Technology, Progress, and Destruction
Over the course of The Three-Body Problem, various characters develop mind-boggling new technologies: protagonist Wang Miao creates a razor-sharp, invisible, new substance known as nanomaterial, for example, while astrophysicist Ye Wenjie figures out how to use the sun’s rays to contact alien life. But even as the book dives deep into the mechanics of human invention, it also suggests that every new technology has the potential for violence and destruction. Wang’s nanomaterial is used…
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Scientific Discovery and Political Division
The Three-Body Problem follows the United States, the USSR, and Communist China racing to find extraterrestrial life at the height of the Cold War. Although these different superpowers share a common scientific goal, science acts not as a unifying force but as something that only sows more division among the powerful governments. In China, where the novel is set, the government is clear in its intention to recruit aliens as allies against the Russians and…
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Trauma and Cyclical Harm
Throughout The Three-Body Problem, characters who have been traumatized and betrayed (especially as young people) reenact that trauma on the people around them. During the Cultural Revolution, intellectuals inform on one another in order to avoid violence themselves. American oil scion Mike Evans, who has had a terrible relationship with his father, copes with that pain by plotting for the destruction of humanity. And though astrophysicist Ye Wenjie betrays the entire human race…
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Theory vs. Lived Experience
Many of the characters in The Three-Body Problem spend their lives thinking about abstract theory, but many of them then struggle to merge these theories with the complexity of the real world. Scientist Ye Wenjie comes from three generations of theoretical astrophysicists. Mathematician Wei Cheng devotes his life to solving the impossible problem of the book’s title. And, finally, protagonist Wang Miao spends all of his free time on a video game that asks players…
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History and Legacy
The characters in The Three-Body Problem aspire to shape the course of history. On a geopolitical level, China, the United States, and the USSR (the three superpowers at the heart of the Cold War) all hope to prove that they alone are “the heroes […] of history.” Part of their impetus to search for aliens in the first place is to find a neutral party who will validate this view. And perhaps most tellingly, even…
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