If one is looking for an escape from the daily drumbeat of bad news coming out of Washington and the Middle East, you can’t do better than science fiction, and among the contemporary sci fi writers, the Chinese author Cixin Liu is one of the best.

His Hugo Award-winning “Three Body Problem” has been on my ”to be read” list since a college friend, Andy, recommended it several years ago.  It’s a challenge.  At 416 pages of dense prose, it’s a heavy lift, but beyond that, it’s very complex. In addition, all the characters have Chinese names which my brain doesn’t process or remember very well.  Finally, there’s a strong influence of video games which as a Baby Boomer, were not part of my youth so again, my brain is not programmed for their input.

The story leaps back and forth in time, beginning in the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960’s, ending up somewhere in the ’80’s, and projecting 450 years into the future as well as in location, jumping back and forth from the earth to Trisolaris, initially presented as a video game setting but eventually as a real planet.  The continuity in all of this is provided by Ye Wenjie, the daughter of a physics professor murdered in the Cultural Revolution who becomes the key figure in what ultimately is communication with a civilization on a planet in Alpha Centauri’s solar system.  She eventually becomes the leader of the Adventists, a group in the  ETO (Earth Trisolaris Organization) that is enabling the inhabitants of Trisolaris to arrive on earth, knowing that it will likely mean the end of the human race.

It’s unusual for me to finish a book and be confused about what happened, why, who, where, how, etc, but that was the case with this masterful piece of sci fi.  The final chapter in which the science counsel explains to the Trisolaris’ leader, the Princeps, how the Earth’s scientific progress will be halted during the 450 years it will take the Trisolaris fleet to reach earth, was totally over my head. Splitting the proton into eleven dimensions—Oy vey!

While this is not a book that will appeal to all or perhaps many readers, you can enjoy the story in a three part series on Netflix that premiered in 2018 to positive reviews, and despite my difficulty in keeping the names, the actions, and the explanations straight, I could admire the incredible skill in weaving this story together. And, it certainly did distract me from the daily news!