The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

"Our chief weapon is surprise... surprise and fear... fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise... and ruthless efficiency.... Our three weapons are fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope..."

"The Spanish Inquisition" (Monty Python sketch)

Several Japanese publishers and organizations publish an annual list of the best-rated mystery novels published that year. Each of these rankings do have their own focus and format. Most major rankings follow a Top 10 format, while the Honkaku Mystery Award for example has a shortlist of nominees wit and one single winner. In general, I find the titles (nominees and winners) picked for the Honkaku Mystery Award to be the closest to my own personal taste, focusing more on puzzle plot mysteries. Even so, none of these rankings really influence my to-be-read list in any significant manner: I sometimes glance at them whenever they are first announced and might take note of some titles, but it's not like I make it a habit of always reading the titles that rank in number one.

But sometimes, these lists do help pique my interest. I don't remember when it started exactly, but last year, I noticed a lot of people from Japan on my Twitter timeline mention Liu Cixin's science-fiction novel 2008 San Ti, available in English translation as The Three-Body Problem. Given the overlap between mystery and science-fiction readers in my timeline, it wasn't completely strange to see many people rejoice over the fact that novel finally got published in Japan, but then I noticed that a lot of people also talked about it as a mystery novel. Comments abouw how the novel, despite its hard science-fiction setting, could appeal to readers of the mystery genre too. And then earlier this year, I noticed that The Three-Body Problem had ranked in fourth place in the Bunshun Mystery Best 10 Ranking for 2019 in the Translated section. Of course, I know "Mystery" is used in the broad sense of the term like the "crime" genre, but still, I couldn't help but think of that hidden hard science-fiction mystery gem James P. Hogan's Inherit the Stars, a book I only tried because of such rankings. So I decided to dive in.

The Three-Body Problem, the first novel of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, introduces the reader to to the nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao, who is asked by the military to help investigate a series of mysterious suicides committed by several scientists across the world. It appears most of these scientists had a link to the Frontiers of Science, a group of scientists who seek new innovative approaches to science: Wang Miao has been invited several times to join the group but had always declined. Wang Miao realizes that the world's governments are all working together to investigate these deaths and that they seem to be hiding something from him, but he eventually agrees to team up with the sleazy, but street-smart police detective Shi Qiang to see what he can find out. With some hints from Ye Wenjie, an astrophysics professor known for the hardships she had to endure during the Cultural Revolution, Wang Miao starts to suspect that the laws of physics as assumed by humankind might not be correct and that that may have driven those scientists to suicide. Meanwhile, Wang Miao also discovers that several of these scientists have been playing a VR game called 3Body, which depicts a strange world where the sun seems to follow no set pattern, resulting in Stable and Chaotic Eras: in Chaotic Eras, the sun can appear and disappear at random times, sometimes scorching the earth until everything is rendered to ashes or staying away for years until everything is frozen. The people of the world of 3Body can 'dehydrate' themselves and lie dormant during Chaotic Eras, and it's only during the rare Stable Eras can the people can develop as a civilization, but nobody knows how long these Stable Eras last, and the players of the game all try to work out a model to predict the sun's movements. At first, Wang's sessions always end with the civilization destroyed by the sun's whimsical actions, but as he slowly progresses in the game, he uncovers a plot that ties back to the suicide of the scientists.

Okay, let me start right away with saying that if you're not interested in (hard) science-fiction at all and only want to read a mystery novel, The Thee-Body Problem is not for you. While the story does make use of mystery-related tropes to tell its story (the investigation into the mysterious suicides), the focus lies on the science-fiction plot, and if you expect something close to Asimov's The Caves of Steel, or even something like Hogan's Inherit The Stars, you'll be disappointed as the focus definitely does not lie on a puzzle that needs to be solved based on clues and deduction. Seen as a crime thriller, The Three-Body Problem will definitely appeal to many readers despite its hard science-fiction background: this is basically a conspiracy science-fiction thriller. As Wang's investigations proceed, he learns that there are people he can trust, people he can't trust and that nothing is what it seems and at the very least, the mysterious events that cross his path do make you want to read on.

Seen solely as a mystery novel though, which is what I usually do here, The Three-Body Problem is fairy weak. A lot of the conspiracy is revealed 'just as is' to Wang/the reader without any real puzzle-solving element and let's face it: the "big reveal" isn't that surprising for a science-fiction novel, and the plot ultimately only serves as a set-up for the following two novels in the trilogy. The book can be fun, science-fiction entertainment (though definitely more "hard science-fiction" than just "regular" entertainment science-fiction), but a lot of the elements feel very, very familiar. The most interesting part of the novel when seen as a mystery novel is definitely the VR game 3Body. When Wang first wanders around this weird world, he learns that the people there are trying to learn the pattern governing the movements of the sun, because civilization can't develop if everything keeps on burning or freezing for years on. The mystery of what causes the unpredictability of the sun is on its own a pretty alluring science-fiction mystery: over the course of several playthroughs, Wang finally realizes what the cause is, based on the visual clues he saw in the game. Ultimately, this ties back to an actual scientific problem, so I assume physicists will have no trouble recognizing the problem and for the regular reader it'd be pretty hard to deduce what is going on based solely on what is shown inside the 3Body scenes, but personally, I do like these kinds of puzzles in my science-fiction and fantasy mystery, where the reader has to figure out the common link or the governing rules of the unique setting. Astra Lost in Space is in a way a very accessible variant of a similar approach to science-fiction mystery, where the crew has to learn what the unique properties are of the flora and fauna of each planet they visit.

I wasn't even sure whether I was going to discuss The Three-Body Problem here or not. While the novel definitely has mystery-elements to it, I think it's juuust beyond the scope of what I usually discuss here. There have been borderline cases on this blog before, but if there's a Venn diagram of people who like science-fiction and people who like mystery fiction and the overlapping part signifies people who will like The Three-Body Problem, I think I'm just outside the overlapping part, sitting safely in my mystery bubble. In the end, I decided to write this post because other people keeping an eye on the Japanese mystery community may have noticed the numerous mentions of The Three-Body Problem. I am content with the knowledge that this just isn't the book for me, and I don't plan to read the other two books in the trilogy.

Original Chinese title(s): 刘慈欣 "三体"