Mad Science: The Three-Body Problem's Ye Wenjie
This article series discusses some of the interesting portrayals of science and/or scientists in horror and other genres of dark fiction as well as reality. With a list of over 100+ characters to explore, this column will examine these portrayals from the perspective of a woman working in STEM, and what these portrayals get right, get wrong, and their influence on the perception of scientists in the popular consciousness.
· Spoilers for The Three-Body Problem
· Note: I will be listing the characters family names first with their given name second. This is usually how Chinese names are written. I did not include the Simplified Chinese characters for the names though.
· TW: Mentions of suicide
Although The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu is a sci-fi book, there were some pleasant moments of cosmic horror that I greatly enjoyed. The expanse of the universe “shining just for you” is deliciously creepy! If you enjoy hard sci-fi with hints of cosmic horror, mystery, and a good story, I recommend the series!
While The Three-Body Problem is filled with scientists and engineers, I found Ye Wenjie incredibly intriguing among so many fascinating characters. While I am halfway through the second book in the series, I am unsure how or if her character changes in the second or third book. So, I will only focus on her actions in the first book. I have not checked out the Netflix series either, so again, this is entirely focused on her characterization in the first book!
Ye Wenjie is a talented astrophysicist specializing in a specific type of radiofrequencies. While there are multiple main characters in Three-Body, her journey from the Cultural Revolution in China until the present day (sometime in the 2000s to 2010s) is crucial for understanding the decisions she makes. Decisions that have lasting global impact should be well explained by the author most of the time! While I strongly disagree with her choices, the translator and author did an excellent job of making me feel for her and understand her reasons.
Although the story is told nonlinearly, I will try to go chronologically through her story. When we begin the translated version of the book, we witness the harsh murder of Ye Wenjie’s father, Ye Zhetai, by the hand of teen girls in the Red Guard. Ye Zhetai was imprisoned for being an intellectual and his murder occurs during a struggle session due to his an abnormally strong will. These sessions were meant to break academics and others so that they would be more loyal to the new regime and stop focusing on any ideas that could be viewed as dangerous. Time is a flat circle…
As her mother and sister have joined the new movement, she is truly isolated after her father’s death. She is also broken by her own mother being one of her father’s accusers. In spite of her mother and sister’s loyalty, she ends up in a labor brigade due to her relation to her father.
However, her time doing labor in the mountains seems peaceful for Ye Wenjie. She accepts the hard life and solitude being related to a dissident affords her. She lives in the shadow of the mysterious Radar Peak. There is a research base atop the mountain that has a large antennae and dish that sometimes extend into the sky, sometimes killing any wandering birds who have the misfortune to pass by. She clears trees and lives a quiet life until she meets a man. This man is sort of irrelevant to the story, except for the book he brings and lets Ye Wenjie read, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. As a Rust Belt/ Appalachian gal myself, Silent Spring, environmentalism, and conservation have always felt personal. While my region has begun to recover, somewhat, the water, land, and air have been damaged by greed to an extent it will take another 100 years or so to truly heal. This doesn’t even begin to cover the negative effects pollution, irresponsible use of chemicals for pesticides, fracking, etc. have wreaked on the human element. I understood why a book like this would resonate with her. For better or for worse, through Silent Spring, Ye Wenjie witnesses another example of vicious cruelty carried out by mankind. It doesn’t matter whether they are the Chinese or American, the worst of humanity will kill whatever or whoever it takes to achieve their goals.
After completing the text, Ye Wenjie aids the man in drafting a document related to Silent Spring. The man betrays her, telling officials that she was the one trying to pass this information around, leading to her being imprisoned. She assumes she will be executed very soon (if she doesn’t die from the prison’s conditions first). She is “luckily” rescued by Lei Zhicheng and Yang Weining, two men who work at Radar Peak at Red Coast Base. They ask her to join them due to her skills and past in astrophysics. She agrees, despite Yang Weining’s warnings about the likelihood that once she enters Red Coast, she will never leave again. Ye Wenjie, who seemingly enjoyed her time in the forest surrounding Radar Peak and the small amount of people living at the base, easily agrees.
While Ye Wenjie slowly makes herself indispensable to the base, she is not entirely aware of what the purpose of the research station and antennae is. It takes some time until Yang Weining convinces Lei Zhicheng to be honest about what exactly they are researching at the Red Coast Base. They are sending signals into space attempting to contact extraterrestrial life. So far, they have not made any successful contact. Ye Wenjie is shocked by this but doesn’t seem to be fazed at first. Eventually though, she wants to make her own attempt. Due to her past work and digging through the literature, she theorizes that the signal is too weak to contact anyone and wants to amplify the signal by taking advantage of the sun. She clandestinely uses the equipment to conduct her experiment one day and, luckily, it goes undetected by her superiors. It also appears to have gone undetected by any additional ears or listening organs by anyone for a long time. These segments show how clever she is but also her lack of care for herself feels jarring. By this point, the story well establishes that Ye Wenjie is uninterested in moving forward with her life, she is simply marking time until she dies. She seems to have no true joy or genuine care for anyone, including herself. Her only real spark of life was trying to send the signal, and when nothing happens, she gives up.
In the eight years following her first message, Ye Wenjie ends up marrying Yang Weining. Life shifts into a relatively relaxing time for her, but she still is numb. However, one day, she receives a message from an extraterrestrial civilization on a strange planet called Trisolaris. This message is rapidly followed by a warning, begging whoever sent the message NOT to respond. The Trisolaran alien fleet would be able to find their planet, travel there, and would likely eradicate humanity. Ye Wenjie wonders if this is a bad idea or not. And why wouldn’t she? Haven’t the formative years of her life been marked by the cruelty of humans? She’s seen how they treat the Earth itself as well as their fellows. Based on her experiences, it isn’t a leap to see why she might assume these aliens may be a better alternative. She responds in spite of the warning, then learns she is pregnant.
Ye Wenjie is still committed to the choice to bring the Trisolarans to Earth. They have quite the lengthy journey to get there, but she starts making plans to aid their arrival. She murders her husband and supervisor when they start to get suspicious about the signals she sent. She mercilessly lets them fall to their death, framing it as an accident. She and her daughter, Yang Dong, live at the base until the girl is older and Ye is permitted to resume civilian life. She looks for someone who can aid her in her goals of helping the Trisolorans.
She enlists aid from the scion of an American industry tycoon to finance her work. Evans is also a scientist and one of the few who does not think that the existence of other species existence is less important than human survival. He is quick to join Ye Wenjie and finance her endeavors, forming the Earth – Trisolaran – Organization, or ETO. He hated his family’s money but can use it to promote a new way, a better way.
The ETO continues to grow, aiming to gain members with high rankings in politics and STEM. They design a “game” to continue bringing people to their side, the side that starts calling the Trisolaran’s “Lord”. This game is named Three-Body, and allows for the gamers to experience the struggle of what it must be like to live on a simulated version of Trisolaris. This game is entirely a fiction though, no one knows really what the planet or the peoples living their look like. This game allows the ETO to recruit many researchers who can aid them in saving their “Lord”. These people use their influence to continue helping the aliens while they travel from their planet to Earth.
The ETO and Ye Wenjie come up with an idea to help the Trisolarans conquer humanity. They are going to effectively sabotage the future of physics research. They plan to use intelligent subatomic particles or sophons constructed by the Trisolarans. These particles are made surrounding Trisolaris and sent to Earth, in another eerie section of the books. The sophons will be used to falsify any new results obtained in the entire field of quantum physics as well as spy on any opposition. This inability to further study of the quantum field basically hamstrings future research in many fields, forcing the humans to rely on other methods to try and prevent the fleet’s arrival in the next few hundred years.
Although Ye Wenjie is captured by the human sympathetic government organizations by the end of the first book, her and Evans’s plot is well in motion. Their actions led to the depression and eventual suicides of many great scientists, including her own daughter Yang Dong. She is comfortable with her choices but does express sadness for the loss of her daughter. Ye Wenjie seems calm, gentle and composed at this point in her life. One wonders if she may have had a change or heart by the end.
What I like about Ye Wenjie is that she is one of the best examples of how scientists can never be truly apolitical. Regardless of what research we are doing, we are confronted with the reality that our very lives, let alone our research, can be halted or helped by which government is in power. It is hard for me to imagine turning my back on the entirety of humanity, but I did not see my family brainwashed or murdered in front of my eyes as a young adult. I did not have my career stymied because of a negative stain on my reputation. But I have seen how terrible humanity can be. I love that author gave Ye Wenjie’s story the time it needed for her decisions to be abhorrent but understandable. I am excited to see how the actions of this scientist will continue to play out in the rest of the series.
Follow Dee on Twitter @sirenofscience and Bluesky @sirenofscience.bsky.social
