Point of View

Cixin Liu tells his novel “The Three-Body Problem” in the third-person, limited omniscient narrative mode. This is done for at least two reasons. First, the sheer scope of Liu’s novel – moving across not only decades, but great distances between Earth and Trisolaris – is made accessible by a single, constant narrative voice that does not change even when events, settings, and characters do. A single, story-unifying voice brings the reader from the darkest days of the Cultural Revolution in China to Beijing of the 2010s to the highly advanced Trisolaran civilization lightyears away. Second, the limited-omniscient perspective of the narrator – withholding important information until later in the novel – creates a sense of both mystery and desperation as Wang and others race against the clock first to save the scientific community, and then humanity at large from the Trisolarans. This also creates a realistic atmosphere, as...