But I think we can all agree that there’s no way this is “just a game”? Dayrit: I want to sound cool and say I'd play, but I am so not a gamer, and I could not be less enthused about VR headsets. Still, it sounds weird enough that I might give it a try-I did, after all, try visiting IRL. Months in game time go by, countless hours in real life go by, fact and fiction become blurred. Pandell: Thinking about the disorientation experienced in V-suits gives me the same anxiety as VR headsets. What if I got dehydrated during the game! It had a Waiting for Godot feel to me, just the way the people were talking and the absurdity of what was going on. The Three Body videogame is majorly creepy. I’m hoping Liu doesn’t send us down as many dead ends. I wasn’t surprised when Pynchon was even evoked in a footnote.

Speaking of disinformation campaigns, some of Wang Miao’s chapters remind me of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, a terribly frustrating and unsatisfying book. It lends legitimacy to what would otherwise feel completely absurd, not that there isn’t space for the absurd. Starting the book in the Cultural Revolution was a nice approach to anchoring the themes of anti-intellectualism and disinformation campaigns that re-emerge in subsequent chapters.

What? The past? Our past? On Earth? What black magic is this? Frankly, I was relieved to take a break from world-building for a while. Jay Dayrit, Editorial Operations Manager: Having become acclimated to our previous book-club books, which largely look into the future, I found myself disoriented by *The Three-Body Problem'*s opening chapter. I assume that tension will come back into play when the secret project needs some of these academics and their descendants to assist with whatever crazy alien invasion is about to go down.

Lexi Pandell, Assistant Research Editor: It sets up this interesting tension-not only do we have a tension between pollution and nature and (soon, it seems) between humans and extraterrestrials, but we have this tension between intellectuals and those in power. And it has the most beautiful line so far, the one about Ye Wenjie’s thoughts dissolving into her blood. What do you think about starting in the midst of the Cultural Revolution? Sarah Fallon, Senior Editor: I loved that chapter-the subjugation of science to political demands, the way people go crazy in the process, the one man who refuses to capitulate. WIRED Book Club: We’re Giddy (and Kiiinda Concerned) About Name of the Wind Arrow

The three body problem 2016