Jacqueline Hochheiser, Corporate Communications
An Introduction to the Three Body Problem
The Three Body Problem is the first novel in Chinese author, Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. The first installation was published in 2006, and won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015 among others. It has since been made into a Netflix show in 2024, with the first season encompassing the events of the first book. In the novel, Earth is threatened by the imminent arrival of an alien species called the San-Ti Ren who are looking to take over the planet as their new home.
The San-Ti abandoned their original planet because it is plagued by the phenomenon, known in orbital mechanics, as the three-body problem: an event in which three masses orbit each other, but the pattern in which they revolve is impossible to predict through any mathematical equation. The San-Ti’s home planet revolves around three suns, and depending on the position of the planet relative to the suns, “chaotic eras” ensue, meaning a catastrophe so destructive that it wipes out their civilization and they are forced to rebuild from scratch. Because the pattern of their revolution around the suns is unpredictable, they could never know for certain when another chaotic era would be upon them. Therefore, their only option for survival was to flee in search of a more stable environment.
The role of RF comes into play, when the San-Ti discover Earth through an illegal transmission sent from a lab in China via a radio telescope in the 1970s. This event serves as the catalyst for the storyline of the first novel and the first season of the show. The transmission is sent by one of the story’s protagonists, Ye Wenjie, who lived through the worst of what life had to offer in communist China before ending up at the lab. The theme we will be exploring in this show review, is the moral implications of Ye Wenjie’s voluntary decision to bring the San-Ti to Earth, despite being warned of their intentions to conquer.
Exploring Ye Wenjie as A Pivotal Character
There were multiple events in Ye Wenjie’s life that continuously convinced her that humanity is inherently evil and beyond saving. First, her father is publicly executed for having independent ideas about the teachings and implications of physics. Due to her connection with him, Ye Wenjie is sentenced to hard labor and sent to a work camp where she harvests lumber. There, though she was suffering, she meets a young journalist who befriends her and lends her a contraband book. Amidst the hardship of the camp, Ye Wenjie thinks she’s found light and kindness in this young man, and even starts to fall in love with him, but he betrays her by revealing that she has the book in her possession to the authorities.
She is then removed from the camp and sentenced to death, unless she signs a contract that claims her father was guilty of conspiring against the government. She refuses. At the last moment, she is spared from execution and brought to a remote government lab that needs her expertise in physics. It’s there that she works on experiments to contact extraterrestrial life (using RF technology in the form of a radio telescope), and against all odds, she succeeds. Having felt betrayed by humanity her whole life, she takes it upon herself to conclude that humanity cannot be saved from its inherent evil nature, and allows another unknown species to take over Earth. She does this despite knowing that saving humanity might very well mean wiping it out entirely.
The question is, did she have a right to decide the fate of all humanity based on just one lifetime of experience out of billions of people? Perhaps, because of the pain and betrayal she experienced early on, she simply chose to ignore the kindness or happiness she may have felt at various times throughout her later adult life. Either way, both RF technology and one woman’s opinion altered the course of the history of humanity for better or worse.
While Ye Wenjie is still working at the lab, after she has already contacted the San-Ti, she meets a young conservationist/activist named Mike Evans. He is reportedly squatting on a site the lab was looking at to delegate to research activities and would need to cut down trees in the area. Evans is there to prevent this from happening because it would mean the possible extinction of a bird species living in the trees. When Ye Wenjie and a colleague come to investigate the situation, she is caught off guard by a comment Evans makes when she and her colleague assume he is advocating for the safety of the villagers that also live in the area.
Evans says, “are we so self-centered that we always assume when we talk about saving lives, it’s human life?”
Ye Wenjie, on some level, agrees with him, because she thinks humanity has a destructive nature it can’t escape. And so, she finds respect for Evans, and agrees with the fact that other forms of life are more important than humanity. Hence, her invitation to the San-Ti to invade Earth no matter the consequences to humanity. But again, are her narrow views of humanity and human life enough to decide the fate of an entire species, or even justify its end?
It is this mutual belief between Ye Wenjie and Evans that leads them to cross paths again many years later and form an organization to help prepare humanity to welcome the San-Ti to Earth. They both agree that humanity is headed in a path for self-destruction, or plainly the destruction of Earth, and they need the San-Ti to intervene. In their minds, they are working toward the good of humanity, and being completely selfless while working toward this goal. But, does the selflessness go too far? And are they truly doing this for what they feel is right, or for more selfish reason to be remembered as accomplishing something groundbreaking?
The idea of selflessness is put to the test through Ye Wenjie’s relationship with her daughter, Vera Ye. Vera follows in her mother’s footsteps and becomes a top physicist running a lab at CERN until she mysteriously commits suicide. It’s found out later on as the show progresses, that Vera stumbled upon evidence of her mother’s direct involvement in the imminent arrival of the San-Ti. She’s evidently sickened by the fact that her mother has played a hand in orchestrating the end of the human race. In a sense, Ye Wenjie is responsible for her daughter’s death. Even if Vera had never committed suicide, Ye Wenjie has accepted the fact that she is working toward humanity’s demise, and therefore how could she have sympathy for one human being even if it is her own daughter?
After Vera’s funeral, this fact is further proven when Ye Wenjie gives Jin Cheng, Vera’s former student and a physicist, the alien technology she let her own daughter use that played a hand in her death. Knowing what it did to her own daughter, Ye Wenjie is willing to risk this outcome on another person for the sole purpose of furthering her mission. She disguises her involvement from Jin by claiming she doesn’t know what the technology is, only that she had seen Vera using it before she died. The conclusion we can gather from Ye Wenjie’s actions is that her past has made her numb to human compassion and she is simply acting out of what she genuinely thinks will salvage the evil in human nature. Or, alternatively, she is single-mindedly focused on accomplishing her goal for selfish reasons rather than the selflessness she preaches when she claims her mission is to save humanity. After a life of being seen as just another cog in the wheel, she finally has a chance to distinguish herself from the rest of humanity through great accomplishment.
When Actions Have Consequences
Ironically, both Ye Wenjie and Evans wind up dead in the end because they have exhausted their purpose to the San-Ti, and so they are abandoned. Ye Wenjie accepts her fate with dignity, but Evans cannot comprehend the fact that he has become obsolete.
Mike Evans became obsessed with the power he held as one of the San-Ti’s most loyal and devout subjects. He was elevated from a normal person in the world, to becoming a direct orchestrator of the future of Earth and its inhabitants. When he reveals that humans can lie to conceal their true intentions, the San-Ti realize that humanity cannot be trusted, and moreover, that Evans has been lying to them for his own gain. They then refuse to help him any further and cease communication with him, after which he succumbs to a sort of mania and cannot accept that the San-Ti have abandoned him. This becomes apparent when the San-Ti allow him and his entire following to perish. Evans fights to live every step of the way but to no avail.
On the other hand, Ye Wenjie, when she discovers that the San-Ti have no more use for her, she becomes complacent and accepting of her fate. She is an old woman who has lived a full life, and she feels that whatever her fate is, she will embrace it with dignity. She takes it upon herself to commit suicide at the lab where the events of the first book/season began. However, Ye Wenjie is greeted there by Tatiana, one of her followers whom the San-Ti have chosen to continue their mission after getting rid of Ye Wenjie and Mike Evans. Tatiana is tasked with ending Ye Wenjie’s life, which she accepts without a fight.
While Evans had completely succumbed to his power-hungriness, Ye Wenjie accepted her fate with grace. It is not conclusive if this is because she knows of all the horrible things she has done and can’t live with it anymore, or she really thought she was working toward a better future and has done all she could. It is for the viewer to determine their point of view on Ye Wenjie’s moral compass and whether her actions were truly coming from a place of wanting to help the world become a better place, or to exact revenge on the world for the pain she experienced through most of her adolescent to young adult life. What do you think were her motivations?
Final Thoughts
While 3 Body Problem is a remarkably elaborate work of Science-Fiction, it is still rooted in truth and originates from the world of RF engineering and radio astrology. In reality, humanity really does have radio receivers tuned to outer space, listening for any communication that may come from extraterrestrial beings. So how far from reality are we from the events of 3 Body Problem?
In fact, the Wow! Signal, detected in 1977 by Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope detected a narrowband radio signal that we still have not been able to identify or determine its origins. Could there be another civilization out there among the stars? And what happens when they find Earth?
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