The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)

by Liu Cixin

Gradually, as fantasies about that distant civilization grew more and more elaborate, the Redemptionists developed spiritual feelings toward Trisolaran civilization. Alpha Centauri became Mount Olympus in space, the dwelling place of the gods; and so the Trisolaran religion—which really had nothing to do with religion on Trisolaris—was born. Unlike other human religions, they worshipped something that truly existed. Also unlike other human religions, it was the Lord who was in crisis, and the duty of salvation fell on the shoulders of the believer.

Most Redemptionists with some in-depth math and physics knowledge had attempted the three-body problem, and even after knowing that the problem was mathematically unsolvable as posed, the effort did not cease, because solving the three-body problem had become a religious ritual of their faith.

In front of each ship is a large magnetic field shaped like a funnel to collect antimatter particles from space. This collection process is slow, and only after a long wait can it gather enough antimatter to allow the ship to accelerate for a brief period. Thus, the fleet’s acceleration occurs in spurts, interspersed by long periods of coasting to collect fuel.

A society with such advanced science must also have more advanced moral standards. INTERROGATOR: Do you think this conclusion you drew is scientific?

Such emotions caused the individual and society to be weak spiritually and did not help with survival in the harsh environment of this world. The mental states that Trisolarans needed were calmness and numbness. The history of the past two hundred-some cycles of civilization proved that civilizations that relied on these two states as their spiritual core were the most capable of survival.

Existence is the premise for everything else.

To permit the survival of the civilization as a whole, there is almost no respect for the individual.

“The plan focuses on emphasizing the negative environmental effects of scientific development and showing signs of supernatural power to the population of Earth. In addition to highlighting the negative effects of progress, we’ll also attempt to use a series of ‘miracles’ to construct an illusory universe that cannot be explained by the logic of science. After these illusions have been maintained for some time, it’s possible that Trisolaran civilization may become a target of religious worship there. Then, unscientific ways of thinking will dominate scientific thinking among human intellectuals, and lead to the collapse of the entire scientific system of thought.”

Overall technological development depends on the advancement of basic science, and the foundation of basic science lies in the exploration of the deep structure of matter.

“Our definition of ‘life’ is probably not appropriate for the high-dimensional microcosmos. More accurately, we can only say that universe contains intelligence or wisdom. Scientists have long predicted this possibility. It would have been odd for such a complex and vast world to not have evolved something akin to intelligence.”

It’s to encourage them to face the destruction of Earth civilization with equanimity. You know very well that after we publicized our policy toward the Earth civilization, there was a wave of extremely dangerous pacifism.

We must control and eliminate these weak sentiments.”

The humanism of Earth will lead many Trisolarans onto the wrong path. Just as Trisolaran civilization has already become a religion on Earth, Earth civilization has this potential on Trisolaris.”

When the sophon shrinks to the size of a regular subatomic particle, the internal sensors and I/O ports will be smaller than the wavelength of any electromagnetic radiation. That means it would not be able to sense the macro world, and would not be able to receive our commands.”

“After the two sophons arrive on Earth, their first mission is to locate the high-energy particle accelerators used by humans for physics research and hide within them. At the level of science development on the Earth, the basic method for exploring the deep structure of matter is to use accelerated high-energy particles to collide with target particles. After the target particles have been smashed, they analyze the results to try to find information reflecting the deep structure of matter.

opening. A sophon can take the place of a target particle and accept the collision. Because they’re highly intelligent, they can precisely determine through the quantum sensing formation the paths that the accelerated particles will follow within a very short period of time and move to the appropriate location.

After a sophon is struck, it can deliberately give out wrong and chaotic results. Thus, even if the actual target particle is occasionally struck, Earth physicists will not be able to tell the correct result from the numerous erroneous results.”

The surface of the Earth is a tiny space for sophons. If sophons patrol around the accelerators on Earth at this speed, then, from the perspective of humans, it is as if they simultaneously exist in all the accelerators and can almost simultaneously create erroneous results in all the accelerators.

I had already known that light could traverse a distance equal to seven and a half trips around the Earth in a single second, but I had not contemplated what kind of terrifying distance could be crossed by flying at such a speed for a whole year.

Scales and existences that far exceeded the bounds of human sensory perception—both macro and micro—and that seemed to be only abstract numbers to others, could take on concrete forms in my mind.

Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains.

In this book, a man named “humanity” confronts a disaster, and everything he demonstrates in the face of existence and annihilation undoubtedly has sources in the reality that I experienced.

—Liu Cixin (), December 28, 2012

The best translations into English do not, in fact, read as if they were originally written in English. The English words are arranged in such a way that the reader sees a glimpse of another culture’s patterns of thinking, hears an echo of another language’s rhythms and cadences, and feels a tremor of another people’s gestures and movements.