The Dark Forest
Liu Cixin
Translated by Joel Martinsen
Having read it
★★★★☆
A fantastic read, that despite what I thought to be a not great early second part (and one which was compelling me to give the book just three out of five!) it had, in its plotting, many great ideas about humanity and the paths it takes and intentions it has. Oh, and a bit of time, space, crisis and technology with a final part that had some great sequences to help wrap up some of the whys and wherefores of life, the universe (well, the dark forest) and the Trisolarans!
A good passage
The rising sun was now just peeking its head over the horizon. The desert in front of them came into focus like a developing photograph, and Rey Diaz could see that this place, once blasted by the fires of hell, was now covered in sparse undergrowth.
‘I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,’ Allen exclaimed.
‘What?’ Rey Diaz whipped his head around, as if someone had shot him from behind.
‘Oppenheimer said that when he watched the first nuclear explosion. I think it’s a quote from the Bhagavad Gita.’
The wheel in the east expanded rapidly, casting light across the Earth like a golden web. The same sun was there on that morning when Ye Wenjie had tuned the Red Shore antenna, and even before that, the same sun had shone upon the dust settling after the first bomb blast. Australopithecus a million years ago and the dinosaurs a hundred million years ago had turned their dull eyes upon this very sun, and even earlier than that, the hazy light that penetrated the surface of the primeval ocean and was felt by the first living cell was emitted by this same sun.
A second good passage
He knew that his suit’s life-support system would only hold up for twelve hours, and before that time ran out he had to make it eighty kilometres back to Base 1, now just a shapeless point far off in the distance of the abyss of space. The base itself would not survive very long, either, if it left the umbilical cord of the space elevator. But now, as he floated in the vast void, he felt like his contact with the blue world down below had been cut off. He was an independent presence in the universe, unattached to any world, dangling in the cosmos, no ground beneath his feet and surrounded by empty space on all sides, with no origin or satiation, like the Earth, the sun, and the Milky Way. He simply existed, and he liked this feeling.
A third good passage
This world [two centuries after the story’s Great Ravine moment] was spare and simple. Devices were no longer permanently installed, but would appear when necessary at any location required. The world, made complex by technology, was becoming simple again, its technology hidden deeply behind the face of reality.