The Three-Body Problem Literary Elements

Science fiction

China, from the 1960s to the early 2000s; large sections take place within a video game or on characters' interpreted version of the alien planet Trisolaris

Third-person limited point of view, alternating between several characters, including the astrophysicist Ye Wenjie, the nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao, and the Trisolaran princeps.

Contemplative, serious

There are several candidates for protagonist in the novel, but the main one is Wang Miao, the good-hearted nanomaterials researcher who helps the police look into the suicides of several scientists and eventually has a major role in stopping the ETO. The antagonists of the novel are ambiguous (Ye Wenjie, for one, counts as both a protagonist and an antagonist), but the most obvious one is the Trisolaran civilization, which is influencing Earth's development so they can invade.

The Earth-Trisolaris Organization (ETO) is attempting to pave the way for the invasion of an alien civilization, the Trisolarans, resulting in conflict between interest groups on Earth, including the police, global leaders, scientists, and factions within the ETO.

At the end of the novel, Wang Miao's nanomaterial allows for the destruction of the ETO's main ship and the recovery of the Trisolarans' messages, which reveal their ultimate plan for taking over the Earth.

Because most of the action in the novel is deliberately orchestrated by the Trisolarans, it's hard to judge many events as "foreshadowing" as opposed to a slow reveal of their interference. One possible example of foreshadowing is Wang Miao's musing on the shooter and the farmer, two thought experiments about misunderstanding the nature of the universe; these musings foreshadow, or at least anticipate, the extraterrestrial involvement later in the novel.

"The article's views will not be to the liking of some" - Document from the Red Coast Project (Chapter 13: Red Coast III)

The first part of the novel takes place during the Cultural Revolution, so allusions are made to the real-world events of the period. Throughout the novel, Liu references famous scientists and mathematicians, such as Copernicus, Newton, Galileo, and Einstein.

"...something finally thawed in Ye Wenjie's heart. In the frozen tundra of her soul, a tiny, clear lake of meltwater appeared." (Chapter 26: No One Repents)

Some Adventists believe that the only way to save humanity is to destroy humanity.

The descriptions of Ye Wenjie and the listener receiving and reacting to alien messages parallel each other in many ways, from overall structure to particular details. Because the description of the listener is filtered through Ye Wenjie's own imagination, this parallelism could be read as a lack of imagination on her part, or a desire to find a human connection with this unknown alien.

"Wang finished the roll in the Leica and grabbed the digital from his son." (Chapter 6: The Shooter and the Farmer)

"Sunlight danced between the gentle waves." (Chapter 7: Three Body: King Wen of Zhou and the Long Night)