- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
OC text below by @[email protected]
My opinion:
- Interesting concept of a Dark Forest & cosmic sociology axioms.
- Unpleasant characters: Ye Wenjie (narcissistic and psychopathic), Cheng Xin (a kind billionaire lol).
- Disappointing ending—the last few chapters feel weak.
Bonus: Absolutely fascinating interpretation of the first book by @[email protected].
Spoiler
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I enjoyed the Chinese TV version, mostly because of the actors & characters. Didn’t try the books or the Netflix series.
Usually I read things instead of watching them, but on this, I think it was the right call - the images brought it to life.
These books are only worth reading if you’re really, really into the kind of Isaac Asimov big ideas scifi that willingly sacrifices story fundamentals like plotting and character development.
Most of the characters are really caricatures at best. Some plot beats are well delivered, others are painfully bad. Most of the second book is basically just your Death Note style “I know that you know that I know that…” bullshit where two “super genius” characters tell each other how they’re outwitting each other.
The science fiction stuff is fun, but it quickly becomes clear that the author’s commitment to research ends at the moment where actual people get involved, a subject with which he has apparently never interacted. Every single person in these books is either a robot, or a hyper-emotional weirdo. And his grand scale psychology fares no better. The signature Dark Forest hypothesis is just really bad game theory that falls apart if you think about it for more than five minutes. It’s a cool “What if”, but it’s not grounded in reality at all.
What the books do well is scale and playing out events over large swathes of time, and if you’re OK with significant chunks of the narrative basically just reading like the “World history” parts of an RPG setting guide than you might get a kick out of that. But unless you have very little need for engaging characters and storytelling, you’re likely just to find them a painfully dull slog.
I’m not saying everyone is going to hate them, obviously the books have their fans. But I will say that if anyone dares try to tell that it’s only book one that sucks and they’re amazing after that (an opinion I have seen expressed more than once) you have permission to kick that person in the balls for being an abject liar. Nothing about Cixin’s style or writing ability changes after book one, the scale just gets bigger.
Interesting, why do you think the Dark Forest idea falls apart?
Three of the biggest critiques I’ve heard:
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If you really are a genocidal alien race, you don’t sit around waiting for new life to evolve and challenge you. You send out a swarm of self-replicating machines. They fly to every star system and simply systematically disassemble every planet that exists around a star’s habitable zone. Considering interstellar communication timelines, some life could go from apes to interstellar threat before the speed of light even allows you to react. If you really are so paranoid that you’ll commit genocide at the drop of a hat, then the far more safe and efficient strategy is to simply prevent new life from evolving at all. In the Three Body canon, species have been genociding each other for billions of years, but no one has bothered simply removing the source of new species entirely. The fact that we exist at all is evidence that we don’t exist in a Dark Forest condition.
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There are more than two civilizations. If we discover an alien civilization ten lightyears from Earth, it’s likely there is another just a little further out, and even more even further out. The number of expected civilizations should increase with the cube of distance. The point is that if you genocide a new weak species, it’s very likely that other species are going to see you do it. And they may be far older and more powerful than you. And there’s no better way to convince that third species that you a threat worthy of extermination than to commit an act of genocide against a new species that is no real threat to yourself. It’s possible there are dark ancient races out there, but the only species they ever attack are those that prove themselves a threat against others. Who better to genocide than a bunch of genociders?
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The logic behind it is flawed. The same issues with communication and intentions uncertainty apply to game theory analyses of human beings. By the logic of the Dark Forest theory, I should go bash my next door neighbor’s skull in right now. I can’t really know what he’s planning, and for all I know he’s planning on killing me. I can’t always observe his actions. How do I know he’s not booby trapping my house while I’m at work? As I value my own survival above his, I have no choice but to kill him now. He’s never done anything to suggest he has the slightest ill intentions towards me, but you can’t be too careful. I can’t read his mind. I can’t know what he’s thinking. Game theory demands I murder my neighbor. See how ridiculous that sounds? It just seems like profound logic when applied to the context of extraterrestrial species. But if you apply it to human beings, the whole thing falls apart.
Thanks for taking the time on this!
This reminds me of talking to a buddy who had vaguely similar ideas but when we got into it, the objections were more because he was offended and quite upset at the idea that advanced civilizations would be aggressive instead of the Star Trek utopian optimism, and then worked backwards to figure out reasons.
I generally don’t buy these reasons though. The first is technical “there’s a better way to do this!” and any species that hits FTL, explodes stars and creates mini black holes at will etc is using technology so far beyond our understanding that deciding there’s a better way to do things seems a little silly. (If you asked the Romans to design a society where everyone was within an hour of all known knowledge, they’d be coming with interesting city designs etc whereas any of us would be thinking about throwing up satellites and getting a phone/computer in everyone’s hands. It’d be like them criticizing us for launching satellites when we could just be using horses that are right there! The difference in tech makes criticisms along those lines ring fairly hollow.)
The second one depends on fear of some altruistic super species that fights on behalf of oppressed or destroyed species, which is noble but by no means assured. (Also, given the nature of the dark forest, you have to assume the weapons used are as non-traceable as possible.)
The last one only doesn’t work for individual humans who are already in a society or social grouping (the notion of our neighbours randomly murdering us is so insignificant as to be laughable but we also all exist in a society with hard boundaries and rules, any neighbour who did so would be on the run etc. ) In fact, one of the first political science texts, Leviathan, basically argues the entire reason we form governments and societies is that because life in a state of nature is “nasty brutish and short” so we surrender our freedoms to an authority figure for mutual protection. And when you look at places without a strong state (think about all the random war groups in failing states. At the nation level, you see this kind of behviour all the time. Just last month Israel/US bombed Iran because they were worried about another power having the ability to destroy them. The entire concept of nuclear deterrence was essentially “if the other side thinks they can survive a first strike, they will do so before our tech gets to the point where we could survive a first strike, so we haven to make sure such an action is non survivable.”
The uhhh, much more tragic and common example of dark forest theory on a human level is how many civilians American cops kill. They claim they are worried they can’t tell who has a gun, who is attacking them etc, so they shoot first. And almost any of the footage of those shootings, it is the same story over and over again, anxious cop screaming at someone to stop, put something down, etc, victim moves their hand too quickly and a scared cop shoots them.
The hypothesis also assumes that your target has not left their home system. But there’s no reason to believe that this is the case. If you’re attacking an enemy that has multiple star systems under their command, you have no guarantee that you’ll find and destroy all of them before they find and destroy all of yours.
And of course, if your target is a cooperator by nature, it is possible that they will have allies who can now strike at you before you can strike at them. Even if you succeed in destroying your target civilisation entirely, their allies will still learn of their demise, and treat you as a threat.
The hypothesis falls apart the moment you give any consideration to the value of cooperation. Now, in all fairness to Cixin, I think that might actually be the point. Basically every failure or near brush with failure in the books happens because of people trying to do things on their own when they should have been working together. While the Dark Forest is bad science, it’s a great metaphor. My issue with it is that people keep treating it as some kind of brilliant revelation about the nature of the universe when a) it’s not, and b) I’m not even sure it’s meant to be.
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I enjoyed the series alongside my son. Not the best writing and a little heavy on philosophy for my taste but some interesting takes on interstellar coexistence. Book 3 was my favorite and Sophon my favorite character by far, though Luo Ji is a badass.
Couldn’t get past the first book. Utter nonsense.
Like many of the comments I had mixed feelings about this trilogy (enjoyed some concepts and large scale plot, disliked some characters and prose and specific plots) but so far no one has mentioned the misogyny. Phew boy the misogyny is front and center in a few places and it’s really jarring and unpleasant.
Dear God, it is egregious, and somehow gets worse as the series goes on. It’s hard to talk about a lot of it without getting into serious spoilers, but Jesus Christ the stuff in book three especially is insanely bad. And I didn’t even think it could get worse after the shit with Luo Ji in book two.
“The world is doomed because of FEMINIZATION”
Okay buddy.
Maybe it was just an Asimov homage?
I’ve heard these were good
Meh. It falls apart rather quickly, IMHO.
The author can’t write people very well and if you’re OK with that it’s a series with some great concepts. It was interesting to see how a Chinese author thought the US would act in a global emergency in Dark Forest, it was the reverse of a US author assuming everyone would act like the US.
I was pretty annoyed with the wallbreakers concept as it played out because the idea that you’d have some intricate plan involving details about how things would play out in several hundred years and then when someone guesses it you just say “Whelp, guess I’ll die” is kind of absurd. Surely you’d just invest in tons of technological development first, see how things shake out, and if someone guesses your plan, abandon it for a new one? Same as in the first book, “Physics is weird, guess I’ll die” just seemed bizarre to me.
::: SPOILER SPOILER The wallbreaker stuff is awful, and it gets even worse when you realise that absolutely nothing about Luo Ji’s plan benefits from secrecy. Like, all the other wallbreakers are actually doing something that involves trying to deceive Trisolaris, but Luo Ji’s idea actually gets more powerful the more people know about it. Ninety percent of the conflict in Dark Forest is solved if he just publicly announces his theory the moment he comes up with it. In fact there’s actually a simpler and faster way for him to test his theory than using his Spell, and it prevents the invasion from ever happening, which is just to assume its true and announce his demands. If Trisolaris buys into the hypothesis, they back down, and if they don’t then it doesn’t actually matter if its true or not. :::
Did you read the books? They’re called Wallfacers. For a reason. The Trisolarans are aware of the plan, otherwise it wouldn’t work.
The only scifi series to repeatedly blow my mind
I am surprised about it being fascinating. Is there any other way to read these beyond politial allegory?
I mean, at one point they put together a crack team of international experts and the countries chosen include Venezuela, the EU (with a side of Japan), the US and China. How do you even read any part of it besides an assessment of political stances via national stereotypes?
I mean, sure, later on the whole thing goes off the deep end and steps into properly Asimovian big cosmic stuff, but the big hook of the series is seeing geopolitics from a Chinese perspective via sci-fi.
Maybe I’m just attuned to it because it’s how every piece of pop culture from the US has felt since the 80s?
Now you know what reading/watching American SF feels like to non-Americans. You’re growing!
I already knew. I’m not American, it all reads that way to me.
It says so in the previous post.
Read the all twice and I’m not as critical as some folks, but the Trisolaran’s continued existence is nonsensical. How could anything evolve on a plant like that. Maybe I missed some explanation?
The Droplet “battle” was gut wrenching. Not sure a book has made me feel quite so helpless, as in, there’s no way out of this.
Also, knowing a bit of orbital mechanics really screws up the whole concept of the Trisolarans. There are so much easier solutions to their problem than staging an interstellar invasion.
For example, the only way you can have three stars orbiting each other without one being ejected is to have them arranged how the Alpha Centauri system is arranged. Here, two approximately Sun-mass stars orbit each other at about the same distance as Neptune orbits the Sun. Then there’s a distant red dwarf that is a quarter of a lightyear out in a wide orbit, orbiting both of the larger stars in common. You can’t have three stars orbiting each other all at a similar distance. One will inevitably get ejected or collide with the others very quickly.
It’s entirely possible for planets to exist in such a system. We’ve found planets around at least one of the larger stars in Alpha Centauri. Now, if you have two Sun like stars orbiting much closer, like Earth-Sun distance, it wouldn’t be possible to have a stable planet in the habitable zone of either star, or in a habitable orbit around both stars. So there are arrangements where no habitable planet can stably exist, either orbiting one or both.
But as you note, nothing could evolve on a planet that isn’t reasonably stable over billions of years.
But even if you ignore that, there are so many better solutions to the Trisolan’s problem that trying to invade Sol. For example, you can almost always find a stable orbit really close to just one of the larger stars. They could build large space habitats really close to one star, closer than the distance of Mercury. And then they can simply use solar shields and mirrors to keep those habitats at comfortable temperatures. And the same works in reverse. Have two large stars orbiting really close, closer than the orbit of Mercury? Maybe there isn’t a stable orbit between them. Instead build artificial habitats distant from both of them, like at the orbital distance of Neptune. Then just rely on large mirror arrays to concentrate the dilute sunlight at that distance. Or hell, just skip the mirrors and use reactors to power your habitats.
The point is, by the time you become a real space-fairing species, capable of getting into space in a big way? The “habitable zone” around a star completely loses all meaning. If we had good access to space, here in our solar system, we could build orbital habitats anywhere from a fraction of Mercury’s distance from the Sun to well outside the orbit of Pluto. You just need to use the right combination of mirrors to either diffuse or concentrate solar radiation towards or away from your habitats. If you have space flight, you don’t need a stable planet in your system’s habitable zone. You can just build entirely artificial habitats in whatever orbits your system does have that are reasonably stable. And they don’t even have to be perfectly stable, as you can use those same mirrors as solar sails to correct for any slight gravitational perturbations. Doing this is absolutely orders of magnitude easier than trying an interstellar invasion. And in the Dark Forest context, it’s a lot less likely to get your civilization noticed by some hungry predator species hiding in the dark. The engines of your giant space armada are likely to be visible at interstellar distances.
i hate that people complain how he was not very good at writing people, so was Asimov.
it’s hard science fiction, it’s shines in that aspect. the author obviously has a different set of skills, and at some point it’s like judging a fish for his hability to run.
not making excuses, not going to say it’s the perfect book and peak literature. but it’s one of the best science fiction written in a long time. especially because the focus is in the universe and science fiction.
way too many “science fiction” stories are great stories with shitty science fiction. because those are two different skill sets. theoretically, you could have an author one day that excels in boths. and I’ll be happy with him/her (originally wrote one him, might have personal biased or the excuse that I had Liu in mind). but so much of the criticism feels cruel.
Asimov is at his best when writing short stories, where ideas can shine while character and plotting take a back seat. Long form was always his weakness. Sorry to everyone who loves Foundation but those books are absolute dog-ass. Full of brilliant ideas, but still dog-ass.
And there are plenty of writers who do good science with good fiction. Hannu Rajaniemi, Alastair Reynolds, Cory Doctorow, William Gibson, Iain McDonald, and Kim Stanley Robinson just off the top of my head. I know there are plenty more.
Just because something is (or pretends to be) hard sci-fi doesn’t make it well written even if you ignore the major character flaws. The concepts the first book explores aren’t even that amazing. This is one of the most over-hyped sci-fi books of all time.
I think the concepts the books present are key amazing, as an avid sci-fi reader. I went into the series expecting some rigid characters and a lot of if/then human logic given the source and the fact that it had to be translated into English.
i hate that people complain how he was not very good at writing people, so was Asimov.
I’m still waiting for my nuclear powered ashtray.
i hate that people complain how he was not very good at writing people, so was Asimov.
Asimov was western and thus “one of us”.
Liu Cixin is Chinese and thus “one of them”.
This makes all the difference.
I don’t think that’s the case for most critics, but I can certainly say Chinese writing styles rarely seem to translate easily to English tastes.
the book series I was most glue to.
I thoroughly enjoyed this. Highly recommend it.
