His political crime taints his scientist daughter's future, too. He pays the price in a horrific scene that, except for its science focus, might have come out of a book by Ha Jin or Yu Hua. Unlike Galileo, Ye Zhetai does not recant, even after his wife awkwardly confronts him in public. 'How can a basic survey course not teach it?'' ''Relativity is part of the fundamental theories of physics,' Ye answered. ''Answer the following question without your typical deceit: Between the years of 19, did you not decide on your own to add relativity to the intro physics course?' Her father, the physicist Ye Zhetai, died after a Galileo-like crisis during the Cultural Revolution. His timeline intersects soon enough with that of Ye Wenjie, an aged astrophysicist. Given the amount of international military cooperation behind him, Wang understands that something big and scary is going on, but it takes some time before he understands how truly frightening the situation is.

Elite scientists, in China and elsewhere, have been dying at an alarming rate. Police and military officers coerce nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao into infiltrating Frontiers of Science, a group of scholars and academics, and reporting back to them. In contrast to the apparent benevolence of the Overlords in Clarke's 'Childhood's End,' the aliens depicted in 'The Three-Body Problem' are not headed toward Earth bearing flowers and candy.

Clarke,' the author told Amy Qin in a recent New York Times interview. 'Everything that I write is a clumsy imitation of Arthur C. It combines fascinating extrapolations from astronomy and physics with a compelling first-contact story and a remarkable gaming / virtual reality tale - and sets the whole thing in contemporary China, among characters profoundly shaped by the notorious Cultural Revolution.Ĭixin Liu has sold more than 1 million copies of this novel and its two sequels in China, a country whose leadership has not always been hospitable to science fiction. If you delight in science fiction that delivers the shock and thrill of something strange, Cixin Liu's 'The Three-Body Problem' is your novel this year.

The three body problem book review