The Dark Forest
By Cixin Lui
Translated by Joel Martinsen
Published 2008 (China); 2015 (US)
Read April 2024
Death’s End
By Cixin Lui
Translated by Ken Lui
Published 2010 (China); 2016 (US)
Read Nov 2024
These two books complete the trilogy known as Remembrance of Earth’s Past by Cixin Lui which began with The 3 Body Problem which this reader has previously discussed. This reader found each book in the trilogy to be extremely remarkable. In addition to being great “hard core” science fiction, these books challenge the reader to confront the Fermi paradox and a possible solution to it—the dark forest hypothesis. The Fermi paradox is essentially the unanswered question “where are they?” Shouldn’t we expect there to be life elsewhere in the universe? Then why isn’t there evidence that it exists?
The 3 Body Problem provides the story of the search for life elsewhere in the universe that, due to somewhat rouge efforts of one scientist, both receives contact from another civilization (Trisolaran) and responds to that contact which sets up a series of events that puts life on earth at peril. The foreign civilization wants to conquer Earth and use it for its own.
The Dark Forest provides the story of attempts to deal with the Trisolaran threat. The Trisolaran’s superior technology includes “sophrons” that see and hear everything on Earth and block Earth’s progression of their own understanding of physics. A “Wallfacer” project is initiated: 4 people are chosen to develop strategies to overcome the threat of Trisolaran. They are given nearly unlimited resources to accomplish this. The Trisolarans try to upset this project by selecting “Wallbreakers” that pair to the Wallfacers with the goal of revealing their strategies thus making them useless. Three of Wallbreakers are successful. The fourth Wallfacer, Lui Ji, develops the dark forest hypothesis — that there are many civilizations throughout the universe that are silent and hostile; remaining silent protects them from the other hostile civilizations. After some plot twists and thrilling scenes not described here, Lui Ji is able to convince the Trisolarans to enter a truce to prevent their own civilization from exposure to other hostile civilizations—a Mutually Assured Deterrence approach .
Death’s End covers a truly remarkable range of time as Earth continues to seek a path of avoiding death of their civilization by a series of approaches. In an early section of the novel, Cheng Xin is an astrophysicist who works on the Staircase Project that is recounted in the Netflix series of the 3 Body Problem, discussed previously. When the Lui Ji steps down as the human linchpin that has kept the Mutually Assured Deterrence approach keeping the Trisolarans at bay, that approach falls apart and a new era begins. This reader won’t detail the numerous things that occur in this new era and beyond but Cheng Xi and Thomas Wade, the CIA agent leading the Staircase Project, are involved in most of them enabled by the hibernation technology introduced to us first in The Dark Forest.
This reader was impressed by the author’s ability to thrill science fiction readers with impressive technical details of technologies that seem plausible while futuristic. But the author accomplishes far more than that. The substantial philosophical questions posed by the stories are quite profound and he uses credible characters to bring these questions to life. Wallfacer Liu Ji’s relationship with his enforced role as a Wallfacer is exquisitely told—his initial rejection, the transition period, developing a useful strategy, the courage to execute it and endure early criticism, and the fortitude to carry out the deterrence mission. Similarly, the author effectively uses the character of Cheng Xin in a believable way so that the reader experiences her feelings as she progresses through her essentially solitary life, driving potential solutions to enable the survival of Earth, and making decisions that likely impact the fate of it.
This word “Wow” leapt to this reader’s mind over and over. Great characters, immense questions, exceptional technical details, and incredible effectiveness in taking the reader literally billions of years into the future. The relationship this reader has with the universe has been altered as a result of reading this remarkable trilogy.
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