The Dark Forest (The Three-Body Problem Series, 2) Paperback – August 16, 2016

Great book. A slow middle is made up by a memorable ending.Continues the story proposed in "The Three Body Problem". Luo Ji is an unlikely candidate to be a Wallfacer (Earth's response to the Trisolaran invasion). After an interesting setup, we get stuck with... his imaginary girlfriend, meeting her, his life with her... Who needs to fight an alien invasion 400 years later when you have such a great life? Of course, everything changes, and Luo Ji is forced to get down to work.The human interaction with the "droplet" is one of the most memorable interactions with the alien technology in a page-turning yet horrendous section. This is followed by the story of Zhang Beihai which was running in parallel and is ultimately very insightful.Then we get back to Luo Ji who makes up the last few chapters. Without revealing anything more, Luo Ji stands out as one of the best anti-heroes I have come across. You too will love to hate him.The "Dark Forest" and humanity's response to it is the goal of the book. Excellent writing, wonderful characters, mind-bending science, and more. The writer has built on the world of "The Three Body Problem" and extended it significantly.If you think the story has ended at the end of this book, wait until you read the 3rd book "Death's End"!!

It's hard to know where to begin talking about The Three-Body Problem trilogy (officially known as the Remembrance of Earth's Past series), a truly staggering piece of science-fiction written by Chinese author Cixin Liu and translated to English by Ken Liu and Joel Martinsen (Liu did books 1 and 3, while Martinsen did 2). A trilogy that spans literally thousands of years, deals with quantum physics, game theory, sociology, religion, space exploration, space colonization, and more, all driven by the nature of first contact with alien intelligence - there's a lot going on in this series, and that's before you start realizing just how much Cixin (reminder: Chinese names are traditionally written with the family name first and the given name second) truly takes on the advanced science of his ideas. And yet, when you finish it, you realize that you've read something truly incredible - a piece of hard science-fiction whose ambition, scope, richness, and ideas are impossible not to find yourself thinking about for days afterward.Once you read The Dark Forest, the series' second volume, Cixin's ambition for this saga starts to come into focus. The question of first contact is settled, and the nature of the alien's approach is known: this is to be a takeover of our planet. But how can we deal with a race so much more advanced than our own, constant surveillance by extra-dimensional forces, and fractured elements of humanity working against us?If The Three-Body Problem was a first contact novel done as hard science-fiction, The Dark Forest is an alien invasion novel, albeit one in which the actual invasion is still many, many years away. It's the first time Cixin starts using hibernation to leap through decades and even centuries, spanning huge chunks of time as humanity changes and evolves in the face of an arrival which will change everything. As humanity struggles to find ways to either defend itself or show that it means no harm, the race has to deal with its own fears of inevitable defeat or a desire to retreat from the only planet we've ever known.It's not as if The Three-Body Problem wasn't already ambitious, but The Dark Forest is on a whole other level, dealing with interplanetary fleets, lightspeed travel, quantum computing, and more, watching as they evolve over huge swaths of time. But more than that, the novel is a deeply philosophical one, discussing the nature of life in the universe, questions about human nature and how we react in the face of threats, how we work together (or not), and game theory in how we try to handle uncertain intentions in allies and foes alike. Indeed, the central metaphor that gives the book its title (which doesn't arrive until near the novel's end) is a stunning one that helps you understand that what Cixin is writing about isn't just this particular alien invasion, but about the nature of all life in the universe and how we attempt to define ourselves in the face of reality.That Cixin does this while, again, mixing in such a compelling story (focusing especially on the "Wallfacers", a small group of people tasked with covertly planning humanity's resistance against the invasion) is nothing short of remarkable. The Dark Forest builds beautifully off of the questions and ideas raised in The Three-Body Problem, but turns them into something else entirely, changing the questions from "how do we initially react" to "how would we redefine ourselves in the face of such news". Far from suffering from any sort of "middle book syndrome," The Dark Forest is incredible, engaging with incredible concepts but never neglecting the human characters that anchor its massive scope nor the ticking clock at its story's core.To explain this series is a difficult challenge, to put it mildly. This is a series that spans a huge amount of time, deals with advanced scientific concepts in complex terms, grapples with rich philosophical and political ideas, debates questions without easy answers, and gives you a scope that can be daunting. It's a story of alien invasions, yes, but one in which the action sequences we're so used to are replaced with existential dread, a rethinking of our own lives, and a fear of the unknown that's hard to quantify. It's also the story of people caught up in these times, trying to give themselves a good life while never forgetting the larger questions of their era, and juggling their own fears with fears for humanity. In other words, it's what hard science-fiction is great at - thoughtful questions, big ideas, and speculation, all of which change the way you think about the world.This series is a truly incredible achievement, one that honestly left me a bit staggered and reeling as I attempt to think about it all, but one that I love all the more for what it accomplishes. If you're a hard science-fiction fan, or simply someone who loves dealing with the complex ramifications of common ideas, this is a must read series. I've never read anything like it in my life, and I'm a richer person for the ideas it's inspired me to think about.

I admit I found The Dark Forest, the second volume of the three-volume The Three-Body Problem trilogy (formally known as Remembrance of Earth’s Past) by Cixin Liu a bit of a slog at times. I loved the first novel—its brief depiction of the Cultural Revolution, for instance, was brilliant and painful to read—and couldn’t wait to peruse the second. Despite the deliberate pace of the first half of the sequel, the images are often startlingly beautiful and the ideas ingenious. The second half of the book has a fascinating realization of a future underground world (although I found it a bit difficult to imagine). The conclusion was fabulous, and that made the entire novel worthwhile.The Dark Forest takes up the story of Earth’s planning for the Trisolaran extraterrestrial invasion introduced in The Three-Body Problem. The Wallfacer Project is established by the UN to counter the ability of the Trisolarans to monitor all human communications: in it, four people are given virtually unlimited resources to create, within their own minds, a realizable plan to defeat the Trisolarans. A terrorist group sympathetic to the invaders, The Earth-Trisolaris Organization, attempts to eliminate the Wallfacers by assigning each an assassin called a Wallbreaker. One of the Wallfacers, Luo Ji, also realizes that the Trisolarans are trying to kill him via more direct means as well. Eventually, many of the main characters of the story go into hibernation and awake two hundred years later when the first Trisolaran probe arrives in the system. The final part of the book is about what transpires when the probe appears.The translation, by Joel Martinsen, isn’t as well done as the work by Ken Liu for the first novel. Although I haven’t compared the original with either translator’s work, Liu’s translation was smooth and read like a well-written English-language work. Martinsen’s translation is clunky at times (e.g., “Da Shi, you’ve really got a clear mind” [p. 484]); one is always aware that one is reading a translation.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It was really entertaining and I have enjoyed all three books of this trilogy. Liu is an excellent author. Highly recommend all three books.

It was a bit slow in the begging, but the second half was simply excellent. There are a number of plot twists that keep you on your toes, and and the characters are very well drawn and very relatable.

Türkçe çevirisine yönelik ağır eleştiriler sonrası orijinalini aldım, kitap sağlam iletildi, fiyat da uygundu.

Wer keine Fortsetzung der SEHR abgewandelten Netflix Version erwartet, wird hier nach dem Vorgänger voll bedient. Insgesamt ist der zweite Teil zwar etwas schwächer als der erste Band - das Überraschungsmoment des ersten Bandes ist natürlich etwas weg - aber dennoch sehr lesenswert und mit interessanten Zeitsprüngen versehen. Tolles und ungewöhnliches Sci-Fi Buch!

The book is good, neat font and very simple language.The story flows well, though it takes time to set the pace, it transcends midway and keeps you on the edge of the seat.