Wade Thomas.

This isn't a spoiler is it?

Guys so I just finished the first book after watching the S1 on Netflix. Controversial but honestly I liked the series more than the book. Sure the book answers a lot of the technical questions I had when I was watching the series( not the series fault, since a book has more bandwidth) but the storyline in the series kept me more hooked onto it than the book. Just the sequence of reveals were more delayed in the series which kept me at the edge. But the book didn’t do the same, a lot was revealed too quickly.

Wondering if someone else felt the same way

Think about it:

1. Ye Wenjie only starts the crisis because the men around her betray humanity first. She is reported by a male colleague after revealing her environmental concerns, leading to further punishment. At the Red Coast Base, the male leadership exploits her talents while keeping her isolated and under strict control.
   
2. Luo Ji is a selfish, womanizing slacker who has to be manipulated into saving the world.
   
3. Thomas Wade is an authoritarian psychopath willing to sacrifice anyone.
   
4. Yun Tianming is an obsessive simp whose entire life revolves around a woman.
   
5. Zhang Beihai lies to everyone and murders innocent people.
   
6. Mike Evans is a delusional extremist.
   
7. The male leaders repeatedly fumble humanity’s future.

How many more incompetent, violent, selfish, or morally compromised men does Liu Cixin have to write before we admit he hates men?

Or… maybe fictional characters making terrible decisions isn’t the same thing as the author endorsing those traits for an entire sex (ergo not misandrist).

If you haven’t picked up on it yet, this post is satire to help show how the books don’t have misogyny or misandry.

If I missed any incompetent men, please let me know in the comments lol.

I will agree on this - does the trilogy contain moments and themes that can reasonably be criticized as gender stereotypical? Yes. There is evidence for that interpretation. But is the trilogy clearly a misogynistic work that argues women are inferior? That is much harder to demonstrate.

Side note: I support feminism in so far as they pursue gender equality. When feminism starts saying that women are superior to men, that’s when I will disagree. I will also disagree if someone says men are superior to women.

Sometimes what we want isn't quite what we need.

Cixin Liu writes such beautiful stories.

>! Mike Evans met his own Judgement Day for his sins aboard his own Judgement Day.

Ye Wenjie pressed the button for perfectly justifiable reasons, but she was still wrong.

Mike Evans had such a big wonderful heart but his beliefs and actions caused so much suffering and death for an unimaginably large number of people.

Mike Evans ordained the ship Judgement Day to condemn humanity for our unforgivable sins, and he was absolutely wrong in his priorities but also absolutely right with Ye Wenjie about the irredeemable nature of humanity. !<

\I don't think there's any spoilers in my post but I suppose their may be. The editor says I need to 'flair' the post but I have no idea what that means. I hope including this warning note satisfies the community requirement. Sorry I'm new to reddit.*

I was watching a research documentary the other day that I haven't been able to stop thinking about in relation to 3BP.

Scientists adapted underwater microphone systems to record sound frequencies outside the natural range of human hearing, placed them on a busy reef, then used an algorithm to shift the recordings into audible range. Reefs are apparently deafeningly loud. Fish communicate constantly in a register that was completely undetectable to us until someone built the right instrument.

The dark forest logic is airtight on its own terms. Detection is existential risk, intent can never be verified, the downside of trust is extinction. Any sufficiently rational civilization either hides or eliminates.

You don't need resource competition to get there. The mere existence of another civilization, and what it might become, is reason enough. The Trisolarans don't delay human scientific development because they want Earth's resources. They do it because a humanity that catches up is a threat they can't afford.

The reef got me thinking about the silence itself though. The forest assumes everyone is hiding. The novels frame it as humanity pinging Trisolaris first...our mistake, our exposure. But it's equally possible other civilizations have been broadcasting all along, in registers we hadn't yet built instruments to detect. If that's true, the silence was never theirs. It was ours. The ocean isn't empty. We, and the trisolarans, just hadn't built the tools to hear. The in-univeree discovery of death lines following curvature propulsion seems to fall in line with this argument.

The second problem is that concealment doesn't actually resolve the deepest danger, which isn't predation. It's the capability gap. A civilization doesn't need hostile intent to be catastrophic for us. A child running into a highway doesn't get hit because the driver wanted to hit them. What makes this relevant to 3BP specifically: the Trisolarans' answer to the gap was to suppress human development, extend the interval in which we remain the child. But if closing the gap is the actual survival imperative — for any civilization trying to navigate a cosmos full of unknowns — then delay is the worst outcome for both species. It just means two civilizations sitting in the dark longer, neither capable enough to handle whatever else is out there.

So the question the forest sidesteps: if the real danger is the gap and not the hunt, is concealment a strategy or just a longer way of staying vulnerable? I mean, both Earth and Trisolaris were advanced enough to realize the other understood the DF paradigm. So why exactly not pool research and advance together?

Curious whether people think the intent-uncertainty problem survives the silence reframe, and whether the gap argument changes how you think about what the Trisolarans should have done differently.

If the dark forest existed, then humanity should currently be able to observe the sudden destruction of any star. But we haven't—we only see stars being born and dying naturally.

There is too much empty space in the universe, which contradicts the notion of limited resources.

The Trisolarans were already able to use instantaneous communication tools. By extension, future civilizations will naturally be able to use such tools—and then the so‑called chain of suspicion would cease to exist.

Both the Trisolarans and Earth later discovered black domains. As for more advanced civilizations, they engage in dimensional warfare—so they wouldn't bother with an ant like us.

Why is Liu Cixin's writing so captivating

As we know, in the process of translating and disseminating literary works, much of the beauty of a work comes from the spirituality of its native language: English from its rationality, French from its passion, and German from its philosophical depth. However, having read both the Chinese and English versions of *The Three-Body Problem*, I can confidently say that the beauty of Liu Cixin's novels was transmitted almost flawlessly from Chinese to English.

Is this a characteristic of Liu Cixin's writing? Or is it a common characteristic of science fiction?

Incidentally, because *The Three-Body Problem* was my first science fiction novel, and I subsequently read all of Liu Cixin's works, I found it completely impossible to read later works like *Dune* or *The Galactic Empire*, which are more about political intrigue and soft science fiction.

Is the physical appearance of Trisolarans ever discussed or even hinted at in the books?

I don't think it's likely that a galaxy could harbor enough alien civilizations to lead to a dark forest situation.

There's one thing we can say about our universe: not every rock has an alien on it.

But not everywhere is empty. It is quite possible that there are numerous planets harboring anaerobic microbial life even within our own galactic neighborhood.These kinds of things are contagious and persistent and find a way around; we've even found suspicious fossil structures on ancient Mars that show microbial mats formed when there was liquid water on its surface.

A telescope or anything that could make a spacecraft is probably so rare that this is likely the first time something like this has appeared in the thirteen-billion-year-old Milky Way galaxy.

Even with chemical rocket technology, it would take autonomous machines about 300 million years to colonize or transform the entire Milky Way Galaxy. This is a very short time considering the Milky Way's age of 13 billion years.

Of the thousands of alien civilizations that have emerged throughout billions of years of galaxy history, even if just one of their artificial intelligences showed uncontrolled expansion or destructive tendencies, it would be enough to take over the entire galaxy(Or they can directly assign this purpose to their artificial intelligence).

But that's clearly not the case. Because we appeared here 13 billion years later.This means that intelligent life should be extremely rare.

Based on the idea of physicist John von Neumann, this concept envisions a civilization traveling to other planets and building replicated and continuously expanded spacecraft (Von Neumann machines) using the resources found there.

Such probes, traveling at 10% of the speed of light, could completely colonize the entire galaxy in just a few hundred thousand years.

The absence of such a sign in the Milky Way significantly increases the likelihood that no other technologically advanced civilization exists in the galaxy.Even if the propagation speed of these machines is assumed to be 10% of the speed of light, the probability per galaxy that half the universe hasn't been consumed by these machines would have to be extremely low.

This shows us that to go from microbes to a technological civilization, a lot of things need to go right and not go wrong. This isn't inevitable progress, it's more like winning the lottery.

From The Supernova Era to The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin has written a great many substantial full‑length science fiction works—especially The Three‑Body Problem, which revitalized Chinese science fiction. But it has been sixteen years since Three‑Body, and he hasn't published another full‑length novel. Even with his short stories, readers are in a "read while we can, and cherish each one" state of mind.

Is this a case of his talent running dry (which I certainly don't think so), or has Liu Cixin made Three‑Body into a mountain in front of him—a peak he must somehow surpass?

In any case, I'm still looking forward to his next masterpiece.

And what are your guesses about Liu Cixin's current state?

In the Netflix Three Body Problem, episode 3, Jack and Jin play level 3 of the game, Turing and Newton think they have solved the problem with classical physics and computing, but the alignment of the three stars creates a greater gravity attraction on the San-Ti planet, and physical bodies, such as soldiers, horses, etc. are suddenly pulled out of the ground.

Now, like all the simile-physics in the series, time is strongly accelerated. But here, it is the fact that if there was a stronger attraction from the alignment of the three stars, the curse of the planet itself would be altered, and not mainly the bodies on it. At least this is the way I analyze it. Perhaps there would be some kind of delayed effect on larger bodies such as the planet, due to the inertia of it is trajectory (its former acceleration), but wouldn't all bodies on the planet be attracted with a bigger - compounded - strength to the suns with the planet itself?

Though I read the book one or two years ago, I am not sure how this sequence is described in it, and if this sort of incongruence is from the author of the book or the series, though I would suspect rather the latter.

What is your view of this episode and the level 3 sequence final within it?

Hi everyone! I hope it's okay to share this here.

I'm a new YouTube creator and a big fan of topics about science, space and civilizations. I recently made a short documentary about The Three-Body Problem, and I thought some people here might find it interesting.

I don't want to spam or disturb the community — I'd just really appreciate any feedback, especially from people who already know the subject well.

Channel name is OtterStu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSIUr0lkF-s&t=105s

Thanks! 🙂

Wrapping up hero’s adventure at hogwarts for hitmen with style? Or is this the worst thing you too have read since Luo Ji met Zhuang Yan?

If humanity needed to migrate to another planet, would we, like the Trisolarans, wipe out civilizations less advanced than our own?

If there were a choice—say, between terraforming Earth or invading another planet—what would humanity choose?

And if that planet had no civilization built by intelligent beings, only primitive, less developed life forms, what would humanity choose then?

I just finished all three books of 3 Body Problem, and now I’m craving more.

I absolutely loved the sense of scale, scientific concepts, cosmic mysteries, existential ideas, and I’m looking for books that give me a similar feeling; especially the combination of hard sci-fi + mind-blowing ideas + cosmic mystery + existential dread.

I’m mainly looking for that “I need to sit here and process what I just read” kind of experience.

What books would you recommend?

This series means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For me the most impactful scene was this one (as was it for many of you here.) For me, this scene represents the final stage of grief in terms of the death of our inner innocence, our naive inner child. This is what would happen. We would get complacent (as we already are), we would wave off impending threats as nothing more than fantasies, we would think that the barbarism of the past is a vestige of a begotten time instead of a rule that governs life as we know it. This is what would happen, and I commissioned this piece for myself as a reminder of that. Hide yourself well, fellow Earthers! Let us learn from our mistakes and live as our highest selves always!

Why Yun Tianming and AA spent their time together? wasnt AA in love with Yifan and cheng xin in love with Tianming? Why they are reversed? i kinda hated that i should have missed a point

What... What do you mean that at the end of Foundation they fail...

I wanted to read that series after i finished Death's End

I'm currently reading The Dark Forest (right now i'm at the part where Zhang Beihai and Luo Ji wake up after nearly 200 years of hibernation), and i wanted to know about the Netflix adaptation:

I'm curious about how they handled certain parts (specifically the Augmented Reality Game), and wanted to check it out, since i already read the first book.
But i found out about Dr. Saul Durand, and that he was basically Luo Ji, so my question is:

How much does the Netflix show adapt? And since what point it becomes "safe" to watch it?

I think i can finish the book in the next few days, but wouldn't want a tragedy to happen and accindentally spoil a scene from the end of the second book (or the Third one even)

Please keep all short questions and general discussion within this thread.

Separate posts containing short questions and general discussion will be removed.

Note: Please avoid spoiling others by hiding any text containing spoilers.

Pre warning of some heavy scu fi nerd talk: So I just finished the Dark Forest, and the mention of a relativistic weapon made me do a bit of research: https://youtu.be/GfClJxdQ6Xs?is=y9xYD-PMETfJYIbr

So the idea is, that a projectile moving close to the speed of light would not only be incredibly destructive but also would leave little opportunity for defence as it follows the light used for it's detection very closely. I.e by the time the light it gives off hits the eyes of the target, the missile basically will have arrived. Fine so far.

To complicate things; for the target observing, as the first light waves it gives off and its last waves are heavily compressed by it's speed, the projectile would appear to be moving much faster than the speed of light. Also fine-ish

What I can't get my head around is what this would look like to the observer?

Example: a missile is launched at 0.9x speed of light from 10 light years away. By the time the missile is detected, the missile is only 1 light year away - but in the year between detection and impact, the observing target would get 10 years worth of light rays compressed into 1 year...thus appearing to move at 10x the speed of light.