The Three Body Problem Trilogy
Recommendation
If you like sci-fi that gives you a lot to think about, sci-fi that makes an interesting choice and then spends a millenium examining the consequences, this is a series for you. Buy a copy of The Three Body Problem from your local bookseller and set aside 10 or so hours to read it through. If you like what you’ve read by that point, you’ll be thirsty for more.
Spoiler-free commentary
- I almost wish I could read this series in the original Chinese, it would be interesting to see what the differences are.
- Each of these three books starts with a section that appears to be completely unrelated to the rest of the story. It always turns out to be related, but I felt like it was a lot to get through before the payoff. This is 100% my own problem, I’m only mentioning it because if anyone else has the same problem, it’s worth the payoff to read all the details!
Summary
The Three Body Problem
A Chinese physicist, disillusioned with her country, devises a way to broadcast messages far into the cosmos using the Sun as an amplifier. She works her way up the ranks at a military radio telescope project and secretly broadcasts a greeting message. An answer comes back: “Be quiet, or they will hear you.” It turns out that the physicist is also disillusioned with her species, and decides to broadcast again that Earth welcomes whoever is coming.
The aliens she made contact with are on a planet called Trisolaris, a world trapped in an unstable orbit around three suns. They are more technologically advanced than humanity, and they desperately want to get off their planet with wild temperature swings. They manage to devise a way to etch a supercomputer into the unfolded higher dimensions of a neutron (TKTKTK was it a neutron?). Trisolaris quantum-entangles several of these to similar particles on Trisolaris, then sends half of each pair Earth in order to thwart particle physics research until an invasion force can arrive. This will take 400 years.
There’s a side story with a strange video game trying to explain Trisolaran history to Earth, and some weird stuff happens with an extremist group called the Earth-Trisolaris Organization, which was basically founded by the physicist.
The Dark Forest
Turns out game theory says that if any intelligent civilization finds out about another intelligent civilization in the universe, the rational choice is to destroy the other civilization before they can threaten you.
Earth spends 400 years preparing for the arrival of the Trisolarans, and fools itself into believing it is prepared. A Trisolaran scout probe destroys basically all of Earth’s fleet in seconds. It is made of “strong-interaction materials,” which are like a usable form of the stuff in neutron star cores. This tiny scout ship is able to fly in lines through each of the fusion reactors powering the ships, exploding them in series. A few ships which escape commit war crimes while attempting to preserve the human species.
The Wallfacer program. Luo Ji figures out the game theory and runs an experiment to test it. He transmits coordinates to a far-away star, and 170 years later, it is destroyed (hibernation technology exists now). He puts in place several methods of broadcasting the coordinates to Trisolaris hooked up to a dead-man switch, and then uses the threat of activating this system to convince Trisolaris to call off the invasion.
Death’s End
Luo Ji’s replacement as the Swordholder does not activate the transmission before all of the transmitter sites are destroyed. Trisolaris resumes the invasion, starting by relocating all of humanity to Australia. This goes about as well as you would think. Due to Dimensional Fuckery™, one Earth ship’s gravity wave transmission beacon is not destroyed as planned, and the crew activates the transmission. Trisolaris calls off the resettlement.
Humanity sees Trisolaris destroyed in the same way as the other star targeted by Luo Ji in his experiment, and prepares the solar system for defense against that kind of attack. Just like in The Dark Forest, they fail to see the larger picture, and the solar system is destroyed by Dimensional Fuckery™ that flattens it into two dimensions. Two people escape with some precious artifacts, find an important star, and discover a pocket universe they can hide in until the end of the universe.
Spoiler-y commentary
- After my first reading, the ending of the final book was unsatisfying. It seemed like the third Halo and the pocket universe from TM (TKTKTK check name) were both a little bit of a deus ex machina. The wild escalations throughout the entire story petered out with a whimper. There’s a broadway tune about someone looking forward to finding a new life by taking the train, a brassy, punchy, excited tune that’s full of energy. A critic described the ending of the tune as “the composer beating the melody to death just to finally get it to stop,” because it was so high energy that there was no other way to do it. I think I was kinda expecting something similar here, based on the precariously increasing stakes in each prior part.