The Three-Body Problem Summary: Plot, Characters and Ending
The Three-Body Problem begins with Ye Wenjie, an astrophysicist who loses all hope in humanity during China's Cultural Revolution and secretly invites an alien civilization to Earth. Decades later, nanomaterials scientist Wang Miao uncovers a conspiracy of humans helping the Trisolarans, whose invasion fleet is already on its way.
It is the first book of Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy.
| Character | Who they are |
|---|---|
| Ye Wenjie | Astrophysicist who contacts the aliens |
| Wang Miao | Nanomaterials researcher drawn into the mystery |
| Shi Qiang | Rough, shrewd police detective |
| Mike Evans | Rich idealist who funds the conspiracy |
| Yang Dong | Physicist, Ye's daughter |
| The Trisolarans | Aliens from a world with three suns |
What happens to Ye Wenjie?
In 1967, Ye watches her father, a physics professor, beaten to death by young Red Guards during a public denunciation. Sent to a labor camp and betrayed by a reporter she trusted, she is recruited to Red Coast Base, a secret radar station. She discovers it can amplify signals using the sun and sends a message into space.
Years later a reply arrives from a peaceful listener on Trisolaris, warning her not to answer or Earth will be invaded. Ye, convinced humanity cannot fix itself, answers anyway: come, we will help you.
↑ Back to the topWhat does Wang Miao discover?
In the present, top physicists are taking their lives, among them Yang Dong. Detective Shi Qiang and the military enlist Wang to infiltrate a group called the Frontiers of Science. A countdown appears in Wang's photographs and then in his eyes, and the cosmic background radiation flickers for him alone. Ye tells him how to stop it: by halting his research.
↑ Back to the topWhat is the Three Body game?
Wang plays a virtual reality game called Three Body, set on a world of chaotic sunrises where civilizations rise and are destroyed by unpredictable seasons. He realizes the world orbits three suns in an unsolvable gravitational dance. The game is a recruitment tool for the Earth-Trisolaris Organization, whose followers, led by Ye and Mike Evans, want the aliens to come.
↑ Back to the topHow is the conspiracy stopped?
The organization's headquarters is a tanker called Judgment Day, which holds the messages exchanged with Trisolaris. Using Wang's ultra-thin nanofilament, the authorities stretch wires across the Panama Canal and slice the ship apart as it passes, recovering the data.
↑ Back to the topHow does The Three-Body Problem end?
The messages reveal that a Trisolaran fleet will reach Earth in about four hundred and fifty years. To stop human science from advancing in the meantime, the Trisolarans have sent sophons, protons unfolded into intelligent supercomputers, which sabotage particle experiments and created Wang's countdown. They send humanity a message: you are bugs.
Wang and a fellow scientist despair. Shi Qiang drives them to the countryside and shows them a field of locusts that humans have tried to wipe out for centuries and never could. Bugs, he says, have never been defeated. The two scientists find their hope again.
↑ Back to the topMore about The Three-Body Problem
This summary reveals the whole plot, including the ending.