Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Three-Body Problem, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Technology, Progress, and Destruction
Scientific Discovery and Political Division
Trauma and Cyclical Harm
Theory vs. Lived Experience
History and Legacy
Summary
Analysis
Wang logs on to Three Body again. This time, the great palace is an Egyptian pyramid, but when he notices two soldiers dueling, they are in Western garb; the game’s version of the East has combined with its version of the West. When another man interrupts the fighting soldiers, he learns that the duelers are actually Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, and they are fighting over who invented calculus. Newton predicts that with the invention of calculus, it will be easy to solve the three-body problem—but the third man, who introduces himself as Von Neumann, is not so sure.
Now, the distorted history of the game begins to more closely parallel what is happening in real life; just as China and NATO are joining forces in Wang’s present day, the East and West of the game are coming together. In real life, Newton invented calculus centuries before Wei Cheng lived, but in the game, the history of scientific discovery does not always proceed in the same order that it did on earth.
Themes
Wang explains that a computer will help them solve the equation, but Newton has never heard of such a thing. Instead, Von Neumann suggests that they can perform the complicated calculations necessary to solve the three-body problem using human beings. As he talks, Wang realizes that Von Neumann is another real player in the game, not a computer-generated character. Von Neumann and Newton want to present their idea to Qin Shi Huang, Emperor of the Qin Dynasty.
Just as calculus took longer to invent, so, too, did computing technology—which is why creating a sort of human computer becomes necessary. It is also key that Wang is now encountering other real, human, players (like Von Neumann); for the first time, readers learn that this is actually a giant multiplayer game.
Themes
When the three men enter the palace, they are greeted by Qin Shi Huang, who has the “same eyes” as King Zhou and Pope Gregory. Qin tells the men to ask for help from Europe, as Europe and China are at war and right now, and “the wisdom of Westerners is terrifying.” Qin has given up on conquering Europe, but Von Neumann—whom Wong has deduced is Chinese—suggests that understanding the three-body problem is more powerful than winning any war ever could be.
This section reiterates, in a new way, several of the most prevalent ideas in the novel. Once again, the East and the West are at odds with each other, and once again, technology and science prove to be at the heart of the conflict. In history, Qin lived in the 200s B.C.E., and Newton lived in the 1700s. The fact that these two men are together (and squabbling over many of the same things that divide Wang’s world) suggests that these issues persist across time.
Themes
Von Neumann asks for three soldiers to demonstrate his idea for a human computer. When Qin offers to give 3,000 soldiers, Von Neumann pushes back; he believes that the East is falling behind in science because it has not realized that “even the most complicated objects of the universe are made from the simplest elements.” Finally, Von Neumann gets three soldiers and labels them “Input 1,” “Input 2,” and “Output.” He gives them each a white flag and a black flag.
On a basic level, this scene shows how Von Neumann and Wang create a human computer, coopting much of the coding language prevalent in computer science; since both men are from the 2000s, they both know the modern terminology. But on a deeper level, this passage is once again getting at the idea (expressed by the painting of the Qingming Festival) that what seems complicated is often simple—and vice versa.
Themes
Get the entire The Three-Body Problem LitChart as a printable PDF.
Von Neumann teaches the soldiers how to act like a computer: depending on what color flags each of the Input soldiers holds up, the Output soldier will hold up a different flag. Using this system, Von Neumann has the three soldiers create all the different possible “gates” in computer science. He explains that with millions of soldiers, they can string these gates together to compute very complicated equations in minimal time. Once Von Neumann’s idea is accepted, the passage of time in the game speeds up, and a giant square of soldiers is assembled. While there are millions of people, they do not take up very much space. Wang realizes that “though it was powerful, the phalanx also revealed the fragility of civilization.”
As the computer continues to build, Wang reflects on both the ingenuity of human beings and their ultimate “fragility.” Though civilizations can create everything from grand palaces to complex computing systems, they ultimately can’t completely understand or control the world around them.
Themes
Qin Shi Huang gives the order (“Computer Formation”), and the soldiers get into formation—they have effectively formed a giant motherboard. Von Neumann and Wang explain all the different parts of a computer operating system to Qin, and they tell Qin how these parts can be recreated in soldier form. They call the operating system “Qin 1.0.”
Tonally, there is some humor in this—it is a ridiculous anachronism to imagine Emperor Qin as the namesake of an operating system. But also, this juxtaposition shows how power has changed over time. Where once power was determined by military might, now it is largely centered around technology.
Themes
The time has come to test the machine. The black and white flags wave and surge as each input is transformed into an output. At one point, however, the surge stops; there has been some confusion. To the horror of Wang and Von Neumann, Qin orders all of the people in the area where the human computer stopped to be executed.
Qin’s brutality mirrors that of Zhou, Mozi, and Pope Gregory before him, but it also has real-life roots. In history, Emperor Qin is famous for being one of the most violent and erratic leaders of China.
Themes
After a successful test, Newton asks the massive collection of people to run the three-body problem. As the flags wave and flip, Qin reflects on the Western criticism that the East suppresses creativity. He argues that “a large number of men yoked by severe discipline can also produce great wisdom when bound together as one.” Before Qin leaves, he reminds the men that no good fate awaits them if their experiment fails.
Again, the East-West divide resurfaces, but this time, Qin adds another layer: he argues that the West’s focus on individualism prohibits some advancements that can only be made through collaboration. This emphasis on collaboration perhaps hits home for Wang, who has thus far been trying (and often failing) to connect various isolated actors.
Themes
The game time speeds up again, and for 16 months, the human computer performs calculations. Finally, the computer spits out a prediction that a year-long Stable Era is about to begin. This time, though, there is no one for Qin to rehydrate, as all of the people and resources in the empire have been spent making this one computer. Yet rather than despair, Qin celebrates—just as Newton predicted, the sun begins to rise, heralding the return of a Stable Era.
Just like Mozi’s experiment relied upon slavery, Qin’s devotion to his project has tremendous human costs. This is one of the novel’s big questions: what happens when science, even science ostensibly conducted for human benefit, demands such destruction?
Themes
Unfortunately, Qin’s joy does not last long. His astronomy minister informs him that an extremely rare tri-solar syzygy is approaching, in which all three of the suns are in a straight line. The feeling of gravity begins to diminish, and everything starts to float and come apart.
Since the suns each have their own gravity, when they approach the planet so quickly, it becomes literally impossible for the planet’s residents to stand their ground. The timing of this catastrophe also seems to hint that discovery is futile—each human victory is compromised by another natural surprise.
Themes
The people and things on the game planet begin to rise so far that they leave the atmosphere, and each person becomes an amorphous blob. Wang notices that the three suns are stacked together, like a “bright eye in the universe.” The game ends, and the message informs Wang that “Civilization Number 184 was destroyed by the stacked gravitational attractions of a tri-solar syzygy,” but that because of the invention of calculus and the computer, this society was able to begin solving the three-body problem. Wang logs off.
Further complicating the idea of individual agency, this passage flips the very human form on its head. Human beings become shapeless blobs, while the universe itself resembles an “eye:” thought and perception, it would seem, might lie not with people but within the universe that houses them. The idea of a universe that is itself intelligent will reappear later in the novel.
Themes
Seconds later, Wang gets a call from a stranger who explains that he is an administrator of the game. He asks Wang for his age, education, and employer, and tells Wang that if he refuses to give out this info, he will be permanently shut out of the game. Though the stranger will not answer any of Wang’s questions, he does invite Wang to a meet-up for players of the game on the following evening.
This is a momentous development: though the game and Wang’s real life have come closer together, they have not yet met. But now, Wang will meet other people who have advanced through the game, confirming his idea that the game has (potentially terrifying) real-world import.
Themes
