Recent Reads
Cixin Liu: The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death’s End
A friend recommended I read this trilogy because there was a much talked-about TV adaptation, and it’s our general rule to always read the book before watching a film adaptation of a book, so we can be book snobs and criticize the adaptation and enjoy it less.
This story is quite different from what I’m used to in SF. It’s very fast-paced, has a huge cast of characters, is epic in scope and very long – not a combination you usually see outside long-running serials.
To be honest, I had a hard time getting through it despite its attempts to hold my attention. The first book was decent, but the middle one lost my interest and I took extended breaks from it a couple of times. The third made up for it though, and I finished that one quickly.
Liu makes liberal use of deus ex technology and wild physics speculation here, but despite that nothing is a conclusive fix – instead there are frequent reversals like a long chain of Frogurt sequences throughout the series, and the reader (and the entire human race) gets something like adrenal exhaustion as this progresses.
I don’t not recommend this trilogy; in the end I’m glad I read it. But I also don’t give it a great recommendation.
I haven’t watched the TV miniseries yet. Maybe I’ll make another post when I do.
I also have a bit of a beef with the main premise of the whole story – maybe skip down to the next section from here if you don’t want any spoilers.
The central premise is what’s referred to in the story as the Dark Forest theory, which is one explanation of why we don’t see signs of other intelligent life in the universe. By this theory, life is out there but most species realize that they’re in a deadly competition for resources in the long term, and in order to survive they must exterminate everyone they see and avoid being seen by others. Thus any species that naively reveals itself by sending signals of friendship will promptly get wiped out by whoever is in the neighborhood with sufficient technology to do it.
The problem with this theory, at least in this story, is that the more advanced species are using weapons that destroy the resources along with the species holding them. Rationally their strategy is counter-productive in the very long term, and they should be smart enough to realize it. Instead they don’t smarten up until it’s too late; they’re thus assumed to have similarly stupid short-term thinking to humans despite having vastly more advanced technology and longer terms of existence.
There’s also a plot hole in that the effects of these weapons are unique and visible over significant interstellar distances yet none were ever witnessed in human history. You can fill in the obvious excuse for that but I feel it should have at least been mentioned to cover the hole.
John Brunner: The Dramaturges of Yan
I wanted a quick, classical-style SF short story as a palette cleanser following the Liu trilogy and semi-randomly selected this one. It was a good choice and a pleasant surprise. Not at all what I expected.
Well, the first half of the story was pretty much what I expected and unremarkable, but about halfway through a single word instantly added an unexpected dark overtone, and in the second half there were several completely unexpected turns. It quickly went from a conventional SF short to something quite unique and delightful.
Unique (or at least early examples of) thoughts inspired by the story are: societies can have their own goals independent of the beings comprising them; can the societies themselves become conscious of those goals and manage them? Can the beings within the society steer these goals in any way? What do you do if your society is self-destructive?
Highly recommended. It’s a short and easy read.
