Often referred to by Chinese literary critics as the most influential piece of science fiction of the last two decades, Liu Cixin‘s “The Three-Body Problem” – known simply as “Three Body” within national borders – finally got its comic book adaptation after spanning across multiple media. The final result, while unpleasantly drab and standardized in its visual approach to the subject, does justice to the original thanks to its compelling writing.
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In 2007 Beijing, a mysterious streak of suicides involving the most illuminated physicists draws military and government attention to the organization knows as the Frontiers of Science, which all victims apparently had some sort of tie with. Nanotechnology researcher Wang Miao, who had been approached by one of the Frontiers leaders before, eventually accepts to infiltrate their ranks after making a startling discovery: A ticking countdown printed on its cornea, whose meaning threatens to shatter the foundations of reality itself.
First published as a series on the monthly magazine Kehuan Shijie in 2006, “The Three-Body Problem” was an almost instant hit, having in Western, old-school sci-fi its main references, such as Isaac Asimov’s short story “The Billard Ball” and Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhood’s End”. However, it was not until 2023 that the novel got its small screen adaptation by Tencent Video, followed one year later by the eponymous Netflix show created by David Benioff and D. B. Wiess.
Same is the case with the comic book version, adapted by writers Lu Twilight, Cai Jin and Silver, with art by Cai Xudong, whose first volume has a quite overt cinematic approach, leaning towards French polar movies from the ‘70s rather than hard science fiction. Indeed, cigarettes lit in the dark and soaked trench coats are the real protagonists of “The Three-Body Problem,” which does a good job in conjuring an aura of mystery around the deceased scientists, especially when it comes to Wang’s unrequited lover and her sibylline suicide note. What if reality as conceived by traditional physics was but a mere delusion, a faulty model underneath which lies absolute chaos? And this is before the actual sci-fi talk even begins, as theoretical physics somewhat points in this direction already, hence having the reader beg for Wang to find a way into the Frontiers of Science and provide an answer to such existential doubts.
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Too bad, however, that such an intriguing narrative style could not benefit from a comparable character design. In “The Three-Body Problem,” all characters look too similar, as if the same template had been used for all of them, with only slight changes in hairstyle and outfit in order to distinguish one from the other. The same could be maintained also for backgrounds, vehicles, and ambience, as they appear impersonal and sometimes not even consistent with the time when the story is set – the events of the first volume supposedly take place in the early ‘00s.
Setting aside the comparison with the other multimedia adaptations, which should not be addressed in order to properly evaluate “The Three-Body Problem” as a comic book and a work of art of its own, this first of three volumes sure has what it takes to hook the reader and spark some existential questions that have no easy answer. Whether there will be more proper science fiction material and more distinctive visuals, it is a matter that will be cleared in the following chapters, hopefully.
