Spoiler-free book guide
The Three-Body Problem
Book 1 of 3 in Remembrance of Earth's Past · by Cixin Liu
How it opens
At a mass struggle session at Tsinghua University in 1967, Red Guards accuse the physics professor Ye Zhetai of teaching reactionary science, and his wife, Shao Lin, joins in denouncing him. He refuses to back down, and four teenage Red Guards beat him to death with their belts while his daughter, Ye Wenjie, is held back below the stage. Two years later, Wenjie works with a Construction Corps logging company in the Greater Khingan Mountains, where the reporter Bai Mulin lends her Silent Spring and she copies out his letter to Beijing warning against the damage the logging is doing. When the letter is traced to her handwriting, Bai lets the blame fall on her, and in a cold cell the court representative Cheng Lihua presses her, without success, to sign a document about her father.
Who you meet early
- Ye ZhetaiYe Zhetai was a physics professor who taught mechanics, quantum theory, relativity, and the big bang theory at his university, a man who held the laws of nature to be more binding than any political doctrine.
- Ye WenjieYe Wenjie is a young astrophysicist from Tsinghua University, swept up in the Cultural Revolution, who works as a logger in the Greater Khingan Mountains with the Production and Construction Corps.
- Bai MulinBai Mulin was a reporter for the Great Production News of the Inner Mongolia Production and Construction Corps, a slender man who used his pen to push back against the deforestation sweeping the land around him.
- Cheng LihuaCheng Lihua is a high-ranked cadre and Intermediate People's Court representative in her 40s, a veteran of the Fourth Field Army who brings the same calculated manner to interrogation rooms that she once brought to Soviet songs.
- Director ZhangDirector Zhang of the Division Political Department warns Ye Wenjie that Silent Spring is capitalist propaganda.
Where it sits
The Three-Body Problem is the first of 3 books in Remembrance of Earth's Past. Start here.
Next · Book 2
The Dark Forest
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