Happy third airing anniversary of Three-Body on January 15th!!!
Zhang Luyi as Wang Miao, Yu Hewei as Shi Qiang, and Wang Ziwen & Chen Jin as young & senior Ye Wenjie in Tencent's THREE-BODY | 三体 (2023) (Kun's 110/∞ Three-Body gifsets)
So a nanoscientist and a microbiologist walk into a bar
(spoilers for phm and the three body trilogy below cut)
Project Hail Mary and The Three Body Problem have such striking similarities to me. Obviously their content is similar; both are hard scifi and depict first contact with aliens, and off the top of my head some of the central themes are human resilience and connection in times of strife. (maybe the latter isn't as prevalent in the text of Three Body, but it's still there)
However, the books are also counterparts of sorts. Three Body is intensely impersonal in its focus on plot and worldbuilding over characters.. it will sack characters freely. Wang Miao appears only in the first book and disappears after. There's a recurring image, of one tiny person against the vast cosmos, of insignificance. The universe will die and be reborn and it will be like we never existed, but we still existed, but does it really matter? The alien adversaries in the book were so powerful that they likened us to bugs. Though it was pointed out that bugs like locusts survive despite the best efforts of the locusts' adversaries (humans), we still got crushed in the end.
Project Hail Mary, meanwhile, is so so personal. From the very first page the reader gets intricate insight into Grace's problem-solving process from his perspective, with first-person narration. He cries every other chapter. The reader experiences or is exposed to every emotion he feels and we get intensely attached to him and Rocky as the book goes on. There's the feeling of one human against the universe, but the human is actually... winning? We are bugs, we're literally using beetles to transport our saving grace back to Earth, but it. it works? I was thrown by this because I'd read Three Body first and was fully expecting to see the Hail Mary explode horribly. But no, it's sci-fi hopecore.
they're so alike, they're so different. They're two sides of a coin, the heads side facing a brighter future and the tails side slipping down a gravity well of doom. Not to mention the characters: on the one hand you have Grace, who never raised kids but taught so many of them, and he loved them so much they were always at the forefront of his thoughts. On the other hand, you have Wang Miao, who had a wife and a kid, but I don't think he ever once has a single thought about his kid in the book and his wife is mentioned like, twice (it's cause he's too busy thinking about his gay bodyguard Shi Qiang trust). Even in the 'divorce bad' environment typical to China at the time I think it makes the most sense to headcanon his wife divorcing him. You got the teacher who loves so intensely but just doesn't have the relationships society expects of him (hello aroace Grace) and you got the Successful Career in Applied Science guy who looks Properly Heterosexual until you realize he has no romantic attachment to his wife and also does not care about his kid. You have two people, two middle-aged guys who are also leading scientists who somehow got unwillingly roped into save-the-world plots, and who object to the loss of autonomy they experience along the way, but who ultimately really, really care about Earth and all the people there.
...so anyways the (friend)ship name is locustbeetle-
seventy pages into the dark forest and i never thought i would say this but… i miss wang miao!! i miss his dynamic with da shi!! come back to me u nerd….
Written for @juneofdoom 2026 Day 6 prompt "Forced To Watch".
Fandom: Liu Cixin "Three Body Problem"
Summary
This is a somewhat canon-divergent reimagining of the scene where the ship "Judgement Day" is passing through the Panama canal and the nanoscientist Wang Miao is forced to watch it. A detailed summary is below the cut since it includes spoilers for "Three Body Problem".
Words: 1835
Gen / Gen
Relationships: Wang Miao & Colonel Stanton, Wang Miao & sophon
Warnings: a depiction of mass murder being committed, but not too graphic. Brief mentions of blood and gore.
Read on AO3
Detailed summary:
This is a somewhat canon-divergent reimagining of the scene where the ship "Judgement Day" and all its crew and passengers is being sliced by the "zither", a set of near-invisible nanomaterial strings that are strung across the Panama canal. The nanoscientist Wang Miao, whose research lab has manufactured the deadly strings, is forced to watch the ship being destroyed. He is very upset by the sight. The two sophons are watching from Earth's orbit. One of them secretly sympathizes with the people of Earth and does not want their destruction. It has to keep these sympathies secret from the other sophon and from the Trisolaran government, while it struggles to find a way to relieve Wang Miao's distress.
no one asked but I'm here to yap anyway (✯ᴗ✯) remember how I said I was starting on Three-Body (三体)...
(which, by the way, is available on YouTube and WeTv with English subs :>>>)
Look, we're only 6 episodes in and we're already getting blood oaths to die together (I'm being dramatic, as usual, but you get the gist of it).
"Wang Miao, if your time is up, so will mine be."
“汪淼，就是你归零了，我也跟你一起归零。” -ep 6
also my kickass girlboss Xu Bingbing, who is as good as ten people (though she needs some work-life balance... caption here is saying shes contactable 24/7...)
"The Criminal Investigation Brigade sent her here, one for the quality of ten people."
"刑侦大队调来的，以一抵十。” -ep 6
also we have Shi Qiang picking up Wang Miao's daughter and spoiling her... do what you will with that
also Ye Wenjie... I can't say anything without spoiling the plot but honestly she's slaying it (ʘᴗʘ✿)
and (imo) it's been a while since I've watched anything with older protagonists/antagonists so this is such a refreshing story to both read and watch ^^ so yes, this is a pitch for whoever is reading this to watch Three Body if you haven't yet (人 •͈ᴗ•͈)
"You remind me of an intellectual I met two hundred years ago. He had the same hangdog look you've got. I remember him sitting out early in the morning in front of the Wangfujing church, crying... But he got out okay. I checked after I woke up: He lived to be nearly a hundred."
