When i was reading the first part of 3 body problem, i absolutely got so hooked, it started affecting other areas of my life. I usually am good with managing my time, but the book messed up my routine, because of how good it was. I hadn't felt that about a book in years.
I haven't picked up the 2nd book in the trilogy yet because I had a hunch it would be just as addictive & i won't workout or clean my home well until that's over.

pocket universes: first draft

No one touch it, you guys! For real. Comments call it a “Photonic Column” but I know a death line when I see one…

Spoilers for both in case you haven't watched the movie yet, but basically, the scene where Nathan Fielder goes to see Elizabeth Holmes in Prison without any recording equipment reminded me so much of Cheng Xin going to have a conversation with Yun Tianming for the last time, also without any way to write down or record the conversation.

Just the fact that he has to memorize everything about the interaction the same way Cheng Xin does gave me the same tension I felt when I read the book. I also felt in both scenes that the situation could "explode" literally or metaphorically if either Cheng Xin or Nathan Field said the wrong thing, which was another similarity I noticed.

The same thoughts came to my mind: Will he/she remember correctly? What if Trisolaris/her husband cut the conversation short? It was very fun, but I kinda wish I wasn't thinking about Death's End as much as I did during that scene. I just couldn't get it out of my head lol.

Did anyone else feel this way? Or has my brain been completely fried by this amazing book series?

Oh, and remember to vote Elizabeth Holmes for Wallfacer.

I just checked
The teaser for S1 was June 2023
The official trailer was exactly 10 weeks from releases (it dropped 10 Jan, season 1
is out on netflix 21 March)

We actually have 9 WEEKS left til 2027.
So where is it? if not postponed to next year

basically title *any or all of the books (typo)

rules:

1. no creepy behaviour
2. be kind
3. have fun
4. no making any extraterrestrial contact

UK time here

open to suggestions

First of all- apologies if this post is not allowed but truly I feel it’s relevant to this sub because I couldn’t stop thinking about Three Body the entire time I watched this movie. The way people lied to the audience in this made me think the Trisolarans would probably turn the fleet around the moment they learned about Holmes.

For those who don’t know, Elizabeth Holmes was the CEO of Theranos (a medical tech company in Silicon Valley) who was found guilty of defrauding investors and sentenced to prison for 11 years after taking billions in investor’s money while knowing the technology they touted did not work. She lied about their capabilities and had an elaborate system in place to hide that fact from the public while raising a LOT of money. It was one of the biggest frauds in Silicon Valley history and cost a lot of people their money, their jobs, and their trust in women in tech.

This movie follows Holmes and her family in the weeks before she reports to prison. During the film, she speaks to the director and lies to his face repeatedly about everything- but the thing is I can’t even say that with certainty. The movie is three hours long and I am still not convinced if she is a masterclass manipulator or if she truly believes she did nothing wrong. It’s fascinating to have someone look you right in the face and say something you know isn’t true but not be able to tell if THEY know it’s not true or if they are just miscommunicating what they actually believe. Sometimes they use a single word in a sentence that would change the entire meaning of what they said- and then argue over that one word and what they actually meant by it.

I think if she were part of the Three Body story, she would be put in charge of the earth defense forces. She would be the most excellent wall facer since nobody, human or non-human, would have any clue what she was doing right in front of everyone. While watching the movie I kept thinking, “Man, I bet a considerable amount of the Trisolaran civilization would be dedicated to trying to work out what she was thinking if they were watching.”

Anyway- I felt like posting this here to discuss how hard it is, even for humans, to get to the truth behind someone who could be considered one of the best liars of our time.

Please no spoilers about the third book

In the beginning of the Dark Forest we learn about Trisolarians attempting to understand (and learn) the concept of deception. They do acknowledge its value, and they do exhibit ability to withhold information. From the beginning of the book I thought this is going to be the key to resolution of the whole book, and it ended up not being addressed at all.

You see, Trisolarian society is built on perfect communication and open information sharing, but they still individual beings, they aren't a hive mind. Ability to deceive or even withhold information would be extremely powerful tool for the individual Trisolarians for gaining power and political advancement within Trisolarian society. I thought that Deception will be a poison pill that defeats Trisolarians - an unintentional, self-inflicted injury that breaks their society apart. We know they do have internal politics, ambition, punishment, so plenty of reasons to deceive. And the best part is that Trisolarians don't even have mechanisms to prevent or even detect deception since they are not familiar with the whole concept.

Even if Trisolarians aren't capable of deceiving "face to face" or "biologically", their society is now split between thousand ships and they have to rely on "digital" communication. The book explores the idea of deception used by humans being a threat to Trisolarians, but that's in my opinion the lesser concern.

While Trisolarian society certainly could adapt to the concept of deception over time, I don't think it's likely at this point. It's in very vulnerable position - split among numerous ships, with no home to return to, facing the doom of their species if they fail to defeat humans and capture the Solar System.

And the worst thing is, they don't even need to use deception against each other, even the concept of distrust might be enough to halt their social interaction to grind.

Unfortunately, the ability of Trisolarians to understand and use deception was never mentioned again, and the danger it poses wasn't even acknowledged.

People do say the novels are a bit bad ob characters and the tencent censoring the foreigners names.

But the books i found pretty diverse (the second and third) with compelling foreign characters like Wade, Tyler, Keiko, The Mind doctor, Van Raijin, Say, The Venezuelan dictator etc.

Tho what did u thought of them, were they written worse or as good as Chinese characters.

Been going to my book club for almost 1.5 years now. I got to choose our summer read and i settled on 3 body, just because id heard so much about it. Read it and loved it, it blew my mind. But the other book club members hated it big time, half didn't even turn up to the meeting, and one of the members- a scientist of sorts - said there "wasn't enough to talk about regarding aliens". Anyway, I think I want to find a new book club...

Hidden reference to Cixin Liu's Death's End encountered while playing Oneshot. Notice that grass? It's actually a genetically-engineered organism that in themeeting between Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming the book called "Wheat"

genuine question looking for a simple answer.

I just finished TBP for the first time and am impatiently waiting for the second book. I have it on hold at the library and won't be available for a little bit so I picked up Ball Lightning.

I was enthralled by the first few chapters, then less so by the next few. I love the concept and I'm curious how it will all end, but it's gotten so painfully tedious to read and I'm only 1/3rd of the way through.

I'm currently about 100,000 pages into this siberian storyline and it's driving me insane.

So I really just want to know if the payoff is worth the wait or if there's something else I should read in the interim.

thanks <3

Is the young girl who follows the player in the 3 Body VR game meant to represent Vera Ye as a child?

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for your help with my previous questions. I am currently running The Dark Forest as a roleplaying scenario, and the players are currently acting as the wallfacers before any of the timeskips. One of my wallfacers asked if they could build particle accelerators that use antiproton beams for fundamental research. I couldn’t remember this being covered in the book, but since protons explode when coming in contact with antiprotons, could this work? Could we overcome the sophon block?

Its mid October.

They said ETA by end of 2026.

Are sophons slowing down the production?

I mean fine, you still have two and a half months left. But what about the teasers?

When Three-Body was first published as a book in China, the Cultural Revolution chapters weren't at the start. From what I've read, they were moved to the middle so the book wouldn't draw the censors' attention. Ken Liu's English translation put them back at the beginning, with Liu Cixin's support, since that's where he wanted them.

I read it in English, so for me the novel opens with a struggle session, and everything that comes later about humanity and the Trisolarans sits on top of that scene. It's hard to imagine the book without that foundation. Yet the first Chinese readers met Wang Miao and the countdown first and got that history only halfway through.

I recently learned that the Spanish edition was translated directly from Chinese, not from the English, which made me wonder how many versions of this book are out there with different openings.

For anyone who has read the Chinese original, or both orders, did it change how you understood Ye Wenjie? And for those who read it in English, do you think the book would hold up if it opened with the mystery instead of the history?

I just want to have the same feeling that I had while reading the “Three Body Problem” series. I didn’t even care much for Sci-fi before I read these books. After that, I’ve been hooked on Sci-fi but none of the books I read have evoked that same feeling.

Please give me book suggestions for something that will make me feel the same way.

Edit: I want to talk a bit more about the aspects of 3BP that I enjoyed the most. It was the socio-political elements of the book - how would the world most “realistically” react to a world-ending threat? What institutions or organizations will need to be set up? How would different people across countries, cultures and generations respond? What would be the norm, who would be the outliers? The transformation of an outlier, over years turning into the norm. Those aspects were simply phenomenally put forward in the book. And that’s kind of what I’m looking for.

I'm relistening to the series (as well as reading the graphic novels for the first book for the first time).

Any cool things to look out for? Foreshadowing, Easter eggs, etc. Or anything else?

Folks, my book is missing pages 545-560. Would anyone mind briefly summarizing these pages for me pretty please? 🙏

Edit - I’m good, yungwulfie came through for me.

Hi, I had a thought today about how Trisolarans could look. I based it mainly off of two facts mentioned in the books. They can dehydrate (and rehydrate) themselves and they “broadcast” their thoughts.

Dehydration would be much easier for small organisms.

It is possible that they share their thoughts in a similar way to ants.

So what I’m essentially saying is that I think it is very possible that they are only a few mm or cm big.

What are your thoughts?