The Dark Forest - Cixin Liu

The Dark Forest, the second part of an ambitious science-fiction trilogy that commenced with Three-Body Problem, doesn't yet make the huge leap 450 years into the future that humanity is facing with mounting trepidation at the end of book one. That trepidation for the future is understandable when you consider that this is the length of time that it will take the recently discovered extraterrestrial race the Trisolarians to cover the four light years from the Alpha Centauri system and arrive to carry out their stated aim - one instigated with just such intent by some groups on Earth - to wipe out humanity as if they were mere bugs.

That's the situation that humanity is preparing for at the start of The Dark Forest, and the dilemma is worse than you might think. The technology is just not there to protect them from an advanced alien race that can cover such distances, nor is the ability there to escape from planet Earth, but considering the huge advances in recent history, who knows what humanity might be capable of in 400 years time. Already hibernation technology is there so deep space travel could be possible by then. Or it would be possible but for the fact that the Trisolarans have send sophons ahead of their arrival, proton sized supercomputers by which they can monitor every human communication channel, have complete awareness of everything that humans are planning and can take action to ensure that no technological progress can be made over the centuries ahead.

There is one communication channel that the Trisolarans can't monitor and that is human thought. That is a concept that the Trisolarans aren't familiar with (among other human behaviours that they are trying to get up to speed with), as thoughts and communication is open and instantaneous between those of their kind. Seeing the potential for this being the only hope for mankind, the Planetary Defense Council have instigated the Wallfacer Project, selecting a small number of individuals with the necessary ability to think beyond the conventional and also use this uniquely human characteristic of lies, obfuscation and deception as their best hope of avoiding the extinction of humanity ahead.

One of those four important individuals is Luo Ji, selected from the Chinese side. A sort of protégé of Ye Wenjie, a student of astronomy who is now a college professor of sociology, Luo Ji has an unusual ability to think differently from others. As an experiment in writing (in one of the stranger episodes in the book) he has been able to create a person who is completely real to him and almost independent of himself. His job is to develop just such an incomprehensible, unusual strategy that will baffle and confound the Trisolaran command in a web of deception and confusion and make it real. As strange as some of his requests are, he is indulged in every respect - up to a certain point anyway...

The ability to exceed limitations is perhaps the central thread of the first half of The Dark Forest, but when you consider the ground covered in the first part of the trilogy, you can imagine that there are many other limiting factors and characters involved now that the Trisolarans intentions are known across the planet and not just by a select few of scientists and conspiracy groups. Humanity responds to that threat in ways that might be expected, and the ideologies of Defeatism and Escapism can only be combatted by a one of the Wallfacers developing a mental seal of faith in humanity’s ability to prevail. There is another challenge as the virtual Three-Body game world is revived with a new purpose; to create Wallbreakers against the Wallfacers.

It might sounds like pulp alien invasion science-fiction, but although there are some unexpected turns, conventional action is very limited in the Dark Forest in favour of high concept scientific theory. But you would have grasped from The Three-Body Problem. Having established contact, there are other high level social, political, technological and astronomical concepts considered quite deeply here. The concept laid out making contact possible and considering the likely outcome of an alien race being discovered and regarded as a threat (or indeed humanity quite rightly being considered a serious threat to the dark forest of the universe should they expand further) it's the human response to it that is followed up here. But that's only half the story, the other half making a leap 200 years into the future.

What we find is that - without getting into spoiler territory - progress has been made, the world is quite a different place from the one we are familiar with, but the Trisolaran threat remains. The majority of the book remains conceptual rather than action led (or even a literary exercise) the author delighting in expanding on where humanity, technology, geopolitics and society might be in several hundred years time. What is surprising - but really not so surprising - is how priorities change over such a time period. What seemed important and like a crisis back then is viewed entirely differently by a new society with different values and experiences in the intervening years. And what of the progress of the Trisolaran Fleet’s approach to Earth? Well, that would be spoiling things and there's Liu’s third book in the trilogy, Death's End, to come…

Reading notes: The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu is published by Head of Zeus. I read the eBook/Kindle download from Amazon. I've tried to avoid spoilers, but obviously, as the second book in a trilogy there might be more information here than you want if you haven't read the first book. Although there is little cross-over, with only one figure featuring fairly prominently in both books, reading The Three-Body Problem is essential before reading The Dark Forest.