Wrapped up the first book after much struggle. Am I crazy for finding it extremely poorly written? Writing aside, the characters suck, the motivations suck, and the scenario building feels like it was tossed together by a 12 year old. I don’t get the hype. Everything is paper thin. The fictional science aspect is the most compelling part but as a cohesive whole it fails to land.
I was very happy to stumble upon this post. I’ve been struggling through The Dark Forest for what feels like forever. I’m usually a pretty voracious reader, but this series is like quicksand to me. It’s really really boring. I just keep hoping it will get interesting. It threatens to…and then starts sucking again. I never DNF books, but I’m so SO tempted here. Glad there are others out there!
Yea, the Dark Forest is a slooooooooog. While I liked the way the last book wraps up the metaphysics of this world, getting there was utterly exhausting.
Dang. Does that mean I need to finish it all out?? 😂
Mileage may vary. There are so many books out there, find ones that speak to you. Not that effort in reading is bad, but I think this series is really, really mixed. You can always go back later if you’re curious.
It happens sometimes.
I really enjoyed the movie Arrival, so I picked up the story collection it’s based on. My, what a load of genre fiction in the worst possible meaning of the word.
oh no, Ted Chiang is a delight!
Ted Chiang is one of my favourite authors.
Seriously ? I loved Tower of Babel, hate arrival the movie 😅
Even worse take. Arrival is ass!
Yeah. I struggled with the cringy romance sections. Very much a freshman entry. But the series as a whole does work well. The Dark Forest is huge improvement. it also had a different translator and has a different structure that I feel works better than the first.
Aliens live on a planet orbiting three suns. The planet regularly gets scorched by those suns. Hot enough to melt rocks. How tf these aliens keep evolving and advancing all the way to space travel?
It is utterly ridiculous.
They just gather their dragon balls, obviously!
Easy. DEHYDRATE!
Rant incoming
The three body problem is chaotic dynamical system. Chaotic means, between other things, that it is unpredictable: given two different starting points, even incredibly close, their behavior will diverge (become different) exponentially fast over time (and we saw during the Covid epidemic that exponentially fast is really damn fast).
So having a super smart mathematician approximating its simulation… that’s a load of bullshit, hot and steamy. That’s a master level example of how not to spend your days, because any approximation you do is going to impact your results exponentially fast.
Furthermore, the three body problem’s solutions don’t need to be bounded. What does this mean? That there is no reason for the planet to stay in orbit of the three suns. Any time it gets far, it could come back, but just as easily keep going further away and lose connection with its starting system. Any time it gets near the suns it could just as easily fall into one of them. So, most likely, during geological ages, the planet would have either gotten ejected or eaten up. If you want to go even further back, there is no way an asteroid belt would generate a planet in these conditions.
Finally, there are well-known configurations of solutions of the three body problem. Configurations are very specific situations (usually assuming two suns of equal mass and a sun that is much smaller and much further away) that can sustain periodic solutions, aka behaviors that repeat after a certain time. If a planet ever got generated in a three suns system, it would definitely need to be in one of these configurations.
The nail in the coffin: if there are three suns and a planet… it’s the four body problem. If you consider the planet to have basically zero mass with respect to the suns, you call it the restricted four body problem.
And this is why knowing way more than the author spoils the fun :( I could not enjoy the science part at all… even when i tried to suspend my disbelief.
Exactly what keeps me from writing anything, which is silly, but I hate the idea of somebody reading something I wrote and thinking, “what an idiot” 😔
I read/watch popular but stupid stuff to remind myself things don’t need to be accurate to be entertaining.
Oh, I am sorry… but you can see this thread: even if there are quite some inaccuracy on the math and physics side of things, many people still really enjoyed this book (my partner included, even after hearing my rant many time). You should not censor yourself! (But accept criticism and improve from it). You go gender-neutral-guy!
Haha, thank you, I appreciate the sentiment! I recognize that this is a Me Problem, but in classic fashion I think I can overcome this, too, with just a little bit of self-improvement in a slightly new area of expertise. I mean really, how hard could it be?
Here’s how I understand it to work.
They have random periods of activity in which they advance as a species so they make large leaps in scientific progress when they are awake as opposed to a slow and steady build up of knowledge. Their large leaps in advancements becomes a disadvantage at times but more so their way of thinking in general.
Because they kinda portray themselves as humanoid that’s how you’re lead to think about them, like approximately human sized smart mamal-ish creatures, when really they are between ant to beetle sized hive mind creatures. This is why the more of them that they are able to have active between the harsh sun cycles the faster they advance. Also makes the whole dehydration thing easier to swallow.
And how do Trisolarians manage to transfer knowledge from one stable era to the next? The surface of the planet literally burns during the chaotic era. Which begs another question, how do they rehydrate? With what water?
I think there’s a real struggle in translating Chinese literature into English.
For what it’s worth, the second book - The Dark Forest - starts off much stronger and builds from there, making the first book feel more like it was just introducing the story.
and the third book is even better.
But I agree with OP that the writing is bad, I just enjoy the intrigue and sci-fi enough to read the books, esp. at that particular part of the second book (the first book and first part of the second book were admittedly less compelling to me than the rest of the second book and the third book).
the Dark Forest sucks just as hard if not more so. the premise of the story
spoiler
Mutually Assured Destruction
isnt an original thought, but the author refuses to acknowledge it until the end, pretending like it wasn’t obvious the whole story. then he hand waves the problems he sets up (how do you deal with an alien technology so much more sophisticated than your own) pretending like the sophons just couldn’t deal with the threat. All this and the character doesn’t ever really develop. Things happen to him, but we don’t get any meat to his personality, just external bullshit.
I started listening to the third book because I am a gluten for punishment and I have a long commute, but it just meandered. If it was another author Id give them the benefit of the doubt, but I havnt been able to get through it.
Dark Forrest: Gump with a Gun
The premise of The Dark Forest is extremely explicitly not MAD though.
The point of the story is
spoiler
The wallfacers have to have a secret plan that they cant share because the sophons can intervene if it is known. The Sophons are so powerful because they can interfere with any technology, only the human mind is beyond their reach. So he creates a technology to do exactly what he tested out that would achieve mutually assured destruction and the sophons cant do anything about it because… reasons.
It was obvious the entire time what he was planning and the result of that plan was MAD. If you come to destroy us, we will both die. He couldnt say it outloud because the premise was he was a wallfacer and there is no good reason this particular plan would suceed.
Ah, I see what you mean, I thought you meant the Dark Forest theory itself.
I also did not love it. The premise is fascinating and is relatively unique as far as ‘first contact’ stories go. At the end of the day, though, the first book is much more about Chinese history than aliens, and the ‘science’ part of the science fiction is so garbage that I had a hard time getting through it. I recommend “Blindsight” by Peter Watts if you’re looking for a really cool first-contact story.
This is the correct answer. The sequel was excellent as well, but nothing has ever touched Blindsight for me in terms of sheer alienness
Haven’t read it, but the show was interesting enough for me to watch the entire season.
I understand this community is about books, but I’m curious if anyone here who read this book also watched the Netflix series?
If so, do you hold a different opinion of the show?
The Netflix series felt very different then the book. I found the mystery aspect in the first part of the book the most interesting, but the show completely skipped it. So the show wasn’t bad but I was still disappointed.
Yeah I can understand that. I liked Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies a lot, but there were some big differences between them and the books that I wished had been different. Tom Bombadil, for instance.
I read the first book, and like OP found the characters bland and the writing boring. I reckon this is due to the way the original is translated into English. The style may be more appealing to a chinese audience. I guess there are cultural differences that transpire in one’s language and prose.
Unlike OP however, I found the story compelling enough to finish the first book. I struggled a lot more with the second one, until my dog did me a favor and decided to shred it to pieces while I was away =D
I did enjoy the Netflix show though, and I’ll happily watch season 2.
Thank you for the response!
I also enjoyed the Netflix series, at least at a conceptual level, and am looking forward to season 2. I don’t think I’ll read the book though.
I read all three. I thought they excelled at creating new plot devices. Sentient particles, Thought as light, dimensional weapons. Its really hard to come up with new sci fi tropes! And Liu casually comes up with a dozen new ones. I thought the characters and plot were… unsatisfying. But I believe that is mostly intended as a portrayal of people’s failings. I’d say it’s a worth it read for real sci fi junkies though. Definitely disagree that it is “Not good”, but taste is subjective. They seemed longer than they needed to be… I dunno.
Its really hard to come up with new sci fi tropes! And Liu casually comes up with a dozen new ones.
Unfortunately, then he shoves them all into the same book. He needs to be the show runner of a sci-fi TV series.
It is easy to come up with nonsense. I much more respect works that explore the consequences of one fantastical thing.
Yeah I thought it sucked ass too. Supposedly the second and third books are better.
Absolutely not.
I loved the first book. The second book is all set up, it’s only good if the third book pays off. It didn’t. Big let down imo. Cool ideas, but not satisfying narratively or emotionally
I liked the Chinese tv adaptation, didn’t read the book, and won’t watch the American version. I think the series was good largely because of the actors, not so much the plot.
This is a failure of the reader, not the literature. It’s science fiction space opera written from the cultural perspective completely alien to most western sci-fi literature. It’s absolutely nothing like H.G. Wells, Asimov, Clarke, Vinge, Herbert, Heinlein, or Niven. The Three Body Problem is almost the antithesis of all of those manifest destiny individual heroes. All of those authors have much more alike amongst themselves than they do with the narrative history we read through The Three Body Problem. Of course a lot of western readers don’t like it, it wasn’t written for their perspective. I don’t even think I could really get into it enough to REALLY enjoy it as much as my “comfort food” sci-fi. But, I could tell their was something there, and it was my own limitation of understanding, not a failure of the literature or the translation.
So… what you’re saying is “skill issue”
Not skill, just perspective. Everyone has a right to like (or dislike) what they like, but that’s as much about them as it is about the art.
The sequels went on forever, to the point that I figured out what the Dark Forest theory was early on and had to finish that book just to find out I was right. Characterisation is pretty non-existent, it’s true.
I felt the same way about the characterization. I thought it might be a translation thing. I don’t know that many folks that read it in Chinese, but I’m leaning towards “no, it’s just like that.”
It’s a fun series to read a wiki about.
I enjoyed it and have recommended it, but then I reread it and yea, it’s not great. But it had some interesting new concepts, for which I’m still grateful I read the books, like the dark forest theory.
Except that the dark forest hypothesis completely falls apart when you examine it for more than a few minutes.
SPOILER
Basically, the fundamental problem is that it applies game theory really badly, by treating the value of “survival” as functionally infinite, which is something that - if we actually applied it in reality - would make life unlivable. For example, eating a chocolate bar contains a miniscule risk to your survival. But if you multiply any minute fraction by infinity you get infinity, so the risk outweighs any possible value you could obtain. This becomes true for every decision you can possibly make. At both the individual and societal levels, treating survival as a purpose that outweighs everything else just leads to total paralysis. Any society that operated on those principles would never actually advance to the point of being capable of interacting with the wider universe. Liu even has to treat humanity itself - our only extant example of a space-faring species - as an almost impossible outlier because our own behaviour completely shatters the hypothesis. Even our studies of animal life on earth repeatedly demonstrate that curiosity and altruism are actually traits that evolution selects for, not against. Yeah, it solves Fermi’s Paradox, but that’s literally the only argument for it. It fails every other test possible. It’s a really interesting idea for a scifi setting, but it’s not remotely supported by reality.
I’m not really sure what you mean. I don’t think ‘infinifte’ value vs arbitrarily high value makes a difference here. Also evolutionarily, intraspecies collaboration is beneficial, not necessarily interspecies. Although we’re talking about civilizations making decisions, not animal behaviour.
I just read it as a parallel to the realists perspective of international relations on a cosmic scale. It the survival of the state in relation to other states that is the goal. In that respect it holds up well enough.
But even there it falls apart, because if it had any merit then every country in the world would be North Korea. And even that wouldn’t be enough, because even North Korea trades with China. The idea that the natural state of the world is total paranoia and the instant annihilation of every civilisation simply doesn’t hold up. The realist’s perspective of international relations actually serves to disprove; even when you begin from the presumption that their own survival is the primary goal of every civilisation, it can be observed that the optimal behaviours that arise from that goal are cooperative, not defensive.
Countries on the same planet results in a completely different situation. Dark Forest theory is a result of great distance (the enemy could become technologically superior within the time it would take just to gather intel), being hidden (so MAD doesn’t apply), and having a large number of civilizations (even if only a very small percentage of civilizations send out dark forest strikes, the principle holds.)
I agree that the natural state with the total paranoia is tad silly. Even the books toy with the idea of cooperation between Tri-solaris and Earth. It would have been better if it was treated as the domineering ideology in their area of space and a theory with flaws from the characters.
If North Korea location was secret, there where no way of telling the difference between North Korea and Switzerland, we had no countermeasures against nukes, and communication increases the risk that North Korea finds you, tensions would way more likely lead to a fist strike doctrines. You only really need one actor with the doctrine to force others to adjust to it.
I know it falls apart quickly, but I still like it as a concept. I also like dragons, magic and immortal beings as concepts.
After much struggle I got some geeky friends of mine to start a book club. I suggested this as the first book based on the hype. Almost no one finished it. When we got together to drink and talk, only two others bothered to dial in (It was during COVID and we are scattered), no one else finished it.
I dislike this book in so many different ways. It has some interesting Ideas and some surprising insights into the modern Chinese view of the revolution, but as an actual story? Ive read better fan fic.
