The Three-Body Problem

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LIST OF CHARACTERS

Chinese names are written with surname first.

The Ye Family

Ye Zhetai

Physicist, professor at Tsinghua University

Shao Lin

Physicist, Ye Zhetai’s wife

Ye Wenjie

Astrophysicist, daughter of Ye Zhetai

Ye Wenxue

Ye Wenjie’s sister, a Red Guard

Red Coast Base

Lei Zhicheng

Political commissar at Red Coast Base

Yang Weining

Chief engineer at Red Coast Base, once a student of Ye Zhetai

The Present

Yang Dong

String theorist and daughter of Ye Wenjie and Yang Weining

Ding Yi

Theoretical physicist, Yang Dong’s boyfriend

Wang Miao

Nanomaterials researcher

Shi Qiang

Police detective, nicknamed Da Shi

Chang Weisi

Major-general of the People’s Liberation Army

Shen Yufei

Japanese physicist and member of the Frontiers of Science

Wei Cheng

Math prodigy and recluse, Shen Yufei’s husband

Pan Han

Biologist, friend/acquaintance of Shen Yufei and Wei Cheng, and member of the Frontiers of Science

Sha Ruishan

Astronomer, one of Ye Wenjie’s students

Mike Evans

Scion of an oil magnate

Colonel Stanton

U.S. Marine Corps, commander of Operation Guzheng

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

List of Characters

Part I: Silent Spring

1. The Madness Years

2. Silent Spring

3. Red Coast I

Part II: Three Body

4. The Frontiers of Science

5. A Game of Pool

6. The Shooter and the Farmer

7. Three Body: King Wen of Zhou and the Long Night

8. Ye Wenjie

9. The Universe Flickers

10. Da Shi

11. Three Body: Mozi and Fiery Flames

12. Red Coast II

13. Red Coast III

14. Red Coast IV

15. Three Body: Copernicus, Universal Football, and Tri-Solar Day

16. The Three-Body Problem

17. Three Body: Newton, Von Neumann, the First Emperor, and Tri-Solar Syzygy

18. Meet-up

19. Three Body: Einstein, the Pendulum Monument, and the Great Rip

20. Three Body: Expedition

Part III: Sunset for Humanity

21. Rebels of Earth

22. Red Coast V

23. Red Coast VI

24. Rebellion

25. The Deaths of Lei Zhicheng and Yang Weining

26. No One Repents

27. Evans

28. The Second Red Coast Base

29. The Earth-Trisolaris Movement

30. Two Protons

31. Operation Guzheng

32. Trisolaris: The Listener

33. Trisolaris: Sophon

34. Bugs

35. The Ruins

Author’s Postscript for the American Edition

Translator’s Postscript

About the Author

About the Translator

Copyright

PART I

SILENT SPRING

1

The Madness Years

China, 1967

The Red Union had been attacking the headquarters of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade for two days. Their red flags fluttered restlessly around the brigade building like flames yearning for firewood.

The Red Union commander was anxious, though not because of the defenders he faced. The more than two hundred Red Guards of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade were mere greenhorns compared with the veteran Red Guards of the Red Union, which was formed at the start of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in early 1966. The Red Union had been tempered by the tumultuous experience of revolutionary tours around the country and seeing Chairman Mao in the great rallies in Tiananmen Square.

But the commander was afraid of the dozen or so iron stoves inside the building, filled with explosives and connected to each other by electric detonators. He couldn’t see them, but he could feel their presence like iron sensing the pull of a nearby magnet. If a defender flipped the switch, revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries alike would all die in one giant ball of fire.

And the young Red Guards of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade were indeed capable of such madness. Compared with the weathered men and women of the first generation of Red Guards, the new rebels were a pack of wolves on hot coals, crazier than crazy.