The Three-Body Problem
Page 38
I may not have succeeded, but these were the standards I had in mind as I set about my task.
In moving from one language, culture, and reading community to another language, culture, and reading community, some aspects of the original are inevitably lost. But if the translation is done well, some things are also gained—not the least of which is a bridge between the two readerships. I hope my fellow American readers enjoy this novel.
I am indebted to the following individuals, who gave me invaluable feedback on various drafts of this translation: Eric Abrahamsen, Anatoly Belilovsky, Aliette de Bodard, David Brin, Eric Choi, John Chu, Elías F. Combarro, Hui Geng, Michael Kwan, Derwin Mak, Joel Martinsen, Erica Naone, Alex Saltman, Alex Shvartsman, Marie Staver, Igor Teper, Bingen Yang, Bingwei Yang, and E. Lily Yu. I lack words to sufficiently express my gratitude for their help in making this translation better, and I wish every translator had such wonderful beta readers.
Others also deserve thanks. Joe Monti, my former agent (and current editor of my original fiction), dispensed much useful advice. Liz Gorinsky, my editor at Tor Books, helped me improve the translation in a thousand ways large and small, and I can’t imagine a better editorial experience than working with her. My wife, Lisa, provided the support and encouragement to keep me going on many late nights. More than anyone else, she made this possible.
Finally, I thank Liu Cixin, who entrusted me with his work and, in this process, became my friend.
—Ken Liu,
June 20, 2014
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cixin Liu is the most prolific and popular science-fiction writer in the People’s Republic of China. Liu is an eight-time winner of the Galaxy Award (the Chinese Hugo) and a winner of the Nebula Award. Prior to becoming a writer, he worked as an engineer in a power plant in Yangquan, Shanxi.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Ken Liu is a writer, lawyer, and computer programmer. His short story “The Paper Menagerie” was the first work of fiction ever to sweep the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM
Copyright © 2006 by (Liu Cixin)
English translation © 2014 by China Educational Publications Import & Export Corp., Ltd.
Translation by Ken Liu
This publication was arranged by Hunan Science & Technology Press. Originally published as in 2008 by Chongqing Publishing Group in Chongqing, China. First serialized in Science Fiction World () in 2006.
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Stephen Martiniere
A Tor Book
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Liu, Cixin.
[San ti. English]
The three-body problem / Cixin Liu; translated by Ken Liu.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-7653-7706-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-5344-7 (e-book)
I. Liu, Ken, 1976–translator. II. Title.
PL2947.C59S3613 2014
895.13'52—dc23
2014033729
e-ISBN 9781466853447
First U.S. Edition: November 2014
1 Translator’s Note: This refers to the August 1967 editorial in Red Flag magazine (an important source of propaganda during the Cultural Revolution), which advocated for “pulling out the handful [of counter-revolutionaries] within the army.” Many read the editorial as tacitly encouraging Red Guards to attack military armories and seize weapons from the PLA, further inflaming the local civil wars waged by Red Guard factions.
2 Translator’s Note: Originally a term from Buddhism, “Monsters and Demons” was used during the Cultural Revolution to refer to all the enemies of the revolution.
3 Translator’s Note: These were some of the most famous intellectuals who committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution. Lao She: writer; Wu Han: historian; Jian Bozan: historian; Fu Lei: translator and critic; Zhao Jiuzhang: meteorologist and geophysicist; Yi Qun: writer; Wen Jie: poet; Hai Mo: screenwriter and novelist.
4 Translator’s Note: Chinese colleges (and Tsinghua in particular) have a complicated history of shifting between four-year, five-year, and three-year systems up to the time of the Cultural Revolution. I’ve therefore avoided using American terms such as “freshman,” “sophomore,” “junior,” and “senior” to translate the classes of these students.
5 Translator’s Note: In the Chinese education system, six years in primary school are typically followed by three years in junior high school and three years in high school. During the Cultural Revolution, this twelve-year system was shortened to a nine- or ten-year system, depending on the province or municipality. In this case, the girl Red Guards are fourteen.
6 Translator’s Note: “Cadre,” when used in the context of Chinese Communism, does not refer to a group, but to an individual official of the Party or the state.
7 Author’s Note: During that phase of the Cultural Revolution, most intermediate and higher people’s courts and procuratorial organs (responsible for investigating and prosecuting crimes) were under the control of military commissions. The military representative had the final vote on judicial matters.
8 Translator’s Note: this is the Chinese term for the work behind “596” and “Test No. 6,” the successful tests for China’s first fission and fusion nuclear bombs, respectively.
9 Translator’s Note: The May Seventh Cadre Schools were labor camps during the Cultural Revolution where cadres and intellectuals were “re-educated.”
10 Translator’s Note: The Second Artillery Corps controls China’s nuclear missiles.
11 Translator’s Note: Qian Zhongshu (1910–1998) was one of the most famous Chinese literary scholars of the twentieth century. Erudite, witty, and aloof, he consistently refused media appearances. One might think of him as a Chinese Thomas Pynchon.
12 Translator’s Note: For more on Ding Yi, see Ball Lightning by Cixin Liu.
13 Author’s Note: See Isaac Asimov’s short story “The Billiard Ball.”
14 Translator’s Note: This refers to Wang’s status as a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
15 Translator’s Note: Hairen () means “Man of the Sea.” This is a play on Wang Miao’s name (), which can be read to mean “sea.”
16 Translator’s Note: The Warring States Period lasted from 475 BC to 221 BC. But King Wen of Zhou reigned much earlier, from 1099 BC to 1050 BC. He is considered the founder of the Zhou Dynasty, which overthrew the corrupt Shang Dynasty.
17 Translator’s Note: King Zhou of Shang reigned from 1075 BC to 1046 BC. The last king of the Shang Dynasty, he was a notorious tyrant in Chinese history.
18 Translator’s Note: Zhao Ge was the capital of Shang China, where King Zhou held court.
19 Translator’s Note: Fu Xi is the first of the Three Sovereigns, a Chinese mythological figure. He was one of the progenitors of the human race along with the goddess Nüwa.
20 Translator’s Note: Ji Chang is King Wen’s given name.
21 Author’s Note: Chien-Shiung Wu was one of the most outstanding physicists of the modern era, with many accomplishments in experimental physics. She was the first to experimentally disprove the hypothetical “law of conservation of parity” and thereby lend support to the work of theoretical physicists Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang.
22 Translator’s Note: Er guo tou is a distilled liquor made from sorghum, sometimes called “Ch
inese vodka.”
23 Translator’s Note: Mozi was the founder of the Mohist school of philosophy during the Warring States Period. Mozi himself emphasized experience and logic, and was known as an accomplished engineer and geometer.
24 Translator’s Note: This was a Chinese 16-bit minicomputer modeled on the American Data General Nova.
25 Translator’s Note: A maser is like a laser, but for electromagnetic radiation, typically microwaves, not in the visible light range.
26 Translator’s Note: The Third Front program was a secret, military-led industrialization effort during the Cultural Revolution that built factories in China’s interior, where they would be less vulnerable to American and Soviet attacks.
27 Translator’s Note: Hand-written posters using large Chinese characters have become associated with the Cultural Revolution in the popular imagination. However, they have a long history in China as tools of propaganda as well as protest both before and after the Cultural Revolution.
28 Author’s Note: How three bodies would move under the influence of their mutual gravitational attractions is a traditional problem in classical mechanics that arises naturally in the study of celestial mechanics. Many have worked on it since the sixteenth century. Euler, Lagrange, and more recent researchers (aided by computers) have all found solutions for special cases of the three-body problem. Karl F. Sundman later proved the existence of a general solution to the three-body problem in the form of a convergent infinite series, but the series converges so slowly that it is practically useless.
29 Translator’s Note: Poincaré showed that the three-body problem exhibited sensitive dependence on initial conditions, which we would now understand as characteristic of chaotic behavior.
30 Translator’s Note: For details, please see Alain Chenciner and Richard Montgomery, “A remarkable periodic solution of the three-body problem in the case of equal masses,” Annals of Mathematics, 152 (2000), 881–901.
31 Author’s Note: Roche limit: Édouard Roche, French astronomer, was the first to calculate the theoretical distance between two celestial bodies such that the smaller body will be torn apart by tidal forces from the larger body. The Roche limit is usually expressed as a function of the densities of the bodies and the equatorial radius of the larger body.
32 Translator’s Note: Chairman Mao was often compared to the “red sun,” especially during the years of the Cultural Revolution.
33 Translator’s Note: The Chinese term for “sunspot” () literally means “solar black spots.” Black, of course, was the color of counter-revolutionaries.
34 Translator’s Note: Alpha Centauri, though appearing to the naked eye as a single star, is actually a double-star system (Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B). A third star, called Proxima Centauri and invisible to the naked eye, is probably gravitationally associated with the double-star system. The Chinese name for the objects () makes it clear that the “star” is really a system of three stars.
35 Translator’s Note: The Five Black Categories, the targets of the Cultural Revolution, were five political identities used during the revolution: landlords, rich farmers, counter-revolutionaries, “bad elements,” and right-wingers.
36 Translator’s Note: During the initial phase of the Cultural Revolution, all classes ceased at colleges and elementary, junior high, and high schools as older students became Red Guards. The resulting chaos finally caused the leadership in Beijing to ask students to return to class in late 1967 and continue the revolution in a more controlled manner.
37 Translator’s Note: “Cowsheds” were locations set up by work units (factories, schools, towns, etc.) during the early phases of the Cultural Revolution to detain the counter-revolutionary “Monsters and Demons” (reactionary academic authorities, rightists, the Five Black Categories, etc.) at the work unit.
38 Translator’s Note: This meeting marked the beginning of the “Reform and Opening Up” policy and was seen as the moment when Deng Xiaoping became the leader of China.
39 Translator’s Note: In the later years of the Cultural Revolution, privileged, educated urban youths were sent down to the poor, mountainous countryside to live with and learn from the farmers there. Many of these so-called “Rusticated Youths” were former Red Guards, and some commentators believe that the policy was instituted by Chairman Mao to restore order by removing the rebels, who had gotten out of control, from the cities.
40 Translator’s Note: The Hundred-Day War at Tsinghua University was one of the most violent Red Guard civil wars during the Cultural Revolution. Fought between two Red Guard factions, it lasted from April 23 to July 27 in 1968. Mêlée weapons, guns, grenades, mines, cannons, etc. were all used. In the end, eighteen people died, more than eleven hundred were wounded, and more than thirty were permanently disabled.
41 Translator’s Note: Norman Bethune (1890–1939) was a Canadian surgeon who served with the Chinese Communists in their fight against the Japanese invasion force during World War II. As one of the few Westerners who showed friendship to the Chinese Communists, Bethune became a Chinese hero known to the elderly and children alike.
42 Translator’s Note: There is a pun in Chinese between the word for a proton, zhizi (), and the word for a sophon, zhizi ().