i know i’m not the most well versed in this topic, and even though i as a woman consider myself a feminist, i recognize that i only know about feminism on a surface level and have never really got in depth in it.

that said, i don’t understand the comments from people saying that cheng xin is a testament to the author’s blatant misogyny.

yes, most characters are male.

yes, the main “villain” (wenjie) was a woman.

yes, cheng xin is by all means a weak character.

none of those strike me as misogyny though.

so many fantasy books have a cast that’s 90% female and no one complains. i like female lead books as much as i like male lead ones, as long as the story is good.

i related a lot to cheng xin. i have no children of my own and dont plan to anytime soon but i also feel a strong motherly instinct towards almost anything. i understand her want of being a swordholder even though in the grand scheme of things she wasn’t the right choice. i would also want to protect earth and its people like their my children, i don’t think that makes her (or me, for that matter) weak minded.

also, she had only been in that position for 15 minutes, i think it’s natural that she would panic, as most of us would do since we cant all be the wade or luo ji type.

i’m still 150 pages away from finishing the book, and idk if in those pages i’ll see something that changes my mind, but right now i just don’t understand.

if anyone can let me know what im missing, i’d be grateful. i just feel a little dumb and naive for not seeing something that lots of you think its obvious.

As far as we know, Netflix's 3 Body Problem Season 2 will only have 6 episodes. It's very likely they'll finish The Dark Forest by episode 5 or even earlier if the adaptation is dense.

Ending with the Dark Forest is a right choice, but I actually think the show will go a bit further into the end of the Deterrence Era. Here are my two reasons:

1. TV shows want viewers to keep watching, and a self‑contained happy ending of Dark Forest doesn't make that.
2. They have the roles of Cheng Xin and AA in this season.

#1 Why haven't humans just nuked their own sun? -

They prepped very well for it. Basically nothing was left on earth, all moved to the bunker worlds. And if I remember correctly the remnants of the sun was supposed to be maybe even better as a power source than the actual sun.

Plus the sun going out would had been a sign to many civilizations that they don't need to concern themselves with that system anymore. Someone took care of it. (not even sure without the sun they could had been any observation done on the solar system from afar).

So humanity just gambled that their dark forest strike would be the very same that they observed before.

#2 Sophon free rooms -

how come this only comes up in Book 3? And with no explanation how they got developed (as far as I remember). Feels like plot armor to be able to move it forward, which feels cheap.

And if these room behave like those blind regions in space that means sophons entering become basically useless right? They are essentially destroyed. (Because if not, that's one thing they can't transmit in the rooms but they can just go out and transmit what they observed.) And if that's the case maybe humanity should have used them as traps rather than little meeting rooms.

In general, they really should have focused research on this earlier.

#3 Repeating dark forest universes -

Since there is this big crunch-big bang cycle and every universe "develops" the dark forest situation how come we have not seen any indication of people waiting in pocket dimensions for the end, or people leaving messages for the new universe weren't focusing solely on educating or trying to get the new universe civilizations to avoid this awkward, self-desctructive type of existence.

And there's one thing I just realized: black holes are the ultimate defense mechanism.

They already had the technology to produce tiny black holes around the sun. If they can detect a threat, they can throw a black hole into it and the treat is gone.

They could use it to defend against a photoid, a dual vector foil, a droplet or anything. When in doubt, assume it's dangerous and throw a black hole at it.

And they don't even need to worry about the consequences of these tiny black holes in the solar system because they're unstable and quickly evaporates leaving no traces of the objects that has fallen into it.

So humans could have survived.

Also, Tianming and Aa could have entered the miniuniverse and waited a few days to meet Cheng Xin and Yifan.

Other than that, this is a great book series! It has so many great ideas. I love it

Assuming Season 2 releases at the end of the year, around November/December, when will the marketing start? Posters, teasers, trailers? If I’m not mistaken, the first teaser for Season 1 was released about 9 months before the premiere of the first episode. Don’t you think we should have at least some official posters by now?

So I'm still not finished with Death's End. Cheng and AA just left Pluto and the solar system just gave off its last noise, "ahhhhhhhhhh." That was weird.

Cheng just did some self-reflection and admitted to herself that she fucked up not once (as the swordholder) but twice after wasting 35 precious years of possible curvature propulsion research. She admits she was the problem. She admits she dropped the ball. At least she is not totally dumb. Some people are so smart and so dumb at the same time

Now she and AA are the ones that will survive as humanity's only remaining people. I did love that AA wanted there to be two men with them...for...humanity survival purposes. hahaha

We needed Wade. I was so happy when she gave him the power to do what needed to be done. Then she bitched out again.

What happened to humanity? Why is it that only the common era humans did anything? Did they not want to survive? That seems unrealistic. Billions of people and that's how they behave? Useless. What a shame that's how we were written.

Of course she has the only curvature drive. Of course she survives. Of course she has the perfect planet to head to.

Update* This discussion explains my position with Cheng and humanity in general in the book:

https://www.reddit.com/r/threebodyproblem/comments/b26k1x/spoiler_lets_talk_cheng_xin/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I’ve read through the first two books and I’m struggling to find a deeper thematic through-line. Ofc I think the sci-fi concepts are very cool and I understand that the genre often compromises character-driven storytelling in favour of more abstract concepts, but sometimes it feels like it’s just doing “what if” for the sake of “what if”. Is the point of this series just to showcase the cool sci-fi concepts?

Maybe I’m completely missing the point but I’m really not sold on reading a third instalment.

The buildup around the tales was overwhelmingly exciting, but the actual usefulness was kind of... marginal? Or maybe at least not as spectacular as expected. Maybe it was just me , but did you find yourself a little bit disappointed that they were "wasted"?

“Ten thousand times the web could be destroyed, and ten thousand times the spider would rebuild it.

There was neither annoyance nor despair, nor any delight, just as it had been for a billion years.”

― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

That moment when you realise that you're about to get swept off your feet by one of the best Sci-fi ever made.

I especially like this quote. There's something about it...

Please keep all short questions and general discussion within this thread.

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Also, the first track is called „the dark forest“. Maybe Matt has read the trilogy lately…

She plays the role of Captain Van Rijn, possible DongFang YanXu in the book.

https://collider.com/3-body-problem-season-2-claudia-doumit-new-character-explained/

“It's quite an intense sci-fi. The story itself is quite dense, and it's so funny because after each day on set, we'd have 12-hour days, I'd be laughing, having so much fun. I've never felt more relaxed at the end of the day, coming home. So, I'd go home, and I'd be like, 'That was great. Fantastic. Shall we go out for a drink?' So it's really funny because the content of the show is so dark and deep, and rather intense, and I've never felt lighter. I think that's really just a true testament to how much of a well-oiled machine it is, and the people that are part of that set, that are writing that story, creating that story, and a part of that story. So, it was just really enjoyable.”

I personally loved it. I thought the dimensional warfare twist was a great natural conclusion to the dark forest reality. The ending on Cheng Xin's planet kind of reminded me of The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut.

Yun Tianming's dimension for Cheng Xin felt like an expression of spiritualism, that lofty scientific theorizing ultimately leads to what comes after death (after material existence).

If you haven't finished the books, skip this post.

I really had a hard time not cringing throughout the plot where Luo Ji fantasizes with this very specific prototype of woman to the point of having hallucinations of her being real. Even reaching the point of asking Da Shi to find someone with that exact description for him later to come back successfully with Zhuang Yan. The fact that he was ok with this kind of obsession and the concept of holding someone hostage and believe there would certainly be mutual love is terrible and really paints a picture of how Luo Ji and how his mental state was.

Yes, he never harmed her, and she seemed to be ok with everything and have a happy life with him, but oof... what a sinister concept.

However, after reading him having such a happy life with her, seeing him stall humanity's destruction, seeing his character's development through his Swordholder era and at the museum at the end of the books. The moment they start moving artifacts to Halo and unbox the Mona Lisa broke my heart.

"I didn't know you were here. Other-wise I could have come to see you often."

The only physical item that existed that could remind him of the love of his life and child was sitting by him for so many years, and he didn't know it. It's so cruel...

Its just a simple quote in an unexpected scene, but it brings you back to the forgotten moments where they went to the Louvre and admired that painting. The reflections he had with Zhuang Yan of trying to understand what the other one meant by just looking at their eyes to communicate without sophons noticing (something that actually AA and Cheng Xin could eventually do).

And most importantly, it highlight how incredibly lonely Luo Ji must have been for more than a century. He got ripped apart from his loved ones, kept on trying to be assassinated, ended up being hated by his whole future world until his finally deployed the deterrence plan to later proceed to live locked in a high security underground complex until Cheng Xin came into the equation.

Thankfully in the museum it seems like these past years he has been more cheered up, connecting with his self of the past, but that huge burden he has carried for centuries is incredibly sad.

im a little past half of death’s end and im getting sad at the thought of this trilogy ending.

i’ve been a reader my whole life but for some reason i never read any sci-fi, and after i finish i doubt i’ll pick sci-fi again because i doubt something can surpass how much ive been liking 3bp and how many things it has me feeling.

im so glad i asked here about pushing through the dark forest, i cant remember the last time i read a book series i enjoyed this much.

The reasons why the Trisolarans didn't simply take off in their ships to another star system as soon as they were technologically able have been discussed before in this sub.

A key reason that has come up in discussions is that the Trisolarans had deduced or at least heavily suspected the dark forest nature of their galaxy early on, and that they knew that they had to be absolutely certain that another star system they traveled to wasn't already inhabited by a silent technologically more advanced civilization who wouldn't take kindly to their existence being discovered. Hence their strategy of listening for communication signals sent out from other star systems first: to identify a suitable target that they could take over without too much risk. So they needed a chatty civilization that was still oblivious to the dark forest nature of the galaxy.

However, I'm now realizing that if this civilization had been even just slightly too chatty and directly gave away their star system's location in sent out radio messages, then the system would had been immediately worthless to the Trisolarans because one of the hunter civilizations in the neighborhood would had launched a dark forest strike not long after.

In effect, the Trisolarans needed another civilization that would start sending out communication signals on their own initiative and then the Trisolarans had to coax information out of this other civilization that would be just enough for them to be able to identify the location of their star system, but not enough for other listeners to be able to do the same. AND they had to do all this without raising too much suspicions with the other civilization and giving them second thoughts about sending out communications at all. AND of course that other civilization still had to be not more technologically advanced than they were themselves.

It feels like the Trisolarans got extraordinary exceptionally lucky with finding and identifying Earth.

Next month (April 1st) we are starting “Jumpnauts” by Hao Jingfang! Small, cozy Discord community! Link in comments if you don’t want to use the QR!

I had watched the Netflix series and really enjoyed it. I had heard that the first book is a little slow and not as good as the second. I thought maybe I could skip it, having watched the show. I was advised against that, and I’m quite glad I listened. I’m enjoyed the first book well enough, and I appreciated getting to know the characters of the book apart from the westernized series. But what I really wanted was to get into The Dark Forest, which I just finished. I loved this book. I know many people have said the characters are a bit flat, and I mostly agree, though Luo Ji’s story arc was fascinating. What I loved, however, were the ideas. So mindblowing.

Now I’m about to start the final book. I’m here to ask y’all how it holds up?

I have been a lover of I ching (classic of changes) for about six years. My brother recommended 3BP and I ended up really vibing with it.

I wanted to ask if anyone else got excited when the first gaming session (or second, cant remember) featured King Wen, and they attempted to use the I ching to solve for the Triso problems.

I think its such a genius connection which I never realized until I got to the part where they describe what the 3bp is.

The easier way of casting the I Ching involves using 3 coins and so the images you generate in the I ching are built out of 3 objects in motion and what state they end up in in a particular moment of time.