Tag Archives: Cixin Liu

Book Review – The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin

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A few months ago, I read The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, and I found it a particularly impressive and riveting work of science fiction. So, I decided to read the second book in the series, which definitely met my expectations on a Liu Cixin work.

This book is the sequel to the Three Body Problem, so to understand the context and setting of this novel, one must have read the previous book. This book is situated under a pretext like the Three Body Problem, but this time focuses on humanity’s survival in the face of the Trisolarian invasion. This book mainly focuses on the efforts of the UN to find a way for humanity to survive, most notably through the Wallface project, granting several individuals great power. This was to counter the “Sophons” the Trisolarians used, a particle that disrupts advancements in physics, while at the same time communicating with Trisolaris via quantum entanglement, which is a theory in physics detailing a phenomenon where two subatomic particles can communicate with each other despite being separated by billions of lightyears of space.

This book was significantly interesting to me, as it is one of the more notable works in the hard science fiction genre of novels. “hard science fiction” defines any science fiction novel that puts an emphasis on scientific logic and realism. The Dark Forest, along with the rest of the Three-Body series, includes both of these things. More interestingly, the Dark Forest is based on a real scientific hypothesis, the “dark forest hypothesis”, which states that the universe contains intelligent alien life, but no advanced civilization would reveal themselves out of the fear of being attacked.

Overall, this was a great sequel to The Three-Body Problem, and I had a great time reading it. I would recommend this book and the corresponding series to anyone who is interested in physics, or anybody looking to read a science-fiction novel with a realistic depiction of scientific concepts.

The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu is available to download for free from Libby.

Book Review: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

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A friend of mine recently recommended that I read this book, as he told me it was one of the best science-fiction novels he had ever read. This book is another foreign work I really enjoyed, and it served, in my opinion as a more modern version of War of the Worlds by H.G Wells.

Initially, the story starts in the past, during the Chinese Cultural Revolution during 1967. one of the protagonists, Ye Wenjie, sees the death of her father at the hands of the revolutionaries, and she gets sent to inner Mongolia as part of a labor brigade and later sentenced to prison. However, two military physicists from the government see an opportunity in her and recruit her to conduct secretive research in the Red Coast project, which was intended to develop technologies that could be used to damage spy satellites from rival countries, reminiscent of the Cold War era this part of the story is set in.

However, Wenjie later learns about the truth behind the project, and realizes that the project’s true intention is to attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life. She inevitably finds evidence of an alien civilization, Trisolaris, and receives a message from a Trisolarian listener to not respond, as their civilization was constantly under the uncertainty that their planet may be engulfed by their sun. However, the specifics behind this is not revealed until much later in the novel.

Meanwhile, in the present, Wang Miao, a scientist in the field of nanotechnology, finds a game named “Three-Body”, played using virtual reality hardware known as V-suits. this game has the users go through a series of eras and challenges. However, a shocking truth is later discovered about the game, which I will not reveal.

Overall, this was a great book in my opinion, and I really liked how unlike a lot of the science-fiction novels I’ve read, a lot of the fictional work is grounded in reality, hence this book being under the genre of hard science-fiction. I really enjoyed reading this book, and I would recommend it to anybody who is interested in physics, or just anybody who just wants to read novel that actually requires a bit of thinking to get.

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu is available to check out from the Mission Viejo Library. It is also available to download for free from Libby.