Three-Body Problem Series
• Part 1: The Three-Body Problem • Part 2: The Dark Forest • Part 3: Death's End This trilogy follows a broad cast of characters through the centuries as earth enters a crisis following the Chinese cultural Revolution and the scientific experiments at the high security Red Coast Base. The short memory of humanity and the nature of the universe are explored in depth, revealing the true extent to which reality has been moulded by it's inhabitants. The methodical nature in which Cixin Liu reveals the sci-fi concepts in each book makes the ideas on display accessible to all readers. Ken Liu and Joel Martinsen did an excellent job translating this trilogy to English and their translators notes gave useful cultural and scientific context when necessary.
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2015–2026years
55% recommend39% neutral5% critical
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What Hacker News says
- I opened this thread to post about Dungeon Crawler Carl. I just finished the fantastic Three Body Problem series, and reading something so pulpy in contrast feels like cheating, but it’s making me happy and that’s what I’m looking for anyways.
Some other bits I’ve read recently that I’ve loved: - Ken Liu’s “The Paper Menagerie” is a beautiful short story by the Three Body Problem’s translator - Cryptonomicon feels like a great balance between heady reading (it goes into WWII-era crypto thinking) and pulpy humor. I loved reading it. - “Stoner” by John Williams (not the Stoner you think, and also not the John Williams you think) is kinda in a different direction, but it’s a really well paced and beautifully written book about a farmer’s son who falls in love with literature. It’s one of those books that’s hard to sell in a sentence, but is effortless to read and makes you think a lot in a non-engineering-brained way.
- Blindsight.
Not an easy read but very rewarding in terms of sci-fi world building.
The three body problem series. Also sci-fi, recommended if you enjoy deeper reading.
- > No physics expert but isn't this unpredictable (based on what I saw in series) ?
A three-body orbital problem is an example of a chaotic system, meaning a system extraordinarily sensitive to initial conditions. So no, not unpredictable in the classical sense, because you can always get the same result for the same initial conditions, but it's a system very sensitive to initial settings.
> Amd this does seem predictable, I saw this for almost a minute
The fact that it remains calculable indefinitely isn't evidence that it's predictable in advance -- consider the solar system, which technically is also a chaotic system (as is any orbital system with more than two bodies).
For example, when we spot a new asteroid, we can make calculations about its future path, but those are just estimates of future behavior. Such estimates have a time horizon, after which we can no longer offer reliable assurances about its future path.
You mentioned the TV series. The story is pretty realistic about what a civilization would face if trapped in a three-solar-body system, because the system would have a time horizon past which predictions would become less and less reliable.
I especially like the Three Body Problem series because, unlike most sci-fi, it includes accurate science -- at least in places.
- If anybody is into sci-fi, I highly recommend The Three Body Problem series. I'm being very elusive here to avoid spoilers, but let's just say that there are some very fascinating challenging with establishing technology (and especially human life) around Jupiter, what with it's gravity, the radiation, it's moons, distance from the sun, etc. As a space nerd, those books were highly enjoyable
- Reading Death’s End and loving it (2nd book in the Three Body Problem series).
- Someone already mentioned Permutation City by Egan, but look at his website for other math ones; he is considered one of the hardest sci-fi authors out there (?).
I second "The Three Body Problem" series (writing is meh but I think the ideas are excellent. Disclaimer: first half of book one is a slog to get through but the second half onwards is fantastic, in my opinion. I keep thinking about the book many years later on a near biweekly basis).
"The Gods Themselves" by Asimov isn't a book mentioned here yet—it has nice math-physics energy ideas.
