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Cixin Liu: The Three-Body Problem (2016, Tor Books) 4 stars

Within the context of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a military project sends messages to alien …

Review of 'The Three-Body Problem' on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

Entertaining, but mostly in the build up and in the present day -- for a while I thought it was going to be a Chinese version of M. John Harrison's Light, but instead it went into Greg Egan / Robert L. Forward territory with an unconvincing sidebar into a VR game.

Also, the premise is ridiculous. The trisolarans are as close as Alpha Centauri, but they don't see the solar system as an inherently safer place to be anyway? They have the technology to encode data into protons and launch an invasion fleet, but don't have the foresight to go to literally any other star that isn't exploding, nor use their incredible power over subatomic particles to correct their world? Why don't they send protons into their suns? Why don't they twig that the protons can work when in building it, they HAVE IT WRAP THEIR ENTIRE PLANET AND ABSORB ALL THE LIGHT THAT THEIR PLANET RECEIVES? Why don't they head into deep space? Why is Earth even worth invading at all -- it's at the bottom of a gravity well, the trisolans obviously don't have the same atmosphere or living requirements, so why start hostilities?

But hey. When it's on Earth and in the present day, it's a fun read. Three stars.