It’s a really cool image and one of the best visualisations I’ve seen of this concept, but only the humans seem to be in the 4th dimension, while the ship is simply fisheye lensed. In the book they can see right out into space with the ship subject to the same ‘distortion’ as the crew. Great review by the way, the trilogy had a similar effect on me when I read it. I’d never encountered anything quite like its mix of epic scale, unbounded imagination and terrifying zero-sum logic in such a gripping narrative. The problematic science (eg. sophons) is made up for in sheer ingenuity and all-too-believable politics. I was thinking telepathy was going to be the solution to the Wallfacer problem but then whoa, Cixin goes 4D.
reminds me of a short story i've read that went: after decades of sending messages out there we finally got one back. It said "Quiet. They are listening"
My favourite part of this series is the notion that after all the collective effort of human research and technological advancement, that the most enduring way to capture information is carving it in stone.
That's more than a quote, actually is the theme of most sci-fi books the author wrote. If you interested, have a search on other books he wrote, don't think they will disappoint you.
I introduced one of my best friends to the series. He’s currently reading The Dark Forest - not even halfway through - and he called me and I listened to his existential crisis for 30 mins. I told him, not to worry, you’ll soon forget about your crisis because it will be replaced by pure terror. 😬
When I have finished the third book I was just swallowed by the depression. It was hard for me imagine a cruel universe that we can be destroyed by other civilization. The only chance for us is to enjoy our lives and make good friends.
I remember that it’s about halfway through the second book that shit really hits the fan for humanity and the story becomes entirely unpredictable. Things just go nuts! After I finished the series, I spent about 2 weeks in a hazy fog of thought, not sure what to do with myself because how could I go back to my normal daily routine after being confronted with such ideas??? 10/10
When the "universe blinked" in the first book, i was intrigued. When the Dark Forest theory was explained in the second book, i hid under my bed. When they started to use cosmological constants as weapons in the third book, i lost my mind. These books are intense!
The Dark Forest fucked me up so badly that it took me three days to get through the first contact battle with the teardrop. It’s such an emotionally draining story to get through, but so good that it’s completely worth it.
Oh ok. So does this series actually have personal horror and tragedy stuff? The feeling I got from this video was just “huh ok so that sounds like a typical cosmic horror backdrop for a story. What’s the actual story about?” Like, is it just about how humanity destroys themselves while waiting for the aliens or is there actual horror from humans being hunted and whatnot?
@@Faint366 This is grand scale, existential horror. There are more details that make it more scary too on a personal level, like how the aliens can observe each and everyone's thoughts and even control them. Personally this is far more scary than your cheap typical horror tropes like "humans being hunted"
Tried series on audiobook format. Found it so difficult to follow had to switch to text based. Then loved it. So much fun to find others who have experienced this story.
My favorite thing about Lovecraft's works is he wasn't afraid to make his aliens ALIEN. He had aliens made of exotic matter. He had aliens that could only be perceived as a color. One of his less alien aliens are equal parts fungus and shrimp.
@@hackedtechnothief The only thing better than somebody willing to have really alien aliens is someone willing to do all the work to figure out how their alien works as a life form, in it's natural environment. Amazingly, there are even people in Hollywood (albeit very rare ones) who understand this. (Larry Niven included an anecdote in one of his essays about being contacted by a producer who had just come on to the old V series and brought in Niven because this producer realized that while they had lots of makeup effects and the like, they didn't have a work-out alien life form. Niven gave them a quite well worked out idea and a story arc arising from it, in which the Visitors end up being laughing stocks for a while, and never get called back. This was as likely because the series was already going to be cancelled at that point as anything else. Given that the Visitors were a rework of a Neonazi movement in the original treatment, which actually made them nastier, this is a show that could have done with some comic relief that was better than Willy.)
No, because he didn't write about them as "outer space" aliens. He generally talked about his monsters as being from other dimensions, and other eras of time. You are thinking about this completely wrong. He had no idea there were other planets around other stars. I mean, he totally misunderstood what "non-Euclidean geometry" was, much less the latest astrological discoveries. The "Colour form Outer Space" isn't an alien. It is more like a disease or radiation. Impressive because he barely understood X-rays and ultraviolet light, but that was clearly what he had in mind rather than "outer space alien".
@@squirlmy Some were definitely 'outer space aliens.' The Yithians were specifically from the long-dead planet Yith, and didn't use spacecraft as they would simply mind-exchange with intelligent beings on the planet in the era that wanted to explore. The Mi-Go (who definitely had a large base on Pluto, if it was not their homeworld) and Byakee could travel interstellar space and take people with them (with the Mi-Go able to furnish life support equipment for their willing or unwilling passengers, but as byakhee are animals their passengers have to supply their own protection and figure out some means of guiding them to a desired destination, lest they be lost forever.)
Most of Lovecrafts "aliens" are actually just extradimensional spiritual lifeforms. Alot of his work draws upon the theme of religion as opposed to aliens, though he has a few in there.
When it comes to aliens or something like that, we always consider ourselves somehow prepared for the first contact and ought to seek for it. Liu Cixin reminds us of the simple fact: we are not, not even close.
The portrayal in popular culture of the military being able to defend against whatever technology they have is always so amusing. The best course of action seems to be assuming they are peaceful and hope for the best. If they are here to wipe us out, we're screwed no matter what. But I don't see how a civilization could advance far enough, technologically, to be able to travel across space and time yet still be a militant civilization hellbent on domination and destruction. Edit: just finished the first book. I was wrong. I was so, so wrong. 😅
@@nemoteric the simple statement that "if they are here" means they posses vastly more advanced technology that enabled them to be here, lol. We'd definitely not be ready for something like that. Or to put it differently...If you don't know where the sucker is at the poker table, it's you!
@@nemotericWell, you want to wipe out intelligence before it eventually wipes you out. **Spoilers** I’m not well read here but I remember how some douche nicknamed “Singer” threw a mass dot at the Trisolarians and a dual vector foil at our solar system for this reason lol. It was his job was to hunt for intelligent civilizations and destroy them before they became stronger.
I think this book is a metaphor for China’s modern history. Two hundred years ago it was the richest empire on Earth. Western powers came, their technology was too advanced to counter. Their weapons and political system evolved from a thousand years of intercivilizational and international warfare. China was defeated, occupied, dismembered, and it took over a century of civil wars and clumsy attempts to modernize to be competitive again. But in that process the civilization changed beyond recognition. So while it survived and succeeded, it was a traumatic and horrifying experience that continues to this day. On the other hand for Westerners the Age of Discovery led to the New World, and eventual colonization and domination of distant civilizations. This is why Western Sci-fi is exemplified by the optimism of Star Trek. The universe is full of opportunity and no danger is unconquerable.
@ Johny Ricco, "no danger is unconquerable." That's a little bit haughty. Assuming that of rational thinking species we are superior. We don't know how advanced Others are (if there are Others) and how higher leveled intelligence works. I think WE are in nature still too animalistic, we had wars in the prehistory and practice them still. In '2001', Arthur C Clark pictured aliens as technically very advanced, and benign, they seem to have outgrown aggression and egoism, they seem to have understood that it's better to build than destroy. But I think intelligence and a violent nature are inseparably paired. Are the most intelligent aliens the most evil ones? I doubt if we'll ever know....
@@willemvandeursen3105 Of course, all of Star Trek has this "haughty" attitude, the OP is not wrong in pointing that out. You sound like you're responding to his personal belief instead of a description of a show. On a different note, if you have HBOMax, you should check out "Raised by Wolves". I'm guessing that later in the series, it will turn out to be that humanity very nearly destroys itself over and over, with just enough survivors to rebuild after repeated armegeddons. It's not "haughty", somewhat pessimistic, but cynically hopeful. The writer is Polish-American Catholic, and I see a lot of Polish culture, which has been victim to repeated invasions of Germans and Russians, conflicts between religious zealots, and atheist Communists, and even Genghis Khan's "Golden Horde".
@@squirlmy Raise by wolves looks great to me, I'll check it out. Our “haughtiness” also stems from our solitary existence, of course. We have no references of other intelligent species. In a way, the centralist idea of pre-Copernicus years that we are the center of the universe with everything orbiting around us, added to our feel of “uniqueness and importance”. Till this day there are people believing that we are the only intelligent creatures in the universe. I call that haughtiness too.
I’m so happy you read this, I’ve been trying to sell this series off to friends for years. Another culture’s take on the genre is interesting enough, but the depth of the story and horrific reality is immense
I do the same thing in Moscow) This series is in some way very similar to Artur Clark's Space Odyssey. Big projects, big periods of time described, lots of people involved in the story, lots of technical details and authors opinion and very big - cosmologicaly big - questions. Must say that the text itself is even more poetic than the Space Odyssey series. This guy is a very wise person, indeed.
The New Yorker did an interesting profile on Cixin Liu a few years back. His comments in that profile along with his works really showcase how scifi can show you the mindset of the person (and culture) producing it. The entire concept of the Dark Forest probably has special resonance in China given the "Century of Humiliation" that's part of their current cultural narrative.
@@Low_commotion there is some of that but honestly I also got some anti CCP or rather criticism of the CCP vibes from it especially since the story starts off with the Cultural Revolution in the 60s in China and how it drives one of the early protagonists to end up despising humanity, also the Trisolarians mass surveillance technology could point at China's surveillance issues, the denunciations of world leaders also reminds me of Cultural Revolution struggle sessions enforced by the Red Guards, but there's also Cold War USA Vs Soviet Union vibes with regards to how humanity implements a Mutually Assured Destruction plan to checkmate the aliens...I feel like there's a lot more than just the Era of Humiliation there, I think he also expressed his true feelings about his own country in a very smart and undercover way using Sci Fi as a smoke screen since apparently his own family experienced persecution during the Cultural Revolution according to online sources about his life.
Quinn, there's another implication that can be drawn from this series: Dimension Strikes destroy dimensions, therefore it's only a matter of time before life destroys all dimensions. Total collapse of the universe might imply another Big Bang and the recreation of life which would ultimately destroy that universe and the cycle would continue ad infinitum.
I read a sci fi book where there were artifacts that survived these big bang cycles and advanced civilizations in each cycle would seak them out and bid for them on black markets. Now I have to find that book and read it again. :)
Just finished the first book. To those worried about spoilers in this video, rest assured: these books are so good that learning more about what's going on in the story's universe ahead of time only increases the enjoyment of reading them.
@@pixpusha man, I just finished the first one and I can't stop reading the second ALL THE TIME. Results come to those who are patient, keep reading and you won't be disappointed :) (sorry if my english is not good)
@pixpusha I felt the same way. Get a free 30-day trial of Audible and use one of the two free credits to listen to it. It's a slow burn and is foundational. Pay attention. He ties it into 2. I just finished it. 2 is absolutely amazing, especially the showdown. Made me think of an old western (The Good, the Bad, & The Ugly ending). About to start book 3. Best of luck.
@@HoxFeesh Warning! The book3 will eat your brain cells like breakfast... need lots of time to dive in and re-read to understand it, especially those 3 fairy tales. And in the Ending is just a God of all dead. I don't know how I can express the feeling after reading the 3rd book, exhausted, despaired, relieved? Kind of strange like this is a sci-fi book, but somehow it talks me into believing I know how our universe or our ex-universe has an ending like this...a very dangerous Sci-Fi series haha
@@CodeMeat I already burned through it, haha! I told a buddy who's finished all 4 that I was emotionally wrecked after several spots in 3. I had to remind myself that it was just a book, lol.
missing the point a bit. there are no "worse or better" civilizations out there. its just, survival. morals mean nothing in the cosmos, and humans have yet to understand that. the humans that survive (spoiler) earths destruction are unable to enjoy life out of constant fear of annihilation. thats the sad nature of the universe (in this trilogy).
@@tairyhesticles4975 the "singer" chapter isn't even the civilization that destroyed the unknown star or trisolaren system. and some hint at the fact that the solar system isn't even destroyed by them (allthough that is often handled as a writer error) since the timelines don't match
I found Wallfacer Luo Ji's plan to be both ingenious and terrifying. It was essentially the threat of mutual assured destruction, but with Earth using a proxy.
I started reading Lovecraft because I was sad. I was warned that this would make me sadder but instead, it made me momentarily forget my own issues. The fear of the unknown and that everything one believes is a lie or is twisted upon its head to reveal something so unfathomable and horrifying was wondrous and interesting concept for me at a young age of nine. I haven't read this trilogy but now I want to. I have been looking for a good science fiction horror series for this Halloween season. Thanks for the recommendation Quinn. Keep up the good cosmic horror content.
The Three Body Problem trilogy is not horror but hard science fiction. If you are looking for sci-fi cosmic horror, this isn't it. It is however an excellent trilogy.
The "Dark forest" theory reminds of another Sci-fi story I read long ago: The killing star, by Charles Pellegrino. In it, humanity discovers light-speed travel, and is attacked without provocation and brought to near-extinction by an unknown alien species, using light-speed missiles impossible to track, impossible to intercept or dodge, and devastatingly powerful. The motivation of the alien invaders was simple: Protection. It was a pre-emptive strike against humanity, because a species with light-speed travel is far too dangerous to keep as a neighbor.
The light-speed missiles you mention are called Relativistic Kinetic Kill Vehicles (RKKVs), but are also called Relativistic Kill Vehicles (RKVs) or Relativistic Bombs (RBs), and are hypothesized to be one of several Interstellar Weapons (Weapons designed to function at interstellar distances). Incredibly precise, capable of destroying whole worlds from light years away with just a few of them, the kinetic energy is so immense that just one the size of a person moving at just under the speed of light could cause the near-destruction of the entirety of a planet's surface, reducing most (if not all) of the crust to molten rock, killing at least 99.99% of all life and 100% of all complex life.
Sad in the sense that the premise is so closed, simple, boring and based on humanity. Like I'm not talking about the book itself, but the way you out it, The Killing Star book, makes it sound very dry and not very creative as it assumes a civilisation that is able to create such a technologically advanced weapon, did not have the intelligence or creativity to do it a different way and more safer way. I believe this was also done in order to make humanity seem like the good guys and the aliens as bad and stupid. But I don't really care in the end of the day, its his work and not mine. The logic is very narrow and conceited. It may be that you did not explain all the nuances of the situation, so I won't base the book's quality on your summary; but I won't lie, a well-written book with a pseudo-intelligent and creative plot is very hard not to read. Anyway, just my opinion on the matter. If you had read this far, I would recommend reading Throne of Magical Arcana, or Lord of the Mysteries, they're like 9-10/10 in my book and in my opinion much more interesting and thought-provoking than The Killing Star simply based on your summary of it.
One of the things that I love about science fiction is how often these sci-fi scenarios are used to explore the nature of humanity, or the human experience from a fresh perspective. The Netflix series really brought to the forefront the concept of lying. We do it knowing it is not good, and also take it for granted that everyone does it. It is a striking plot point in the Netflix series.
I stopped watching the video after the spoiler warning, and finally, after 7 months of listening to the books on Audible, I can finally listen to the entire video. Such an incredible series.
@@eldenfindley186 you are missing out on one of the most thought provoking series you will ever find. the revolution is important in that that the first book is a product of China and set in China, past the first chapters its not very relevant though I recommend pushing through it! atleast get to the second book!
@@eldenfindley186 Just skip this chapter. I don't think it adds much beside providing a backdrop to current state of affairs. You have a rebel group, which includes many intellectuals, that is cool with all trains of thought, and then you have a group that is against particular free thinking which is mainstream. That is about all I got from it. It gets better. I didn't enjoy it either.
The ideas get bigger and bigger. And absolutely terrifying at parts. The teardrop scene messed my mind, but the choices made by Starship Earth totally fried my brain and gave me a sleepless night. Genius.
Last third of Death's End is dreadful. It's the worst I've ever felt when reading a book lol, this is really the moment I "understood" the Dark Forest like Luo Ji did. And even when the greater things are somewhat secured, what happens to main character (deserved or not) is so brutal it broke the last hopes I had in me. The dark forest is horrific, but the sheer size and force of the universe itself makes you realize how small and insignificant anyone really is.
This trilogy was absolutely incredible. It legitimately changed the way I look at the universe and terrified me in a way I didn’t think possible. Hands down the best sci-fi I’ve experienced
Read this series this past year. It really is terrifying! The whole idea that the universe is a “Dark Forest” where that even announcing our existence to it is a death sentence… THAT is some true cosmic horror. Honestly, it scares the shit out of me.
@@thesurvivalist. no. I have not. Will look it up now. Thanks for putting it on my radar. I’m currently finishing up Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein series, The Dark Tower series, and waiting on the last novel of The Expanse series.
@@thesurvivalist. start with Mary Shelly’s original Frankenstein. It may be the first true Sci-Fi story ever made, but it STILL holds up as one of the best. It’s that good.
@@Kenshiro3rd Will do! The Long Winter has A.I. in it and it bothers me, I remember when the TV series Westworld came out, I was nervous the whole series.
After watching the first minute of this video back in October, I went out and read all three books and finally finished the video today. Thanks for the awesome recommendation and the quality content Quinn!
Another perspective not understood by most western readers is that the Chinese have a long recorded history (3200-3600 years written history). Their experience was that one can attain supremacy and suzerainty for a period, but there would always be random technological breakthroughs or advances or climate developments that can and will change the balance of power. No power can ever remain a superpower forever - this explains why the aliens seek to eliminate any other civilization whenever possible in the Dark Forest theory. The Chinese have been there where they experienced multiple golden ages as the top civilization on earth while they have also experienced and equal number of equally catastrophic disasters/collapses/decline. They are very cognizant of this fact even as they are once more on the ascendancy. In comparison, the US with it's merely 246 years of history (barely a single dynasty out of 24 official Chinese dynasties) has the hubris to think they can be the top superpower forever. Their history is too short - unlike the British, Spanish, Roman empires. It is an arrogance born of ignorance
So, because of you I've decided to look up this series and the Hyperion Cantos at my local library, I specifically went to their digital section as I have a phone app for that, and the first book for both series have a waiting list of 7-9 people, for each copy they have available. If this interest is your fault that means you've managed to affect my small city.
Try renting it out either in open library or on the internet archive. They both have a online renting feature, hopefully you find the books there though. GL!
@@karolean8342 Well almost everyone has a smart phone these days so a digital section would still be accessible by the majority potential patrons, though publishers insist on an artificial scarcity for digital books so people still have to take turns to read something that theoretically could be copied infinitely. Also I have a limited budget so libraries are a great way for me to grab some entertainment.
I'd like to note that Trisolaris was the first to make contact. A group of people sympathetic to other civilizations essentially asked Earth to stay quiet so that the rest of Trisolaris wouldn't find them. Yi Wenjie then sent a message back essentially saying "come get me bro" notifying the rest of Trisolaris, and the rest is history.
Its covered in one of the last few chapters in the 1st book in the series. We get to see that moment from the pacifists perspective and its really interesting. @@nyxnes
This series strikes me as a reflection of Chinese history specifically. A region so old and with such well kept records going back thousands of years, and you can see how they persevered through external threats, self destruction, famine and ecological problems stemming from human activity, history being altered with heroes becoming villains and vice versa. Even man's impact on a planet as the Three Gorges Dam literally changed the tilt and rotation of the Earth when it was built. He's applied this history to the entire universe and followed it to its logical end, and thats the scariest part: its all happened before and will happen again. Great video 👏👏
Liu Cixin once said in the preamble: "The author tries to tell a reinterpretation of modern Chinese history on the scale of light year. " I'm glad that you could see it from a different view, rather than merely observe it as a science fiction.😄😄
I owe you a big "thank you" for having introduced me to this mind blowing trilogy. I read the books in a couple of months to allow myself enough time to absorb the extreme concepts of each one before taking on the following and I must say they now rank among my top 5 science fiction stories of all time. As an incidental thought, I noticed how some concepts of the dark forest theory easily apply to modern warfare (i.e. stealth technology, submarine tactics, satellite intelligence surveillance) as they revolve around the idea of "listening without being detected" in order to gain the initiative for a preemptive, deadly strike.
Then I guess he wouldn't try space marines this time,because DARK FOREST means the war in heaven never ends until the end of the universe,and each forces do not necessarily have to see each other before they win. So,basically no waaagh,no glorious close-quarter combat,just build enough galaxy-destroying weapon and throw it to every suspicious star system from far,then you are in the lowest level of war in DARK FOREST system.
This is the video that got me to start reading the three body problem, a novel I just finished and loved. This is also the first ever thick sized novel I ever finished, which is impressive to me. Great stuff, definitely will consider The Dark Forest.
I found the ending to be so profound. Everyone in the universe has/had to altruistically abandon their personal universes in order for the big bang to happen anew. That is the core of faith.
@@kamau506 yeah,and the first version Liu wrote was that because Cheng selfishly collected 5KG from the universe ,the start point of bigbang had a tiny hole,so the bigbang couldn't success and the universe was killed by one human's selfish tho the editor thought it's way too dark,so he had to change it,but he said it's his favourite ending
@@boya1986 this is faith-deconstruction. Very dangerous approach, especially for young thinkers. This is like coco...once tried, hard or impossible to go back...but it doesn't mean that's the right way to think. Secondly: there is no conclusion which confirms in our soul. We are created for relationships, but nothing mentions here...so be careful! For me only Christianity solves existencial, philosophical and eternal problem.
The "Dark Forest" concept was terrifying because it does kind of makes sense. This was a disturbing book in a way that Ray Bradbury stories disturbing during the Cold War. This is what great science fiction should be.
Worryingly, Anti-Science is on the Rise. Thats why i randomly recommend stuff like science-channel to others and/or ask them to recommend something to me i dont know. Yeah, I'm often perceived as random, but who cares? I wanna actively know i really spread Education and Fun; hopefully both at the same time. ...Would you mind if i recommend you some good stuff to give a Try?
It really doesn't though. Dark forest hypothesis is not even considered a weak Fermi Paradox solution. It predisposes that EVERY single civilization in the history of ever would come to the same faulty conclusion. Not just that, but every single MEMBER of every single civilization, across billions of years. Secondly, it doesn't work because even with current or near future technology, we could detect ourselves over pretty significant distances. Lastly, even if the faulty presumption of the book were true, a better strategy would probably to Dyson up and acquire as much energy and material to arm yourself for your defense. The Idea that not a single civilization, deliberately or accidentally, would go down this path, is preposterous. Isaac Arthur made a pretty good video about it. It's a really good story though, and that's what counts for a novel.
@@MortalWombat1988 People in general WASTLY underestimate how insanely huge the universe truly is. You don't need to kill each other "dark forest" style when the space you have to yourself is so unbelivably, massively vast.
It doesn't "kind of" makes sense. It makes complete sense. If we assume several civilizations similar to ours, even peaceful and willing to cooperate originally, given enough time there will eventually be some cosmic equivalent of Hitler bend on destroying the others. If this happening is a near certainty, you're better off immediately eliminating the others if you can, in order not to be among those destroyed at some future point. The idea that the explanation to the Fermi paradox is that all existing civilizations stay silent and hidden for a good reason isn't new to Liu Cixin. it has been postulated long ago.
@@olivierdastein2604 The problem is that dark forest hypothesis has been discounted as a fermi paradox solution, even a weak one, since it is strategically unsound and, more importantly, it's not enough to postulate something why we may not hear some aliens, we need something that explains why we hear none at all. Not something that just concerns itself with "what might most aliens do", but something that every single species, and beyond, every single MEMEBER of every single species adheres to. Dark Forest falls apart because it predisposes that no species ever will weaponized their star, none ever will ask "hey, is anyone out there", none will fear consequences from an older, more powerful species for genocide. It's a cool story but as a fermi paradox solution it's beyond hopeless.
Thanks for introducing me to this series. I finished it 2 weeks ago, went through the existential crisis and am finally ready to watch the rest of your videos about it. I have never seen such a compelling argument for the dark forest hypothesis and I am now a firm believer that we should stop broadcasting our existence into space. It was awesome, thank you.
Quinn, your book collection is the stuff of legends. Even your duplicate copies of Dune are worthy to have just for the amazing cover art each one has and how different and yet connected they all feel.
@@chiputiman Worryingly, Anti-Science is on the Rise. Thats why i randomly recommend stuff like science-channel to others and/or ask them to recommend something to me i dont know. Yeah, I'm often perceived as random, but who cares? I wanna actively know i really spread Education and Fun; hopefully both at the same time. ...Would you mind if i recommend you some good stuff to give a Try?
its a universal constant. Its the same, at every level. exist, propagate, prosper. in that order, at every scale. from single celled organisms in a drop of water, to complex organisms competing with each other, to symbiotic relationships between individuals, parasites even, then you get to families, groups, clans, societies, cities, states, countries, planets, systems, sectors...
The argument that the products of life are unnatural falls flat for me. Tool users naturally produce and use tools, they build on those tools making better tools. All this is natural. Concrete, steel, and such are all as natural as honey, or maple syrup. It is all a matter of perspective, and modern society is too caught up in guilt complex to recognise these, and to recognise that new tools can be made which are better at not destroying our environment. Separating Life from other natural forces feels contrived. That said, I love this trilogy. It does a lot which has been left by the wayside in many recent releases.
Cosmic horror is fun but the the goal of cosmic harmony is underexplored. Imagine a species that's reduced its energy consumption to virtually nothing, because its reduced its size to smaller scales, able to see with their own eyes the smallest mechanisms of the universe.
If the dark forest hypothesis was true, we would have been wiped out long ago. Why wait for life to turn sentient when you could eradicate it at the start? Just get a few million asteroids, accelerate them to relativistic speeds, and smash them all into a planet at once. That shouldn’t be difficult for a civilization that has the power to collapse dimensions. You could sterilize the whole galaxy in a few hundred million years.
By "natural" we denominate those elements that have a huge chance of achieving their maximum evolution via freeform in the environment. A tractor isn't "natural", because the chances of it being produced by freeform nature itself without the intervention of a powerful intelligent force, are 0, regardless if the materials from which it is made all come in some form, from nature itself. Steel isn't "natural", because the chances of freeform elemental and chemical forces producing it in "nature" are incredibly low, almost impossible. Same as concrete.
Just finished reading the main Trilogy... I have to say thank you for exposing me to such a thoughtful story. The books really helped expand my views on civilization, society, the actions of individuals, responsibility and our place in the universe. Even though the story might get sad and dark sometimes, by the end of the third book, my outlook on life was somehow more positive
I loved this series, especially in terms of cultural expression. References, descriptions, all from a different cultural point of view. A phenomenal job of translation! Can't recommend the books enough!!
Right. The books are great sci-fi, period. But the uniquely Chinese perspective adds a lot of additional value. The stuff about the Cultural Revolution in the first book was incredible and set a very unique tone, forcing me to look at things from a perspective that was new for me. I really loved it.
(Spoiler Alerts ahead) I was lucky to have read this series as I got the first volume free when I started my Tor subscription. I am 63, the first SF I read was Asimov's Foundation Series when i was in the seventh grade, ironically introduced to me by my Nazarene pastor, it of course set me on towards an eventual secular world view. Thank you Quinn for your great analysis of what I do think is one of the greatest SF stories in the genre. Incredibility imaginative and rich in detail. The motive for the reply to the alien warning during the Chinese cultural revolution was great. I am also impressed by how you described the tone of pessimism in the series. This may be culturally chauvinistic to state, but, I wonder if this is not somehow an influence of Chinese culture, I particularly remember the inflexibility aboard the Chinese ship near the end. I don't remember the ending being all that positive, but I did (spoiler alert) enjoy the depiction of the higher dimensional beings playfully folding of of what was left of Earth into kind of a string? ... I can't remember now, but it seems the protagonist ended up in some kind of 2-D cube, but i can't remember exactly what happened to him. Again, thanks for the summery, very well done. And if I am getting some of the details wrong, I apologize, it has been awhile since I read it.
Not gonna lie, this series of books scared the shit out of me and continues to do so. Learning of the dark forest theory has changed my whole way of thinking about our place in the cosmos.
+ Romans 10:9-10 "That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved." Amen 🙏!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The man in Luke 16:24 cries: ". . .I am tormented in this FLAME." In Matthew 13:42, Jesus says: "And shall cast them into a FURNACE OF FIRE: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." In Matthew 25:41, Jesus says: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting FIRE,. . ." Revelation 20:15 says, " And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the LAKE OF FIRE." And please repent of all of your sins and be baptized by the Holy Spirit before it is too late, you will never know when the time will come 🙏!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Amen 🙏!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's important to remember that this book series is pure fiction. If the concept of the dark forest terrifies you, then you should look up all of the reasons why it's probably not even plausible. Also important to remember that for any human to say that they understand 'secrets of the universe', is hubris of the highest order. Humanity has never even really left this planet. The book does a good job of pointing this out, actually. Also important to remember that cooperation is the primary axiom of life. It's not competition as is commonly accepted, because if the balance of competition outweighed cooperation, then complex life would simply not exist. There would be no mitochondria, and the great oxidation would have wiped out all life. Just pointing this stuff out in case anyone needs some brain bleach. While this series is poetically beautiful, it's also horribly depressing. It's a worse case scenario. I love this channel. Basically one of the few channels that makes quality, thought provoking content. Thanks Quinn.
"Also important to remember that cooperation is the primary axiom of life. It's not competition as is commonly accepted" I generally agree with this, though I have some caveats I will not go into. However, there is a lot of violent competition between tribal groups and nations. It makes sense that a species on one planet would find it safer to simply annihilate a species on another planet.
Couldn't agree more. Pretty much the whole story relied on "worst case scenario" at nearly every turn. For one, there was absolutely no way a humanity with ships capable of 15% the speed of light, hibernation tech and everything in-between would have collectively agreed to stay on a doomed planet for 60+ years. The ban on escapism was unrealistic nonsense and self contradictory within the story itself. For two, the entire premise banks on most civilizations being system-bound and planet-bound. The books also made a point about the difficulty in tracking starships. And yet the solution is under-utilized and left as a last resort.
@@kiendn Yeah, the ban on escapism was one of the sillier aspects IMO. This series truly is a masterpiece, but there are a few aspects of it that made me shake my head a little. The Wallfacers are another - a really interesting plot point, but completely impractical IMO. There's no way a single person could invent and contain such complex plans in their head, with no external reference whatsoever. And on top of that, the surveillance of the sophons would render them unable to do any sort of calculation or research, because whatever they were planning would become very apparent.
Yeah, it is a nice trilogy. I am privileged to be able to read it in its original Chinese. It has a great deal of cultural references that only the native speakers can get. There are problems with the books, but the scale and imagination are incredible. He even manages to slip in a nice fairy tale and makes it the central plot of the third book.
@@blackpajamas6600 The trilogy contains too much pop science that doesn't add not add much, but slow down the momentum. The trilogy was classified for young readers because there is so much pop science in it. The author is a great admirer of Arthur C. Clarke who does pay a great deal of attention to real science. However, Clarke is also very careful not to introduce bogus science, with the exception of an engine that allows for space travel. His "Rendevou with Rama" is a prime example. Liu tries to do that, but his stories have too much fantasy elements. This is fine. The problem is when he tries to reconcile these elements with real science.
@@eugenexia3634 This is one of my complaints. I wouldn't have used the term "pop science", but there is an information overload a lot of the time where he provides excruciating detail about technology, policies, or certain practices that are really not important to the development of the story or the central ideas and questions the novels are posing. It does get bogged down in that stuff a lot and it effects both pacing and also kind of distracts from the more interesting parts of the novels. I've found the novels Blindsight and Echopraxia provide a somewhat similar feeling to Remembrance of Earth's Past, but with a lot of this "fat" trimmed out. The scientific ideas are pretty concrete and well developed and when they are introduced, they are dovetailed almost perfectly with the themes the novels are exploring.
please expand your experience as a native chinese reader with your experience with the english translation. For instance I read Dune in three languages three very different languages and the narrative never lost power intrigue and joy. How does it feels to you as a native chinese reader and a maybe native english reader? please share
The greatest tragedy of the series is how valuable a earth trisolaran alliance would have been. Two very fast developing very capable species of evolving literally right next to each other.... And for some reason, The proxima centaurans decide to invade another terrestrial planet instead of just building a Dyson swarm of Paradise-like orbital habitats..... It's somewhat like world war I in that it's a series of terrible happenstance all in sequence which leads to tragedy
The earth and the Trisolaran are lucky enough to not have destroyed each other completely and actually had a chance of communicating, in the book countless civilizations just vanish without even have a chance to say hi.
@@AnarchoCatBoyEthan he meant read, English as second language mistake. PS. the TV show sucks noth Tencent and Netflix ones, i can tell just from the casting of the Netflix series that it's just gonna be another Hollywood styled American propaganda.
ive just finished deaths end today and read through deaths end as a whole in maybe 3 days. absolutely phenomenal. i’ve never felt so in awe of the sheer epic of liu cixin‘s ideas
As a Peruvian whose society is beginning to rip appart because our president shows sign of being a tyrant, it seems completely believable. We are tearing appart because we expect the worse of him and can't get a unique solution or a rational one. That will become true when we throw him out in a few months, just pray it has a peaceful ending and not one with a broken society. So much the biggest player in Peruvian economy, Antamina mine (one of the biggest copper mines of the world), has closed yesterday due to this, adding pressure.
Quinn, months ago, I watched the first few minutes of the video. I went and bought the books on Amazon immediately because it intrigued me so much. Just finished all 3, truly some of the Greatest and most intricate books I've ever read. Definitely some of the greatest sci Fi, definitely some of my favorite books out there. I cannot thank you enough for the recommendation. I have been trying to motivate myself to read like I did when I was a kid, and this was it man.
Okay, the Dark Forest supposition is actually is a pretty unsettling thought. This reminds me greatly of a story i read called The Quiet Sky I'd definitely recommend it, it's a very short story but it exemplifies this kind of cosmic dread really well.
The notion itself is ridiculous, entirely founded on human thought process and completely disregards the possibility that extraterrestrial life is diverse. There would be tyrant civilizations but to suggest that others would open fire at the sight of intelligent life is absurd. Having said all that, I also think it's still necessary for us to develop technology that could hide our coordinates before developing ones that would help us venture out to the unknown.
@@JsJdv Well, it's meant to be scary, you're obviously right about the diversity, but the idea and scale of the thought is the unsettling part about it, not the real life application
The 'battle' to defend Earth, the Mutually Assured Destruction, the fate of the escaping ships. The sheer scope of space and time this book series dares ans succeeds to include is mind blowing.
2:45 Done! In two minutes and forty five seconds, you have completely sold me on a series. Many thanks for this. I will watch the rest of your video after these books have been read.
I was reading the books, got to this point, stopped and finished reading first. Came back now that I'm done and glad I did. It's a good video and a great read and I'm glad I didn't spoil it for myself. To be fair though, there's a ton of interpersonal and global experience that is glossed over in the video, otherwise it'd have been much, much longer.
After reading The Dark Forest, I can't help but be a little bit worried each time I look at the night sky...each single star could be the sun of a civilization that would be ready to wipe us out if it found out we exist.
its only one answer to the Fermi paradox. and not even the most likely one. this is of course based on our understanding of physics, but still. and even if inter stellar travel is possible, its no guarantee that DF is true. it would require a single species to A) be capable of colonizing vast amounts of any given galaxy and B) still remain a coherent unit as a species. Its even mentioned in the book itself, that the fringe worlds of a high tech civilization are the main threat to the home world of its own species. In a universe where you can't trust your own species all the way, galactic colonialisation has its limits. thus no need to eradicate other species without restraint. especially since cooperation brings huge benefits
What if "high tech" isn't even a thing throughout the rest of the universe, but just a unique way that human beings have adapted to their environment? What if we're the only ones who have developed this sort of technology, and it's either nonexistent, or very rare, elsewhere.
@@alexanderjakubowski5673 that is pretty mich equal to "no intelligent life" then. obviously from our perspective. and in the end, its all relative as usual. but if no one out there is capable of communication or travel, then no one is really "intelligent" on a cosmological scale (assuming those things are possible to begin with)
Science Fiction is always amazing! Take a supposition, an idea, a notion. Let it fly in a direction and you can see what obstacles it hits, what it effects and what potentially stops it. I am right there with you, the ideas expressed here are quite horrific. Fortunately they fall back a little when one puts other factors into the equation. The Tri-Solar System created a massive need for escape for the Trisolarins, a thing probably not needed by other systems. Then there's the physiological needs of other species, which might not fall within the same window of temperature and chemicals we possess. I say all this more or less to comfort myself. ;) The writing style did an exceptional job of prolonging the horror, which is also my sole criticism of the series; It was mentally stressful to read and I know some people who would probably break down if they read it!
The fact you have managed to do this whole guide and not even mention Wallfacers (which was the most innovative and terrifying part for me... my little mind was blown by its originality and brilliance) is a measure of amazing this trilogy is.
@@flyingstonemon3564 Basically the bad guys can see anything/everything we do as humans. We can keep no secrets from them. The solution? Grant four people complete power to do anything they want. Any wish. Any desire. The whole of humanity will facilitate it. Their only job? Come up with a way to defeat the aliens. Only you can't tell anyone about it (as they will see it/hear it). This is why they are wallfacers- turning their faces away from humanity. Of course the aliens now try and guess what the wallfacers are up to... And designate agents to work out the plans The wallbreakers. And the ultimate game of mental cat and mouse begins...
@@tallyboyle9148 That's actually really interesting of a way to deal with the alien intelligency, but also a fairly terrifying idea to grant such a limited number such powers, but the game is worth the candle in this case is It
As an old HP Lovecraft's fan, I can only say: "Thanks for making this video!" And thanks for revealing the existence of 刘慈欣 to me. I'll definitely read his books.
Thank you Quinn, Cixin Liu's ideas do seem to paint a bleak picture, but if we truly are alone in the universe, that in itself is equally frightening, perhaps more so.
I was thinking about that, and debating with myself on whether it'd better to find that we aren't alone, or we are truly alone, after all. I came to the conclusion that finding ourselves totally alone should not be frightening, it should be inspiring. It would be recognized, that the universe is our birthright, and it is the natural course of events that humans would be naturally predisposed to success.
The thought of being alone in an entire universe, a universe so enormous we literally can't conceive of how big it truly is, is an impossibility in my opinion. I find the very concept a human fallacy in actuality, the Fermi paradox and Drake equations rely on so many unknown factors that putting any stock into them is almost totally useless. It's not even philosophically debatable from our extremely limited vantage point. It might as well be an argument for God, but then that would also be a species of alien at the same time. No argument really works in favor of a hypothetical scenario of us being alone. We look to science fiction as a means of escape from the real world, so much so it's often used as an argument against the existence of alien life, but such arguments are asinine as they only explore human interpretations of future events that are as of yet unknown factors to us. We often use that as an argument against people that claim to have seen UFOs "you must watch too much sci-fi television" as if that in itself is the only possible explanation. What I find humanities biggest roadblock is are the very egos that bring us to such premature conclusions. The only real fact of the matter is that we are embarrassingly short of enough information to draw any real conclusions either way. Even so it's pretty much mathematically certain that life exists elsewhere in the universe. The odds that life is so rare that only we have evolved makes the universe itself so hostile to the development of life that only us evolving makes no sense itself. The entire argument collapses in on itself if that truly were the case.
@@DeathBYDesign666 We live in the savage infancy of our kind, sentient, destructible and limited in endurance. I've heard educated people say that some people alive today will be among the first to never die. The immortals will struggle with a new human condition. Finally, as we become both immortal and indestructible there will be discussion as to which state is more romantic and poignant: the mortal and destructible, or the immortal and destructible? Which is more tragic, the life of a creature that knows it has only about 80 years to live, or the death of a creature that has lived for 80 million years? This is certain: how we manage to get through our days, crazed by dread and still managing to love and co-operate, will be a mystery to those endless ones. Our condition will be the subject of mathematical poetry and songs that take a year to listen to but are worth the time. Those songs will sound like Lustmord and/or Rammstein.
@@xyaeiounn Ahh a man with musical taste as well as social awareness I see. Though I think the only possibility of humans alive today of living practically forever is if they cryogenically preserved themselves, I think we are still some centuries away from true immortality. If that was what you meant I totally agree with pretty much everything you said.
So I started reading the first book and read it in a single day. My biggest takeaway is this: the book's initial idea, that being "what if we discovered that physics did not exist and science was a lie" to be INFINITELY more interesting than what the book ended up as, which was an "bad aliens coming, buckle up" story. The idea of all humanity's ideas about how the universe works and what the fundamental laws of nature are turning out to be completely false is seriously more compelling than an alien misinformation campaign. Surely I'm not the only one who had this reaction. Surely.
Yeah, this book didn't impress me. The fact that the author think the Chinese communist party is a good ruling party and the Xinjiang genocide is legit didn't help
@@comediangj4955 just watch an interview if Liu, his book reek totalitarian government apologist, "you have to get together and abandon your ego the outside world want you dead, genocides are ok if it's for stability" that just obvious
@@NihilistAlien yes, but, I think a majority of the 1 billion other Chinese actually agree with him. Compare that numberwise to Western Europeans and North Americans... Well for that matter, the U.S., and most of the Americas were found upon genocide for which very little in the way of reparations have been attempted... I can't question Liu's beliefs in these things without seeing a lot of hypocrisy in my own society.
I finally got around to reading this series based on your recommendation. And wow. This is by far the most interesting, thought provoking, and fascinating series I've read. Thank you for the awesome review and great recommendation.
I read these books years ago after seeing a recommendation from Obama, he described The Three Body Problem as 'wildly original'. So true, there are astonishing ideas presented seemingly every ten pages, one after another!
There was a joke about Liu working on the second book Dark Forest. One day he was playing chess with a co worker who took the sadistic pleasure of killing his pieces one by one. After the chess game Liu wrote on his computer: annihilation. That's the highest respect a civilization can receive🤣
If anything, he goes pretty light on humanity. I highly doubt humanity would be capable of coming together at all given the state of division and apathy we live in. Building space fleets, putting cities around Jupiter, THAT is giving humanity a lot of credit IMO.
Personally I think humanity in 40k is the most bleak & dreadful I've ever seen us depicted. A highly zealous, xenophobic and militaristic humanity worshipping a human as a god, who's been dead for millennia, sitting in a throne that keeps him "alive". 1000 psykers a day are sacrificed to keep the God Emperor going, even though nobody knows if that actually works. Trillions of people suffering in massive hive cities, waiting either to waste away, be drafted as cannonfodder or be made into mindless servitors for the most menial tasks (just to name a few). Humanity also forgot the knowledge on how the invent new technologies, forgot how older technology works and pretty much ductaped their way to survival. Also pretty much the entire galaxy and every species is at war with one another for millennia. There's only war. This description doesn't even do it justice and in a way, a galaxy full of lovecraftian horrors would make one think on how to survive this as a species.
Your video essays on this series are the best essays of their kind on the platform. They fill me with dread, hope, and curiosity. I've shared them with many people, and I'm currently watching it with my dad while visiting him for the day. He's loving it.
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! I read these books last year during the darkest days of the pandemic and they quickly became my favorite books! They are truly terrifying, but also show how amazing the human imagination is. Just when I thought fiction had become derivative and uninspired, I read these! I have absolutely zero faith that Dave and Dan will do a good job adapting this series. From what I gathered, the primary characters won't even be Chinese in their adaptation, rather, English speaking actors. Thanks for spreading awareness of this trilogy Quinn. It is something truly special. If we never get a good adaptation, at least these books will always exist.
Without life on earth, it wouldn’t necessarily be like mars. The way mars is has to do with the fact that its mantle cooled which stopped any volcanism going on. Mars is case #1 for previous life, and hell it could be the answer for life on earth, but leaving mars would’ve been an effect from it not supporting life, not a cause.
Yeah, just one of the ex-cathedra arguments in the series. It is not oxygen that protects Earth's atmosphere from the solar wind, these are Van Allen belts.
That trilogy is the latest and one of the greatest scifi masterpieces ever written. Easily on a level with the most famous scifi novels out there. Writing, scope, concepts, philosophies… it‘s all in there.
My take is similar, but couple things make it not to rise above "decent book": Humanity/people making incedibly unrealistic, shortsighted and bad decidions where there is little questioning and next to no dissent (escapism ban for example) and mysoginy where women exist to dooms humanity multiple times due to being womanly.
@@wtfihavetoregister Look at the epidemic in the United States. I read this book many years ago. At that time, I was very angry and very sad about the stupidity of one person and cause the destruction of all mankind. But now I can understand that ordinary people can only choose leaders they like Instead of electing capable leaders, the destruction of mankind is due to the naivety of the masses, not the fault of Chengxin. Electoral systems can be detrimental in the face of major crises.
About a year and some change ago I saw this video recommended, clicked on it and got till the starting premise of the first book (a number of scientists killing themselves out of a sort of existencial crisis) and decided that I wanted to read this book, now after finishing the series I can come back and man, what a great series, I honestly can't recall the last sci fi book that gave me so much to think about, it took me way more than usual to finish the series because I had to take breaks between the existential dread by reading other books in between, Cixin Liu manages to protray humanity with eerie accuracy and the ideas presented are honestly amazing, it has become one of my favourite book series, so thanks for making this video that lead to several existential crises for me.
Can’t describe the feeling I felt after finishing the series, like a sort of existential crisis/catharsis? Very few things make us feel so insignificant compared to the universe itself, and the series really spells it out for you lol
Yes!!! Quinn!!! TROEP series is absolutely one of my favorites!!! Thank you so much for going into this series. And, yes this is so terrifying, it's one of the reasons I love this series. Again, thank you!!!!! 💜💜💜
Hey Quinn, I watched this video almost an year ago and bought the trilogy. I finally finished rrading Death's End yesterday and can't get the story out of my mind. Thank you so much for this channel and these videos, it sparked an interest in me wanting to get back to reading and I feel like I've finally been able to get back to reading. Your pitch for the story felt like a strong enough hook for me to make time, I have always loved science fiction and I wanted to thank you for helping me get back into reading after almost a decade. Now I can finally watch all your other 3 body problem videos as well, so amazing spot to discuss the story now that Ive finished it. Thank you, once again!
I adore this trilogy. It’s what got me into sci-fi. The mix of tragedy, hard sci-fi, and mysterious alien civilizations in this series makes it perfectly fit to my taste. It’s deserving of all the accolades. I can’t wait to dive into more of Cixin Liu and Ken Liu’s work.
Just finished this series about two weeks ago and was bummed there are really no videos about it. Can’t think of a better man for the job! Also have to say the obligatory “God, I cannot wait for the Chapterhouse: Dune Ultimate Guide”… don’t listen though, take your time
I couldn't read the books when I was little and now that I have the chance I just can't get invested in it. The netflix series made me want to retry and finish it. Good vid.
Worryingly, Anti-Science is on the Rise. Thats why i randomly recommend stuff like science-channel to others and/or ask them to recommend something to me i dont know. Yeah, I'm often perceived as random, but who cares? I wanna actively know i really spread Education and Fun; hopefully both at the same time. ...Would you mind if i recommend you some good stuff to give a Try?
I think Lovecraft wasn't so much only expressing the fear of the unknown...that is certainly a part. It is the next step that he took his writing, from fear of the unknown, to the fear that we are irrelevant. We have no special or specific place in the cosmos. To the "Old Ones" it matters not if we exist or not.
You're the reason I decided to read this series - I started watching this video, got five minutes in and went, "Holy smokes. I have to actually read this." Just finished the first book and loving it!
This is up there with IHNMBIMS. It’s on THAT level… except rather than being condensed, this one is drawn out and let’s you stew in it. It give you a mouth to scream with… then tells you not to make a sound for the rest of your life, or you will die.
@@Chuckolicious I actually prefer Manifold Space over Manifold Time, but Manifold Origins is basically indefensible. Still worth discussing, though. Or, in other words: 2 > 1 > 3
I miss reading books; this video series inspired me to immediately buy the first book, which I’ll be able to start reading tomorrow. In the meantime, these videos are so good that I had to keep watching, even with spoilers, even though I’m still going to read it. Thanks!
I started this video 9 months ago, got 5 minutes in and stopped until I started and finished the trilogy. Thank you for introducing this amazing series to me!
I also finished reading the Three Body trilogy recently. I find myself unable to believe that the Dark Forest theory isn't true to a large degree. I don't think it's completely true (it's a very extreme vision) but I think it's close to reality
Attenuation is the problem. You have to send a strong signal to be heard. The universe could have life, but space is unbelievable large. If something is more than 50 light years away, we would probably never know of it.
The problem is that an advanced civilization being quiet is basically impossible. It would be incredibly difficult for a civilization to enforce complete and total silence, unless the civilization is a hivemind or a planet of hats there will always be a considerable number of them who do want to make contact. That only leaves hostility and cooperation as options.
@@saucevc8353 We are becoming more quiet than 50 years ago. We mostly use satellites to transmit back to Earth. There is less over the air transmission today. We have become quieter because of progress. How often do you watch something online?
In fact, it is only a part of describing human nature. That is selfish greed. But humans also have selfless times, such as parents facing children. When everyone treats people other than family and friends equally, the glorious side of mankind will be reflected.
YES!!!! I was beyond excited when you announced you were reading 3BP, only a minute in but I'm betting this will be one of your best videos!!! ❤️❤️ Love your work Quinn, can't wait for Tadyha.
I came across this video by pure chance a while back while trying to find some books to read, as I recently got back in to reading. I was so thoroughly fascinated by your video that I had to buy the trilogy immediately. I just finished The Dark Forest yesterday. Man what a ride it has been. When Luo Ji explained the Dark Forest theory in the forest, it made me actually sweat from anxiety. I have to take a breather before sinking my teeth into Death's End. A lot to process from the first two books before I'm ready for the third. Thanks for exposing this trilogy as I'd probably never have found this my self.
Just finished Death’s End. Lots of interesting things in the series, lots of existential dread. I like the idea of hibernation so we could follow many characters over time, which is one issue I have with Foundation. It helps to build story when your characters are around in the next book.
Just finished the trilogy, and in hindsight, Ye Wenjie was the true hero of the story. She is a perfect manifestation of every misanthropic sentiment I've ever had, and the fact that she betrays her own values in the end (by giving Luo Ji the axioms of cosmic sociology) makes her a perfect example of the human race. Granted, maybe her views genuinely evolved and she realized that the trisolarans would inevitably be every bit as awful as humankind, but I like to imagine she was just weak, because the only proper conclusion you can reach from there is that nothing which lives is worthy of life. I thought I hated Cheng Xin, and then I realized that I only hated her because she was a perfect example of the thoughtless cruelty and fecklesness that humankind so often cloaks in virtuous sentiment. The only time I respected her was when she gave up her miniverse (if you were paying attention, you gotta know that the rest of the folks hiding out in miniature universes were never going to give that shit up and Cheng Xin was just being the same blind fool she'd always been, but her choice took real conviction.) The scene that most resonated with me was when the author described how the folks cheering on the execution of the trisolaran's human-staffed military arm had applied to join the organization themselves. That was the moment where I had to put the book down and think, "Damn. This guy understands the human condition."
Ye wenjie has never betrayed human race and herself.she was disappointed by humanity and believed that alien with higher technology could build better society,that’s why she send signal to the universe. But then she realize the alien only want invasion and annihilation, she tells luo ji the axioms and hope to save the world. Her value never changed, she just want a better, more moralized society for the human race
@@zheji I think Ye Wenjie was smart enough to have realized that the axioms of cosmic sociology necessitate that nothing which lives and thrives can be moral, and so her dream of a moral awakening was impossible from the start. If she did not develop the axioms of cosmic sociology until after she realized the trisolarans were just as evil as humankind, then it's fair to say that her values never changed. But the information was there.
I want you to know that when I heard your spoiler warning it convinced me to immediately buy this trilogy and it's one of the best sci-fi novels I've ever read, so thank you!
The way you talk and present the video is so good! How you first went into the book was SO good and enticing. Also, the way you were expressive was great, and the questions you posed as well! Great video!!!!!
"If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans," -Stephen Hawking
Yeah but colombus is follower of bloody god of abraham/Christianity. He, his kingdom and his crew felt having a right to Genocide and enslave the anti christ. We are screw If Alien is a christian or muslim.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." This is one of the only comforts I have to existential dread. There is so much more we just dont understand. We can be afraid but the fact is we dont know the end of the story.
There's no end. Only to life that has a limited life expectancy. Watch Halo, the animated version back story. Messages get shown to us in different ways..💥🤯👍
If anyone is reading this, I promise you'll get halfway through this playlist, and then wish that you had just read the books. Currently reading and I'm blown away, wish I hadn't spoiled so much of it. Seriously gets insane for the second and third books
As I told my wife that I was finishing the last book, she asked who the author was so she would never accidentally read it because of how much I disliked this series.
I'm right there with you. The most horrifically beautiful series I've ever read. I genuinely used to want to see a future where we make first contact but now I dread it.
@@mac24sevenyou read all 3 books and hated it that much? Lol. There's no way someone who dislikes this type of story made it past the first book. It just gets better and better as it goes.
Dude, this is the first video of yours that I’ve watched, and I had to comment and say it blew me away how incredibly well spoken you are! Phenomenal job my man! Keep up the great work.
So glad you mentioned this series, since you said stop this video if you don’t want spoilers I basically stopped the video and binged it. Boy was I glad I did. This series is incredible, and honestly I hope Netflix is faithful to it
The Cover Art to this video is by Marc Simonetti. The wrong attribution is given in the video, my apologies.
Hello just wondering what does the "ETO" stand for 7:00
@@gabrielpinatecaballero1666 Earth Trisolaris Organization, the group of people who side with the Trisolaran invaders against humanity.
It’s a really cool image and one of the best visualisations I’ve seen of this concept, but only the humans seem to be in the 4th dimension, while the ship is simply fisheye lensed. In the book they can see right out into space with the ship subject to the same ‘distortion’ as the crew.
Great review by the way, the trilogy had a similar effect on me when I read it. I’d never encountered anything quite like its mix of epic scale, unbounded imagination and terrifying zero-sum logic in such a gripping narrative. The problematic science (eg. sophons) is made up for in sheer ingenuity and all-too-believable politics. I was thinking telepathy was going to be the solution to the Wallfacer problem but then whoa, Cixin goes 4D.
@@QuinnsIdeas cheers!
Aren’t the show runners of Game of Thrones doing a show based on the three body problem😮💨😮💨
reminds me of a short story i've read that went: after decades of sending messages out there we finally got one back. It said "Quiet. They are listening"
A rogue Trisolaran actually did that. The person who had sent the initial signal _wanted_ them to come, and disregarded the warning.
Do you remember it? It sounds like some Lovecraft type ending and that shit gave me immediate chills.
@@gamernotvalid9452 I think thats the whole story. A so called "Tiny Tale". Designed to provoke your own spine chilling interpretation
Similar to "The last man on earth sits alone in his room and hears a knock on the door." Chilling but simple.
I remember a creepypasta pretty similar to the one you described
My favourite part of this series is the notion that after all the collective effort of human research and technological advancement, that the most enduring way to capture information is carving it in stone.
History (or rather archeology) would tend to endorse this.
It's a close second only to ceramic tiles
@@PhileasLiebmann gotta bake the tablets 😁
@@PhileasLiebmann Technically, ceramic tiles are just man made stone, although purer, so therefore less chemicals that breakdown and erode.
Ceramic tiles would be better but yeh lol
One of my favourite quotes from the series: Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is
That's more than a quote, actually is the theme of most sci-fi books the author wrote. If you interested, have a search on other books he wrote, don't think they will disappoint you.
Covid deniers proves that point
@@Drayonis *cough* 0.03 death rate* *cough*
@@callithasmed8468 you're exactly who I was referring to
@@Drayonis How am I arrogant?
I introduced one of my best friends to the series. He’s currently reading The Dark Forest - not even halfway through - and he called me and I listened to his existential crisis for 30 mins. I told him, not to worry, you’ll soon forget about your crisis because it will be replaced by pure terror. 😬
When I have finished the third book I was just swallowed by the depression. It was hard for me imagine a cruel universe that we can be destroyed by other civilization. The only chance for us is to enjoy our lives and make good friends.
I remember that it’s about halfway through the second book that shit really hits the fan for humanity and the story becomes entirely unpredictable. Things just go nuts! After I finished the series, I spent about 2 weeks in a hazy fog of thought, not sure what to do with myself because how could I go back to my normal daily routine after being confronted with such ideas??? 10/10
I had these earthly concerns for a while but then i remembered i'm a turkish sigma male and went on with my life.great series tbh
Wow, I felt this so much
You’re a very good friend
When the "universe blinked" in the first book, i was intrigued.
When the Dark Forest theory was explained in the second book, i hid under my bed.
When they started to use cosmological constants as weapons in the third book, i lost my mind.
These books are intense!
These books are amazing
Maybe you should be less of a nerd and get a job ?
@@v.hamilton5679 Yes, we should all just work 24/7 and don't try to find any joy or hobbies of any kind. Be a good productive drone. CAPITALISM, HO!
@@v.hamilton5679 this guy thinks people who have jobs can't read. Can you read, buddy?
V. Hamilton talking to their doctor = " So i was shitting on this nerd after i clicked on a nerdy video - hey where u going ? "
The Dark Forest fucked me up so badly that it took me three days to get through the first contact battle with the teardrop. It’s such an emotionally draining story to get through, but so good that it’s completely worth it.
Dude me too, I feel like I've found my people in these comments.
Oh ok. So does this series actually have personal horror and tragedy stuff? The feeling I got from this video was just “huh ok so that sounds like a typical cosmic horror backdrop for a story. What’s the actual story about?” Like, is it just about how humanity destroys themselves while waiting for the aliens or is there actual horror from humans being hunted and whatnot?
@@Faint366 This is grand scale, existential horror. There are more details that make it more scary too on a personal level, like how the aliens can observe each and everyone's thoughts and even control them. Personally this is far more scary than your cheap typical horror tropes like "humans being hunted"
Tried series on audiobook format. Found it so difficult to follow had to switch to text based. Then loved it. So much fun to find others who have experienced this story.
All that hubris of the grid gone in minutes.
My favorite thing about Lovecraft's works is he wasn't afraid to make his aliens ALIEN. He had aliens made of exotic matter. He had aliens that could only be perceived as a color. One of his less alien aliens are equal parts fungus and shrimp.
this is what i always say to people when they *ONLY* bring up aliens and describe them as *green with giant heads and black oval eyes*
@@hackedtechnothief The only thing better than somebody willing to have really alien aliens is someone willing to do all the work to figure out how their alien works as a life form, in it's natural environment. Amazingly, there are even people in Hollywood (albeit very rare ones) who understand this. (Larry Niven included an anecdote in one of his essays about being contacted by a producer who had just come on to the old V series and brought in Niven because this producer realized that while they had lots of makeup effects and the like, they didn't have a work-out alien life form. Niven gave them a quite well worked out idea and a story arc arising from it, in which the Visitors end up being laughing stocks for a while, and never get called back. This was as likely because the series was already going to be cancelled at that point as anything else. Given that the Visitors were a rework of a Neonazi movement in the original treatment, which actually made them nastier, this is a show that could have done with some comic relief that was better than Willy.)
No, because he didn't write about them as "outer space" aliens. He generally talked about his monsters as being from other dimensions, and other eras of time. You are thinking about this completely wrong. He had no idea there were other planets around other stars. I mean, he totally misunderstood what "non-Euclidean geometry" was, much less the latest astrological discoveries. The "Colour form Outer Space" isn't an alien. It is more like a disease or radiation. Impressive because he barely understood X-rays and ultraviolet light, but that was clearly what he had in mind rather than "outer space alien".
@@squirlmy Some were definitely 'outer space aliens.' The Yithians were specifically from the long-dead planet Yith, and didn't use spacecraft as they would simply mind-exchange with intelligent beings on the planet in the era that wanted to explore. The Mi-Go (who definitely had a large base on Pluto, if it was not their homeworld) and Byakee could travel interstellar space and take people with them (with the Mi-Go able to furnish life support equipment for their willing or unwilling passengers, but as byakhee are animals their passengers have to supply their own protection and figure out some means of guiding them to a desired destination, lest they be lost forever.)
Most of Lovecrafts "aliens" are actually just extradimensional spiritual lifeforms. Alot of his work draws upon the theme of religion as opposed to aliens, though he has a few in there.
When it comes to aliens or something like that, we always consider ourselves somehow prepared for the first contact and ought to seek for it. Liu Cixin reminds us of the simple fact: we are not, not even close.
This, this right here.
The portrayal in popular culture of the military being able to defend against whatever technology they have is always so amusing. The best course of action seems to be assuming they are peaceful and hope for the best. If they are here to wipe us out, we're screwed no matter what. But I don't see how a civilization could advance far enough, technologically, to be able to travel across space and time yet still be a militant civilization hellbent on domination and destruction.
Edit: just finished the first book. I was wrong. I was so, so wrong. 😅
@@nemoteric the simple statement that "if they are here" means they posses vastly more advanced technology that enabled them to be here, lol. We'd definitely not be ready for something like that.
Or to put it differently...If you don't know where the sucker is at the poker table, it's you!
Aren't we saying the same thing lol? @@TudorSicaru
@@nemotericWell, you want to wipe out intelligence before it eventually wipes you out.
**Spoilers**
I’m not well read here but I remember how some douche nicknamed “Singer” threw a mass dot at the Trisolarians and a dual vector foil at our solar system for this reason lol.
It was his job was to hunt for intelligent civilizations and destroy them before they became stronger.
I think this book is a metaphor for China’s modern history. Two hundred years ago it was the richest empire on Earth. Western powers came, their technology was too advanced to counter. Their weapons and political system evolved from a thousand years of intercivilizational and international warfare. China was defeated, occupied, dismembered, and it took over a century of civil wars and clumsy attempts to modernize to be competitive again. But in that process the civilization changed beyond recognition. So while it survived and succeeded, it was a traumatic and horrifying experience that continues to this day.
On the other hand for Westerners the Age of Discovery led to the New World, and eventual colonization and domination of distant civilizations. This is why Western Sci-fi is exemplified by the optimism of Star Trek. The universe is full of opportunity and no danger is unconquerable.
@ Johny Ricco,
"no danger is unconquerable."
That's a little bit haughty. Assuming that of rational thinking species we are superior. We don't know how advanced Others are (if there are Others) and how higher leveled intelligence works. I think WE are in nature still too animalistic, we had wars in the prehistory and practice them still.
In '2001', Arthur C Clark pictured aliens as technically very advanced, and benign, they seem to have outgrown aggression and egoism, they seem to have understood that it's better to build than destroy. But I think intelligence and a violent nature are inseparably paired. Are the most intelligent aliens the most evil ones? I doubt if we'll ever know....
Watch this space
@@willemvandeursen3105 Of course, all of Star Trek has this "haughty" attitude, the OP is not wrong in pointing that out. You sound like you're responding to his personal belief instead of a description of a show. On a different note, if you have HBOMax, you should check out "Raised by Wolves". I'm guessing that later in the series, it will turn out to be that humanity very nearly destroys itself over and over, with just enough survivors to rebuild after repeated armegeddons. It's not "haughty", somewhat pessimistic, but cynically hopeful. The writer is Polish-American Catholic, and I see a lot of Polish culture, which has been victim to repeated invasions of Germans and Russians, conflicts between religious zealots, and atheist Communists, and even Genghis Khan's "Golden Horde".
@@squirlmy
Raise by wolves looks great to me, I'll check it out.
Our “haughtiness” also stems from our solitary existence, of course. We have no references of other intelligent species. In a way, the centralist idea of pre-Copernicus years that we are the center of the universe with everything orbiting around us, added to our feel of “uniqueness and importance”. Till this day there are people believing that we are the only intelligent creatures in the universe. I call that haughtiness too.
@@willemvandeursen3105 "Technology implies belligerence" (Peter Watts). I can never get that quote out of my head when discussing these matters.
I’m so happy you read this, I’ve been trying to sell this series off to friends for years. Another culture’s take on the genre is interesting enough, but the depth of the story and horrific reality is immense
The translations of foreign speakers is never as good as native speakers in my opinion. I've tried and it just never clicks with me.
I do the same thing in Moscow) This series is in some way very similar to Artur Clark's Space Odyssey. Big projects, big periods of time described, lots of people involved in the story, lots of technical details and authors opinion and very big - cosmologicaly big - questions. Must say that the text itself is even more poetic than the Space Odyssey series. This guy is a very wise person, indeed.
It's by a Chinese guy so it's hard to relate to Chinese
The New Yorker did an interesting profile on Cixin Liu a few years back. His comments in that profile along with his works really showcase how scifi can show you the mindset of the person (and culture) producing it. The entire concept of the Dark Forest probably has special resonance in China given the "Century of Humiliation" that's part of their current cultural narrative.
@@Low_commotion there is some of that but honestly I also got some anti CCP or rather criticism of the CCP vibes from it especially since the story starts off with the Cultural Revolution in the 60s in China and how it drives one of the early protagonists to end up despising humanity, also the Trisolarians mass surveillance technology could point at China's surveillance issues, the denunciations of world leaders also reminds me of Cultural Revolution struggle sessions enforced by the Red Guards, but there's also Cold War USA Vs Soviet Union vibes with regards to how humanity implements a Mutually Assured Destruction plan to checkmate the aliens...I feel like there's a lot more than just the Era of Humiliation there, I think he also expressed his true feelings about his own country in a very smart and undercover way using Sci Fi as a smoke screen since apparently his own family experienced persecution during the Cultural Revolution according to online sources about his life.
Quinn, there's another implication that can be drawn from this series: Dimension Strikes destroy dimensions, therefore it's only a matter of time before life destroys all dimensions. Total collapse of the universe might imply another Big Bang and the recreation of life which would ultimately destroy that universe and the cycle would continue ad infinitum.
cyclical nice
Exactly my thoughts from the end where a message from an unkown source comes to those who remain hiding (if I'm remembering correctly).
That’s exactly the final story in deaths end
It’s like Darwinism taken to its logical extreme.
I read a sci fi book where there were artifacts that survived these big bang cycles and advanced civilizations in each cycle would seak them out and bid for them on black markets. Now I have to find that book and read it again. :)
Just finished the first book. To those worried about spoilers in this video, rest assured: these books are so good that learning more about what's going on in the story's universe ahead of time only increases the enjoyment of reading them.
I can't seem to get thru the first book. It's sooo dry.
@@pixpusha man, I just finished the first one and I can't stop reading the second ALL THE TIME. Results come to those who are patient, keep reading and you won't be disappointed :)
(sorry if my english is not good)
@pixpusha I felt the same way. Get a free 30-day trial of Audible and use one of the two free credits to listen to it. It's a slow burn and is foundational. Pay attention. He ties it into 2. I just finished it. 2 is absolutely amazing, especially the showdown. Made me think of an old western (The Good, the Bad, & The Ugly ending). About to start book 3. Best of luck.
@@HoxFeesh Warning! The book3 will eat your brain cells like breakfast... need lots of time to dive in and re-read to understand it, especially those 3 fairy tales. And in the Ending is just a God of all dead. I don't know how I can express the feeling after reading the 3rd book, exhausted, despaired, relieved? Kind of strange like this is a sci-fi book, but somehow it talks me into believing I know how our universe or our ex-universe has an ending like this...a very dangerous Sci-Fi series haha
@@CodeMeat I already burned through it, haha! I told a buddy who's finished all 4 that I was emotionally wrecked after several spots in 3. I had to remind myself that it was just a book, lol.
Honestly, reading the star getting destroyed then realizing it was by a far worse civilization than the Trisolarans was terrifying
Yeah that random 3rd civilization was brutal
@@Candyapplebone the chapter in the 3rd book from their perspective is so weird
missing the point a bit. there are no "worse or better" civilizations out there. its just, survival. morals mean nothing in the cosmos, and humans have yet to understand that. the humans that survive (spoiler) earths destruction are unable to enjoy life out of constant fear of annihilation. thats the sad nature of the universe (in this trilogy).
@@tairyhesticles4975 the "singer" chapter isn't even the civilization that destroyed the unknown star or trisolaren system. and some hint at the fact that the solar system isn't even destroyed by them (allthough that is often handled as a writer error) since the timelines don't match
I found Wallfacer Luo Ji's plan to be both ingenious and terrifying. It was essentially the threat of mutual assured destruction, but with Earth using a proxy.
I started reading Lovecraft because I was sad. I was warned that this would make me sadder but instead, it made me momentarily forget my own issues. The fear of the unknown and that everything one believes is a lie or is twisted upon its head to reveal something so unfathomable and horrifying was wondrous and interesting concept for me at a young age of nine.
I haven't read this trilogy but now I want to. I have been looking for a good science fiction horror series for this Halloween season. Thanks for the recommendation Quinn.
Keep up the good cosmic horror content.
👀
You have to actively look for his opinions on race. If you just read without an agenda, his writing is brilliant, ahead of his time.
@Meridias Watchtower Obvious to those hunting for them. And, no more than any other works of fiction set during turn of the last century America.
The Three Body Problem trilogy is not horror but hard science fiction. If you are looking for sci-fi cosmic horror, this isn't it. It is however an excellent trilogy.
@@kidoliva i am sorry but you have a limited applicability for Horror - i know it engenders eye rolling but 'Horror is in the Eye of the Beholder'
The "Dark forest" theory reminds of another Sci-fi story I read long ago: The killing star, by Charles Pellegrino.
In it, humanity discovers light-speed travel, and is attacked without provocation and brought to near-extinction by an unknown alien species, using light-speed missiles impossible to track, impossible to intercept or dodge, and devastatingly powerful.
The motivation of the alien invaders was simple: Protection. It was a pre-emptive strike against humanity, because a species with light-speed travel is far too dangerous to keep as a neighbor.
Sounds like a good one, I’ll have to track it down. Thanks for the recommendation.
The light-speed missiles you mention are called Relativistic Kinetic Kill Vehicles (RKKVs), but are also called Relativistic Kill Vehicles (RKVs) or Relativistic Bombs (RBs), and are hypothesized to be one of several Interstellar Weapons (Weapons designed to function at interstellar distances). Incredibly precise, capable of destroying whole worlds from light years away with just a few of them, the kinetic energy is so immense that just one the size of a person moving at just under the speed of light could cause the near-destruction of the entirety of a planet's surface, reducing most (if not all) of the crust to molten rock, killing at least 99.99% of all life and 100% of all complex life.
Read Killing Star as well loved that book!
Sad in the sense that the premise is so closed, simple, boring and based on humanity. Like I'm not talking about the book itself, but the way you out it, The Killing Star book, makes it sound very dry and not very creative as it assumes a civilisation that is able to create such a technologically advanced weapon, did not have the intelligence or creativity to do it a different way and more safer way.
I believe this was also done in order to make humanity seem like the good guys and the aliens as bad and stupid. But I don't really care in the end of the day, its his work and not mine. The logic is very narrow and conceited.
It may be that you did not explain all the nuances of the situation, so I won't base the book's quality on your summary; but I won't lie, a well-written book with a pseudo-intelligent and creative plot is very hard not to read.
Anyway, just my opinion on the matter.
If you had read this far, I would recommend reading Throne of Magical Arcana, or Lord of the Mysteries, they're like 9-10/10 in my book and in my opinion much more interesting and thought-provoking than The Killing Star simply based on your summary of it.
@@valecamus4329 To each his own...
One of the things that I love about science fiction is how often these sci-fi scenarios are used to explore the nature of humanity, or the human experience from a fresh perspective.
The Netflix series really brought to the forefront the concept of lying. We do it knowing it is not good, and also take it for granted that everyone does it. It is a striking plot point in the Netflix series.
I stopped watching the video after the spoiler warning, and finally, after 7 months of listening to the books on Audible, I can finally listen to the entire video. Such an incredible series.
this is crazy I've just experienced exactly this! finished deaths end today! I look at the universe differently now
Great minds think alike!
I tried reading it and couldn’t get through chapter 1. The cultural revolution stuff is so cringe.
@@eldenfindley186 you are missing out on one of the most thought provoking series you will ever find. the revolution is important in that that the first book is a product of China and set in China, past the first chapters its not very relevant though I recommend pushing through it! atleast get to the second book!
@@eldenfindley186 Just skip this chapter. I don't think it adds much beside providing a backdrop to current state of affairs. You have a rebel group, which includes many intellectuals, that is cool with all trains of thought, and then you have a group that is against particular free thinking which is mainstream. That is about all I got from it. It gets better.
I didn't enjoy it either.
The ideas get bigger and bigger. And absolutely terrifying at parts. The teardrop scene messed my mind, but the choices made by Starship Earth totally fried my brain and gave me a sleepless night. Genius.
Last third of Death's End is dreadful. It's the worst I've ever felt when reading a book lol, this is really the moment I "understood" the Dark Forest like Luo Ji did. And even when the greater things are somewhat secured, what happens to main character (deserved or not) is so brutal it broke the last hopes I had in me. The dark forest is horrific, but the sheer size and force of the universe itself makes you realize how small and insignificant anyone really is.
This trilogy was absolutely incredible. It legitimately changed the way I look at the universe and terrified me in a way I didn’t think possible. Hands down the best sci-fi I’ve experienced
There is a fourth book, it isn't written by the original author but he read it and liked it
@@buttknuckles8590what's the title?
@@cellador_tk2105it gets brought up almost immediately in this video
@@buttknuckles8590 he did not like it
Read this series this past year. It really is terrifying! The whole idea that the universe is a “Dark Forest” where that even announcing our existence to it is a death sentence… THAT is some true cosmic horror. Honestly, it scares the shit out of me.
Have you read The Long Winter trilogy?
@@thesurvivalist. no. I have not. Will look it up now. Thanks for putting it on my radar. I’m currently finishing up Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein series, The Dark Tower series, and waiting on the last novel of The Expanse series.
@@Kenshiro3rd I read a Few of those, never read any Frankenstein books before! I read the Dark Tower series months ago.
@@thesurvivalist. start with Mary Shelly’s original Frankenstein. It may be the first true Sci-Fi story ever made, but it STILL holds up as one of the best. It’s that good.
@@Kenshiro3rd Will do!
The Long Winter has A.I. in it and it bothers me, I remember when the TV series Westworld came out, I was nervous the whole series.
After watching the first minute of this video back in October, I went out and read all three books and finally finished the video today. Thanks for the awesome recommendation and the quality content Quinn!
Same here! Finished Death's End today and am now sitting down to watch all of Quinn's Three Body videos.
Haha wow, yeah same here. I watched the first minute, and after he said it was sci-fi horror, I was like, well I have to read that.
Another perspective not understood by most western readers is that the Chinese have a long recorded history (3200-3600 years written history).
Their experience was that one can attain supremacy and suzerainty for a period, but there would always be random technological breakthroughs or advances or climate developments that can and will change the balance of power. No power can ever remain a superpower forever - this explains why the aliens seek to eliminate any other civilization whenever possible in the Dark Forest theory.
The Chinese have been there where they experienced multiple golden ages as the top civilization on earth while they have also experienced and equal number of equally catastrophic disasters/collapses/decline.
They are very cognizant of this fact even as they are once more on the ascendancy.
In comparison, the US with it's merely 246 years of history (barely a single dynasty out of 24 official Chinese dynasties) has the hubris to think they can be the top superpower forever. Their history is too short - unlike the British, Spanish, Roman empires. It is an arrogance born of ignorance
@@slslbbn4096 Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is.
Same! This was an amazing read.
So, because of you I've decided to look up this series and the Hyperion Cantos at my local library, I specifically went to their digital section as I have a phone app for that, and the first book for both series have a waiting list of 7-9 people, for each copy they have available. If this interest is your fault that means you've managed to affect my small city.
It spreads. It echoes...
Try renting it out either in open library or on the internet archive. They both have a online renting feature, hopefully you find the books there though. GL!
I don't get it, why don't you simply buy a digital version on the internet? Why do libraries have digital sections?
@@karolean8342 Well almost everyone has a smart phone these days so a digital section would still be accessible by the majority potential patrons, though publishers insist on an artificial scarcity for digital books so people still have to take turns to read something that theoretically could be copied infinitely. Also I have a limited budget so libraries are a great way for me to grab some entertainment.
Ya i was on hold for over two months. Gave up and bought the book instead yesterday.
I'd like to note that Trisolaris was the first to make contact. A group of people sympathetic to other civilizations essentially asked Earth to stay quiet so that the rest of Trisolaris wouldn't find them. Yi Wenjie then sent a message back essentially saying "come get me bro" notifying the rest of Trisolaris, and the rest is history.
"SHUT UP"
"Nah, I'd submit"
"Man fuck yo species you weird as hell"
Im so curious who the pacifist who sent the "do not answer" message is
Its covered in one of the last few chapters in the 1st book in the series. We get to see that moment from the pacifists perspective and its really interesting. @@nyxnes
@@shainaelise2694 he also shows up in the second
At last, very briefly @@haydoom5350
This series strikes me as a reflection of Chinese history specifically. A region so old and with such well kept records going back thousands of years, and you can see how they persevered through external threats, self destruction, famine and ecological problems stemming from human activity, history being altered with heroes becoming villains and vice versa. Even man's impact on a planet as the Three Gorges Dam literally changed the tilt and rotation of the Earth when it was built. He's applied this history to the entire universe and followed it to its logical end, and thats the scariest part: its all happened before and will happen again. Great video 👏👏
Probably just as true as the great wall of China "being visible from space" 🙄🙄🙄
He's pretty much describing the build up to the "Cultural Revolution" and the consequences thereafter.
@@aggrogator4045 fair point tbh
Liu Cixin once said in the preamble: "The author tries to tell a reinterpretation of modern Chinese history on the scale of light year. " I'm glad that you could see it from a different view, rather than merely observe it as a science fiction.😄😄
@@dawnizz6324 "merely as science fiction" way to undermine an entire genre...
I owe you a big "thank you" for having introduced me to this mind blowing trilogy. I read the books in a couple of months to allow myself enough time to absorb the extreme concepts of each one before taking on the following and I must say they now rank among my top 5 science fiction stories of all time. As an incidental thought, I noticed how some concepts of the dark forest theory easily apply to modern warfare (i.e. stealth technology, submarine tactics, satellite intelligence surveillance) as they revolve around the idea of "listening without being detected" in order to gain the initiative for a preemptive, deadly strike.
God Emperor of Mankind: "Now this looks like a job for me."
Material universe: WWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!
Immaterial universe: Tee hee!
@@craigsinclair171 "Dem Triso-whatzit Boyz iz in fer a good krumpin'"
I swear I was gonna write this comment!!! Hail the Emperor! All hail the Imperiuam!
Then I guess he wouldn't try space marines this time,because DARK FOREST means the war in heaven never ends until the end of the universe,and each forces do not necessarily have to see each other before they win.
So,basically no waaagh,no glorious close-quarter combat,just build enough galaxy-destroying weapon and throw it to every suspicious star system from far,then you are in the lowest level of war in DARK FOREST system.
@@ForThePrince
The crazy thing is you still basically described the warhammer series for it is endless war.
This is the video that got me to start reading the three body problem, a novel I just finished and loved. This is also the first ever thick sized novel I ever finished, which is impressive to me. Great stuff, definitely will consider The Dark Forest.
This series is DEEPLY disturbing. Loved it, but it left existential and philosophical scars
Agreed, very disturbing and depressing series! Huge in scope.
I found the ending to be so profound. Everyone in the universe has/had to altruistically abandon their personal universes in order for the big bang to happen anew. That is the core of faith.
How? can you elaborate more?
@@kamau506 yeah,and the first version Liu wrote was that because Cheng selfishly collected 5KG from the universe ,the start point of bigbang had a tiny hole,so the bigbang couldn't success and the universe was killed by one human's selfish
tho the editor thought it's way too dark,so he had to change it,but he said it's his favourite ending
@@boya1986 this is faith-deconstruction. Very dangerous approach, especially for young thinkers. This is like coco...once tried, hard or impossible to go back...but it doesn't mean that's the right way to think. Secondly: there is no conclusion which confirms in our soul. We are created for relationships, but nothing mentions here...so be careful! For me only Christianity solves existencial, philosophical and eternal problem.
"Because they're hiding"... along with your excellent reading voice, has given me chills. Excellent.
The "Dark Forest" concept was terrifying because it does kind of makes sense. This was a disturbing book in a way that Ray Bradbury stories disturbing during the Cold War. This is what great science fiction should be.
Worryingly,
Anti-Science is on the Rise.
Thats why i randomly recommend stuff like science-channel to others and/or ask them to recommend something to me i dont know.
Yeah, I'm often perceived as random, but who cares?
I wanna actively know i really spread Education and Fun; hopefully both at the same time.
...Would you mind if i recommend you some good stuff to give a Try?
It really doesn't though.
Dark forest hypothesis is not even considered a weak Fermi Paradox solution. It predisposes that EVERY single civilization in the history of ever would come to the same faulty conclusion. Not just that, but every single MEMBER of every single civilization, across billions of years.
Secondly, it doesn't work because even with current or near future technology, we could detect ourselves over pretty significant distances.
Lastly, even if the faulty presumption of the book were true, a better strategy would probably to Dyson up and acquire as much energy and material to arm yourself for your defense. The Idea that not a single civilization, deliberately or accidentally, would go down this path, is preposterous.
Isaac Arthur made a pretty good video about it.
It's a really good story though, and that's what counts for a novel.
@@MortalWombat1988 People in general WASTLY underestimate how insanely huge the universe truly is. You don't need to kill each other "dark forest" style when the space you have to yourself is so unbelivably, massively vast.
It doesn't "kind of" makes sense. It makes complete sense. If we assume several civilizations similar to ours, even peaceful and willing to cooperate originally, given enough time there will eventually be some cosmic equivalent of Hitler bend on destroying the others. If this happening is a near certainty, you're better off immediately eliminating the others if you can, in order not to be among those destroyed at some future point.
The idea that the explanation to the Fermi paradox is that all existing civilizations stay silent and hidden for a good reason isn't new to Liu Cixin. it has been postulated long ago.
@@olivierdastein2604 The problem is that dark forest hypothesis has been discounted as a fermi paradox solution, even a weak one, since it is strategically unsound and, more importantly, it's not enough to postulate something why we may not hear some aliens, we need something that explains why we hear none at all. Not something that just concerns itself with "what might most aliens do", but something that every single species, and beyond, every single MEMEBER of every single species adheres to.
Dark Forest falls apart because it predisposes that no species ever will weaponized their star, none ever will ask "hey, is anyone out there", none will fear consequences from an older, more powerful species for genocide.
It's a cool story but as a fermi paradox solution it's beyond hopeless.
Thanks for introducing me to this series. I finished it 2 weeks ago, went through the existential crisis and am finally ready to watch the rest of your videos about it. I have never seen such a compelling argument for the dark forest hypothesis and I am now a firm believer that we should stop broadcasting our existence into space. It was awesome, thank you.
Quinn, your book collection is the stuff of legends. Even your duplicate copies of Dune are worthy to have just for the amazing cover art each one has and how different and yet connected they all feel.
@@chiputiman Worryingly,
Anti-Science is on the Rise.
Thats why i randomly recommend stuff like science-channel to others and/or ask them to recommend something to me i dont know.
Yeah, I'm often perceived as random, but who cares?
I wanna actively know i really spread Education and Fun; hopefully both at the same time.
...Would you mind if i recommend you some good stuff to give a Try?
I really like that idea of hunters in the dark forest killing out of safety
Same
@@mute8136 Its the most depressing thought in a universal sense the worst part is, it rings true.
@@thyrassword9698 ok
its a universal constant.
Its the same, at every level. exist, propagate, prosper. in that order, at every scale.
from single celled organisms in a drop of water, to complex organisms competing with each other, to symbiotic relationships between individuals, parasites even, then you get to families, groups, clans, societies, cities, states, countries, planets, systems, sectors...
Tells you something about Chinese thinking, and why the U.S. should Nuke China as soon as possible
The argument that the products of life are unnatural falls flat for me. Tool users naturally produce and use tools, they build on those tools making better tools. All this is natural. Concrete, steel, and such are all as natural as honey, or maple syrup. It is all a matter of perspective, and modern society is too caught up in guilt complex to recognise these, and to recognise that new tools can be made which are better at not destroying our environment. Separating Life from other natural forces feels contrived.
That said, I love this trilogy. It does a lot which has been left by the wayside in many recent releases.
Wise commint
It sounds like paranoid misanthropic nihilist dreck. Hard pass.
Cosmic horror is fun but the the goal of cosmic harmony is underexplored. Imagine a species that's reduced its energy consumption to virtually nothing, because its reduced its size to smaller scales, able to see with their own eyes the smallest mechanisms of the universe.
If the dark forest hypothesis was true, we would have been wiped out long ago. Why wait for life to turn sentient when you could eradicate it at the start? Just get a few million asteroids, accelerate them to relativistic speeds, and smash them all into a planet at once. That shouldn’t be difficult for a civilization that has the power to collapse dimensions. You could sterilize the whole galaxy in a few hundred million years.
By "natural" we denominate those elements that have a huge chance of achieving their maximum evolution via freeform in the environment. A tractor isn't "natural", because the chances of it being produced by freeform nature itself without the intervention of a powerful intelligent force, are 0, regardless if the materials from which it is made all come in some form, from nature itself. Steel isn't "natural", because the chances of freeform elemental and chemical forces producing it in "nature" are incredibly low, almost impossible. Same as concrete.
Just finished reading the main Trilogy... I have to say thank you for exposing me to such a thoughtful story. The books really helped expand my views on civilization, society, the actions of individuals, responsibility and our place in the universe. Even though the story might get sad and dark sometimes, by the end of the third book, my outlook on life was somehow more positive
It really is impressive how deaths end manages to be completely nihilistic yet somehow hopeful
Don't read the fourth one if you value creative thinking
@@firstNamelastName-ho6lv that's technically a fanfiction not the fourth book
@@aehello3444 Yeah unfortunately Cixin Liu put his stamp of approval on it and published it. Should have stayed a fanfic.
That's how I felt after reading the first book.
I loved this series, especially in terms of cultural expression. References, descriptions, all from a different cultural point of view. A phenomenal job of translation! Can't recommend the books enough!!
Right. The books are great sci-fi, period. But the uniquely Chinese perspective adds a lot of additional value. The stuff about the Cultural Revolution in the first book was incredible and set a very unique tone, forcing me to look at things from a perspective that was new for me. I really loved it.
(Spoiler Alerts ahead) I was lucky to have read this series as I got the first volume free when I started my Tor subscription. I am 63, the first SF I read was Asimov's Foundation Series when i was in the seventh grade, ironically introduced to me by my Nazarene pastor, it of course set me on towards an eventual secular world view.
Thank you Quinn for your great analysis of what I do think is one of the greatest SF stories in the genre. Incredibility imaginative and rich in detail. The motive for the reply to the alien warning during the Chinese cultural revolution was great. I am also impressed by how you described the tone of pessimism in the series. This may be culturally chauvinistic to state, but, I wonder if this is not somehow an influence of Chinese culture, I particularly remember the inflexibility aboard the Chinese ship near the end. I don't remember the ending being all that positive, but I did (spoiler alert) enjoy the depiction of the higher dimensional beings playfully folding of of what was left of Earth into kind of a string? ... I can't remember now, but it seems the protagonist ended up in some kind of 2-D cube, but i can't remember exactly what happened to him. Again, thanks for the summery, very well done. And if I am getting some of the details wrong, I apologize, it has been awhile since I read it.
Not gonna lie, this series of books scared the shit out of me and continues to do so. Learning of the dark forest theory has changed my whole way of thinking about our place in the cosmos.
It should be read like a ghost story and it really has no solid basis in reality.
@@jth4242 unlike ghost extra terrestrial lives are real, do you even know what's Fermi paradox is?
@@Hijab_Diffusion It's only a paradox if you already assume that intelligent life exists out there.
+ Romans 10:9-10 "That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved." Amen 🙏!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The man in Luke 16:24 cries: ". . .I am tormented in this FLAME."
In Matthew 13:42, Jesus says: "And shall cast them into a FURNACE OF FIRE: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth."
In Matthew 25:41, Jesus says: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting FIRE,. . ."
Revelation 20:15 says, " And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the LAKE OF FIRE." And please repent of all of your sins and be baptized by the Holy Spirit before it is too late, you will never know when the time will come 🙏!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Amen 🙏!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@@jth4242 There are billions of other planets out there. To think that we are the only ones in the cosmos is extremely stupid or extremely arrogant.
I started reading the first book not knowing it was about aliens. It was a wild trip when the reveal happened.
I just finished the first book. Every reveal is a slow on/off switch. Brilliant.
Same
thanks for the spoiler
@@MSUParkerare you stupid?
@@MSUParkerwhy are you watching this video bruh
It's important to remember that this book series is pure fiction. If the concept of the dark forest terrifies you, then you should look up all of the reasons why it's probably not even plausible. Also important to remember that for any human to say that they understand 'secrets of the universe', is hubris of the highest order. Humanity has never even really left this planet. The book does a good job of pointing this out, actually. Also important to remember that cooperation is the primary axiom of life. It's not competition as is commonly accepted, because if the balance of competition outweighed cooperation, then complex life would simply not exist. There would be no mitochondria, and the great oxidation would have wiped out all life. Just pointing this stuff out in case anyone needs some brain bleach. While this series is poetically beautiful, it's also horribly depressing. It's a worse case scenario.
I love this channel. Basically one of the few channels that makes quality, thought provoking content. Thanks Quinn.
"Also important to remember that cooperation is the primary axiom of life. It's not competition as is commonly accepted"
I generally agree with this, though I have some caveats I will not go into. However, there is a lot of violent competition between tribal groups and nations. It makes sense that a species on one planet would find it safer to simply annihilate a species on another planet.
Couldn't agree more. Pretty much the whole story relied on "worst case scenario" at nearly every turn.
For one, there was absolutely no way a humanity with ships capable of 15% the speed of light, hibernation tech and everything in-between would have collectively agreed to stay on a doomed planet for 60+ years. The ban on escapism was unrealistic nonsense and self contradictory within the story itself.
For two, the entire premise banks on most civilizations being system-bound and planet-bound. The books also made a point about the difficulty in tracking starships. And yet the solution is under-utilized and left as a last resort.
I think the Cultural Revolution has a deep impact on the formation of the dark forest analogy
@@kiendn Yeah, the ban on escapism was one of the sillier aspects IMO. This series truly is a masterpiece, but there are a few aspects of it that made me shake my head a little. The Wallfacers are another - a really interesting plot point, but completely impractical IMO. There's no way a single person could invent and contain such complex plans in their head, with no external reference whatsoever. And on top of that, the surveillance of the sophons would render them unable to do any sort of calculation or research, because whatever they were planning would become very apparent.
It’s also worth noting that we already have the technology to escape the Earth and even the solar system via nuclear rocket technology.
Yeah, it is a nice trilogy. I am privileged to be able to read it in its original Chinese. It has a great deal of cultural references that only the native speakers can get. There are problems with the books, but the scale and imagination are incredible. He even manages to slip in a nice fairy tale and makes it the central plot of the third book.
Curious to hear your criticism/problems with the narrative.
@@blackpajamas6600 The trilogy contains too much pop science that doesn't add not add much, but slow down the momentum. The trilogy was classified for young readers because there is so much pop science in it.
The author is a great admirer of Arthur C. Clarke who does pay a great deal of attention to real science. However, Clarke is also very careful not to introduce bogus science, with the exception of an engine that allows for space travel. His "Rendevou with Rama" is a prime example.
Liu tries to do that, but his stories have too much fantasy elements. This is fine. The problem is when he tries to reconcile these elements with real science.
@@eugenexia3634Are you living in china?
@@eugenexia3634 This is one of my complaints. I wouldn't have used the term "pop science", but there is an information overload a lot of the time where he provides excruciating detail about technology, policies, or certain practices that are really not important to the development of the story or the central ideas and questions the novels are posing. It does get bogged down in that stuff a lot and it effects both pacing and also kind of distracts from the more interesting parts of the novels.
I've found the novels Blindsight and Echopraxia provide a somewhat similar feeling to Remembrance of Earth's Past, but with a lot of this "fat" trimmed out. The scientific ideas are pretty concrete and well developed and when they are introduced, they are dovetailed almost perfectly with the themes the novels are exploring.
please expand your experience as a native chinese reader with your experience with the english translation. For instance I read Dune in three languages three very different languages and the narrative never lost power intrigue and joy. How does it feels to you as a native chinese reader and a maybe native english reader? please share
The greatest tragedy of the series is how valuable a earth trisolaran alliance would have been. Two very fast developing very capable species of evolving literally right next to each other....
And for some reason, The proxima centaurans decide to invade another terrestrial planet instead of just building a Dyson swarm of Paradise-like orbital habitats.....
It's somewhat like world war I in that it's a series of terrible happenstance all in sequence which leads to tragedy
It's more interesting to watch the original Chinese version.
@@杨超-t9l the book translations are the same, sure some nuance may be missed but the majority of it transfers fine.
By watch do you mean the tv show or did you mean read?
The earth and the Trisolaran are lucky enough to not have destroyed each other completely and actually had a chance of communicating, in the book countless civilizations just vanish without even have a chance to say hi.
@@AnarchoCatBoyEthan he meant read, English as second language mistake. PS. the TV show sucks noth Tencent and Netflix ones, i can tell just from the casting of the Netflix series that it's just gonna be another Hollywood styled American propaganda.
ive just finished deaths end today and read through deaths end as a whole in maybe 3 days. absolutely phenomenal. i’ve never felt so in awe of the sheer epic of liu cixin‘s ideas
So we destroyed ourselves over fear of a distant enemy.
Sounds legit.
@@jakobinobles3263 except we cant and you forgot the how highly advanced they are part. its bad. real bad.
As a Peruvian whose society is beginning to rip appart because our president shows sign of being a tyrant, it seems completely believable.
We are tearing appart because we expect the worse of him and can't get a unique solution or a rational one.
That will become true when we throw him out in a few months, just pray it has a peaceful ending and not one with a broken society.
So much the biggest player in Peruvian economy, Antamina mine (one of the biggest copper mines of the world), has closed yesterday due to this, adding pressure.
So… my stellaris game?
Humanity more-or-less tries to destroy most of itself multiple times through the book series, and on occasion does a half-decent job of it.
The real enemy is within...
Quinn, months ago, I watched the first few minutes of the video. I went and bought the books on Amazon immediately because it intrigued me so much. Just finished all 3, truly some of the Greatest and most intricate books I've ever read. Definitely some of the greatest sci Fi, definitely some of my favorite books out there. I cannot thank you enough for the recommendation. I have been trying to motivate myself to read like I did when I was a kid, and this was it man.
Okay, the Dark Forest supposition is actually is a pretty unsettling thought.
This reminds me greatly of a story i read called The Quiet Sky I'd definitely recommend it, it's a very short story but it exemplifies this kind of cosmic dread really well.
That story still creeps me out.
The sense of doom and hopelessness that story made me feel was insane.
The notion itself is ridiculous, entirely founded on human thought process and completely disregards the possibility that extraterrestrial life is diverse.
There would be tyrant civilizations but to suggest that others would open fire at the sight of intelligent life is absurd.
Having said all that, I also think it's still necessary for us to develop technology that could hide our coordinates before developing ones that would help us venture out to the unknown.
@@JsJdv Well, it's meant to be scary, you're obviously right about the diversity, but the idea and scale of the thought is the unsettling part about it, not the real life application
It's unsettling but seems more like a horrible thought than something honestly logical.
@@JsJdv the logical explanation of the dark forest theory is in the book
Humans sending messages to space is peak human hubris
The 'battle' to defend Earth, the Mutually Assured Destruction, the fate of the escaping ships. The sheer scope of space and time this book series dares ans succeeds to include is mind blowing.
2:45 Done! In two minutes and forty five seconds, you have completely sold me on a series. Many thanks for this. I will watch the rest of your video after these books have been read.
It was 2:50 for me 😂
I was reading the books, got to this point, stopped and finished reading first. Came back now that I'm done and glad I did. It's a good video and a great read and I'm glad I didn't spoil it for myself. To be fair though, there's a ton of interpersonal and global experience that is glossed over in the video, otherwise it'd have been much, much longer.
how's your progress?
After reading The Dark Forest, I can't help but be a little bit worried each time I look at the night sky...each single star could be the sun of a civilization that would be ready to wipe us out if it found out we exist.
its only one answer to the Fermi paradox. and not even the most likely one. this is of course based on our understanding of physics, but still.
and even if inter stellar travel is possible, its no guarantee that DF is true. it would require a single species to A) be capable of colonizing vast amounts of any given galaxy and B) still remain a coherent unit as a species.
Its even mentioned in the book itself, that the fringe worlds of a high tech civilization are the main threat to the home world of its own species. In a universe where you can't trust your own species all the way, galactic colonialisation has its limits. thus no need to eradicate other species without restraint. especially since cooperation brings huge benefits
What if "high tech" isn't even a thing throughout the rest of the universe, but just a unique way that human beings have adapted to their environment? What if we're the only ones who have developed this sort of technology, and it's either nonexistent, or very rare, elsewhere.
@@alexanderjakubowski5673 that is pretty mich equal to "no intelligent life" then. obviously from our perspective. and in the end, its all relative as usual. but if no one out there is capable of communication or travel, then no one is really "intelligent" on a cosmological scale (assuming those things are possible to begin with)
For me, I started to wonder if we are seen as ants by other possible cosmic civilisations. Small and insignificant.
WELL AWARE EMPTY YOUR BANK ACCOUNTS🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 GO TO HELL
Science Fiction is always amazing! Take a supposition, an idea, a notion. Let it fly in a direction and you can see what obstacles it hits, what it effects and what potentially stops it.
I am right there with you, the ideas expressed here are quite horrific. Fortunately they fall back a little when one puts other factors into the equation. The Tri-Solar System created a massive need for escape for the Trisolarins, a thing probably not needed by other systems. Then there's the physiological needs of other species, which might not fall within the same window of temperature and chemicals we possess. I say all this more or less to comfort myself. ;) The writing style did an exceptional job of prolonging the horror, which is also my sole criticism of the series; It was mentally stressful to read and I know some people who would probably break down if they read it!
The fact you have managed to do this whole guide and not even mention Wallfacers (which was the most innovative and terrifying part for me... my little mind was blown by its originality and brilliance) is a measure of amazing this trilogy is.
Can you tell me about it?
Me too
Wallfacers?
@@flyingstonemon3564 Basically the bad guys can see anything/everything we do as humans. We can keep no secrets from them. The solution?
Grant four people complete power to do anything they want. Any wish. Any desire. The whole of humanity will facilitate it. Their only job? Come up with a way to defeat the aliens. Only you can't tell anyone about it (as they will see it/hear it).
This is why they are wallfacers- turning their faces away from humanity. Of course the aliens now try and guess what the wallfacers are up to... And designate agents to work out the plans The wallbreakers.
And the ultimate game of mental cat and mouse begins...
@@tallyboyle9148 That's actually really interesting of a way to deal with the alien intelligency, but also a fairly terrifying idea to grant such a limited number such powers, but the game is worth the candle in this case is It
As an old HP Lovecraft's fan, I can only say: "Thanks for making this video!"
And thanks for revealing the existence of 刘慈欣 to me. I'll definitely read his books.
I'm not gonna lie, I was so mind blown with every page of this series that I never realized how terrifying the dark forest truly was
Watching this while sitting under the stars in my backyard seemed like a neat idea, but now I’m terrified. Amazing video.
Thank you Quinn, Cixin Liu's ideas do seem to paint a bleak picture, but if we truly are alone in the universe, that in itself is equally frightening, perhaps more so.
Right on
I was thinking about that, and debating with myself on whether it'd better to find that we aren't alone, or we are truly alone, after all.
I came to the conclusion that finding ourselves totally alone should not be frightening, it should be inspiring. It would be recognized, that the universe is our birthright, and it is the natural course of events that humans would be naturally predisposed to success.
The thought of being alone in an entire universe, a universe so enormous we literally can't conceive of how big it truly is, is an impossibility in my opinion. I find the very concept a human fallacy in actuality, the Fermi paradox and Drake equations rely on so many unknown factors that putting any stock into them is almost totally useless. It's not even philosophically debatable from our extremely limited vantage point. It might as well be an argument for God, but then that would also be a species of alien at the same time. No argument really works in favor of a hypothetical scenario of us being alone. We look to science fiction as a means of escape from the real world, so much so it's often used as an argument against the existence of alien life, but such arguments are asinine as they only explore human interpretations of future events that are as of yet unknown factors to us. We often use that as an argument against people that claim to have seen UFOs "you must watch too much sci-fi television" as if that in itself is the only possible explanation. What I find humanities biggest roadblock is are the very egos that bring us to such premature conclusions. The only real fact of the matter is that we are embarrassingly short of enough information to draw any real conclusions either way. Even so it's pretty much mathematically certain that life exists elsewhere in the universe. The odds that life is so rare that only we have evolved makes the universe itself so hostile to the development of life that only us evolving makes no sense itself. The entire argument collapses in on itself if that truly were the case.
@@DeathBYDesign666 We live in the savage infancy of our kind, sentient, destructible and limited in endurance. I've heard educated people say that some people alive today will be among the first to never die. The immortals will struggle with a new human condition. Finally, as we become both immortal and indestructible there will be discussion as to which state is more romantic and poignant: the mortal and destructible, or the immortal and destructible? Which is more tragic, the life of a creature that knows it has only about 80 years to live, or the death of a creature that has lived for 80 million years?
This is certain: how we manage to get through our days, crazed by dread and still managing to love and co-operate, will be a mystery to those endless ones. Our condition will be the subject of mathematical poetry and songs that take a year to listen to but are worth the time. Those songs will sound like Lustmord and/or Rammstein.
@@xyaeiounn Ahh a man with musical taste as well as social awareness I see. Though I think the only possibility of humans alive today of living practically forever is if they cryogenically preserved themselves, I think we are still some centuries away from true immortality. If that was what you meant I totally agree with pretty much everything you said.
So I started reading the first book and read it in a single day. My biggest takeaway is this: the book's initial idea, that being "what if we discovered that physics did not exist and science was a lie" to be INFINITELY more interesting than what the book ended up as, which was an "bad aliens coming, buckle up" story.
The idea of all humanity's ideas about how the universe works and what the fundamental laws of nature are turning out to be completely false is seriously more compelling than an alien misinformation campaign. Surely I'm not the only one who had this reaction. Surely.
I agree. It was a red herring. The book was fine without having to entice us on that premise.
Yeah, this book didn't impress me. The fact that the author think the Chinese communist party is a good ruling party and the Xinjiang genocide is legit didn't help
@@NihilistAlien ...... Did you write those things in your copy yourself and then read it as part of the book?
@@comediangj4955 just watch an interview if Liu, his book reek totalitarian government apologist, "you have to get together and abandon your ego the outside world want you dead, genocides are ok if it's for stability" that just obvious
@@NihilistAlien yes, but, I think a majority of the 1 billion other Chinese actually agree with him. Compare that numberwise to Western Europeans and North Americans... Well for that matter, the U.S., and most of the Americas were found upon genocide for which very little in the way of reparations have been attempted... I can't question Liu's beliefs in these things without seeing a lot of hypocrisy in my own society.
Recently read this series, and they’re some of the best books I’ve ever read.
I finally got around to reading this series based on your recommendation. And wow. This is by far the most interesting, thought provoking, and fascinating series I've read. Thank you for the awesome review and great recommendation.
I read these books years ago after seeing a recommendation from Obama, he described The Three Body Problem as 'wildly original'. So true, there are astonishing ideas presented seemingly every ten pages, one after another!
This series had the bleakest depiction of humanity I've ever seen. I want to know who hurt Liu.
There was a joke about Liu working on the second book Dark Forest. One day he was playing chess with a co worker who took the sadistic pleasure of killing his pieces one by one. After the chess game Liu wrote on his computer: annihilation. That's the highest respect a civilization can receive🤣
This is one of the most accurate description of humanity when faced with the threat of destruction.
If anything, he goes pretty light on humanity. I highly doubt humanity would be capable of coming together at all given the state of division and apathy we live in. Building space fleets, putting cities around Jupiter, THAT is giving humanity a lot of credit IMO.
Personally I think humanity in 40k is the most bleak & dreadful I've ever seen us depicted. A highly zealous, xenophobic and militaristic humanity worshipping a human as a god, who's been dead for millennia, sitting in a throne that keeps him "alive". 1000 psykers a day are sacrificed to keep the God Emperor going, even though nobody knows if that actually works. Trillions of people suffering in massive hive cities, waiting either to waste away, be drafted as cannonfodder or be made into mindless servitors for the most menial tasks (just to name a few).
Humanity also forgot the knowledge on how the invent new technologies, forgot how older technology works and pretty much ductaped their way to survival. Also pretty much the entire galaxy and every species is at war with one another for millennia. There's only war.
This description doesn't even do it justice and in a way, a galaxy full of lovecraftian horrors would make one think on how to survive this as a species.
Life. Life in general. Frankly, I’m sick of it too
It's crazy that I've never heard of this series. This looks like words can't describe how cool it is. I will 100% be reading these
Words literally describe how cool it is
@@scootybooty9626this guy reads
Your video essays on this series are the best essays of their kind on the platform. They fill me with dread, hope, and curiosity. I've shared them with many people, and I'm currently watching it with my dad while visiting him for the day. He's loving it.
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! I read these books last year during the darkest days of the pandemic and they quickly became my favorite books! They are truly terrifying, but also show how amazing the human imagination is. Just when I thought fiction had become derivative and uninspired, I read these! I have absolutely zero faith that Dave and Dan will do a good job adapting this series. From what I gathered, the primary characters won't even be Chinese in their adaptation, rather, English speaking actors. Thanks for spreading awareness of this trilogy Quinn. It is something truly special. If we never get a good adaptation, at least these books will always exist.
Without life on earth, it wouldn’t necessarily be like mars. The way mars is has to do with the fact that its mantle cooled which stopped any volcanism going on. Mars is case #1 for previous life, and hell it could be the answer for life on earth, but leaving mars would’ve been an effect from it not supporting life, not a cause.
Yeah, just one of the ex-cathedra arguments in the series. It is not oxygen that protects Earth's atmosphere from the solar wind, these are Van Allen belts.
That trilogy is the latest and one of the greatest scifi masterpieces ever written. Easily on a level with the most famous scifi novels out there. Writing, scope, concepts, philosophies… it‘s all in there.
My take is similar, but couple things make it not to rise above "decent book": Humanity/people making incedibly unrealistic, shortsighted and bad decidions where there is little questioning and next to no dissent (escapism ban for example) and mysoginy where women exist to dooms humanity multiple times due to being womanly.
@@wtfihavetoregister well he is Chinese so morbid writing is a given
@@wtfihavetoregister Look at the epidemic in the United States. I read this book many years ago. At that time, I was very angry and very sad about the stupidity of one person and cause the destruction of all mankind. But now I can understand that ordinary people can only choose leaders they like Instead of electing capable leaders, the destruction of mankind is due to the naivety of the masses, not the fault of Chengxin. Electoral systems can be detrimental in the face of major crises.
About a year and some change ago I saw this video recommended, clicked on it and got till the starting premise of the first book (a number of scientists killing themselves out of a sort of existencial crisis) and decided that I wanted to read this book, now after finishing the series I can come back and man, what a great series, I honestly can't recall the last sci fi book that gave me so much to think about, it took me way more than usual to finish the series because I had to take breaks between the existential dread by reading other books in between, Cixin Liu manages to protray humanity with eerie accuracy and the ideas presented are honestly amazing, it has become one of my favourite book series, so thanks for making this video that lead to several existential crises for me.
Can’t describe the feeling I felt after finishing the series, like a sort of existential crisis/catharsis? Very few things make us feel so insignificant compared to the universe itself, and the series really spells it out for you lol
Yes!!! Quinn!!! TROEP series is absolutely one of my favorites!!! Thank you so much for going into this series. And, yes this is so terrifying, it's one of the reasons I love this series. Again, thank you!!!!! 💜💜💜
This series absolutely blew me away. What an achievement. Glad to see this channel covering it.
Hey Quinn, I watched this video almost an year ago and bought the trilogy. I finally finished rrading Death's End yesterday and can't get the story out of my mind. Thank you so much for this channel and these videos, it sparked an interest in me wanting to get back to reading and I feel like I've finally been able to get back to reading. Your pitch for the story felt like a strong enough hook for me to make time, I have always loved science fiction and I wanted to thank you for helping me get back into reading after almost a decade. Now I can finally watch all your other 3 body problem videos as well, so amazing spot to discuss the story now that Ive finished it.
Thank you, once again!
What if we brought Duncan Idaho back to life again so he can lead Space Force? 🙃
Let the guy rest
@@ememememem592 But humanity *needs* him...
Meanwhile, back at the axolotl tanks…
Humanity needs the astartes program of warhammer 40k
@@II-hj3hz Howabout we make Duncan Idaho an astartes Ghola?
I adore this trilogy. It’s what got me into sci-fi. The mix of tragedy, hard sci-fi, and mysterious alien civilizations in this series makes it perfectly fit to my taste. It’s deserving of all the accolades. I can’t wait to dive into more of Cixin Liu and Ken Liu’s work.
Just finished this series about two weeks ago and was bummed there are really no videos about it. Can’t think of a better man for the job! Also have to say the obligatory “God, I cannot wait for the Chapterhouse: Dune Ultimate Guide”… don’t listen though, take your time
We're all waiting for the Chapter House video 🍃
You can check out the "我的三体" series,it's a fan-made minecraft show about this series.
I couldn't read the books when I was little and now that I have the chance I just can't get invested in it. The netflix series made me want to retry and finish it. Good vid.
I ended up reading this series because of this video, and I was not disappointed. Rarely do I get into series like I did with this one.
I used to go to the public library and borrow the horror tapes.
Those were really scary, really, really good.
Worryingly,
Anti-Science is on the Rise.
Thats why i randomly recommend stuff like science-channel to others and/or ask them to recommend something to me i dont know.
Yeah, I'm often perceived as random, but who cares?
I wanna actively know i really spread Education and Fun; hopefully both at the same time.
...Would you mind if i recommend you some good stuff to give a Try?
I think Lovecraft wasn't so much only expressing the fear of the unknown...that is certainly a part. It is the next step that he took his writing, from fear of the unknown, to the fear that we are irrelevant. We have no special or specific place in the cosmos. To the "Old Ones" it matters not if we exist or not.
You're the reason I decided to read this series - I started watching this video, got five minutes in and went, "Holy smokes. I have to actually read this." Just finished the first book and loving it!
Definately adding this to my reading list.
I would say that the scariest sci-fi short story is I Have No Mouth but I Must Scream.
Harlan Ellison is great! Check out Philip K. Dick's "Upon The Dull Earth" for another terrifically terrifying short story.
I Must Scream is great, and does come close to The Dark Forest (book 2 of 3-body) in pure terror.
This is up there with IHNMBIMS. It’s on THAT level… except rather than being condensed, this one is drawn out and let’s you stew in it. It give you a mouth to scream with… then tells you not to make a sound for the rest of your life, or you will die.
I Have No Mouth is definitely existentially terrifying.
I was looking for this in the comments.
Speaking of the Fermi Paradox, I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts about the Manifold Series by Stephen Baxter, Quinn.
@@Chuckolicious I actually prefer Manifold Space over Manifold Time, but Manifold Origins is basically indefensible. Still worth discussing, though.
Or, in other words: 2 > 1 > 3
@@thomascollins5622 whoops! Should have actually read for comprehension. I was talking about his world engine stuff. Never mind! 🤣
Just started reading this. What a coincidence. Maybe the universe is winking at me.
😉😉
Just don't wink back! :)
I miss reading books; this video series inspired me to immediately buy the first book, which I’ll be able to start reading tomorrow. In the meantime, these videos are so good that I had to keep watching, even with spoilers, even though I’m still going to read it. Thanks!
I started this video 9 months ago, got 5 minutes in and stopped until I started and finished the trilogy. Thank you for introducing this amazing series to me!
I also finished reading the Three Body trilogy recently. I find myself unable to believe that the Dark Forest theory isn't true to a large degree. I don't think it's completely true (it's a very extreme vision) but I think it's close to reality
Attenuation is the problem. You have to send a strong signal to be heard. The universe could have life, but space is unbelievable large. If something is more than 50 light years away, we would probably never know of it.
The problem is that an advanced civilization being quiet is basically impossible. It would be incredibly difficult for a civilization to enforce complete and total silence, unless the civilization is a hivemind or a planet of hats there will always be a considerable number of them who do want to make contact. That only leaves hostility and cooperation as options.
@@saucevc8353 We are becoming more quiet than 50 years ago. We mostly use satellites to transmit back to Earth. There is less over the air transmission today. We have become quieter because of progress. How often do you watch something online?
In fact, it is only a part of describing human nature. That is selfish greed. But humans also have selfless times, such as parents facing children. When everyone treats people other than family and friends equally, the glorious side of mankind will be reflected.
YES!!!! I was beyond excited when you announced you were reading 3BP, only a minute in but I'm betting this will be one of your best videos!!! ❤️❤️ Love your work Quinn, can't wait for Tadyha.
I came across this video by pure chance a while back while trying to find some books to read, as I recently got back in to reading. I was so thoroughly fascinated by your video that I had to buy the trilogy immediately. I just finished The Dark Forest yesterday. Man what a ride it has been. When Luo Ji explained the Dark Forest theory in the forest, it made me actually sweat from anxiety. I have to take a breather before sinking my teeth into Death's End. A lot to process from the first two books before I'm ready for the third. Thanks for exposing this trilogy as I'd probably never have found this my self.
Just finished Death’s End. Lots of interesting things in the series, lots of existential dread. I like the idea of hibernation so we could follow many characters over time, which is one issue I have with Foundation. It helps to build story when your characters are around in the next book.
Just finished the trilogy, and in hindsight, Ye Wenjie was the true hero of the story. She is a perfect manifestation of every misanthropic sentiment I've ever had, and the fact that she betrays her own values in the end (by giving Luo Ji the axioms of cosmic sociology) makes her a perfect example of the human race. Granted, maybe her views genuinely evolved and she realized that the trisolarans would inevitably be every bit as awful as humankind, but I like to imagine she was just weak, because the only proper conclusion you can reach from there is that nothing which lives is worthy of life.
I thought I hated Cheng Xin, and then I realized that I only hated her because she was a perfect example of the thoughtless cruelty and fecklesness that humankind so often cloaks in virtuous sentiment. The only time I respected her was when she gave up her miniverse (if you were paying attention, you gotta know that the rest of the folks hiding out in miniature universes were never going to give that shit up and Cheng Xin was just being the same blind fool she'd always been, but her choice took real conviction.)
The scene that most resonated with me was when the author described how the folks cheering on the execution of the trisolaran's human-staffed military arm had applied to join the organization themselves. That was the moment where I had to put the book down and think, "Damn. This guy understands the human condition."
Ye wenjie has never betrayed human race and herself.she was disappointed by humanity and believed that alien with higher technology could build better society,that’s why she send signal to the universe. But then she realize the alien only want invasion and annihilation, she tells luo ji the axioms and hope to save the world. Her value never changed, she just want a better, more moralized society for the human race
@@zheji I think Ye Wenjie was smart enough to have realized that the axioms of cosmic sociology necessitate that nothing which lives and thrives can be moral, and so her dream of a moral awakening was impossible from the start. If she did not develop the axioms of cosmic sociology until after she realized the trisolarans were just as evil as humankind, then it's fair to say that her values never changed. But the information was there.
叶文洁 is my favorite female character
@lexbeaf364雖然我無法體會這種情境，但是我基本同意你的說法
Fantastic breakdown, but all that and you basically just realized the truth of Romans 3:23.
I want you to know that when I heard your spoiler warning it convinced me to immediately buy this trilogy and it's one of the best sci-fi novels I've ever read, so thank you!
The way you talk and present the video is so good! How you first went into the book was SO good and enticing. Also, the way you were expressive was great, and the questions you posed as well! Great video!!!!!
"If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans,"
-Stephen Hawking
Yeah but colombus is follower of bloody god of abraham/Christianity.
He, his kingdom and his crew felt having a right to Genocide and enslave the anti christ.
We are screw If Alien is a christian or muslim.
were either on the menu.. or a workforce ... if they can get here we are so behind the loop we would be unable to recover
Shit, give me a casino, land that I govern myself, and free money every year. Sounds awesome.
But are we Columbus or are we the natives
@@unreconstructed lmao
I just finished reading this amazing trilogy, based up on this review. WOW. Please give us more on this amazing piece of work.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
This is one of the only comforts I have to existential dread. There is so much more we just dont understand. We can be afraid but the fact is we dont know the end of the story.
There's no end. Only to life that has a limited life expectancy. Watch Halo, the animated version back story. Messages get shown to us in different ways..💥🤯👍
If anyone is reading this, I promise you'll get halfway through this playlist, and then wish that you had just read the books. Currently reading and I'm blown away, wish I hadn't spoiled so much of it. Seriously gets insane for the second and third books
After I read this series I had only this to say to my wife to explain what I had experienced: "This story is life altering."
As I told my wife that I was finishing the last book, she asked who the author was so she would never accidentally read it because of how much I disliked this series.
I'm right there with you. The most horrifically beautiful series I've ever read. I genuinely used to want to see a future where we make first contact but now I dread it.
Sounds like shrooms.
@@darkforest154 Humans forget Aliens have been in contact with us for centuries..
@@mac24sevenyou read all 3 books and hated it that much? Lol. There's no way someone who dislikes this type of story made it past the first book. It just gets better and better as it goes.
Dude, this is the first video of yours that I’ve watched, and I had to comment and say it blew me away how incredibly well spoken you are! Phenomenal job my man! Keep up the great work.
So glad you mentioned this series, since you said stop this video if you don’t want spoilers I basically stopped the video and binged it. Boy was I glad I did. This series is incredible, and honestly I hope Netflix is faithful to it
The part where the ‘Drop’ tears down earth’s space fleet like its all pieces of paper is one of the most vivid scenes written in a book.