u/idlsicaraiaige

In the canon of the Three-Body Problem book series (excluding the fanfiction and including the prequel), the fact that no mass can be transported faster than the speed of light is one of the things necessary for the dark forest theory to work in-universe, correct? Chains of suspicion wouldn't exist without the lightspeed limit... or would they? (queue vsause music lol) Would the vast differences between the cultures of distant civilizations be effective in creating long-enough chains of suspicion in order to create the dark forest state? Would different environments in different parts of the cosmos create different-enough cultures? Would the dark forest state realistically exist in a world like the Xeelee Sequence, where the different forms of life are so vastly different from each other (e.g. civilizations of dark matter, civilizations inside stars, civilizations made of logic trees or something, etc.)? Would the exponential growth of civilization simply inherently target other civilizations as enemies?

Obviously within canon the lightspeed limit is an extremely important factor for multiple different mechanisms and plot points. E.g. the cosmic horror of the universe being a paraplegic, and that the low value of the speed limit being a direct effect of many wars in the past. But I'm asking for the sake of exploration into the dark forest theory, as well as potentially to help any future worldbuilding projects that want to deal with dark forest-adjacent ideas in a cosmos without the speed limit.

Basically what I'd like to hear different thoughts on is this: If every mechanism in 3bp canon remains the same with exception that technology can enable FTL travel, would the dark forest state still exist?

Deep thinking and long and detailed discussions are welcome.

(This exact question hasn't been posed and/or discussed about before on this sub, right?)

A couple disclaimers to start:

1. Project Hail Mary, both the movie and the book, while being absolutely excellent in their own right, are not an appropriate movie or an appropriate book to treat your post-Three-Body Problem withdrawal symptoms. It's a very different story that shares only a few and only superficial similarities, with completely different themes and vibes. If you go into PHM searching for something similar to 3bp, you will be very disappointed. But if you don't, you will have the time of your life.
2. I'm personally generally speaking not a big fan of H. Styles's music.

That said, the lyrics of "Sign of the Times" has a lot of relevance to Death's End:

>!The most relevant lines are "We can meet again somewhere / Somewhere far away from here" - this is almost verbatim what Yun Tianming says to Cheng Xin at the very end of their sophon conversation. Yun wants to communicate to Cheng that 1) "he would never be able to return to the Solar System", and that 2) "he had very little faith that the Earth would survive" (Part III, "Broadcast Era, Year 7 Yun Tianming's Fairy Tales").!<

>!"We never learn, we've been here before / Why are we always stuck and running from / The bullets" - humanity in Death's End repeatedly refuse escapism (the best hope for humanity's survival). They were able to be saved (more or less) from their own self-destructive choices several times, but Earth civilization (as represented by Cheng Xin) makes the wrong choices one too many times, resulting in their complete destruction with the exception of the two (Cheng and Ai).!<

>!The rest of the lyrics are relevant also just in general, but these couple things stood out to me.!<

Idrk if it'd be a good idea to put this song in an adaptation of the books (exacerbated by just how very much it's been tied to PHM by public perception), but maybe Netflix will be shallow enough to do it.