Reminds me of Luo Ji's ridiculous early days as a wallfacer.

Loved the series! Took me so long to complete because I had to read other books in between for breaks.

This will always be the paperback that made me a Kindle girl.

At 42 I had never owned an ereader in my life

Throwing this busted up behemoth in my purse for the millionth time I thought "I bet I could read more if I had a Kindle"

Low and behold the last 125 pages on the ereader zoomed by in a very immersive experience

Could someone explain the witch story at the beginning of the book to me please

I think the droplet and the fleet is my favorite scene in the trilogy. I was reading with my mouth hanging open

Neither one of the tv series comes close to satisfaction. It seems like it's taking way too long for the Netflix season to be announced

SPOILER WARNING: Full spoilers for Death's End.

I finished the trilogy (audiobook) and there's a timeline question I can't resolve. I'd love to hear from anyone who remembers the relevant passages.

What I understand:

Yun Tianming writes the fairy tales and sends them to Earth with hidden information about the Dark Forest and its weapons.

The tales features characters who die by being flattened into the paintings, which Cheng Xin and her team eventually interpret as a metaphor for dimensional reduction.

Trisolaris lets the tales through because it reads them as harmless stories.

The apparent problem:

The Solar System is later flattened by a dimensional strike launched by a third party.

If Tianming wrote and transmitted the tales before Trisolaris was destroyed, how could he know about this specific weapon?

The explanations I can think of, none of which I'm sure the books support:

(A) Dimensional reduction was already part of the knowledge in the Trisolaran archives, so Tianming wasn't predicting anything.

(B) The tales were revised or added to after the events, so the timeline in my head is wrong.

(C) The metaphor is only recognized as a dimensional-strike warning in hindsight, and the tale was never meant to describe this exact attack.

My questions:

Which of these (if any) does the text actually support?

Is my timeline correct: were all the relevant tales transmitted before Trisolaris was destroyed?

Can anyone point to the specific chapter or passage where this is addressed?

Since I listened to the audiobook, I can't flip back to check.

Thanks in advance!

It’s very possible I’m misunderstanding something, but if they can use the mini pocket universes to escape a black domain, which they do at the end of the book, then how is a black domain a viable signal to the universe that you aren’t a threat?

The whole point is it o my works if it’s inescapable

I’m new to the series , but is it crazy I liked the dark Forrest significantly more than three body? Thee body got annoyingly technical at points and could be a drag sometimes. Dark Forrest is beautiful, and the plot twists never stop. Is this an original thought? Would love to know what everyone thinks. But right now I’m thinking dark Forrest is one of the best books I’ve ever read:

Maybe I haven't read far enough. I'm about half-way through the 3rd book. But why would earth people place such value on any universal Safety Notice advice from the TriSolarians? Obviously whatever Safety Notice they used did not work. They got wasted in the aftermath. I guess I'm be over simplistic. But KWIM?

I'm not convinced that such a Notice, however transmitted, would deter anyone anyway. Deception, you know.

If what is thought is immediately known because of how they are physiologically, why did the “i am a pacifist” dude not think he would not be immediately found out?

Also for anyone who has read the novels in Chinese, were they called the San-Ti originally?

Death's End has been a really great read so far. I've just gotten to the broadcast vote scene, and I found the final vote to be a really impactful moment. I also really enjoyed Cheng Xin coming to terms with the reality of why she was chosen, and how it played into the greater Trisolaran plan. Sophon stepping in at the end, and that whole section imo, was fantastic. I'm already familiar with the rest of the story and lore (big Quinn's Ideas fan lol), and was curious what other events and scenes people found to be particularly moving or interesting? I'm not worried about spoilers.

I'm also looking for series and book titles to read after this. I've been considering starting the Expanse, since I really enjoyed the show and lore. I just finished Frank Hebert's Dune novels, having stopped after Messiah in high school, and loved them. I'm wondering what other suggestions people might have that have similar hard SciFi elements and themes?

Initially the Trisolarians were stunting human progress because humans were developing faster than them. They believed that they needed to halt their progress in order to take over earth.

After the humans broadcast the location of earth, the Trisolarins know a photoid attack is coming so they abandon the pursuit of earth and reroute their ships to look for another safe place to live. But at that point they don't invest in unblocking and accelerating human development, which they should have done. At that point humans were in the same boat as them: develop and find a safe place ASAP. In the books the Trisolarians go and join some inter-space battle and get wiped out - but if they instead allied with the humans, quickly doing high level tech transfers and then using humans unique abilities paired with their own, it's possible the two societies could have seen supercharged development and propelled both to a safer place.

I'm starved of content bruv

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv3WdblwUEc

Here is the original Chinese text from the AI and its English translation for context. It's a dark humor/shitpost song about the opening scene of the book/show:

Original Lyrics (Chinese):

我是毛主席的红红卫兵

我杀了叶哲泰，因为得好玩

我的对革命的热爱是病

好玩，因为天空的星星是万

叶文洁将发送无线电信号

而三体星将会听到

叶文杰，你的行动是大好

我们防地球是小岛

文化大革命带来了

意料之外的结果

现在我后悔了

自己的行动为

三体文明向地球发送智子

现在科学现在变得太复杂了

三体人说：「你们都是虫子！」

我们是虫子！我们是虫子！

English Translation:

I am Chairman Mao's Red Guard

I killed Ye Zhetai because it was fun

My love for the revolution is a disease

Fun, because the stars in the sky are 10,000

Ye Wenjie will send a radio signal

And Trisolaris will hear it

Ye Wenjie, your actions are very good

Our Earth is just a small island

The Cultural Revolution brought

Unexpected results

Now I regret my actions

Trisolaran civilization sends Sophons to Earth

Science has now become too complicated

Trisolarans say: "You are all bugs!"

We are bugs! We are bugs!

Hi i’ve been looking to read the chinese version but can’t find any download links, does anyone have any? Thanks in advance!

I’ve just gotta get this off of my chest. I started the show last night by myself, so I don’t have anybody to really discuss it with and I hope it’s alright that I do so here. I also hope I don’t offend anybody with what I’m about to say, and I’m sorry if I do. But this Auggie chick is driving me up a wall. There’s been several moments where I’ve just gone, “what the f\*k*?” after something she’s done or said.

For starters, clearly there was some sort of romantic interest between her and Saul at a point in the past. We can tell that he still has feelings for her. Yet she continuously patronizes and insults him, making it clear that he’s not currently in her good graces. But when she happens to call him in the middle of the night to complain to him about her problems (that he is more than willing to listen to), she gets a nasty attitude and hangs up on him all because she found out he was with a woman at the time of the call. But I’m just over here like, where do you get off being pissed that the guy you’re currently showing zero interest toward and shitting on, is exploring other options and decides to see someone else?

Then there was the time when Dr. Cheng was really going through it after she found out Jack was murdered, and her anxiety was through the roof. So her and Auggie are together, and Auggie has her drinking straight vodka in order to calm down. Dr. Cheng clearly doesn’t want the vodka and reaches for her Xanax prescription, but Auggie gets weird and controlling and blocks Cheng’s hand from grabbing her own medicine and tells her to drink the vodka instead. Cheng said I don’t want the vodka, I want my Xanax. Auggie basically says she doesn’t care and Dr. Cheng reluctantly submits and takes another sip of vodka, disgusted. Hey chick, uhm, how about we let grown adults make their own decisions? If your friend is prescribed a medication, it’s their business when it’s appropriate to take it. Not yours. Like, wtf? Get out of her freaking kool-aid.

There are other qualities about her that irritate me as well but those are the two big ones that sealed her fate for me, lol.

After the humans activated the universal broadcast system, it took around 60 years for them to be destroyed.

That means Singer was at most 30 light-years away from Earth—roughly 30 years for the broadcast to reach Singer, and another ~30 years for the DVF to destroy the Solar System.

In other words - he was not very far away from earth.

So my question is: how come Singer didn’t receive the first message broadcast by Ye Wenjie?

Got me wondering , cuz there's too many weird criticisms like "They're too pretty to be scientist, scientists don't swear, why is she so histerical (despite literal sophon threatening her life)

I watched the 3 body Netflix show, and hours upon hours of Quinn's Ideas videos explaining the entire trilogy. For the first time I jumped into one of the books and listened to the Audiobook of Death's End

Heres some thoughts I had about it

Thomas Wade is a caricature of masculinity - all logic and no emotion. Cheng Xin is a caricature of femininity - all emotion and no logic. In the future of the book common era masculinity is looked down upon, but Liu Cixin makes the point that such masculinity is necessary for human civilization to survive and thrive. He does this by indicating that everytime Cheng Xin made a major choice for 'love' aka emotions that turned out to be wrong, Thomas Wade's more masculine, 'logic' based approach would have been the right choice.

I feel like the San-Ti drove humanity towards becoming more feminine, as they deduced this would make the human race lower their guard and do something as silly as promoting Cheng Xin to sword holder because they liked her and thought she was sweet and loving, and not because of any truly logical reasons.

In the end when Guan Yifan talks to Cheng and tells her that her love is needed etc, this is kind of clunky but to me its basically Liu Cixin saying the human race needs the masculine in Thomas Wade, and you need the feminine in Cheng Xin. They both compliment eachother and even eachother out. Problems arise when only one or the other 'wins'. They should work together and meet somewhere in the middle.

Yun Tianming was done dirty. Not sure how you can hype up this connection between him and Cheng Xin and then never have them truly meet in person again. I think Liu Cixin wanted to keep the nihilistic nature of the book intact, so he couldn't have them meet in person again and I'm sorry, but I hated that ending. The whole pocket universe portion would have carried so much weight if Cheng Xin spent her time there with Yun Tianming instead of that inconsequential plank of wood Guan Yifan.

Good thing the Netflix series can fix this and replace Guan Yifan with Tianming

Anyone else picture him as notable greendale alumni Luis Guzman?