The Three-Body Problem (Trisolaris)
example · film: The Three-Body Problem (book) ·
retold in 5 talks
Cites Liu Cixin's sci-fi novel about a planet with three suns causing chaotic weather, as a metaphor for Earth's current state where nature itself is chaotic and unpredictable.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 3
“About a planet far away from Earth called Trisolaris, which has three suns, which rise and set at strange unpredictable intervals.”
“What happens on that planet with three suns is not a new equilibrium but chaotic weather: seven years of winter, then suddenly too much heat—and this is what we are approaching.”
“It's such a nice opposition Maoist order/disorder. Because our earth has regular rhythm order, that planet has disorder: three suns you don't know how.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
nature doesn't exist
×2
perfect storm of crises
×1
Unbehagen in der Natur
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
alongside works
Every retelling 3
Cites Liu Cixin's sci-fi novel about a planet with three suns causing chaotic weather, as a metaphor for Earth's current state where nature itself is chaotic and unpredictable., illustrating Nature is unnatural
Žižek recommends the Netflix adaptation of Liu Cixin's novel to illustrate that the climate crisis will not settle into a new equilibrium but produce chaotic, unpredictable weather, seven years of winter, then sudden scorching heat, compounding into an unmanageable perfect storm of crises., illustrating perfect storm of crises,ecology-climate
Liu Cixin's novel contrasts Earth's regular orbital rhythm (order) with the chaotic three-sun system (disorder); Žižek reads this as a science-fictional embodiment of the Maoist order/disorder dialectic and plans to open his next philosophical book with it., illustrating disorder as opportunity,interregnum / when the old is dying but the new is not yet born