Opening : China 1967. The Read Union had been attacking the headquarters of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade for two days. Their red flags fluttered restlessly around the brigade building like flames yearning for firewood.
Closing : Over the western horizon, the sun that was slowly sinking into the sea of clouds seemed to melt. The ruddy sun dissolved into the clouds and spread over the sky, illuminating a large patch in magnificent, bloody red. “My sunset,” Ye whispered. “And sunset for humanity.”
Review : First of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. This is a gripping tale of alien invasion and how humans confront extraterrestrial civilisation. It’s a wee bit slow and boring at the beginning like depicting events during the Cultural Revolution, almost like historical fiction which I’m not a fan of, but as you progress, it gets much more interesting and exciting.
This is not a typical hard sci-fi only jam-packed with esoteric scientific concepts and mind-bending imaginations. It has some philosophical elements like anthropocentrism which I didn’t expect. Overall, I enjoyed it immensely. Strongly recommended.
Highlights / Quotes
The more books you read, the more confused you become.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 473
We’ve discovered a great principle of nature: The laws of physics are invariant across space and time. All the physical laws of human history, from Archimedes’ principle to string theory, and all the scientific discoveries and intellectual fruits of our spieces are the by-products of this great law.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 964
The V-suit was a very popular piece of equipment among gamers, made up of a panoramic viewing helmet and a haptic feedback suit. The suit allowed the player to experience the sensations of the game: being struck by a fist, being stabbed by a knife, being burned by flames, and so so. It was also capable of fenerating feelings of extreme heat and cold, even simuating the sensation of being exposed in a snowstorm.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 1143
In this world, can everyone be dehydrated and rehydrated?
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 1428
“Then how long does a Chaotic Era last?”
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 1451
“I already told you. Other than Stable Eras, all other times belong to Chaotic Eras. Each of them takes up the time not occupied by the other.”
“So, this is a wold in which there are no patterns?”
“Yes. Civilisation can only develop in the mild climate of Stable Eras. Most of the time, humankind must collectively dehydrate and be stored. When a long Stable Era arrives, they collectively revive through rehydration. Then they proceed to build and produce.”
These buildings were called dehydratories, warehouses where the dehyrdrated bodies could be stored.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 1530
The soldiers opened he heavy stone doors of the dehydratory and carried out rolls of dusty skins. Each soldier walked to the lakeshore, and tossed them into the water. As soon as the skins touched the water, they began to unfurl and stretch out. Soon, the lake was covered by a layer of man-shaped floating skins, each rapidly absorbing the water and expanding. Gradually, all the man-shaped skin cutours became fleshy bodies that gradually began to display signs of life. One by one, they struggled up out of the waist-deep water and stood up. Looking around at the sunny world with wide-open eyes.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 1530
The reason why the sun’s motion seems patternless is because our world has three suns. Under the influence of their mutually perturbing gravitational attraction, their movements are unpredictable – the three-body problem. When our planet revolves around one of the suns in a stable orbit, that’s a Stable Era. When one of more of the other suns move within a certain distance, their grativational pull will snatch the planet away from the sun it’s orbiting, causing it to wander unstably through the gravitational fields of the three sunds. That’s a Chaotic Era. After an uncertain amount of time, our planet is once again pulled into a temporary scale of the universe. The players are the three suns, and our planet is the football.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 2597
Humans could use the sun as a superantenna, and, through it, broadcast ardio waves to the universe. The radio waves would be sent with the power of the sun hundreds of millions of times greater than the total usable transmission power of Earth.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 3747
The sun was an amplifier for radio waves. […] However, there was a question: The sun must be receiving electromagnetic radiation from space every second, including radio waves emitted by the Earth. Why were only some of the waves amplified?
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 3747
The answer was simple: In addition to the selectivity of the energy mirrors for frequencies they would reflect, the main reason was the shielding effect of the solar convection zone. The endlessly boiling convection zone situated outside the raditation zone was the outermost liquid layer of the sun. The radio waves coming from space must first penetrate the convection zone to reach the energy mirrors in the radiation zone, where they would be amplified and reflected back out.
This meant that in order to reach the energy mirrors, the waves would have to be more powerful than a threshld value. The vast majority of Earth-based radio sources could not cross this threshold, but the Joviam radio outburst did – and Red Coast’s maximum transmission power also exceeded the threshold.
“Why is it so afraid of nanomaterial?”
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 3960
“Because it can allow humans to escape gravity and engage in space construction at a much larger scale.”
“The space elevator?” Wang suddenly understood.
“Yes. If ultrastrong nanomaterials could be mass produced, then that would lay the technical foundation for building a space elevator from the group up to a geostationary point in space.
Six years ago, in the distant Trisolaran stella system, Trisolaris accelerated two hydrogen nuclei to near the speed of light and shot them toward the solar system. These two hydrogen nuclei, or protons, arrived at the solar system two years ago, then reached the Earth.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 4649
They’re a lock. They are sealing off the progress of human science. Because of the existence of these two protons, humanity will not be able to make any important scientific developments during the four and a half centuries until the arrival of the Trisolaran Fleet. Evans once said that the day of arrival of the two protons was also the day that human science died.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 4657
The Trisolarans were able to shoot two protons at the Earth from four light-years away and they both reached the target! That accuracy is incredible! There are numerous obstacles between there and here: interstellar dust, for example. And both the solar system and the Earth are moving. It would require more precision than shooting a mosquito here from Pluto. The shooter is beyond imagination.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 4667
The sponge or active charcoal inside a filter is three-dimensional. Their adsorbent surfaces, however, are two-dimensional. Thus you can see how a tiny high-dimensional structure can contain a huge low-dimensional structure. But at the macroscopic level, this is about the limit of the ability for high-dimensional space to contain low-dimensional space
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 4684
Because God was stingy, during the big bang. He only provided the macroscopic world with three spatial dimensions, pls the dimension of time. But this doesn’t mean that higher dimensions don’t exist. Up to seven additional dimensions are locked within the micro scale, or, more precisely, within the quantum realm. And added to the four dimensions at the macro scale, fundamental particles exist within an eleven-dimensional space-time.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 4686
To effectively contain a civilisation’s development and disarm it across such as long span of time, there is only one way: kill its science.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 5156
“How complicated can the internal structure of a subatomic particle be?”
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 5246
“It depends on the number of dimensions of your observation perspective. From a one-dimensional perspective, it’s only a point – that’s how ordinary people think of the particles. From a two- or three-dimensional perspective, the particle begins to show internal structure. From a four-dimensional perspective, a fundamental particle is an immense world.”
A particle seen from a seven-dimensional perspective has a complexity comparable to our Trisolaran stellar system in three dimensions. From an eight-dimensional perspective, a particle is a vast presence like the Milky Way. When the perspective has been raised to nine-dimensions, a fundamental particle’s internal structure and complexity are equal to the whole universe. As for even higher dimensions, our physicists haven’t been able to explore them, so we cannot yet imagine the degree of complexity.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 5252
Quantum entanglement can work at a distance. Even if four sophons were placed at opposite ends of the universe, they could still sense each other instantanesouly, and the quantum formatio. between them would still exist. Keeping Sophon Three and Sophon Four here will enable them to receive the infrmation sent back by Sophon One and Sophone Two instantanesouly.This gives us a way to monitor the Earth in real time. Also, the sophon formation allows Trisolaris to communicte in real time with the alienated forces within Earth civilisation.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Loc 5510
◃ Back