The Three Body Problem: Science Fiction is Alive and Well in China

 

Is science fiction dead? Probably not but, in the West, it doesn't seem to be feeling so well. At least, we are not seeing much in terms of innovation in the Western narrative sphere, apart from a streak of "ecological science fiction" in the stile of the movie "Avatar" (2009)

Yet, different cultures may be able to revisit and revive the old the Sci-Fi themes. This is the case of Liu Cixin and his novel "The Three-Body Problem" (2008), a remarkably original reworking of some classic sci-fi themes mixed in an original and challenging way.

So, I endeavored to read Liu's novel. To be honest, I was immediately put off by the first scene, where he describes in graphic detail the killing of a young woman. My first impression was that if a writer needs this kind of cheap trick to attract the attention of the readers, then he must be a bad writer. 

But no, the novel is not cheap stuff, nor the work of a bad writer. It is a rich and complex story that mixes different themes and that manages to keep the reader's attention with the gradual discovery that there is "something" out there, another civilization existing on a different star, and not necessarily a friendly one. Another thing that puts me off in novels is the use of flashbacks -- Liu uses them a lot, but in such a masterful way that they do not disturb the narrative flow. 

Liu's novel is, in many ways, classic in style and conception. It is a modern example of "hard" science fiction. You can find its sources of inspiration, first of all, in Asimov's classic "Nightfall." (1941), one of the novels that defined a whole genre. Asimov's tells us of a system with six stars, more than Liu's three, but we have the same problem for the best minds of the inhabitants of one of the planets of the system: discovering Newton's gravitational law. And also surviving the vagaries of a chaotic system where the dance of the stars has unpredictable effects on the life on the planets. 

Another source of inspiration for Liu's novel is Fred Hoyle's "The Black Cloud" (1957). We have some similar tropes in the plot: the isolated observatory that discovers an alien entity, the direct communications between humans and aliens, the military reaction to the aliens, and other details. And, of course, there is more than a hint of Arthur C. Clarke's ideas in the novel. 

Yet, Liu's novel is not just a repetition of old themes. It is original in many aspects. One is its "political" aspect, with the plot influenced by the events of the Chinese cultural revolution, and also its mirroring the concept of a "clash of civilization" with the Trisolarians playing the role of an aggressive enemy. The plot also makes extensive use of the "gamification" concept. In our time, we tend to learn much using simulations that, in some cases, may take the form of games. In "The Three Body Problem" much of what we know of the Trisolarians comes in the form of a full-immersion game played by the protagonists. 

So, as I was saying, a rich and stimulating story in terms of themes: Liu Cixin is an engineer, and he knows his trade. As a hard piece of science fiction, this novel is truly a masterpiece. 

How is it in literary terms? Well, it has defects, and not just a few. The plot has holes that could let the whole fleet of Admiral Zheng pass through. For instance, when the scientist Ye Wenjie receives the first message from the aliens, she understands it immediately. We may imagine that it is written in her language: Mandarin Chinese. How can it be that the inhabitants of a faraway star system speak Chinese?

Then, the characters of the story are mostly shallow -- not surprising: it is typical of hard science fiction. Ye Wenjie, the scientist, comes out as the most interesting character, someone driven by deep thoughts and a moral stance. The others, well, much less. A large part of the novel is seen through the eyes of Wang Miao, a nanotechnology specialist. He is as shallow as a character can be: he has no clear purpose in the novel except as a narrative focus. But, again, a hard science fiction novel is not supposed to tell us about the inner conflicts of its characters.

So, where is science fiction going? During the golden years of Western science fiction, there existed a parallel version in the Soviet Union: different in conception, but just as creative and interesting. Today, it doesn't seem that Russia or other former Soviet countries are active in science fiction. So, are scientific fantasies destined to be reborn in China? Maybe. For sure, the Chinese are exploring new ways in a field where the West doesn't seem to be able to innovate anymore. We can only say that literature is just like humankind. It keeps changing and evolving.

  

The Shores of Another Sea: Are we Running out of Creativity?

 

If the universe is fractal, then its structure is fully contained in every sub-element of it. So, a single novel may be a tool to understand the whole universe. Here, I explore a 1971 novel by Chad Oliver titled, "The Shores of Another Sea," featuring a front cover that could compete for the worst book cover in history. But it may have been the first science fiction novel to describe the interaction of primates, baboons in this case, with aliens, and, perhaps, the origin of the 2001 movie series "The Planet of the Apes." It seems that, nowadays, we are getting many creative ideas from old sci-fi novels. Have we run out of creativity? I am afraid it may well be. 

Novels have become mostly an archeological item, so, reading one from 1971 has the flavor of an excavation among the ruins of an ancient civilization. It is perhaps much more than a hyperbole, considering the pitiful state of the civilization that we call "The West" nowadays. And this strange object that came out of this virtual literary trench may tell us something about our present conditions. Where has our creativity gone? Possibly, we lost it forever,

But let's examine this book and see what we can learn from it. Its most remarkable feature is that it may have been the first to deal with the interaction of aliens with a non-human, but humanoid, species on planet Earth. Baboons, in this case. Could this novel be the origin of the 2001 series "Planet of the Apes"? It may very well be. The origin of much of our contemporary filmography is in earlier novels. Just think of how "Avatar" is a remake of the old novel by Ursula Le Guin, "The Word for World is Forest" (1972). 

As a novel, "The Shores of Another Sea" is a good example of the rule that says that you should always write about things you know well. Here, Chad Oliver has done an excellent job in describing a world that, as a professional anthropologist, he knew very well. He uses his experience in Kenya to describe the "Baboonery" -- a remote outpost where the protagonist manages a small enterprise dedicated to capturing baboons and then shipping them overseas to zoos or for medical experiments. Of course, most of us have no direct experience with living in Kenya, nor with dealing with baboons in the wild. But, as readers, we can understand the consistency of the background of the story. It is a world that makes sense. 

So, Oliver uses the basic elements of a typical science fiction plot: you start with a "normal" situation, ordinary, quiet, predictable, and you add a supernatural element that gradually overturns the certitudes of the characters of the novel. You see this technique at its best in a movie such as "E.T." And it works great with "The Shores of Another Sea." The reader is immediately captured by the mix of the exotic, but predictable, world of the baboonery, and the strangeness of "something" that came from the sky that makes baboons behave in unexpected ways. 

Unfortunately, the novel doesn't keep its promises. As we keep reading, the magic slowly dissolves. The aliens never take an active role in the story, the baboons keep behaving strange, but we never learn what the aliens want to do with them. Most of what we are told about the aliens comes from arbitrary trains of thought of the protagonist, that would shame Sherlock Holmes in terms of deducing something out of nothing.

The end of the novel is especially disappointing. The author, clearly at a loss as to what to do with the plot, recurs to a truly cheap narrative device: having the young daughter of the protagonist being kidnapped by the aliens. Then, the protagonist cleverly manages to get her back, the aliens depart, and it is the end of the story. 

So, a narrative failure. Nevertheless, it was a creative attempt to innovate in science fiction. We see here a new take on the interaction of aliens and humans, using the baboons as an avatar of the Aliens, who seem to prefer to deal with them than with humans. It is a characteristic of novels that they can try new ways, even at the risk of utter failure. Today, with novels having nearly disappeared from the literary horizon, our fictional universe has moved to the serialized movies that we watch on Netflix. But creative innovation is not, and cannot be, the same thing. A movie involves a much larger effort (and money) in comparison to a novel. So, sponsors are not willing to take risks, and we are not seeing anymore the kind of personal effort that may lead to innovative ideas. Movie scripts are often just mediocre, although they may still be truly bad in narrative terms.  

So, it may well be that movie fiction is running piggyback on the great science fiction season of the 1960s and 1970s. But it is like mining fossil fuels. Great idea, but they are running out of them. Will we run out of narrative ideas?  Could be, and then? It is known that civilizations fail and disappear when they can't imagine a different world. And it seems that this is what's happening to us.