Three Body Problem (The Most Horrifying Science Fiction Series of All Time)

The text and audio to my upcoming video.  There may be a few typos!

Intro

Recently I had the pleasure of reading what is likely the most terrifying science fiction book series I’ve ever read. I’ve always enjoyed scary stories. As a kid, I read anthologies like goosebumps or scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. But I didn’t know true fear until I encountered the works of Stephen King, and H.P. Lovecraft in my teenage years. Lovecraft’s works opened up such terrifying vistas of thought that I would while reading them become transfixed and filled with ultimate existential dread. The cosmic terrors he wrote about in his stories struck me as somehow realer than the monsters and ghost of goosebumps and that is probably because in truth Lovecraft, being the flawed man he was, was expressing a very simple fear, fear of the unknown. And what is more unknown than the blackness of space. I must admit that not since my early teenage years have I felt such poignant terror while reading as I did when first encountering the work of Lovecraft. That Is until I read the Remembrance of Earth’s past trilogy.

Part One: Remembrance of Earth’s Path | Humanity’s Painful Future

There are three books in this series, The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Deaths End, there is also an additional book not written by Cixin Liu himself, called Redemption of Time. The first books in the series The Three-Body Problems start off as a mystery. As the story unfolds it starts to feel as though we are reading the unfolding of some grand conspiracy, a conspiracy written into the fabric of the universe itself. Early on in the story, you find out that scientists around the world have been killing themselves. A note left behind by one of the late scientists, Yang Dong ominously added to the mysteries, saying only:

All the evidence points to a single conclusion: Physics has never existed, and will never exist. I know what I’m doing is irresponsible. But I have no choice.

We base so much of our own perception of what we consider to be reality on what we can observe. We look upon the universe as it is and extrapolate from that point. But what if we will never be able to know the truth about the universe. What if the universal constants are not constant. What if the laws of physics are not laws, what if reality isn’t real. Before we get any further into the video I have to give a spoiler warning. If you have not read the series I highly recommend you stop this video and do so. If you’ve read the series, or just don’t care about spoilers then continue forth. Now we won’t be getting into all of the details of the series, I’ll be giving context to why exactly I think this series is so unnerving.

Ultimately the secret of the first book is this. We are not alone in the universe. We are not alone in the milky way. Just 4 lightyears away live another species. They have heard the call of earth from the vacuum of space. And because their own world is unstable, in a constant state of varying extremes due to the three sun structure of their solar system they have chosen earth as their new home. They intend to exterminate the human race, like bugs. Though their technology is great due to the distance of space, it will take at least 400 years for the Trisolarans to arrive on earth, but in the meantime, through technology involving quantum entanglement, they were able to stifle the progress of human scientific development. Scientific theories based on humanity’s current understanding of physics were rendered useless. The Trisolarans had lead humankind into a trap, and the trap snapped closed. Leaving humanity as a helpless victim only capable of waiting until the predator arrived to claim its prey.

Everything that humankind did was monitored in real-time by the Trisolarans as their fleet made its way from their homeworld to the world of earth. Nothing could be concealed from them save the thoughts hidden away within individual human minds. For a while, the world struggles to adjust, attempting to find solutions. It was briefly considered that a portion of the human species might be sent off into the vacuum of space on generational ships. Escapism would have had three potential goals: The first option would be finding a new world among the stars where humanity could survive, this would have been the most ideal option. The next option would be a starship civilization its citizens aboard an eternal voyage. The third option would have been for humanity to take temporary refuge among the stars they would hope to return after Trisolaris   had settled in the solar system and attempt to coexist with the aliens.

But escapism could never truly happen. Not because humanity’s technology couldn’t potentially reach the levels sufficient enough to allow it but because human nature would prevent it from ever getting off the ground. It’s simply a matter of who is allowed to leave, and who is condemned to face the wrath of the Trisolarans on earth. No matter who got to leave whether they be elite, or poor, humankind’s fundamental value system would ultimately collapse, for the idea of equality would be utterly shattered.

Human rights and equality have deep roots. Inequality of survival is the worst sort of inequality, and the people and countries left behind will never just sit and wait for death while others have a way out. There will be increasingly extreme confrontations between the two sides until there’s world chaos, and then no one goes!

The United Nations realizing this simple fact overwhelmingly voted to ban escapism. Instead, choosing to focus on what they could do from earth to thwart the Trisolarans, including the formation of a space force. Even with everything, world leaders attempted in order to maintain stability eventually society did collapse in an apocalyptic testing event known as the Great Ravine. During the Great Ravine the Space Force was brought to the brink of collapse, inflation skyrocketed credit systems unraveled. It started with the slow economic transformation that often accompanied wartime. The standard of living declined and the political climate grew more and more intense but instead of it just being one or a few countries it was the entire earth.

Society was on edge, and if you said something wrong they would say you were ETO, or a traitor to humanity, so nobody felt safe. And film and television from the Golden Age began to be restricted, and then was banned worldwide.

But eventually, things got even worse, humanity began to starve. Climate change had already been greatly accelerating. With the coming of the Trisolaran crisis, humanity grew pessimistic, even if they saved the earth, made it into Eden come again, it would be an Eden for the Trisolarans, not them. Only the space force was given thought, and its continued development only further polluted the earth. So climate change accelerated, the environment changed, the temperature raised, forests and plains became desert. The process of desertification had not been subtle or gradual. The green of the earth eroded simultaneously like a damp towel left out to dry in the sun. Food production halted, for there was no grain being produced. For the next fifty years, the planet was famished. The population of earth decreased by 5 billion during those years all while the Trisolaran fleet marched steadily on.

One of the most intriguing things about these books, mainly the second book, The Dark Forest is how they show the effect the imminent Trisolaran invasion has on humanity before the aliens even arrive within the solar system. Initially many people denied that the invasion was truly real, once the truth became widely accepted a sense of dread crept over all mankind. Religions had to change to make way for the existence of extraterrestrials, humanity could no longer hide behind the comforting fantasy of our own uniqueness we were not unique, we were one of the potentially endless civilizations out there in the dark.

Part 2: What Hides in the Dark | The Universe’s Secrets

The scariest part of this book series in my opinion is also in the second book, The Dark Forest. In this book, we begin to unravel the truth about the state of life in the universe. The book calls us to consider cosmic sociology. If you supposed that a vast amount of civilizations were distributed throughout the universe based on the number of detectable stars, those civilizations would make up the body of cosmic sociology. Cosmic socially is based on two axioms. “First: Survival is the primary need of civilization. Second: Civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.” These two axioms are all that is needed to extrapolate the ultimate horrifying truth about cosmic society. It is a secret that the Trisolarans themselves knew, and called the most important secret in the universe. It was the secret that the universe itself was a Dark Forest.

“The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It’s the explanation for the Fermi Paradox.”

The Famous Fermi Paradox of course brings up the quandary, if based on what we know about the universe, it should be full of life, then where is said life. Why is the universe seemingly silent? This series provides a single terrifying answer.. We don’t see them because they are hiding. Like all life on earth, life in the universe must compete to survive. It is a cruel fact about the nature of life itself. If the location of a world is revealed, it is marked in a way, a metaphorical spotlight is shown upon it, a blinking sign stating “there is intelligent life here, destroy before it destroys you” Eventually the mark will be noticed. It is only a matter of time.

It doesn’t matter what motivated someone to leave the mark. What’s important is that the dead hand has stretched the nerves of the dark forest to the breaking point, and it’s the most sensitive nerve that’s most liable to make a move. Suppose there are a million hunters in the forest—the number of civilizations on the billions upon billions of stars in the Milky Way could be thousands of times that. Perhaps nine hundred thousand of them will disregard the marking. Of the remaining one hundred thousand, maybe ninety thousand of them will probe the location, and, after confirming that it has no life, disregard it. But one of the remaining ten thousand hunters will surely make a choice to fire on that position, because for civilizations at a certain level of technological development, attacking may be safer and less of a hassle than probing. If there’s really nothing at that location, then it’s no loss.

The idea that the universe is a Dark Forest is terrifying. Humans have always seemed to be fascinating with the idea of extraterrestrial life, making contact. For more than a hundred years we have blasted the sky signals, sending pieces of our world out unto the cosmos in the form of waves, never thinking about exactly who might be listening. Though humans had revealed themselves to the Trisolarans who only wanted the colonize the earth for themselves, there were things far worse and far more powerful than the Trisolarans. Ancient Civilizations were shielded in the dark armed with the power to rip apart dimensions.

Another fascinating and also quite troubling concept Cixin Liu forces us to consider in his books is the potential effect that life has had on the universe itself. Without life, the earth would be a different planet. There would be no oceans. No Rivers, the entire surface of the planet would be as dry as mars. Life is not some tiny shell clinging to the surface of the world, fragile waiting to be snuffed out in an instant, life with the aid of time is powerful enough to move mountains and without life, it is very possible that by what is now thought the be the modern era, liquid water would not exist on the planet earth.

Plants, animals, and bacteria all have had important roles in the present composition of our atmosphere. Without life, the atmosphere would be very different. It’s possible that such an atmosphere would not be able to shield the surface of the Earth against solar winds and ultraviolet rays, and the oceans would evaporate. Soon, greenhouse effects would turn the Earth’s atmosphere into a copy of Venus’s, and then water vapor would be lost to space over time. After several billion years, the Earth would be dry.”

• Deaths End

The earth that we and all the other life on this planet inhabit is ultimately a home constructed by life for itself. If we take this idea and apply it to the universe itself then this thought occurs: If life has had such a drastic effect on earth, then what effect has life as a whole had on the universe itself, and what would the universe look like without life? If life was exceedingly rare in the universe its impact on the evolution of the cosmos could be ignored but if the universe was, in fact, teeming with life, as the famous drake equation suggest, then a terrifying question arises: How much has the universe from its original state, been altered by life. Is the nature that we experience natural at all?

A terrifying revelation comes near the end of the final book in the series. The universe had once been 10 dimensions, a state of perfection. But due to the destructive nature of life itself, those dimensions have collapsed, and the universe will continue to collapse until only a single dimension remained. Countless ancient civilizations potentially possessed the capability of initiating dimension collapses in parts of the universe, it was one of the methods that hunters in the dark forest used to eliminate other intelligent species. The problem was that once a dimension strick occurred it never ended. The universe itself was dying.

Part 3: Science Fiction At It’s Best

Aside from pure existential dread, this series has so many great science fiction ideas that I just love such as the idea of cryogenics. The philosophy behind people being willing to freeze themselves in the present in order to wake up in the future is based on a very human but often not true assumption, that the future will somehow be better than now. Many of the characters throughout this book series experience being frozen and unthawed in a different era. I find it fascinating to read about how someone from a specific era interacts with the world and the people of a new era, this idea is also at the heart of one of my all-time favorite science fiction shows, the lighthearted animated show Futurama, whose main character after being frozen for a thousand years wakes up in the year 3000 and has to deal with the fact that not only is he living in a world completely aliens to him but also everyone that he’s ever known or loved is dead. Cixin Liu’s use concept of this helped to illustrate the idea that humans are humans even when coming from a different era.

Cixin Liu throughout the series also explores the concept of the Longview of history. He explores how certain events and figures throughout human history evolve in the way they are perceived by humanity. Men Become gods, gods become devils. Heros become enemies and vice versa. We see this mainly with the characters Luo Ji and Cheng Xin as their stories progress through the centuries. And also the inhabitants of the ship’s Gravity and Blue space, who are certain points in history were considered to be enemies of all mankind and at other points took on near-mythic proportions in the minds of some humans all due to the shifting perspectives created by the different vantage points of time. On the whole, humankind seems to possess fleeting short terms memories, and ideas that aren’t constantly reinforced instantly fade away in the mists of time, this is the reason that humanity seems to constantly repeat its old mistake, we as a species simply forget.

Some would say that Cixin Liu’s trilogy is a quite pessimistic one and I agree to an extent. Cixin Liu does seem to present a pretty pessimistic view of human nature as a whole. Though certain individuals can sometimes come up with solutions that could potentially help, the human entity as a whole for some reason resists. It is easy to see the Trisolaran Crisis in particular as a metaphor of Climate Change, destruction is imminent, perhaps distant but certain, and it is likely that modern humans won’t be affected nearly as much as the generations that come after. Can humankind come together to stop this crisis, and ensure the survival of its future generations? One of the most interesting parts of the series is when we get to see how the various governments cooperate when it comes to dealing to with the crisis, at some point, the book mentions that there was a push for socialized technology, which would give the human race as a whole a greatly increased chance of survival, the major world powers flat out rejected this notion because they believed it would weaken them. Not even the sure threat of alien destruction was enough to force the world the cooperate.

The US government said that no form of socialized technology was realistic, that it was a naïve idea, and that under the present circumstances US national security was a priority “second only to planetary defense.”

Dark forest

I would say that humankind as a whole is depicted as being rather selfish in this series and many times we see how the species cannibalizes itself. Humanity is often its own greatest hindrance. The books are not all pessimism, however, the final book in the series Death’s End does in fact end with certain optimistic undertones by highlighting the endurance of the human race and its spirit. Cixin Liu combines philosophy, science, and pure horror to create what is honestly what is one the best science fiction book series I’ve ever read. The series is endlessly bold, and unpredictable, even the spoiler’s I’ve mentioned in the video barely begin to get into the place where these books eventually go. The third book, Death’s End gets more into the idea of the inter-dimensionality of the universe which is endlessly intriguing, and quite trippy actually. The series feels boundless in a way a lot of other books the questions about humanity, about the universe that is brought up in this series are questions that I’ve been pondering since I read. The book isn’t scary in the traditional sense, but the ideas explore are chilling to the bone. The remembrance of Earth’s Past series is science fiction at its best and I hope to cover more of the series and explore some of its other concepts in future videos. Thanks, Guys.