introduction
comprising 3 books
- The Three-Body Problem (2006)
- The Dark Forest (2008)
- Death’s End (2010)
i can see why it was given so many sci-fi literature awards, I haven’t read this good science fiction since Arthur Clarke 🤷♂️
i came here because i wasn’t going to wait for netflix to green light the other seasons of the tv show
major spoilers ahead
i’d say the dark forest is the over-arching concept here, very innovative, very plausible
i mean, we can all relate to the fact that resources are limited against a backdrop of ever-increasing consumers
the whole physics subject matter is way too advanced for me, but it’s fun to pretend it all makes sense :)
i do have a couple of questions
- what’s the basis to send a photoid instead of a veil, it seemed as if the advanced civilization operator did it on a whim
- i think trisolarans were very naive at different points, which doesn’t correspond to their superiority vs human race
- the author repeatedly hinted at a different trisolaran form factor, they materialized as humans for us to be “comfortable”, but never reached its conclusion (what were they: transparent beings ???)
- i believed that death’s end would actually become that, conquering death, that the technology was so advanced that people were able to cheat death, the end of the universe and the birth of a new one, wasn’t quite the same
conclusion
it’s a great series, i was barely able to stop reading it, although i was a bit disappointed by the ending
extract
The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him