A really bizarre science fiction story set in the background of Mao’s paranoid cultural revolution, this long story totally lost me.
At Tsinghua University in Beijing in 1967, a group of academics is brutally attacked by the armed forces, because of their scientific view of the world. They work in cosmology, theoretical physics, and nanotechnology, with interference from an alien society that Ye Winjie secretly communicates with. The author, then abandons this setting until returning to it late in the story.
In this world, the universe begins to flicker in line with an unsolicited Morse code delivery.
Alternatively, “The universe is a hollow sphere floating in a sea of fire. There are numerous tiny holes in the surface of the sphere, as well as a large one. The tiny ones are stars and the large one is the sun.” A modification has two spheres, one inside the other. This is even more bizarre than standard cosmology. People are dehydrated with loss of all of their water and then later revived in a different civilization. Einstein and Copernicus converse on the steps of the U.N. building where Einstein is playing the violin as a beggar. Two protons sent to earth by the Trisolarian aliens planning to invade are able to block all scientific progress for years.
The title is based on the three suns model of the universe leading to either a Stable Period or a Chaotic Period.
This book is so bizarre, disjointed,dry, and dystopian that I cannot give it a rating above 1, and it was a total waste of time as far as I was concerned. Perhaps my profound ignorance of telecommunications technology, theoretical physics, string theory, cosmology, and my general low opinion of science fiction did not help, but that does not explain a lot of my disappointment. It does not even qualify as good science fiction.
1/5
Thanks, Alan, but no thanks.
The Passionate Reader 