3 Body Problem
One of my bad habits is lying in bed before sleeping and scrolling through the news feed on my phone. I try to stay away from the really triggering stuff and get sleepy reading silly BuzzFeed lists. But last December an article about a new series being created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss caught my eye. They created Game of Thrones, so I was intrigued . . .
It's called 3 Body Problem and it's on Netflix. It's based on a science fiction trilogy by Cixin Liu called The Three Body Problem. Being in a reading frame of mind of late, and possessing an addictive personality I bought all three books and read them last month. I knew I was going to watch the series, so I wanted to experience the original source material.
Here's the basic idea: an advanced alien civilization gets in touch with us and let's us know their coming to take over our planet. But even traveling close to light speed it will take them 400 years to get here. So the first book (and season 1) isn't about an alien invasion, it's about what happens to humanity when there's an end date to life as we know it.
As my many thousands of followers 😉 know, I am deeply interested in #humanintelligence or #hi, which I contrast with #artificialintelligence or #ai. 3 Body Problem among many other exciting things, is an examination of a dynamic blend of HI and AI, as opposed to the tired trope of HI vs. AI. In order to begin designing a defence against the coming invasion, the humans in the series have to use every bit of technological assistance they have. In the series and in the books, powerful technology is guided by and interfered with by our human emotions, mistakes, and life-saving flights of fancy.
The books tell a dark story of an amoral universe populated by many civilizations all trying to wipe each other out in an effort to seize resources - we'll see if the series goes there. But what makes the story so compelling in print and on screen is that the truth of that darkness forces us humans to ask ourselves - who are we, really? What the series gets right is that that question - and the deep and complex wrestling match we have with our conscious, our faith, our principals - plays out in the day to day actions of the main characters, who despite their intellectual brilliance are revealed to be every bit as ordinary, human, and fallible as we all are.
In one of the extraordinary parts of the story the aliens (called Trisolarans in the books and the San'Ti in the series), the aspect of humanity the aliens are most fascinated by is our art, creativity, and storytelling. In other words, they become fascinated by what makes us human.
Have a look and tell me what you think . . .
