Book review: The Three-body Problem
The Three-body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu, published by Tor. Copyright 2006, English translation copyright 2014, ISBN 978 0-7653-8203-0.
The back of my paperback copy has the following marketing blurb: “Experience beloved science fiction author Cixin Liu’s award-winning masterpiece The Three-body Problem.” The back also has a quote from NPR: “Stunning, elegant … A science fiction epic of the most profound kind.” However, The Three-body Problem is fantasy, not science fiction. Let me explain.
Science fiction is fiction, with science. An interesting aspect of this off-the-cuff definition is, we have to take the date of writing into account. For example, in the late 1800s astronomers reported canals on Mars. By the early 1900s, those observations were almost entirely discounted, but imagination would not let go. It wasn’t until the Mariner 4 spacecraft flew by Mars in July 1965 that canal speculation stopped. My point is, science fiction writing could reasonably include Martian canals from the first “observation” in 1877 (by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, according to Wikipedia) until July 1965 when the definitive non-observations were reported by Mariner 4. So, for approximately 88 years, a science fiction writer could have Martian canals as part of the “science” of the story. But with the hard news from Mariner 4, that topic stopped being available for the science part of science fiction.
Stated another way, in my opinion, after mid-1965 Martian canals in science fiction are a fantasy element. Science has found they do not exist, so introducing Martian canals today doesn’t stretch science, it is not science. All of this is a warm up for the protons introduced late in The Three-body Problem.
Quarks
The author precedes proton discussion with one of dimensions by way of a cigarette filter (page 328):
Ding walked over and picked up the [cigarette] butt. In front of Wang’s eyes he tore it open and revealed the yellowed spongy material inside. Wang smelled burnt tar. Ding continued, “Look, if you spread this little thing open, the adsorbent surface area can be as large as a living room.
In other words, take the spongy volume (three dimensions) and unroll it to make it flat (two dimensions). What was a three-dimensional object becomes a two-dimensional object. And, important although not mentioned here, the flattened (2D) filter can easily become a volume (3D) again. Dimensional change for the cigarette filter can be two-way: 3D to 2D then 2D back to 3D.
I enjoyed that dimension change example, a nice bit of seeing one thing in two ways. The next part of the story got dimensionally complicated.
On page 362, I read that scientists of Trisolaris want to “… unfold a proton into two dimensions.” Another Trisolaran asks, “Unfold a nine-dimensional structure into two dimensions?” I wonder, is that reasonable? When it comes to protons, maybe not.
Wikipedia: String theory: String theories require extra dimensions of spacetime for their mathematical consistency. In bosonic string theory, spacetime is 26-dimensional, while in superstring theory it is 10-dimensional, and in M-theory it is 11-dimensional.
All of that is above my head, but, ok, I will play along with more than four dimensions (length, width, depth, and time). But I wonder specifically about unfolding a proton.
Wikipedia: Quark: Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei.
Wikipedia: Quark model: Hadrons are not really “elementary” …
Wikipedia: Quark: A proton is composed of two up quarks, one down quark, and the gluons that mediate the forces “binding” them together.
So, a proton is only a name for three quarks and their associated gluons bound together. If that sounds farfetched to you, I don’t blame you. But it is today’s best science of subatomic particles. Quarks were first discovered in 1967; the last of the six quarks was discovered in 1995.*
The unfolding of a proton into two dimensions takes place on page 327:
“The immense mirror that appeared over Trisolaris was the proton being unfolded, a geometric plane without any meaningful depth.”
Does that make sense? If I unfold a proton, I am actually unfolding the package of three quarks and gluons. And that, finally, is my point. The “up” and “down” quarks of the proton were discovered in 1967 but the author unfolded protons in 2006 (copyright date). That cannot happen. Just as Martian canals were no longer an acceptable science fiction element after mid-1965, it is not valid to manipulate a proton as a single object. The author ignored 39 years of science.
Eyes
If a writer has just one beyond science fiction (fantasy) element in the story, does that disqualify the story from the science fiction category? I say “yes.” But, if you want to go toe-to-toe arguing that with me, let’s go to another part of this book.
On page 364, the unfolding resulted in a mistake (before the successful unfolding on page 371):
“Have we succeeded?” the princeps asked. “Is that the proton unfolded into two dimensions?”
The science consul replied, “Princeps, it’s still a failure. I just received the report from the accelerator control center. The unfolding left one too many dimensions in, and the proton unfolded into three dimensions [from its original nine dimensions].”
The three-dimensional objects “were in the form of regular geometric solids: spheres, tetrahedrons, cubes, cones, and so on.” … “Out of the mess of three-dimensional objects, a few in particular drew special attention from observers on the ground.” … “They were all eyes!”
The various eyes merged into one, then deformed into a parabolic mirror. “The parabolic mirror focused the sun’s beams onto the surface of Trisolaris.” Before the mirror could destroy much of the surface, the mirror was destroyed by the Trisolaran space defense corps.
“Afterwards, the princeps asked the science consul, “Did we destroy a civilization in the microcosmos in this experiment?”
“It was at least an intelligent body. Also, Princeps, we destroyed the entire microcosmos. That miniature universe is immense in higher dimensions, and it probably contained more than one intelligence or civilization …”
Is this science? No. There is speculation about the universe as a large neural network** but that’s it.
So, another fantasy element.
Mass
Let me take a moment to consider engineering a proton as a 2D plane.
In our world, we have three physical dimensions: length, width, and depth. However, a true 2D plane has no depth; it is infinitely thin. In The Three-body Problem, the author unfolds a proton so Trisolarans can etch circuits into the surface. The circuits will be programmed to do various things, including wreak havoc on Earth. “Etching the proton circuits was a huge engineering feat, …” (page 374). As we understand etching, it will not work on an infinitely thin 2D surface – it will cut through the plane. So, what does the author mean by “etching”?
The “p-n junctions” of the circuits were formed by twisting the strong nuclear forces locally on the surface of the proton plane, and the conduction lines were made of mesons that could transmit the nuclear force (page 373).
Wikipedia: Meson: Mesons are part of the hadron particle family, which are defined simply as particles composed of two or more quarks.
So, the “conduction lines” of the integrated circuit are not etched into the proton’s surface but are, I imagine, a string of meson particles. When etching is finished, the three-quark 2D surface also has very (very) many additional quarks.
Wikipedia: Quarks: In QCD [quantum chromodynamics], quarks are considered to be point-like entities, with zero size.
This tells me no size was added to the 2D proton, but what about mass? Remember, a proton is really two up quarks and one down quark (bound together by gluons). And, after etching conduction lines of mesons (each meson is at least two quarks), the author added many (many) quarks to each proton.
On page 377, four programmed protons are converted to normal subatomic, 11-dimensional (not a typo) entities, after which they are protons. Or are they? With the addition of many (many) mesons, the mass of a programmed proton (which the author calls a Sophon) must be thousands or millions of times that of the original 3-quark proton. Is a Sophon stable? Is a particle composed of thousands or millions of quarks stable? That is, how many (nano)seconds would such a particle exist after conversion from the 2D plane to 11 dimensions? My guess: not long.
For these reasons I say The Three-body Problem is fantasy, not science fiction.
I welcome your thoughts.
Ben Pruitt
ben@ben-pruitt.com
* “History of SLAC,” section “The hunting of the quarks,” https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/about/our-story/history; and Wikipedia: Top quark.
** bigthink.com, Bobby Azarian, June 12, 2023, “The case for why our Universe may be a giant neural network.”