THREE BODY IS BACK

BY TYlER RONEY

THREE BODY IS BACK

BY TYlER RONEY

Dark Forest, you don’t have a Wallbreaker

面对强大百倍的“他者”，人类能否打破黑暗森林的魔咒，拯救地球文明？

Only a few weeks after Dark Forest hit shelves in English, translated by Joel Martinsen, Liu Cixin became the first Chinese person to win the coveted Hugo Award for his Three-Body Problem, the first in the Three Body trilogy. With this second astounding work of phantasmagorical, space-age fiction, Liu Cixin has cemented a name for himself in the world of sci-fi as the Asian Asimov.

Fans of Liu Cixin should be forewarned that the following contains spoilers—even a slight sniff of the page could ruin one of Liu’s famous twists. Though, truth be told, Liu’s twists are less like twists than outright emotional abuse—a situation in which he creates a world, convinces you it is real and enduring, and then ceremoniously kicks it to death.

Whereas the first in the Three Body trilogy dealt with the politics of the poor wastrel that was humanity in the time of the Cultural Revolution and on to our current cusp of environmental annihilation, Dark Forest is altogether more succinct, more focused. Rather than the politics of a society on the brink (and an alien society constantly on the brink), Dark Forest concentrates on a world at war with an unbeatable foe and what that does to the psyche of society and the individual.

Dark Forest begins where the first left off, leaving many of the characters from the first in the dust (or, in fact, diced into tiny pieces), but fans of the first book will be happy to know that Da Shi makes a roaring comeback.

Besides the coming war, which is centuries away travelling at a fraction of the speed of light, the true focus of Dark Forest is in the existence of what are termed Wallfacers. The name, perhaps a little difficult to understand in English, is from the Chinese 面壁 (miàn bì), which has a duel meaning of a meditative state and a punishment—like being told to stand in the corner as a child but also to contemplate one’s existence. The Trisolarans, you see, communicate via a strange form of telepathy, having no idea how to translate a difference in the words “think” and “speak”. Given the power of the Trisolaran sophons to discover any and all Earth secrets, there is only one place left where planet Earth can hide its plans for war: inside a single human mind.

Planet Earth chooses the greatest minds of their generation to be Wallfacers, including a Venezuelan leader with a nuclear obsession and so hateful of the US that he goes to an analog of the late Osama bin Laden for advice and resources—Osama being an avid fan of Asimov in the book, of course.

Each Wallfacer lives a life of perpetual trickery, where they can use the combined resources of planet Earth for the wildest projects imaginable in order to completely dupe the attacking Trisolarans. As Liu states in the book, “The thoughts and behaviors these Wallfacers present to the outside world will be entirely false, a carefully crafted mélange of disguise, misdirection, and deception. The subject of this misdirection will be the entire world, both enemy and ally.”

And, while much of the book is the existential suffering of a life lived outside humanity, fans of hard sci-fi need not worry； the technological advances in this book dwarf the speculative science of the last (though more in scope than in substance). The novel takes us from the comparatively mundane science of carbon fiber to non-medium fusion engines, space colonies throughout the solar system, and deep space travel.

Indeed, the first in the Three Body trilogy only set up the motive； this is the war. Fans of the first book will remember that the chronology of Earth in Three-Body Problem only reached back to the Cultural Revolution and into the near future (2015, as it happens, though no hyper-dimensional protons have yet to threaten me into submission). This novel spans hundreds of years, but thanks to the speculative science of cryogenics, the characters get to sleep and then wake up to a world entirely changed.

Our main character this time is not a low-level physicist in a dead-end research project. It’s Luo Ji, who, and I’m warning one last time about spoilers, is an unlikely Wallfacer. He has the might of planet Earth behind him and, well, uses it to get drunk and live a life of solitary hedonism. Da Shi, a Chinese foil for a clever film noir detective, is as ever the truly wise one of the pair.

Dark Forest, much like the first novel, hosts a bevy of brilliant military and scientific minds, but the most frightening aspect of Dark Forest is the impending Trisolaran fleet； the most striking aspect of the Trisolarans is that they simply don’t give a damn about the might of Earth. Wallfacers come up with plan after brilliant plan using nukes, cruelty, bribery, and even planetary suicide, but the message from the Trisolarans is always the same: go ahead punk, make my day.

“NO NEED FOR THE lONG VlEW. RlGHT NOW THE ENTlRE UNlVERSE HAS BEEN DEAlT A DEAD HAND”

This is perhaps the most central question of the novel, namely, how do you deal with a doomed society?

The Trisolaran plan to sabotage Earth’s scientific advancement was successful in the first novel, so what’s left but for humanity to throw up its hands in defeat and wait for Armageddon? The social concepts of Defeatism and Escapism, rather than impending alien invasion, are the main foes in this novel—the idea that humanity’s future lies in annihilation or running away. How do you keep people from buying their way onto a private spaceship bound for the stars? Who gets the tickets to that spaceship? How do you decide? How do you keep military personnel from blowing their brains out at the prospect of facing a race who quite rightly view you as insects? Do you bother working? Breeding?

Giving up and running away are not options. The human race is left to stand against an undeniably superior enemy whether they like it or not because Escapism ends in social unrest, revolution, or injustice and Defeatism, well, that really only ends one way.

Dark Forest addresses this issue—perhaps in a way that doesn’t necessarily translate that well. Ideological purity for victory is essential for the continuation of the war effort, so the subject of Defeatism is met with failed attempts at official guidance of thought. Nations themselves don’t fare that well in the novel. The Great Ravine (a social and economic collapse) causes Frenchspeaking Canada to split with Canada (a prospect about as real as the Trisolarans), and nations themselves seem to coalesce into an unimportant mishmash of domestic policy—keeping the lights on until humanity’s victory or death. The real war, after all, is heading toward Earth at a fraction of the speed of light. As Luo Ji says, “No need for the long view. Right now the entire universe has been dealt a dead hand.”

In short, humans simply don’t have the hardware to deal with the problems facing them in Dark Forest. In response to a Wallfacer plan, a character comments, “The brain needs twenty thousand to two hundred thousand years to achieve noticeable changes, but human civilization has a history of just five thousand years. So what we’re using right now is the brain of primitive man.” The Wallfacer responds simply by saying, “All of us are basically Flintstones.”

Liu’s masterful narrative style, buoyed by a translation from Martinsen that is every bit as impressive as Ken Liu, holds a distinct and clear view of time. Three-Body Problem perhaps discussed the idea of time and causality better than Dark Forest—going as it did through civilizations of destruction on Trisolaris—but all of that looked back, whereas Dark Forest looks forward. Decisions have a century to unfold and Liu Cixin carefully lays them out with a sense of wonder and disappointment that few other sci-fi writers can master.

If the characters of Dark Forest lack the depth of the previous novel, it is only because every minute detail in their personality is a clue to an eventual surprise. Luo Ji is the exception to this； his every thought, dream, and fantasy are laid bare in such a fantastically transparent way that readers always feel they are a hair away from discovering his plans. When Liu puts that decision in your head—remembering that this isn’t a mystery novel—you can but wait to see if your suppositions or fears bear fruit. Like all great sci-fi, Liu Cixin gives you rules and clues； ignore them at your peril.

For readers familiar with Liu Cixin’s short works—“The Wandering Earth”, “The Longest Fall”, “Sun of China”, and the like—Dark Forest has a greater scope as it pertains to hard science fiction than the first novel, showing progress with both the continuation of what is sure to be remembered as one of the greatest science fiction stories told in recent memory and the progress of Liu Cixin as an author. Three-Body Problem may have pointed to the stars, but Dark Forest shoots humanity at them.

Throughout Dark Forest, you will be dazzled by dialectical problems and moral quandaries. By the end you’ll be wondering if Luo Ji is right； one second later, you’ll wonder if it’s inevitable. English readers will have to wait until April of 2016 for the final installment of the Three Body trilogy, Death’s End, and that is a long wait indeed. In the meantime, it might be a good idea to give Liu’s shorter works a go and, oh yeah, keep an eye out for your Wallbreaker.