Three Body Problem - A Review

There's nothing quite like a great new sci fi series, and Three Body Problem, based on the Hugo-Award-winning novel by Liu Cixin, is one of the best to be found out there.

The show was created, in part, by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who are best known for creating HBO's Game of Thrones. As such, they brought some key actors from Game of Thrones along with them to this project: Liam Cunningham, who played Davos Seaworth (the Onion Knight), and John Bradley (sometimes John Bradley West), who played Jon Snow's timid friend, Samwell Tarley.

The plot originates with the Cultural Revolution in China under Mao Tsedong in the mid 1970's. A young woman named Ye Wenjie, a brilliant physicist, witnesses her parents being presented before an angry mob for the "crime" of espousing scientific ideas which run afoul of the official Chinese Party line. For example, her father taught students about the Big Bang theory at university, which (they say) strongly implies the existence of a creator - something the CCP cannot tolerate. When asked to recant, he defends the truth. When asked if this idea makes him believe in a god, he admits that he can neither confirm nor deny that hypothesis. The mother is then brought forward, recants, and begs her husband to do the same, but he again refuses. The party loyalists then proceed to bludgeon him to death. Not long after, Wenjie returns to the scene to retrieve her father's body and mourn his death. She is immediately discovered and arrested.

In a Chinese work camp, a coworker gives her a copy of Silent Spring by Rachel Carlson. This contraband gift is eventually discovered, but Wenjie refuses to give her colleague up. She is arrested and sent to prison, where she nearly dies. Yet the Chinese government knows they have a brilliant physicist in their custody, and eventually decide to utilize her talents. She is taken to a radio observatory atop a mountain, and soon discerns that the purpose of this research station is SETI - the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Meanwhile, in modern-day England, five researchers, all former students of Vera Ye (the daughter of Wenjie Ye) find themselves perplexed. High-powered particle accelerators are consistently showing impossible results, leading some to conclude that science itself is broken. Some physicists commit suicide, including Vera Ye. A British investigator of Chinese descent named Clarence "Da" Shi, working for the Strategic Intelligence Agency, investigates the scientist suicides. He discovers a gaming headset device several of them possessed.

One of the former lab members, Augustina "Auggie" Salazar, a developer of nanofiber applications, starts seeing a countdown timer right in front of her eyes. She fears she is going mad. Not long after, a mysterious woman appears to her, appearing at first to be some sort of religious nut. She inquires about Auggie's countdown and Auggie is astounded that she could possibly know about that. The woman tells Auggie that for the countdown to stop, she must abandon all her research permanently. She then asks her to watch the sky at midnight the following day. When she asks what she will see up there, the mysterious woman replies with a question: "Have you ever seen the universe wink at you?"

The next day at midnight Auggie, together with her sometime-boyfriend Saul, and indeed along with the rest of the world, witness the entire night sky flashing in a specific pattern, as though someone were flipping a switch, violating all known laws of physics.

And that's just the opening salvo. Wenjie presents an idea to her superior officer on how to contact alien civilizations by targeting the center of the sun. Her superior steals the idea, and presents it to the station commander, who rejects it out of hand. Wenjie, however, knows her idea will work. On a night she is presumably doing routine maintenance checks, she aims the radio dish at the sun and broadcasts a message in direct defiance of orders. To her astonishment, she gets a reply. "Don't contact us again," the message warns. "I'm a pacifist in our society, but if you persist in contacting us, my people will come and dominate your world." Wenjie, sick and tired of the oppression she has witnessed in her life, determines humanity doesn't deserve to rule its own world, and replies to the message.

Our modern-day cast discovers a strange gaming helmet which launches the user into a virtual reality so incredibly realistic that they all intuitively know the technology is way beyond them. Inside the game, they learn that the point is to solve the problem of inherent unpredictability within a tri-solar system. Why? Because the game is actually a sort of test - one in which aliens determine the worthiness of various humans.

There's so much more, but it's too delicious. You simply have to check this out. It's fresh, it's unique, and it has all the dark reality we loved in Game of Thrones, but without the disappointing ending.

You'll thank me for this one.

Eric

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