From: Simon Laub Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2019 20:33:06 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.science,comp.ai.philosophy,comp.society.futures Subject: 450 years before the Invasion - Putting things in perspective (Cixin Liu's Three-Body Problem) Have just spotted (a little late) a New York Times article "Obama’s Secret to Surviving the White House Years: Books" (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/books/obamas-secret-to-surviving-the-white-house-years-books.html). - That tell us that the former president reads presidential biographies to provide context, countering the tendency to think "that whatever’s going on right now is uniquely disastrous or amazing or difficult". Even more interestingly, the article tell us that the former president has read the Hugo Award-winning apocalyptic sci-fi epic "The Three-Body Problem", by the Chinese writer Cixin Liu. Interestingly! Clearly, a good book for putting things in perspective... According to Obama: "The scope of it was immense. So, that was fun to read. Partly because my day-to-day problems with Congress seem fairly petty, in comparison. — Not something to worry about. Aliens are about to invade". Guided by Obamas praise, I also picked up the series, and it is indeed an interesting series of books (The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest and Death's End). --- Starting in the era of the "Cultural Revolution" (Launched by Mao Zedong, then Chairman of the Communist Party of China, the revolution hoped to get rid of all capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society, and replace it all with Maoism), the book takes us to the exercise grounds of Tsinghua University, where a mass "struggle session", attended by thousands, has been going on for nearly two hours. A public rally intended to humiliate and break down the enemies of the revolution, through verbal and physical abuse, until they confess to their crimes before the crowd. Interesting, but sort of difficult to see how that leads to an alien invasion, as described in Obamas "review"... But, as you read on, it becomes clear that actually there is a >>red thread<< here... --> The cultural revolution was, of course, a tumultuous era. An era where scientitic accomplishments should be given "proper names", like "resistance law", "quantum constant" etc. Not names like "Ohms law" or "Plancks constant" etc. after the bourgeois physicists, "who stole the fruits of the working masses and put their names on them". And, when the revolution spiralled out of control, in the period after Mao's announcement that bourgeois elements had infiltrated the government and society at large, millions of people were persecuted, and suffered a wide range of abuses, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, hard labor, execution. Which obviously lead to resentment, and plans for revenge... Later, in the book, we meet Ye Wenjie, an astrophysics alumna from Tsinghua University, who has witnessed her father (guilty of being an intellectual) being beaten to death by Red Guards on the exercise grounds of Tsinghua University. She has now been branded a bourgeois traitor, and is forced to join a labor brigade in inner Mongolia... Not good. Long after these horrible events, Ye finds herself working at a radio facility, where she discovers a technique to amplify outgoing radio waves by bouncing them off the sun. Thereby being able to send an interstellar message. The plot thickens as she receives a message back from a concerned alien pacifist from the planet Trisolaris, that tell her not to respond to alien messages... Great! But, well, logically, as she has come to despise humankind, she invites the aliens to come and "reform" humanity. Turns out that the alien planet Trisolaris has three suns. Where chaotic eras occur when Trisolaris is pulled by more than one sun - I.e. the books "Three-Body Problem". So, no wonder that the Trisolarians are eager to find a new home planet... A Trisolaran invasion force departs, traveling at 1/100-th of lightspeed. So, it will take them 450 years to arrive... Eventually, the "happy message" of the coming invasion is spread to other disgruntled members of Earth's society, who plan to work as a fifth column for the Trisolarians, preparing the destruction of humanity. Yet again, the plot thickens, as Cixin Liu takes us to the present day, where particle physicists kill themselves... ? and where the world's governments communicate closely with each other, realizing that they have to work together in preparation for the coming invasion (now common knowledge apparently). Rather cleverly, Cixin Liu lets the aliens create eleven-dimensional supercomputers, which when viewed in three dimensions, looks like mere, ordinary protons. These guys are then sent to Earth to disrupt all of Earth's particle accelerators. As the aliens reason that physics is a cornerstorne of science, and shutting down particle accelerators will stop humanitys technological advancement in physics for the next 400 years, or so - making it much easier to conquer Earth. Indeed, there we go - Cixin Liu's reason for why fundamental physics hasn't progressed that much in recent years... :) Interestingly, just as Trisolaran society becomes a religion for some on Earth, Earths society has the same effect on some members of the Trisolaran society - so all sides conclude that the flow of cultural information must be strictly controlled. A nice twist, as citizens of Earth prepare for the "Doomsday Battle" with the invaders (in "Dark Forest"). Always rather logical, Cixin Liu then tell us that human salvation ultimately comes down to human ingenuity. And with 450 years to the "Doomsday Battle", it makes sense to use a century to "elevate" human brains, before moving on to more practical physical war-preparations... Still, if everything else fails humans can always threaten to blow-up our blue home, Earth, and deny the Trisolarians the possibility of settling here, instead of on their own wretched planetary system. Or, perhaps, we could block sunlight from our Sun periodically, and use such a technique to send messages throughout the Galaxy, about what is going on here. Inviting others to join the battle? Cixin Liu's books are indeed full of good ideas! Sending messages into the Galaxy, are, in Cixin Liu's view, not without risks though, as he sees the galaxy as a dark forest, where civilizations are hunters, stalking through the trees like ghosts. If you meet someone else - fire and eliminate. Indeed, no wonder that there is a Fermi paradox. - Noone wants to tell others about their existence... except naive humans, perhaps. In the end (in Deaths Ends), it seems that Earth and the Trisolarians can co-exist peacefully, as equals without the terrible threat of MAD (mutually assured destruction), but well, history/time never ends, time passes, and new things happens... Eventually, even more advanced civilizations enter the "game", and change the laws of physics in our Universe. Thereby threatening the existence of the Universe itself... Of course. And so it goes, into "pocket" Universes, and beyond. - - - Highly entertaining - and no wonder that Obama found the books a good counter measure to the tendency to think "that whatever’s going on right now is uniquely disastrous or amazing or difficult". Awesome! For more see "The Three-Body Problem" - series by Cixin Liu. Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy: The Three-Body Problem (2014) The Dark Forest (2015) Death's End (2016) April 18th 2019 -Simon www.simonlaub.net