disappointed

Listened for the second time.

It was even better the second time around. Fascinating story line and seems to build on the"good and evil" of all societies.

Starts slow but worth reading to the end

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I highly recommend this audiobook though it is imperfect. The story starts off very slow and then suddenly at the the bad guys give an unnecessarily long discussion of their evil plans and ways as if we are in a very bad James Bond movie (I can hear Scott from Austin Powers complaining). The plausibility is lost, the bad guys have super technology yet can't solve their problem using the technology even though I could think of many ways. The whole thread where a scientist may have solved their problem and obviated the situation was discarded. Yet the framework of the Cultural Revolution, what you would do if you were the person to make first contact during the Cultural Revolution, and what They would do is fascinating and creative.

What other book might you compare The Three-Body Problem to and why?

The book is similar in the science and scope seen in Kim Stanley Robinson's books. The thread of the Cultural Revolution and its devastating, subtle impact on science and a person's life was reminiscent of Dan Simmon's Hyperion series (only without the tight plotting, deep characters, and lyrical writing).

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

The narrator mispronounced many computer science terms and I found his characterizations too "American"- I read the book in the hopes of getting more of a feel for a Chinese perspective not have it transported to Los Angeles.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I was blown away at the thread of the Cultural Revolution and what it could drive a person to do.

A Textbook's content weaved into a compellingstory

This book shouldn't be as amazing as it is. Hardest sci-fi, many drudges, always reccomend.

Wow.

One of my favorite audiobooks I've listened to. If you like Sci first, this is a fantastic listen!

Good ideas poor story telling

While there are certainly some very interesting ideas in this book the overall story and character development leave a lot to be desired. I'm not sure if something was lost in translation but the writing is actually quite poor, and very mechanical. If it wasn't for the good performance by the narrator as well as the interesting ideas at play, I don't think I could have kept going.