The Dark Forest

This is the second book in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past series, by Cixin Liu. Like the first book, there is some widlly imaginative stuff in here.

But also like the first book, the ideas seem more important than the characters. It’s more interesting and accessible than something like the Foundation series, but it suffers from the same problem I had with Asimov’s stuff: Conceptually brilliant but emotionally tepid.

The main things I’ll take away from these two books are the novel concepts: the “dark forest” (i.e. civilizations avoid revealing themselves to other civilizations because all will eventually hunt down the others); the two maxims of the universe: First, survival is the primary need of civilization. Second, civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant; the sophons-blocking-scientific advancement stuff; and the sheer distances civilizations need to travel to interact.

I decided not to read the third book, at least not yet, because The Dark Forest was an exhausting experience.