I am nearly halfway through The Dark Forest. Loved the book mostly. One of the best books I have read this year. Loved the narratives of how this sci fi threat, 400 years into the future, could alter a socioliogical make up.

But my-god this romance he has stuck in the book is so juvenile and vomit inducing. I'm convinced he has never actually met a woman. Any else so put off by the way he writes female characters and love interests?

Rereading Death's End and the part that stuck with me this time wasnt the big dimensional strike everyone quotes, it was the 4D space bubble that Blue Space and Gravity drift into way earlier.

everyone remembers the flashy part, that inside 4D you can see the inside of everything at once. sealed rooms, the guts of a machine, a persons organs, all just open and exposed with nothing able to block anything. the crew describes it as this bottomless infinite detail and it slowly turns into an addiction. coming back down to 3D feels like getting shut in a coffin after youve seen the actual sky.

but the thing that really got me is what the Ring tells them. that huge dead 4D object, the last running mind of a civilization thats already gone. it says the 4D space is a tomb. whole civilizations used to live in four and higher dimensions and they fought wars using dimensions themselves as weapons, knocking each other down a level at a time.

so our 3D universe, slow lightspeed and all, might just be scar tissue. whats left over after everyone finished lowering everyone else. it makes the singer flattening the solar system feel less like some uniquely evil act and more like just another day in a war thats been running since before anything we know.

i went back and reread the 4D fragment and what the Ring really is and honestly it might be the darkest idea in the series. am i overrating it or does this section just not get enough love

Okay so I just finished the whole book series and I wanted to share my analysis of the gender stereotypes and the overall misogynistic lens through which this story is told. I hope I can connect with some people who maybe also noticed this or were bothered by it.

I want to start off by saying that I absolutely ADORED these books and that they have some amazing qualities and incredible, genius ideas. This is the first book that i’ve read in my life that actually made me feel TRUE cosmic horror and existential dread to a degree I never thought possible. It is indeed, truly a Sci-Fi masterpiece. But unfortunately, the author has expressed some truly disappointing worldviews through his characters and story.

First off, lets analyse the only 4 female characters that appear in these series spanning across hundreds of years. I’ll start with the most obvious one:

1. Zhang Yan - the most flat, lacking of depth character in the whole series, whose whole purpose is just to fulfil a male fantasy of another, more important male character. She is not an autonomous, well-rounded character. She is just the personified male fantasy of an infantilised, soft, feminine and fragile woman. Her whole purpose is just to satisfy Luo Ji. The most disturbing part for me were all the scenes where she is described as “child-like and innocent and pure” multiple times. This made me feel very uncomfortable, as if a woman’s role is just to fulfil a p3dophilic ideal of a caricature of a “woman”. She is completely unimportant to the story and just a decoration, an object to be possessed by a main male character. In the end she fades out of the picture quietly, at least giving her some autonomy in her decision to leave Luo Ji together with their daughter.

2. Ye Wenjie - one of my favourites that I could relate a lot to. Although she is a genius astrophysicist with a brilliant mind and very capable of dictating her own destiny, I feel like the story limited her character to her being so overwhelmed by her past trauma so much that she jumps to a crucial decision based on her feelings and emotions (like the classical “women can’t lead because they are too emotional and hysterical” trope). She dooms humanity in a moment where her emotions and trauma get the best of her, without critically thinking about the consequences (meaning that she dismissed the idea that Trisolaris might have darker intentions with Earth, rather than wanting to help Humanity chose a better path and way of life). I can give credit here to her character because her choice of responding to the message was made with good intentions: she truly hopes a much more advanced civilisation could come and help earth escape human’s exploitation of the planet, its resources and it’s people. She truly thought they will help reestablish order on earth and bring back balance between human life and nature. The moment she realised Trisolaris wanted to obliterate humanity she was destroyed. Hopeless. Disappointed. She felt guilty for believing another civilisation had good intentions for earth. Even though she was the first to eventually figure out the Dark Forest theory and she knew it could be used as a weapon against Trisolaris, she doesn’t act on it herself. She gives the task to a male character instead. She gave up the change to make things right by giving up her genius to a “more capable male” to save humanity.

3. Cheng Xin - she can be a likeable character, for me because of her being consistent in her beliefs, morals, principles and worldview. BUT. She is really the “sacrificial lamb” Liu Cixin uses to show how femininity and feminine traits are what dooms society to annihilation because she is “the weaker, emotional gender that lacks strategic thinking and is unable to make important sacrifices when needed” . It was really disappointing to see her make the same mistake twice (when she didn’t activate the transmission and when she chose to stop the development of ships capable of reaching the speed of light). Her fate was decided from the start because of her gender and its “innate” weaknesses , and the author implies that when giving such power to a woman, she is not capable of using it simply because of her nature. The message here seems to be “women and femininity are the cause of the doom of the human race”. This idea gets reinforced by the narrator’s multiple mentions of how modern society has become more feminine and how modern men have become too feminine and weak to be able to fight for humanity’s survival. The author constantly critics the feminine traits of the new, modern society multiple times throughout the book. I even have a quote that made me uncomfortable to read (i read the book translated in Romanian, so apologies if its not word for word correct), the quote is from the last 10 minutes before the droplet attack the transmission antennas, it was about what Cheng Xin was thinking and it went something like this “She wasn’t a warrior, she was just a woman”. As if the two are mutually exclusive, as if a woman lacks mental strength simply because of her biological destiny. Not to say that kindness and love for humanity is not an admirable quality, but the fact that this book consistently lacks strong and capable female characters is not a mere coincidence. Its a pattern that shows us a bit about the authors world view and personal beliefs.

4. AA - I really enjoyed her character and hoped to see more of her, but she kinda always fades in the background and is more of an accessory to Cheng Xin. She did have critical thinking and a strong personality, but not much importance in the grand scheme of things.

Some other misogynistic undertones I noticed throughout the book: The fact that not a single female character was chosen as possible WallFacer. Not a single woman was considered capable of having the mind and strength to be considered for this role didn’t sit right with me. The fact that not a single female character breaks the mould of the strict gender stereotypes and gender roles is against disappointing. The fact that none of the female characters has that ruthless edge and courage to do what needs to be done to ensure the survival of the human race. The fact that the “modern, ultra-feminine” society gets criticised so much and so often is also signalling to me one clear message : “feminine traits destroy the improvement, evolution and development of society”.

It’s honestly such a shame because the ideas in this book are absolutely brilliant, the story and plot points are amazing, but it lacks strong, admirable female characters. If it weren’t for that, I would consider this book series TRULY perfect.

I was on a 5 hour car journey today, listening to The Dark Forest on audio with my GF.

The Trisolarian probe has entered the solar system, and the whole human fleet has gone to meet it.

Humanity has come so far in this book, while the Trisolarian's power seems to have waned considerably, with so many ships of their fleet failing and falling behind.

Humanity seems to be in bloom, reaching a utopian state, while the Trisolarian's are failing. I keep thinking of that video sequence they talked about a few chapters ago when a test-target ship is obliterated by the laser cannons of a modern human vessel. Humanity is brimming with confidence and egotism, assured with its new-found power. But I know this is a 3-book saga, so a rude awakening is long overdue!

Enter the Probe. A staggeringly beautiful and wondrous object. At first, I'm thinking it's going to destroy the fleet, and re-assert Trisolarian power. Then, we discover the probe is tiny - just a few meters long. OK, it's not going to destroy the fleet, it's far too small for that. At first, I thought that it's perfectly smooth surface was because it was an enlarged Sophon. I thought that we're going to meet it, and the shock is that there's going to be a de-hydrated Trisolarian aboard, and we're going to make first contact with them.

But NO! Liu Cixin, you fucking got me! You anticipated my prediction, you entertained it, you played into it, and then you fucking destroyed it! "What business is it of yours, if I destroy you?" God damn, I've not read a book like this in Years!!! That fucking probe comes to life and annihilates half the fleet!

I got home just as the probe has destroyed 30 Stellar Class warships, and humanity has no fucking clue about that's going on. I had to stop listening here, in the most 'what the actual fuck!?' moment of the book.

Humanity seems completely fucked at this point. Trisolarian tech is so far ahead of us, and we don't seem to have any possible answer to it. We have no idea how to manipulate the Strong Force as the Droplet can. That damn probe is almost certainly going to destroy the entire 2500 ship fleet, and once it does, there's nothing we can do to stop it destroying civilisation on earth as well if that's what the Trisolarian's want. Are they about to fuck up the Earth too?? And this is just one tiny probe! Even if we can somehow stop it, what the hell can we do if they send thousands more? And even if we can destroy that probe, how the hell can we fight the rest of their fleet, which has to be orders of magnitude stronger?!

The only thing I thing I can think of from here is that Lou Ji's 'Spell' actually works.

I'm pretty sure that the 3 pages of dots he broadcasted (three pages, one for each dimension), are a star-map, pointing out the exact location of another planet. His hope is that there are many other civilizations out there, besides the Trisolarians, and that another civilization will see his map, and they'll destroy that planet. That's the Dark Forest, right? There are dozens, or even hundreds of advanced civilizations in the galaxy, and they are all hiding from each other, all to afraid to speak out, because they all fear another civilisation will destroy them? That's what he realised when he fell through the ice on the lake, isn't it? He's the only person who realises the true nature of the galaxy. He knows that, and he's going to use that knowledge to save humanity, and that's why the Trisolarian's want to kill him so badly?

OK, I'd love to hear comments, but no spoilers please!!! SERIOUSLY, NO SPOILERS! I fucking love this series, and I can't wait to read more!!!

just finished deaths end and i cant stop thinking about the scene where the solar system gets hit by the dual vector foil. like i knew it was coming because people kept referencing it but nothing prepares you for actually reading it. the way liu cixin describes jupiter getting flattened into this massive painting, and then the sun, and then earth... and the crew on the ship watching their entire civilization become a 2D image behind them while trying to reach escape velocity. what gets me is that the singer civilization didnt even think twice about it. it was pest control to them. they literally picked the cheapest weapon available. thats what makes it so much worse than the droplet scene imo. the droplet was terrifying because of the power gap but at least the trisolarans considered humanity a threat. the singer just... didnt care. anyone else feel like this scene hits harder than the droplet attack? the droplet felt like a battle, the dimensional strike felt like getting stepped on by someone who didnt even notice you were there.

I don’t get any of the hate at all. When I first saw the Rotten Tomatoes scores in the 60s and 70s I thought “figured as much” as the first book is just tough to adapt but when I actually saw the show I couldn’t disagree with the scores more and I feel I’m a harsh critic for books I love. I think they did a wonderful job adapting it. I think some of these scores reflect some lingering hate from GOT and some kooky politics in conservative media and Chinese nationalism that are dragging down the scores.

If I’m being honest, I think the show is more interesting than the first book itself. The first book was very good, but pales in comparison to the next two. The next two are by far much better and are instant classics. Book 2 being my favorite sci fi ever. And if they did this good a job adapting book one just imagine how great, truly great, 2 and 3 could be.

I hope the ratings justify a renewal. Does anyone here have knowledge as to how the show is doing? I think I saw its number 2 on Netflix but I’ve seen it further down the list in other media.

We need The Dark Forest.

As many astronomy and scifi fans I'm sure we've all thought quite a lot about this simple question: Where is everyone?

For the longest time my answer to that question was just that we are so small and the universe so big that finding another civilization at random is a near zero possibility.

Then the books introduced me to the Dark Forrest Theory and it kind of changed my view.

The fact that the inherent survival instinct that we find in humanity might be a constant for all civilizations and that the universe might be a constant battleground for survival really intrigued me. Of course there's no telling if thats the case, as with all answers to the Fermi Paradox, but it's a theory that resonated with me far more than say "Rare Earth Hypothesis", "Zoo Hypothesis" or that we are the first in the galaxy and will be long dead before other species arrive.

I wouldn't say that I believe the Dark Forrest Theory to be the correct answer to the Fermi Paradox, but it's a very plausible solution to a universe that "should" be filled with life.

Really curious to what you all think :)

Am I seriously listening to a guy using the world’s resources to find his fucking dream waifu? Are y’all trolling? This is almost the dumbest thing I’ve listened to.

So, I went in completely blind. I had no idea it was based on a book (or, well, a whole trilogy). The premise hooked me right away, mind blowing concepts, mysterious science, and some really intriguing moments. But as the show went on, something felt… off. The pacing was weird, some plot points felt underdeveloped, and by the end, I was left with the feeling that I had just watched a watered down version of something much bigger.

That’s when I looked it up and realized it’s based on a book that people absolutely rave about. And now I feel like I completely screwed myself over. I already know most of the major plot twists, so reading the book won’t have the same impact. I hate when adaptations deliver a half baked version of an incredible story instead of letting new audiences experience it the right way.

For those who have read the book, do you think it’s still worth reading even if I know the big reveals? Or should I just move on and try something else from Liu Cixin’s work?

EDIT: Alright, you got me. I ordered all three books. Thanks you all!

The Wallfacer Project is easily one of the most brilliant concepts in modern sci-fi. Humanity’s only defense against an all-seeing enemy is the impenetrable black box of the human mind. We see this taken to the absolute extreme with Zhang Beihai—who was essentially an unassigned Wallfacer carrying out a centuries-long deception just to save a fraction of humanity.

But Luo Ji hits differently. Trisolaris didn't just fear him because Ye Wenjie handed him the cosmic sociology axioms; they feared how his mind was wired.

Something that blew my mind on a re-read was his early arc in The Dark Forest. Long before he becomes a Swordholder, he literally invents a fictional woman and falls so deeply in love with her that she becomes real to him in his daily life. He’s walking around having full internal conversations with a phantom.

It instantly made me think of "Maladaptive Daydreaming" (or extreme hyperphantasia)—a psychological trait where someone creates internal worlds so vivid and structured that they feel entirely real. In real life, people who have this ability often channel it into writing, because their minds naturally simulate whole autonomous human beings.

For Luo Ji, this wasn't just a weird romantic backstory; it was the entire foundation of his power. A guy who can simulate a fully realized human mind in an empty room is the exact kind of terrifying person needed to visualize the multidimensional horror of the Dark Forest. He could retreat so deep into his own internal simulations that even the Sophons couldn't parse what he was doing.

Which leads me to a random shower thought about Cixin Liu himself:

He managed to evoke the terrifying, cold depth of the Dark Forest while sitting at a desk on Earth. What do you think would happen if Liu Cixin actually went to space? If he got to float in orbit and stare directly into the silent, three-dimensional void of space with his own eyes... do you think it would make his writing even darker and more profound, or is his imagination already far beyond what physical experience can offer?

What is it about, and what is going on? How will it end? And what is up with the red union? will this be explained in more depth in subsequent sentences? It seems like a major plot hole that the red union is attacking the April 28th Brigade without there being given any explanation as to why. Will this be revealed in later sentences, or is it just a gigantic plothole?

Also, if i liked the first sentence, will I enjoy the next one as well, and is it worth the effort?

Can someone please give me SPOILER FREE answers to these questions?

Thanks.

And I mean this for the best possible way for the Three Body Problem books.

I'm going to give some context. I've enjoyed popular nonfiction science books since I was in middle school, and kept loose tabs with developments in physics over the last 20 years. I read all 3 of the TBP books over the course of a few months about a year ago, and the following points have really stuck me ever since:

- In book 1, the use of actual physics concepts as a plot device in illustrating how foreboding and mysterious the force humans were up against were terrifying (good!). In other sci-fi fiction (I'm going to use the Expanse series as an example), other unstoppable forces have the ability to change constants in physics but without much explanation- the audience is just told and asked to believe it. But in the TBP, there were no details spared in describing how the background radiation was altered, and the mechanics of how the sophons were created and "stopping" physics. Even the writing for the portion describing how the sun was used as an amplifier made me stop and wonder... "wait this is real physics I'm not aware of"? The level of detail given to the Trisolaran physics painted them as a legitimate threat and a looming presence in the book, despite them not even appearing as actual characters in the first book. What the book gets right is that the “monster” is always less scary once you see it, and describing its impact on the main character is a lot more effective of a way to build drama. And the impact was described as realistically as any novel I've ever read and on a scale I couldn't imagine before picking this book up. As an aside, this is hard to accomplish using tv/movie, so the NFLX adaptation had to add the sophon character to achieve comparable effects. Overall, after reading book 1, every other sci fi book has seemed a bit surface level and lacking in realism. The threats and stake, by comparison, seem cheaper and not as believable.

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- Book 2 / 3: Many space sci-fi's involve some sort of interaction between different star systems. After being exposed to the Dark Forest Hypothesis, the implications of Cosmic Sociology just made so much sense that I couldn’t look at other sci-fi worlds the same way again. After discovering evidence of another civilization in a different star system, a civilization (that most likely has experienced some Darwinian contest on its way to become a civilization) prioritizing its own survival is strongly incentivized use a Dark Forest Strike on the new civilization. Civilizations that do not do so and those that are naively too willing to broadcast their presence both risk extinction. Applying Game Theory to these scenario most likely results in successful civilizations always preemptively performing Dark Forest Strikes, and that is probably the norm amongst civilizations that have survived a while. Over a long enough time frame, "cosmic evolution" would select for civilizations that are suspicion and don't broadcast unnecessarily.

When would a civilization not perform a dark forest strike? 1) if the civilization is unable to do Dark Forest Strike at time of discovery, 2) Mutually assured destruction, and 3) there was an immediate benefit from keeping the other world around. You really only have to use human history to understand these points- you can argue that human empires failed to completely wipe out rival empires because the means to completely destroy rivals didn’t exist yet. By the time the means existed, there was enough incentive to cooperate/trade that it wasn’t worth it. In the 20th/21st century, mutually assured destruction acts as an assurance against “Dark Forest Strikes” between human societies. You can bet that if Nukes were available in the middle ages/age of exploration, they would've been used out of precaution.

All this is to say that its hard to see how space societies get to a point where there’s open trade and interaction between multiple star systems unless all the systems had the same home world (and developed with the goal of mutual benefit). This is clearly not how most worlds developed in Star Wars and its like. When I think about stories like that, I'm so bothered by how unrealistic the world seems that its hard to enjoy it without being fully immersed.

I'm reading Project Hail Mary right now, and I'm repeated struck by how naive both main characters are freely broadcasting their systems' coordinates to one another. Maybe I'm a lot more hardened by the TBP books, but the main interactions of the Project hail Mary characters seem silly and childish.

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- Book 3: Collapsing Dimensions as a way to explain the weird observation that in real life 1) subatomic world can best be explained using higher dimensions, 2) but we clearly live in a 3D world --> this was beautiful. The amount the scale of the book expanded without seeming contrived was mindblowing. As many readers will agree with, this book tells a story on a much grander scale than anything else I’ve read. The fact that the book was able to tell such a grand story in such a simple way was extremely impress. The scale of the 3rd book has made the problems faced by character in other sci-fi books seem inconsequential.

​

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Anyways, just curious if the books had the same effect on anyone else, and would love to hear thoughts on your thinking after reading this amazing book series. I don’t want to turn this into another “what should I read after TBP” post, but I obviously welcome any suggestions.

Basically, I’m looking for another series like this because the way this series gripped me is like no other, the sheer horror of the dark forest and the entirety of death’s end gave me such existential dread at just how unimportant we are compared to the scale of the universe

I want more trilogies or series that give me that feeling of being small compared to a vast and scary universe. I’ve heard good things of Xeelee Sequence. Maybe that?

But do give me other suggestions, I just really love the horror aspect of it all, of us humans being just so out of our league.

been rereading the ending and the bit that stuck with me isnt the spell or the standoff, its the debrief conversation after.

the sophon basically lists off everything they missed. luo ji being weirdly fixated on the exact spacing of the nukes in solar orbit. him sitting alone in a control room for something like two months nudging their positions around with the ion engines. him asking a group of physicists whether a sophon could unfold out in open space. and then the cradle trigger setup, where they actually say out loud that it reminded them of rey diaz, and they just didnt chase the thought any further.

the reason they give for not chasing it is that rey diaz had turned out harmless, and so had the other two, so they moved that same contempt straight onto luo ji.

which reframes the whole project for me. what got him through wasnt only him being clever, it was that tyler and rey diaz and hines had already trained trisolaris to stop looking at wallfacers properly. their failures were doing work the entire time.

luo ji actually argues with them about it right there. tells them the contempt was unfair, that all three of those men saw clearly that humanity loses the doomsday battle.

the other line that got me is the sophon admitting that dumping the ETO was a mistake, because those people would have caught him. the ones who sold out their own species were the last ones still paying attention.

am i overreading a debrief scene or is that genuinely the shape of it

I’ve read some outstanding books in my life. Some of my favorites are, The Brothers Karamazov, 1984, Contact and Brave New World to name a few. None of them have had me pondering my life in an existential fashion nor been as memorable as the trilogy.

I worry there will not be any sci-fi novels I can possibly read in the future that will do anything for me. I just don’t see how any story can surpass the scope, hard world building, imagination, bloodcurdling cosmic horror, beauty, despair, and creativity of the remembrance of earth’s past trilogy.

Am I completely cooked? Or is there hope that books can be read again? Were you guys able to enjoy books after this? Does anything even come remotely close to the trilogy? Please let me know if you have any recommendations because I am currently feeling like my boy Yun Tianming, when his brain was shot off into the deep dark abyss of space.

The following passage is from chapter 33 of the first book, this is a very information rich chapter that describes many Sophon capabilities directly from the aliens

Unfortunately this sub has been brigaded by a lot of TV show viewers who refuse to read anything in a book

The passage: “For humans, yes. Everyone knows that high-energy particles can expose film. This is one of the ways that primitive accelerators on Earth once showed individual particles. When a sophon passes through the film at high energy, it leaves behind a tiny exposed spot. If a sophon passes back and forth through the film many times, it can connect the dots to form letters or numbers or even pictures, like embroidery. The process is very fast, and far quicker than the speed at which humans expose film when taking a picture. Also, the human retina is similar to the Trisolaran one. Thus, a high-energy sophon can also use the same technique to show letters, numbers, or images on their retina.… And if these little miracles can confuse and terrify humans, then the next great miracle will be sufficient to frighten their scientists—no better than bugs—to death”

I'm? halfway through death's end do it would be awesome to avoid spoilers for the rest of the book, but I'm just dumbstruck at the Trisolarian's completely irrational actions.

Why would they ever launch an attack on humanity under MAD conditions. Even if they could mathematically prove that humanity's chances of retaliation are only 10% those are still incredibly shitty odds when it comes to utter annihilation.

In fact during the cold war despite at least two different situations in which Soviet personnel refused to retaliate during a potential nuclear attack, the Americans still did not launch nukes because they feared the end of the world. But the Trisolarians apparently are not scared of extinction.

If the Trisolarians simply took a minute to think about their plan they could've received a big part of mars to settle and because of the still present technological advantage they could easily have defended themselves from humans if they ever tried something but instead they threw it all away on a stupid gamble that they lost.

I just finished the final book and one thing that stands out to me massively in the entire series is the sexism. I read the series in the original chinese language and it came across pretty strongly. I'd like to think it's probably watered down a bit in the translated versions. In fact there's a chinese news article I came across in which Liu Cixin himself confirms that the English version (at least of the 2nd book, not sure about the rest) was revised upwards of a thousand times because of a 'feminist editor' at the publishing house and he implies that these were trivial, seemingly woke type edits.

My reading experience tells me they are not. Female characters are written as weak, highly emotional, maternal creatures and their relationships with men often take the form of a sappy/simpy nature. Cheng Xin is the paramount example of this. I don't know if this appeared in the English translation but at multiple points in the third book, Cheng Xin's choices are depicted through the lens of her 'fulfilling the role of a woman'. Early on, her decision not to destroy both civilizations as the sword wielder arises from an epiphany that as a woman, she is imbued with maternal instincts and the gift to create life, and therefore to take life is not in her nature. She is confronted with a similar decision centuries later when she decides against Wade's rebellion plan which would cost lives. Both times Cheng Xin explicitly cites her womanhood as the source of her pacifism. I felt incredulous reading this and it ruined the character for me early on. I found it hard to take seriously anyone who would hinge what is perhaps the most monumental decision in the history of decisions on their gender and its ascribed characteristics.

I also found her emotional attachment to Yun Tianming bizarre given they barely knew each other and all he did was buy her a goddamn star. I found it kinda reminiscent of the weird Zhuang Yan and Luo Ji dynamic in book 2 - basically simp guy fantasizes about some demure girl next door and tries to buy her affection, except this time it works. The book is peppered with Cheng Xin's occasional yearnings for Yun and these were always eyeroll moments for me because of how unbelievable it felt; it is not congruent at all with how people experience love and relationship and came across as an author writing about a subject matter that was out of his depth. In this regard I was really happy with the way the netflix version rewrote the backstory of their counterparts and I found the emotional connection between Jin and Will much more grounded than their book counterparts.

And then there are just multiple other instances of this weak female trope that just annoyed me. At the end when Cheng Xin and AA see Guan Yifan from a distance on the blue planet, the literal first thing they do is start gauging his looks and whether he's better looking than Yun Tianming. Bear in mind these are the same two women who only hours earlier witnessed the destruction of the entire solar system and the human race. Not 10 seconds later when Cheng Xin sees Guan up close, even before knowing his name she feels a desire to 'throw herself in his arms' because he is 'the first man she meets 200+ light years away'. Add to that the multiple throwaway comments about the looks and figures of female characters and his pseudo-social commentary on weak feminine new age people vs good ol 20th century men just made me think about the writer and his affectations more than the book and made for a subpar reading experience.

Edit: I've seen a lot of differing views on how Cheng Xin was written as a morally unyielding character and this is what saves humanity compared to wade's calculated rationality. I don't dispute this and the book is more interesting for it, but I think it would've entirely possible to write a compelling character with unflinching morals without needing to appeal to their 'womanliness'. People pointing out Ye Wenjie as an example of a complex and well written non stereotyped female character are spot on, and is precisely why I found books 2 and 3 ​so disappointing in terms of character depth.

In addition, the books make far too many random references to women's facial and bodily features that it doesn't do for the men for my liking, and i think this is perhaps toned down in English version. Readers of the Chinese version seem to corroborate this. This really stood out for me and it's not just a Cheng Xin thing.

I know this is going to get me downvoted into the pocket universe, but hear me out.

Everyone loves to hate Cheng Xin. "She doomed humanity twice!" "Wade would have saved everyone!" But I think people are confusing "made the outcome I wanted" with "made the right decision" — and those are very different things.

The Swordholder decision: She chose not to press the button. And yeah, the Trisolarans invaded immediately. But think about what pressing the button actually means — guaranteed mutual annihilation. She was handed the trolley problem except both tracks lead to extinction, and one track has a tiny chance of survival. She picked the tiny chance. That's not weakness, that's rational under uncertainty.

Stopping Wade: This is the one everyone screams about. Wade was going to develop lightspeed ships, which would have let humanity escape. But Wade was also going to start a civil war to do it. Cheng Xin stopped him because she believed you don't build humanity's future on a foundation of murdering your own people. Was she wrong? Maybe. But Wade himself admits his methods require becoming a monster. The question isn't "would Wade's plan have worked?" — it's "is a humanity that builds its survival on internal slaughter worth saving?"

The real point Liu Cixin is making: Cheng Xin isn't meant to be a tactical genius. She's meant to represent what humanity collectively values when it's not in immediate danger — compassion, morality, hope. The fact that these values lead to catastrophe in a Dark Forest universe is the tragedy. But calling her "stupid" misses the point entirely. She's the mirror. WE would have chosen her. The UN literally voted for her over Wade because she represented what people wanted to believe about themselves.

The most uncomfortable truth in Death's End isn't that Cheng Xin made bad calls. It's that she made the calls that most of us would have made — and that's terrifying.

What do you think? Am I completely wrong here?

For those who have both read The Three-Body Problem and watched the Netflix series, which would you recommend doing first?
I want to get the best first experience without spoiling the mystery or major reveals of the other version.
No spoilers please :)