Book review: The Three-Body Problem series by Liu Cixin
Whoa… I just finished listening to this audiobook. It took a while—three damn big books. And I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Even though it has nothing to do with software, management, and other work-related subjects, I decided to note my thoughts (in my usual format).
Good
The book is really well written. I know that my bar is quite low. I enjoy most of sci-fi (even if it is quite crappy). That being said, this one is great.
However, you don’t have to listen to me. Based on this series, Netflix is working on the movie(s?), which shows that it stands out.
First of all, I really enjoyed the storyteller rhythm (changing between slow and fast). It’s different from a lot of Western sci-fi, but it reminded me a bit of Clifford Simak's classic sci-fi novels.
The second thing that I enjoyed was that it touched upon many ideas. Future technical progress, game theory, politics, the role of a person in history, physics, and the universe. And it does it quite organically.
Finally, it was thrilling to read it. I had no idea how it would turn out, and it was amazing to follow the author in anticipation.
Bad
I didn’t like that in a lot of places; it uses Deus ex machina. (By the way, I have a feeling that I wrote that about some other book, too.) Multiple situations were resolved with the introduction of some wild card (vs. the natural progression of what was talked about before).
BTW, in one place, the author even breaks the fourth wall, mentioning that there are way too many lucky coincidences (miracles).
That being said, I can live with it. It’s a sci-fi, not a documentary.
Oh… And another thing. Don’t read the first chapter. It contains quite a brutal depiction of atrocities that were happening during the Cultural Revolution in China. You can skip it. All you need to know is that one of the main characters' father was murdered as part of this revolution.
Ugly
I totally disagree with the book's flawed premise. The key to the book is the Dark Forest hypothesis that there are numerous alien civilizations, but all of them hide because they are afraid of being discovered and destroyed.
There is an inconsistency that irked me while I was reading the book.
And here are my arguments against the Dark Forest hypothesis based on the book itself. (BTW. This section is way longer than the previous one. However, even though I will bark at Dark Forest theory, again, I enjoyed listening to this book immensely).
Spoiler alert. I will be talking about some book specifics. I will try to leave it a bit vague, but if you hate spoilers, you probably shouldn’t continue reading.
Argument #1: The universe is not silent in these books
- Dark Forest Theory: The universe is silent. We don’t see aliens because they are hiding.
- Observations (from the book): In the book, three star systems are completely destroyed in a pretty short period (hundreds of years). They are destroyed in a way that will be easily noticeable through a simple telescope. On top of that, a lot of additional things ended up being observable (like trails from curvature-drive ships, etc).
- Pretty much you can’t have a cake and eat it too. Either you have a Dark forest theory, and you should not see in Universe anything unusual happening (because everybody is hiding). Alternatively, we (humans) should see stars exploding or disappearing routinely without a cause, and in such cases, it’s not a dark forest anymore but something else.
Argument #2: Keeping quiet doesn’t help
- Dark Forest Theory: If a civilization keeps quiet/hides, it increases the chances of survival.
- Practice: I am looking at Earth civilizations. It looks like expansion and rapid technological progress (to overpower other civilizations) are way more associated with chances of survival (and leaving descendants) than trying to hide.
- Observations (from the book): The civilization that had just one homeworld and didn’t expand could have been destroyed by one attack, while civilization that spread (which weren’t explicitly depicted) had way more chances of survival.
Game theory problem
The last one is less related to the Dark forest theory itself but rather how civilizations act in the book in response to it.
It looks like numerous civilizations sit and wait to see signs that some civilizations may start becoming dangerous (for example — sending radio signals or using curvature drive). And they strike at this moment (to prevent another civilization from rapidly developing and striking first)
This strategy seems reasonable if you have minimal resources, limited time, and are barely a couple of steps ahead of the rest of civilizations.
However, let's think for a second. Let's say there is a civilization in the Milky Way that achieved a speed of light flight ten million years ago (which is literally yesterday if you look at the 13.6 billion years clock on the wall). Let's say this civilization sent ships to stars nearby. And made enough automation to allow them to mine material, build new ships in these star systems, and send to the next stars. Taking into account faster-than-light communication introduced in the book (Sophons) , they can remotely control all these star systems and prevent any sentient life from even evolving.
So, the question is, Why do you want to wait until the last minute and potentially miss it when you can easily prevent it altogether?
The Milky Way galaxy is just 52k light years in radius. So, in 100k years, one civilization that emerged early could have occupied it entirely. The Local Group (the galaxy cluster that includes the Milky Way) has a radius of 5m light years. So, in 10m years, they would have occupied it entirely, too.
BTW. And we are assuming here that in 10m years, they haven’t found a way to beat the speed of the light barrier and do other interesting tricks.
Based on the technologies described in the book, we should have seen the universe where millions of civilizations will still exist. However, each of these civilizations would be controlling absolutely vast regions of space — like galaxy clusters (vs. having civilizations packed one on top of each other like it’s depicted in the book).
The bottom line. I don’t think that Dark Forest Theory is compatible either with the book story or with how things would have played out in the real world.
P.S. Anyhow… Just dumping my thoughts here. Go and read the book — you will enjoy it.
