r/threebodyproblem

So my friend is an awesome guy, but holy shit. We were chatting about the TBP TV show not long ago and he mentioned that he "didn't like the fact that characters from the book got split into multiple characters in the show" and that the show "focuses too much on romance." I was confused so I tried to explain that the characters were pretty 1:1 from the book to the show, the only difference being that we see characters from all three books at the same time. This made him even more confused than I was so I drew some parallels, mentioning Wade and Cheng Xin. And bro goes; "Who are those guys." And I'm like "ummm Cheng Xin becomes the Sword Holder and Wade is the guy who shoots her? You don't remember that?" and he's like "No, I don't." So I say "You read the trilogy right?" and he's like "Yeah" and I say "tell me the last thing that happened at the end of the trilogy?" and bro goes "Luo Ji stops Trisolaris from invading Earth by revealing the Dark Forest deterrence." I was completely floored. This whole time I thought I was catching up on a series that he is an expert in, only to find that he's been LARPING this entire time W/O EVEN KNOWING IT. So after telling him that there is in fact a third book and that it is extremely good he agrees to read it. But the cherry on top of this whole interaction is after he agrees to read it he says "I mean the ending of Dark Forest was perfect, what else could happen?" Oh buddy, you have no idea...

I've read the book a while ago and don't remember clearly if or how they handle it in the book, but i saw the tv show recently and a question popped in my mind - how do people not realize that the VR headsets couldn't be human?

They are 100% immersive, need no internet connection, they don't need to be charged, updated or anything, and they are very light and thin for something that has a performance that is unmatched even by the best gaming systems on earth. That's tech that just does not exist.

So how do all those smart characters not realize that those headsets are impossible? Anyone with a shred of tech literacy should know that the way they work is tantamount to magic

I still don’t understand how the Trisolarians got to the technological level they are if literally every 60 years they have a mass die off and or hibernate for another 6 decades.

Also i imagine they look something like water bears since they function like them (unless theres a cannon depiction of them i don’t know of)

Let's say for argument's sake that Zhang came to same conclusions as Blue Space but faster and acted just as fast, thereby eliminating Blue Space and ultimately prevailing in the Battle of Darkness. How would he and the crew of Natural Selection have dealt with the subsequent events Blue Space faced when the latter won the BoD in the original story?

https://preview.redd.it/19y2r2g80e2h1.png?width=738&format=png&auto=webp&s=e169b53e5736f8abd1f8e562845a448cd453c408

Two new studies suggest humans possess the genetic machinery that bears and bats use for hibernation. 

I'm talking about the fall of Constantinople. This part of the series was unexpected but really cool. It kept a sort of sci-fi vibe I thought, even though it took place in the ancient past and could also be categorized as fantasy or historical fiction. We go from all this futuristic technology to a scene entirely different, but the technology that is present is still given respect and projects power - as it describes the monstrous bombards battering the walls of Constantinople, walls continually reinforced since the fifth century that had allowed the Byzantine court to survive many powerful enemies, etc etc. I would imagine the parallel is intentional and it was a cool thing for the author to do.

The "magic" is truly mysterious and we aren't given a real explanation until much later in the book. Until then it remains as arcane to us as it must appear to the other characters in the story, and are only given a slight hint when we are told it was the result of a "dimensional fragment" intersecting earth (whatever that means!!!). This only serves to make things more mysterious and spur curiosity. It makes you wonder and provides a new perspective on how the universe could be, as great sci-fi does, but does it within a new context. I really like this approach to magic systems, in the sense that it isn't like most hard magic systems where you are given in-depth explanation of how things work, yet at the same time it doesn't seem as hand-wavy as soft magic systems can be. If anyone knows of fantasy books that give this vibe or follow this style, let me know!

so i just finished deaths end and i cant stop thinking about zhang beihai.

this guy commits two murders (the Staircase Project scientists), lies to his commanding officers for decades, hijacks a starship, and abandons earth to its fate. by every normal ethical standard hes a monster.

but when he appears in the crisis era chapters and then the deterrence era timeline, most readers (including me) immediately root for him. why?

i think its because liu cixin wrote the Natural Selection mutiny as a pure survival logic problem, not a moral one. zhang beihai doesnt hate earth or the people he leaves behind. he just sees the probability distribution more clearly than everyone else and acts on it.

cheng xin does the opposite. she has more compassion than anyone in the trilogy and it costs humanity the solar system. zhang beihai has less compassion and saves the species (probably).

liu cixin isnt saying zhang beihai was right exactly. he just makes the coldness feel earned rather than evil. that gap between "wrong by every normal standard" and "still rooting for him" is the most interesting thing in the whole trilogy for me.

anyone else feel like their sympathy for zhang beihai surprised them on first read?

For me, it was thumbnails of the trailers, that eye and those helmets grabbed attention. And comments saying how deep the experience of reading was.

Luo Ji told the Trisolarans that the ETO would've seen through his efforts, but I can't see it. I think the ETO and their chosen Wallbreakers just lucked out that Tyler and Diaz were so relatively transparent in their plans and methods in a manner that didn't fit the Wallfacer way.

Hines in contrast was far more opaque and while his Wallbreaker did break and expose his plan eventually, she couldn't do it in time before he did most of his damage, and even she was surprised at Hines being imprinted.

While Zhang Beyai managed to fly under the radar, his assassination plot eventually drew the Trisolaran's attention and in turn the ETO's. Even then they still couldn't see through his true nature and even they admitted that they were amateurs compared to him.

Even if the ETO's efforts weren't hampered by the Trisolarans, I still don't see them seeing through Luo Ji's efforts. They couldn't see through the significance of his spell and the Trisolaran's assassination orders. He's just too easy to dismiss as a sham, especially since the earlier part of his Wallfacer run was spent intentionally goofing off.

Spoiler - If the foil moves at light speed, how was Cheng xin able to view a bunker world being flattened over At least a minute. At the size of the bunker world the foil would have hit it and been far beyond it instantaneously.

Also I really wiah he had described the foil as it hit the miniature black hole in the abandoned bunker.

I was completely prepared for the trisolaris to reach and attack the earth (since I watched the Netflix season 1 before reading the book).

below are some more expectations I had that were not fulfilled:

1. I was expecting to find out how the trisolarans looked. But they are never described.

2. Netflix series dramatised Ye Wenjie too much. I thought she'd be the centerpiece of the whole story. Although, she did play an important role by defining the "axioms".

3. I DEFINITELY DID NOT expect that the human civilization would be destroyed. Let alone the whole solar system that was pancaked. I loved it but it was too drastic.

4. I was expecting the "dark forest strike" to be an actual attack. So much prep went into defence. I thought we'd witness a battle.

5. Over-all, i think that this series does defy many expectations, but what happens is still satisfying and "wildly imaginative". I can't even begin to imagine how I'd go on to write such a story.

1. I have a lot of mixed feelings and I'm still trying to process it.

2. Immediately after the read, i felt it was a bit depressing. First the solar system ends, and the MOST depressing - Cheng Xin isn't able to spend her life with Yun.

3. Over-all I loved it, because the imagination is insane. But it also caused a lot of heart ache.

4. Time dilation is even scarier than Interstellar here.

I'll start off by saying that I do intend to dig into the books in the near future, so "the books do it better" is a perfectly acceptable answer in this case.

I'm on my 2nd viewing of the Netflix show, and suddenly a bunch of the San-Ti's actions and timelines aren't making sense.

Our introduction to the San-Ti is the lone "pacifist" who warns Ye Wenjie that if she responds to the message, the rest of the San-Ti will receive it and conquer Earth. Flash forward 50 years, and now the San-Ti are on the way, but they think that they are going to be welcomed and accepted on Earth? That is, until they learn the fundamental concept of "untruth" from a fairy tale, and then decide that humans are too untrustworthy to live alongside. Except that they had already developed and deployed the sophons years before this, and had spent at least a couple of months by this time screwing with our scientific development. I can get sending them ahead of time to facilitate communication, but why screw up the particle accelerators and make a bunch of scientists off themselves for months, before they even knew we are capable of hiding our true thoughts or intentions?

I dunno, it feels like the San-Ti are either perfectly capable of lying themselves and just used the fairy tales as an excuse to finally drop the friendly neighbor act, or the show's timeline is kind of cherry picking events from the books in a haphazard way.

The context is the crew of natural selection calculating the amount of fuel they need to make it to the target star system. Right before it says “ all of the fuel on starship earth is basically enough for two spacecraft “ and then it says, “but if we’re careful, it’s enough for just one.” just confused on what this means

i've seen a lot of frustration about wang miao just vanishing after book 1. he's the main character, and then by the dark forest he's basically a footnote.

i used to agree. then i realized: he was never supposed to be the protagonist. he was a guide. his function was to get you into the story, to witness the revelations you needed to see. the three-body game reveals itself, ye wenjie's truth comes out, the countdown stops, and then wang miao has done his job. there's nothing left for him to do.

the thing that stuck with me was imagining him just going back to his lab after all of it. no heroic arc, no closure. just a scientist who saw too much and lived out the rest of his life knowing humanity was ending in 450 years.

the real protagonist was never a person. it was civilization itself. Wang Miao in Three-Body Problem breaks down exactly why this works, and why the same thing happens to every character in the trilogy eventually.

anyone else think this is intentional, or do you think liu cixin just lost interest?