(Full spoiler for a book titled the Three-body Problem. Though due to more or less unorganized nature of the text behind, one might have to read that book to understand the bloody thing.)

It can be said that this is a Hideo Kojima adjacent book report. The connection between the Three-body Problem and that snake oil salesman is two-fold, one direct and one otherwise.

The direct one first. Japanese translation of this book was published in 2019 and Kojima contributed a praising “back of the box quote”. Apparently, he found time to read and enjoy this pretty heavy and dense science fiction novel when the unreported crunch to finish and ship Death Stranding started.

The indirect connection between those 2 is something very personal to yours truly. Allow me to take you all back to the year 2006. Back then, Kojima and company were probably still trying to figure out the black box we know as PS3. My 16 years old self finally made first contact with “A Hideo Kojima Game”, Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance on PC. As far as “first contact” goes, it was a bumpy ride that led to me calling Hideo Kojima “my sworn enemy” after seeing credits roll twice in MGS2.

In that 6 to 7 months long time when I tried to turn the Tanker Discovery and the Plant Big Shell inside out, the Three-body Problem, or just Three-body was being serialized on the Chinese magazine called Science Fiction World. It tells the story of First Contact with 2 parties end up as sworn enemies to each other.

A Master of horror who co-owns a rocket-shaped trophy

By 2006, I had been a reader of Science Fiction World for 3 years. On the so-called hard science fiction side, Cixin Liu was the king for that magazine. But Liu did not ignite my interest in sci-fi since. My interest in the genre started in the mid-1990s, while his works in that field did not start until 1999.

Instead, his works wet my appetite for horror. The first of his I read titled Devourer contains both horror on individual level and geographical hell on earth brought by future or alien weaponry. Let’s just say that by the time I saw Alien for the first time in 2007, that 1979 flick felt tame in comparison. Monsters and implied deeds have nothing on what extreme environment can do when it comes to fouling humans up.

While Liu’s stories are mostly in short form, his did dip into novel territory. Ball Lightning, the event of which the Three-body Problem would reference sporadically, came out in 2004. Then there is his magus opus, Remembrance of Earth Past trilogy started with Three-body. Writing those 3 books must have burnt Liu out since it’s hard to find a new piece of science fiction by Liu beyond 2010.

One would think the whole science fiction writing was behind Liu by then, except some loyalty payment whenever his stories get republished of course. Then the damnedest thing happened, a Hugo rocket for Best Novel landed under his name in 2015. Yours truly still trust Hugo Award to a certain degree. Had the Last of Us Part 2 won the one-time Best Game in 2021, I would have played that loathed-by-many sequel to a game I loathe so much. But thank the gods for their stories in Supergiant’s Hades won instead.

So, in the initial lock-down in 2020, I picked up the Three-body Problem British paperback (9 quid it cost, governor.) I bought years before that and started to read. It was a pleasant surprise in more than one way.

Editing choice for genres

When Three-body came out as a Simplified Chinese book in 2007, one who read the novel during the period of serializing, like yours truly, would find the first page jarring. The book skipped the first installment of serialization and began with the second one. Readers of the English edition would not notice, since “Part 1 Silent Spring” in their copies of the Three-body Problem is that first installment us “first readers” saw.

To put it bluntly, Silent Spring is an immersive experience about how one’s life got torn apart in People’s Republic of China at the height of the Cold War, the year 1967 and 1969 to be more precise. Ye Wenjie, the point of view character there, heard how her sister died willing as a martyr for one course, saw her father unwilling martyred for another and her own life almost ruined for taking after her father. Then due to her expertise as an astrophysicist, she was moved to a classified site called Red Coast in inner Mongolia. There is a giant antenna there, shooting towards the stars.

The 2007 Chinese book does not cut this part out, but simply puts it much later into the book. When Wang Miao, the point of view character in the “present day” part of the book, met one of Ye’s student and the latter told her life’s story.

Yours truly sees this choice as adjust the book’s genre to sell more copies. The “present day” in the Three-body Problem starts as a mystery box style paranoia thriller where the pov character being gaslighted by some high tech bs, while Silent Spring is a harrowing piece of historic fiction with a hint of science fiction at its end. Big ass antenna shooting towards space to my 16 years old ass back then still register as “Oh, I guess they were looking for aliens”, thus the novel had landed as a First Contact story already by that point.

Do not call it a game, call it “interactive media”

Part 2 of the book is called Three-body that can be a reference to more than one thing. It takes place “more than forty years” after part 1. In many ways, 2014, when the book came out in English speaking nations and regions, is closer to be “the present day” than the mid to late aughts, when the novel came out in Mainland, China.

For one thing, the book has “the newly completed China Central Television building” in its timeline. That er, monster of a building in Beijing was not completed until 2012, 2 years after Liu finished his intended trilogy. Then 2004‘s “great tsunami that swept through the Indian Ocean” happened “more than a decade ago”. Finally there is a reference to Shenzhou 19. Shenzhou is the name for spacecrafts used in China’s space program. As time of writing, early 2023, number 18 is still not launched. I guess reality just does not update as frequently as Liu’s speculation.

Speak of author’s speculation outpacing reality, Virtual Reality technology is way more advanced in the book than in our reality. It is common enough that the longue of National Nanotech Research Center in Beijing, China can just have one in there. The titular “Three Body” can mean the game people play with the V-suit, a VR device that simulate senses beyond audio and visual.

In Tencent’s faithful 30 episodes long adaption in Chinese, Three Body became a massive multiplayer survival game set in a wasteland where cannibalism is a valid way to keep on playing. Not so much in the book. There, the game feels more like a VR chatroom with details noticeable or otherwise to the player. Its goal is more in line with tabletop games, since player’s performance rely less on the pre-programmed mechanic but how much they can describe with the in-game details they notice. Then some hidden Game Master would give out reward, which is usually the knowledge that game world is more doomed than one can imagine. Eventually some sun related fiasco would destroy everything, from frozen to dust to perish in the flame. My favorite is how human body turned inside out when it gets pulled in vacuum by the gravity of two way-too-close-each-other celestial bodies. I told you Liu is a master of horror who would give Hollywood a run for their money.

The game turns out to be a way the alien invaders to recruit local collaborators and generate empathy among humans by the third act. Of course, the closer to reality casino or theme park type video games exist in the world of Three-body Problem just to contrast this VR “masterpiece”. The aforementioned Tencent Chinese series even makes the dry text of one final third act revelation, the one visualized on the cover of first English edition actually, into an interactive VR experience the characters get into.

In many ways this fictional Three Body game is very closer to Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty. Love it or hate it, MGS2 is the poster child of not rewarding players for their agency. One wonder if Kojima loves the book partially because there is the kind of misery sim in the book is like things he and company make.

I am of the opinion of game must be fun and I admit my definition of “fun” is pretty narrow, “no power fantasy, no fun” kind of narrow. If a game wants me to feel powerless, I would rather call it “a piece of interactive media” since other forms of media can make me feel powerless yet remain enjoyable to see and hear. Like reading about someone playing such a game is more than enough for me.

The woman who sold the world

By Part 3 Sunset for Humanity, Ye Wejie, the pov character in the period portion of the book, was revealed to the woman who sold the world. She covered up the fact that Red Coast did make First Contact with an alien race later dubbed Trisolaris and went to extreme length for that, including murdering her husband along with base politic commissar. Neither man knew that she sold our world, but commissar’s further inquiry would reveal that.

Reading this book again on Kindle help me see the seed buried in Part 1 about how Ye would sell the world without a second thought, it’s about how if evil is iceberg then humanity must the ocean under it. That ocean is inherently bad no matter how one look at it so it needs outside intervention Ye’s happier days on Earth were when she provided education for younger members of a community and received warmth distantly from said community. A type of happiness that the so-called Cold War days just did not provide. Funny how her thought is not “Stars are better off without us”, but “Our monkey paws are allowed on the stars and space if what they can do with nuclear power is anything to go by.”

The Two Jacks

Almost to prove Ye’s point about human, the most human character in the book is a former special force member turned cop named Shi Qiang. In the book, he is described to be someone closer to Jack Reacher on the outside and Jack Bauer of 24 fame in the inside. Big dude with agility and wit, a wit so sharp that it’s scare.

On the one hand, when pov character Wang Miao got gaslit by alien invaders, Shi was the only one that can comfort the confused and scared scientist. Tell the man to “Eat, sleep, drink (liquor) if it’s necessary. Then get back to work if you feel better”. It’s about the only way street smart can be of use to egg heads.

On the other hand, Shi is responsible for the last and most brutally effective action set-piece of the book. Operation Guzhen is a chapter goes very well with Ray Escapes and Big Shell, 2 Harry Gregson-Williams tracks for MGS 2, back to back. I remember reading the scene on the magazine back in later 2006, and the more intrigue inducing second half of Ray Escapes was playing in my head. Guess Ocelot talking to “Mr. President” in the cockpit of Ray after a tanker sunk does provoke the image of another tanker got sliced and diced along with its crew on the Panama by a zither made of nano material.

Neither “us” nor “them” are the Aztec, but they are closer

A way the book’s alien invasion collaborators justify their action is to call human kind the Aztec. Though except their action of finding local help, Trisolaris in the book is actually closer to the Mesoamerican natives than humans. Just the humble opinion of someone who had listened to a podcast or two on the subject. Oh, and they are the devil one doesn’t know.

For one, Trisolaris shares a similarly pessimistic world view with Aztec. They found out that there were 12 planets in their solar system with 3 suns. 11 were long gone into the suns, and their world is next. Then this world view was weaponized into some dumb thing called Farmer Hypothesis and taught to humans. Farmer Hypothesis and how humans are the chickens to be slaughtered in the story being the emphasis of Tencent’s show is that show’s biggest misstep if you ask me.

Other thing being how they are better builder just for survival. Even Conquistadors admitted that Aztec could outbuild anyone in Europe at the time. So, the statement about them being lower on the so-called Civilization hierarchy is just utter nonsense.

Guess all is fair in a struggle for Living Space, depicting what one has to do as the malice of an enemy included.

Xin, Da, Ya

Xin da and ya were first taught to me in the Chinese classes during high school. The 3 characters, excuse the pun, form the quality of translated text. Funny how I only heard of them during classes about my native tongue, while in English classes, translation requires 3 other completely different characters: grammar, grammar and grammar.

By the time I had purchased my copy of Three-body Problem I have not thought about that trio for about a decade. Yet Ken Liu, the translator of this book, reminded me in his afterword, though they became “fidelity to the source”, “aptness of expression” and “beauty of style”. Young Ken’s habit of not afraid to use longer English words to get the points through is present throughout the novel itself. Including but not limited to some of Shi Qiang’s more laconic regards. One of Shi’s regards was actually translated incorrectly, as in the original Chinese the line is actual ordering his armed squad member to kill any armed hostile who tries anything, while in English it morphed into he would personally kill any sob who tries anything.

Other than the dense text is pretty close across the 2 languages. In fact, it was clear that whenever English dialogue is required in that Tencent Chinese series, Ken’s text is obviously the base for those scenes. I would call that a feat, especially with MGS2 did what MGS2 had to do in Japanese to English translation before.