三體（全球突破三千萬冊燙金簽名版）

by 劉慈欣

人類不斷向宇宙發出訊號，但我們不知道宇宙鄰居會如何回應……

 

◎二○○六年中國科幻銀河獎特別獎

◎二○一五年雨果獎長篇小說獎，為獲該榮譽的首部亞洲作品

◎二○二○年日本星雲獎海外長篇首獎

◎全球熱銷三千萬套，二十一世紀最值得注意的作家暢銷系列作

 

一封寄往宇宙深處的信

一款謎樣的線上遊戲

引出決定人類命運的重要決戰

 

父親在文化大革命被殘殺，對人類絕望的菁英科學家葉文潔加入了軍方的通訊單位。就在這裡，她向宇宙深處寄出了改變人類命運的一封信……

 

數十年後，研究尖端奈米材料的汪淼被捲入頂尖科學家接連自殺的謎團之中，他循著線索找到了一個由科學家組成的組織「科學邊界」，還有一款名為「三體」的虛擬實境線上遊戲。這個神秘組織究竟藏著什麼祕密，「三體」中出現的三顆太陽又代表著什麼？

 

《三體》系列，是中國文壇最值得注意的作家劉慈欣的科幻史詩鉅作。雜揉科技、政治與歷史，在全世界引發熱潮，至今已賣破三千萬套，授權NETFLIX影集將於二○二三播出！

 

口碑推薦

王德威／知名評論家、哈佛大學講座教授

 

各界評價

 

充滿狂放的想像，規模宏大的

Genres: Science Fiction

333 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 7, 2023

Reviews

[Rob Hocking · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had this book recommended repeatedly to me since around 2015. I can't remember my response in those early days, but when it was recommended again twice last fall, I said "well, I'd rather read it in the origin Chinese than read a translation. Give me about a year to read all of Harry Potter in Chinese, and by then I should be ready." Therefore, after I finished 哈利柏特 死神的聖物 in July I picked up 三體. It's a fairly large step in difficulty up from Harry Potter, so it took me the whole summer to read, even though it's only about 300 pages.

I think that this is the best science fiction novel I've ever read. The English translation would also probably be pretty good - there are a few things that would be lost in translation or translated awkwardly; but with the book is so science focused - and with science having originated in the West and not the East - in a way the English translation might actually be more natural. I say that because the book repeatedly refers to real scientific discoveries or phenomena that are awkward to express in Chinese. There are also references to ideas from Chinese philosophy that I imagine must have been difficult to express in English, but they are far outnumbered by the scientific references.

Although not perfect, the science in this book is pretty good - the author worked as an engineer for twenty years before he started writing science fiction, so he mostly knows his stuff. I even learnt a few things. There are a few areas where the science is off a bit - for example, at one point in the story all three suns in the solar system where the planet that the 三體人 live on all rush at the planet at the same time and each of them grazes it - resulting in the planet being ripped in two, with half of the planet forming a moon. The book explains that this is because the planet has passed within the Roche limit of each sun (the Roche limit of a larger celestial body is the distance a smaller celestial body has to be from it for the tidal forces of the larger body acting on the smaller body - wanting to rip it apart - to exceed gravitational forces within the smaller body holding it together - it's the distance within which a larger body breaks a smaller body apart). The book then has a footnote which says that the Roche limit is typically 2.44 times the radius of the larger body, and therefore being "grazed" by the sun is also going inside its Roche limit. I'd never heard of Roche limits before reading the book, but this is wrong. The correct formula for Roche limit is 2.44 times the radius of the larger body times the cube root of the ratio of density of the larger body to that of the smaller body (this assumes both bodies are fluid). Suns are far less dense than rocky bodies like planets, so that extra factor actually puts the Roche limit of a star (provided the smaller body is a rocky planet) well inside the star. For example, the Roche limit of the Earth with respect to the Sun is approximately 1.42% of the Sun's radius. So this part of the book doesn't make sense.

Another area where the book didn't make sense is when the three suns form a line, and this caused their combined gravitational field to suddenly be super powerful, and objects start to fall upwards into the sky. This doesn't make sense because the stacked gravitational field of all three suns should affect the earth and everything on it equally - there should be no relative motion between the planet and the things on it. The only way that this would make sense is if the tidal forces of the suns were to exceed the gravitational self attraction of the planet. But for that, we'd need to be within the Roche limit from the paragraph above, and we definitely aren't anywhere close.

Aside from these two issues - the second one being the only really serious issue in my opinion - I was mainly ok with the science in the book. When it started getting into quantum mechanics and string theory, there were a bunch of issues, but that's almost always the case with these topics, and since its frontier stuff that isn't really fully worked out yet I'm more forgiving. I found it remarkable how the author was able to take a simple idea like the insolvability of the three body problem and the chaotic behavior that it exhibits - something every math undergraduate learns in passing but most of whom don't think too deeply about it - and to build such a compelling story around that idea. I liked the character development of 葉文潔, the anti-hero of the book, who gradually becomes radicalized by her experiences with the dark side of human nature to the point that she is gives up on humanity and is willing to help an Alien race fleeing their doomed solar system conquer the earth. My only complaint is that I would have liked it better if her objective was simply to destroy humanity, because the idea that she would be naïve enough to believe that the aliens would be benevolent and help humanity fix its problems simply wasn't plausible for someone of her intelligence. What would have been plausible would be for her to lie and trick other humans into thinking that the latter was her objective so they would help her, while her true objective was secretly the former (indeed, 葉文潔's accomplice Mike Evans does exactly this).

This book is actually the first book in a trilogy. I'm now onto the second book. Season one of the Netflix series actually covers both the first book and bits of the second, so I haven't really gotten into new material past the Netflix series yet.

[Indy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a few deep breaths to start reading the book, as the physics and astrophysics theories involved were quite daunting even to a science student. Moreover, it took about half of the book to set the stage for this grand story that is finished in three volumes. Nevertheless, the author managed to make the story amusing to science amateur.

[Andrew Ng · Rating 5 out of 5]

與大多數人美好的願望相反，人類不可能作為一個整體與外星文明接觸，這種接觸對人類文化產生的效應不是融合而是割裂，對人類不同文明間的衝突不是紓解而是加劇。

與外星文明的接觸，只是一個符號或開關，不管其內容如何，將產生相同的效應。假如發生一個僅僅證明外星文明的存在，而沒有任何實質的內容的接觸,其效應也能通過人類群體的心理和文化透鏡被放大，對文明的進程產生巨大的實質性的影響。這種接觸一旦被某個國家或者政治能量所壟斷，其經濟和軍事意義超乎想像。

[Chang Xin · Rating 5 out of 5]

超神 結局相較設定和過程平淡 但還是超神