See here for
essential background: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-3-body-problem-book.html.
Cixin Liu's sequel to 3 Body Problem was published in 2008 and has a different English translator, Joel Martinsen. The Dark Forest or 黑暗森林 carries on from where the last book left off and its beginning is adapted in the current Netflix TV series. The Wallfacer project is launched as an attempt to beat the sophons the only way anybody knows how. The main character is a rather immature and irresponsible young scientist called Luo Ji yet he is chosen for the project because the Trisolarans have mentioned him personally. Unfortunately he simply exploits his lavish position, at one point spending a fortune on an antique barrel of beverage brought up from an ancient shipwreck. The centuries old booze is undrinkable, as you would expect after all that time, but he doesn't care and simply pours it away. The wallfacers are confronted by ETO agents called "Wallbreakers", but Luo Ji tries to escape them and join his family in the future by going into suspended animation, called "hibernation", like in Arthur C Clarke's works, to be revived centuries later, closer to the time of the Trisolarans' arrival. This is a common plot device of science fiction in order to keep using the same characters over a long period of time. In the future there is a new faction called "escapists" who want to get off the earth in spaceships until the Trisolarans have come and gone. There are also characters seeking transhumanism. My hopes were high when I picked up this book, because the first one was so good; but in this sequel the story loses almost all its energy. It turns into a rather cheap kind of Star Trek. I found myself zoning out as I was reading. I forgot who each the characters were and had to keep flicking back to remember. In fact, I've decided not to read the last novel of the trilogy, Death's End. I might catch any TV adaptations instead.
Cixin Liu's sequel to 3 Body Problem was published in 2008 and has a different English translator, Joel Martinsen. The Dark Forest or 黑暗森林 carries on from where the last book left off and its beginning is adapted in the current Netflix TV series. The Wallfacer project is launched as an attempt to beat the sophons the only way anybody knows how. The main character is a rather immature and irresponsible young scientist called Luo Ji yet he is chosen for the project because the Trisolarans have mentioned him personally. Unfortunately he simply exploits his lavish position, at one point spending a fortune on an antique barrel of beverage brought up from an ancient shipwreck. The centuries old booze is undrinkable, as you would expect after all that time, but he doesn't care and simply pours it away. The wallfacers are confronted by ETO agents called "Wallbreakers", but Luo Ji tries to escape them and join his family in the future by going into suspended animation, called "hibernation", like in Arthur C Clarke's works, to be revived centuries later, closer to the time of the Trisolarans' arrival. This is a common plot device of science fiction in order to keep using the same characters over a long period of time. In the future there is a new faction called "escapists" who want to get off the earth in spaceships until the Trisolarans have come and gone. There are also characters seeking transhumanism. My hopes were high when I picked up this book, because the first one was so good; but in this sequel the story loses almost all its energy. It turns into a rather cheap kind of Star Trek. I found myself zoning out as I was reading. I forgot who each the characters were and had to keep flicking back to remember. In fact, I've decided not to read the last novel of the trilogy, Death's End. I might catch any TV adaptations instead.
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