The Dark Forest

The Dark Forest

Cover page
Author Liu Cixin
Original title 黑暗森林
Translator Joel Martinsen
Country China
Language Chinese
Series Remembrance of Earth's Past
Genre Science fiction
Publication date
 2008
Pages 400
ISBN 978-1784971595
Preceded by The Three-Body Problem
Followed by Death's End

The Dark Forest (Chinese: 黑暗森林Hēi'àn sēnlín) is a 2008 science fiction novel by the Chinese writer Liu Cixin. It is the sequel to the Hugo Award-winning novel The Three-Body Problem in the trilogy titled "Remembrance of Earth's Past" (Chinese: 地球往事 Dìqiú wǎngshì), but Chinese readers generally refer to the series by the title of the first novel.[1] The English version, translated by Joel Martinsen, was published in 2015.

Plot

Earth is under total surveillance by Trisolaris, a planet whose inhabitants will invade Earth in 400 years. Since the human mind is the only place the Trisolarans cannot see, the UN selects four men to be "Wallfacers," the keepers of plans known only to themselves, who are granted full access to the resources of the UN.

The Trisolarans react to the Wallfacer project by assigning a "Wallbreaker" to each of the Wallfacers except for Luo Ji. The Wallbreakers will make the Wallfacers their subjects of study until they figure out what the Wallfacers are planning.

Wallfacer Bill Hines, a British neuroscientist, intends to create a genetically superior race of humans via genetic modification, so he delves into computational research of the human mind. Wallfacer Frederick Tyler, the former US Secretary of Defense, intends to create a fleet of "Mosquito" ships piloted by suicidal humans. Wallfacer Rey Diaz, a former leader of Venezuela, famous for repelling a US invasion, intends to construct a more powerful hydrogen bomb for use as a weapon. The latter two Wallfacers are the first to be revealed.

Tyler's plan is unmasked by a mysterious but refined stranger who reveals that Tyler's ultimate plan is to have the fleet pilots betray Earth and bring a mountain-sized shard of water to the enemy, which will be a trojan horse enabling a hydrogen bomb to cause huge damage. After his plans are exposed by his Wallbreaker, Tyler falls into despair and commits suicide.

Rey Diaz constructs an array of hydrogen bombs and plans to use them to cause Mercury to crash into the Sun, causing debris to fly towards the remaining planets (thereby destroying Earth and the Trisolarans' hope for survival) in the event that the Trisolarans do not back off. The UN panel harshly criticizes him for his plan after his Wallbreaker exposes it; he responds by saying that he has a biometric watch connected to a nuclear weapon in New York City that will detonate if he dies. He blackmails the UN panel to release him from his Wallfacer duties; flying home, he reveals that he was bluffing—there was no such weapon—and just wanted to return to Venezuela. After returning home, he is stoned to death by his own people for putting the entire world in danger.

The unlikely Wallfacer Luo Ji, refuses his Wallfacer status, only to discover that his refusal is taken to be part of his plan. Resigned to his fate, Luo lives a hedonistic life by exploiting his power to live in a beautiful remote mansion, drinking expensive alcohol, and courting a beautiful woman delivered to his mansion. Eventually, the United Nations kidnaps Luo Ji's wife and child, putting them in hibernation as a means of goading him to get to work. At last, Luo Ji begins his work as a Wallfacer, asking questions about how to transmit the information about the position of a certain star in the Milky Way to a potential third observer civilization. This causes the Trisolarans to become truly afraid of Luo Ji, so they redouble their efforts to kill him. The Trisolarans' worry concerns what they call "the most important secret in the universe."

Luo Ji uses the solar amplification technique (originally used by Ye Wenjie to contact the Trisolarans) to send out a set of three images—pictures of scattered dots. When asked by the Wallfacer commission what he is doing, he answers that it is a "spell against the planets of star 187J3X1," which will take one hundred years to be verified. The effects of the spell will be catastrophic, he predicts. He also admits that it is a proof-of-concept and cannot yet be used against Trisolaris.

He then comes down with what appears to be the flu. Many people have come down with it, with only minor effects, but Luo JI seems to be dying of it. Trisolarian agents created a virus to specifically target his genetic makeup. Unable to be cured, Luo Ji is put into hibernation to await a future time when a cure can be found.

Zhang Beihai creates bullets out of meteorite material and uses them to assassinate members of the military who are against researching a non-media radiation drive using nuclear fusion. Zhang believes that this is the only technology that stands a chance against Trisolaris. Since the assassination takes place in space, the meteorite bullets make it seem as if the generals were killed by a meteor shower, and Zhang Beihai escapes suspicion for the murders. He enters hibernation soon after.

Almost 200 years after being put into hibernation, Luo Ji is awakened to discover a drastically changed world. The "Total War" society Earth had created resulted in the repeal of environmental regulations, which led to massive ecological collapse, turning much of the surface into a desert. In response, nation states excavated large caverns underground. Despite the sophon block, Earth technology has also progressed dramatically, culminating in a space fleet of ships numbering in the thousands. Citing its fleet strength, many discuss the potential for future peace talks with the Trisolarians.

Luo Ji struggles to integrate into the new earth society, which has radically changed its social structure. He is joined by Da Shi, who has also hibernated for centuries, but was awakened and cured of his cancer shortly before Luo Ji. Together the two explore the new Earth; they are met by a series of attacks against Luo Ji by a computer virus that had been dormant for decades and was using the machines to try and kill him. It is slowly revealed that Earth society had experienced a dramatic depression called The Great Ravine, a fifty-year period during which time the Earth's population had been massively decreased from 8.3 billion to about 3 billion due to massive starvation and other ills.

Immediately after awakening, Luo Ji attends a UN Wallfacer meeting, discovering that the Wallfacer project was all but forgotten over the centuries. The other surviving Wallfacer, Bill Hines, is also present. He had invented a sort of mind adjustment device called the "Mental Seal," which the military used to overcome defeatism. Despite its utility, it was not widely adopted. The purpose of the meeting is to officially disband the Wallfacer program. As the meeting ends, Hines' Wallfacer strategy is revealed as false by his Wallbreaker, who turns out to be his wife and scientific collaborator, Keiko. Hines had created five devices, and used them to instill defeatism in the minds of the users.

Zhang Beihai is given the position of acting captain of the starship "Natural Selection" because he was someone put into hibernation before the mind adjustment device was created. After the power to control the ship is transferred to him, he deserts the Solar System to escape the Trisolarans' incoming fleet, fulfilling his self-proclaimed duty as a soldier to preserve humanity. Five other starships pursue him.

The Earth Fleet, organized under three broad geographic commands, races towards the edge of the solar system to meet the first incoming probe sent by the Trisolaris fleet. Political jockeying to be the first nation to meet an extraterrestrial species results in a massive formation of most of Earth's starships, which are organized into a dense, two-dimensional grid as the people on Earth rejoice at the grand display of human power and dignity. The probe, a solid "droplet" of mirror-like metal arrives and, at first, seems innocuous. The aesthetic beauty of the probe is taken as a peace sign sent from the Trisolaran fleet. The only ships absent are the renegade ship Natural Selection and its pursuers. An unmanned ship captures the probe, and a team of scientists examine it. It is inferred that the droplet is constructed of matter bonded together using a strong interaction force, creating an object of extreme strength.

The droplet awakens, breaks free of the unmanned that holds it, and immediately attacks the fleet. It flies to a corner of the fleet formation and begins to destroy the starships one by one. The fleet's convenient grid formation allows the droplet to fly through one starship after the other, causing immense destruction and casualties in a short amount of time. All of Earth's space-based forces are destroyed and only two Earth ships escape the attack, fleeing into deep space.

The droplet heads toward Earth, and the population panics, expecting it to destroy the planet. The droplet, however, bypasses the planet and instead parks itself in a Lagrange point between the Earth and the Sun. Here, it broadcasts a powerful scrambling signal to prevent Earth from using the Sun's amplification mechanism again.

The only surviving Earth ships are Natural Selection, its pursuers, and the two ships which escaped the massacre. A strategy is formed to escape the solar system and head for nearby stars in hopes of founding civilization once again. The captains of Natural Selection and its pursuers unanimously appoint Zhang Beihai as their leader for preserving them from the droplet's attack, but he refuses, saying that he has fulfilled his duty and is tired and approaching retirement age. A tally of each ship's stocks, however, reveals that supplies are insufficient for such a plan to succeed—the supplies are only enough for a single ship. As a consequence of the Prisoner's dilemma, there is a near-simultaneous first strike among the ships, using nuclear weapons designed to kill ship crews. The attacks, called "The Battle of Darkness," result in the death of Zhang Beihai and leave only one surviving ship. A similar battle occurs between the two ships that had escaped the droplet's attack. The two remaining ships then harvest supplies from the destroyed ships and head for distant stars, cutting off all contact with Earth.

The Battle of Darkness sets up the novel for the explanation of the central metaphor of the story. Back on Earth, Luo Ji and Da Shi discover that star 187J3X1 has been destroyed. This confirms Luo Ji's suspicions, and he explains to Da Shi the implications of the star's destruction. The universe is full of life. Life in the universe functions on two axioms: 1. Life's goal is to survive, and 2. Resources are finite. Like hunters in a dark forest, life can never be certain of alien life's true intentions. The extreme distance between stars creates an insurmountable "chain of suspicion" where any two civilizations cannot communicate well enough to relieve mistrust, making conflict inevitable. Therefore, it is in every civilization's best interest to preemptively strike any developing civilization before it can become a threat, but without revealing their own location, thus solving the Fermi paradox.

Humanity is thrown into disarray. In order to capitalize on Luo Ji's popularity with the masses as a messiah, his Wallfacer status is restored, which calms people down. Forced by the successor of the UN to work for them, as he refuses to come up with a plan by himself, Luo Ji is given a project to track the other probes that will shortly enter the solar system. Project Snow is intended to create a screen across the solar system, which when crossed will reveal the trajectories of incoming probes. Luo Ji quickly realizes the futility of this project, but continues work anyway. He throws himself into the project, but it fails to reach its intended scope—only a third of the bombs necessary for the screen are created.

Three years pass, and Luo Ji falls from favor and descends into alcoholism. He is slowly ostracized from society. He eventually travels to the grave of Ye Wenjie, the woman who first sent the message to Trisolaris and told Luo Ji about the axioms of interstellar society. Luo Ji digs his own grave and places a pistol to his heart. In his final moments, he issues an ultimatum to the Trisolarans, who are watching him via sophons. Luo Ji reveals that he is wearing a biometric watch similar to the one constructed by Wallfacer Rey Diaz. He has positioned the bombs of Project Snow so that they can selectively block light from the sun, creating a message that will go out to the galaxy with the exact coordinates of Trisolaris and Earth. If Luo Ji dies, the bombs will detonate, sending the interstellar message. He threatens to kill himself if the Trisolarans fail to surrender. The Trisolarans, facing destruction of their home planet and Earth, capitulate and acknowledge that they have failed in their strategy. Luo Ji then negotiates with the Trisolarans who agree to change the course of their fleet, lift the sophon block, and teach humans their technology. Luo Ji thanks them for letting both civilizations coexist.

Five years later, Luo Ji is spending time with his family when a sophon unfolds to communicate with them. They have a conversation about love; the Trisolaran communicating with them is the pacifist who replied to Ye Wenjie's initial message, warning her not to reply. As the sun sets, the Trisolaran asks if Luo Ji's daughter is afraid of the coming night, to which he replies, "Of course she's not afraid. She knows that the sun will rise again tomorrow." See: Death's End

Characters

Wallfacers (面壁者):

Videos

References

  1. ↑ Liu, Cixin (7 May 2014). "The Worst of All Possible Universes and the Best of All Possible Earths: Three Body and Chinese Science Fiction". Tor.com. Retrieved 8 May 2014.
  2. ↑ "「三体·黑暗森林」致敬作品". www.project-57.org. Retrieved 2016-09-21.
  3. ↑ "南方周末 - 看完《水滴》，毛骨悚然 这就是刘慈欣心目中的《三体》电影". www.infzm.com. Retrieved 2016-09-21.
  4. ↑ 神游八方. "【MC动画】我的三体 黑暗森林01 & 两首角色歌_单机联机_游戏_bilibili_哔哩哔哩弹幕视频网". www.bilibili.com. Retrieved 2016-09-21.
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