Modern Hard SF: Simulating Physics in Virtual Reality in Cixin Liu’s "The Three-Body Problem"

Philip Steiner

Abstract


In Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem, the reader follows the protagonist Wang Miao into the digital depths of the virtual reality of Three Body. As I will demonstrate in this paper, the virtual reality Three Body constitutes a purposeful combination of literary simulation of modern physics and intermedial VR video game representation. I will show that this combination is utilized for several interesting narrative purposes, for example, as a powerful foreshadowing instrument and as an almost didactic explanatory device for the theoretical physics problem upon which the novel is based.


Keywords


virtual reality; Chinese SF; hard SF; Cixin Liu; intermediality

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2022.46.3.57-66
Date of publication: 2022-10-31 18:06:40
Date of submission: 2022-03-30 19:24:43


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