The killing star
The opening chapter of an incredible adventure includes the destruction of Earth by ten thousand relativistic bombs launched by an alien race in a science fiction thriller and follows the desperate struggles of the remnants of humankind to survive in a hostile universe.
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8recommend
29mentions
16people
2008–2024years
31% recommend69% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- For an exploration of the dark forest theory at least, I recommend The Killing Star. Fair warning though, it’s extremely bleak.
- I won't argue the prose or characterization is great, but then that's extremely true of the 3BP as well. In every other sense I found the Killing Star to be a better book.
- Cixin straight up borrowed this from The Killing Star. You should read that. It's also pretty fun but goes 0-100 in chapter 1.
- "The Killing Star" is a good one.
- Another book in this vein, although distinctly more uncompromising in its conclusion, is The Killing Star, by Charles R. Pellegrino and George Zebrowski.
- It's well established that fish feel pain[0]. It's also possible to kill them far more humanely that we do now, e.g. by electroshock or by eugenol anesthesia. Despite this, out of the 1+ trillion fish killed by humans every year, almost all of them die slowly and painfully. We choose to do this simply because it's more convenient. Why would aliens treat humans any differently?
Intentionally signaling to aliens is one of the stupidest ideas I can think of. The Killing Star by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski has a good analogy (longer quote here: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/aliencontact.ph... ), describing a thought experiment of surviving the night in a crime-ridden Central Park:
"How do you survive the night? The last thing you want to do is shout, "I'm here!" The next to last thing you want to do is reply to someone who shouts, "I'm a friend!"
What you would like to do is find a policeman, or get out of the park. But you don't want to make noise or move towards a light where you might be spotted, and it is difficult to find either a policeman or your way out without making yourself known. Your safest option is to hunker down and wait for daylight, then safely walk out.
There are, of course, a few obvious differences between Central Park and the universe.
There is no policeman.
There is no way out.
And the night never ends."
[0] https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/fish-feel-pain-now-wh...
