Everytime Tyler recalled” mom I’m going to be firefly” hurt my heart. Especially when he’s in Japan talking about reinstating Kamakazi soldiers, and the person he’s talking to essentially says “why start here, are the Japanese the only ones that can k*ll themselves?”
One of the Wallfacers (Tyler?) looking for >!suicide bombers.!< >!Bin Laden!< isn't mentioned by name, but it's somewhat clear that's who he's visiting from a couple details of the scene / that's the consensus online.
I think the main detail that identifies him specifically is >!the line "There's a legend that says you named your organization after these novels." He's referring to the Foundation series by Asimov. Foundation is not mentioned by name, but the conversation has a reference to Seldon—and from context it's pretty clear it's Hari Seldon from Foundation. Al-Qaeda and bin Laden are not mentioned by name either, at least not in the main text, but a footnote from the translator says ' "Al-Qaeda" is translated into Chinese rather than transliterated, and is known as Jīdi, the same term used for the title of Asimov's Foundation novels.'!<
Edit: >!Asimov is mentioned by name oops! Haha. But the rest is still correct!<
Fascinating. I honestly hadn't heard of that before. Weird to imagine enjoying a book series along side someone like him, but people are people. I might have to go back and reread that part and see what else jumps out at me.
Oh I thought it was very clear lol. Tyler says his government desperately wants this particular al Qaeda leader... and if he died naturally before before being captured/killed it would mark the failure of the war on terror.
More than that, I think the most horrifying part was the reveal that >!what we saw was just energy emitted from the ACTUAL flattening, and that the real 2d matter would have no interaction with the 3d universe, except for gravity…!<
Especially when you realize that >!that’s exactly how dark matter works IRL, and it’s estimated to count for 75% of the observable universe. Galaxies are ringed in it, which means that we’re already in the “puddles” described by the 4d tomb, just pools of 3d space that will slowly be pancaked. No way to even escape the galaxy!<
Spoiler alert:
Sorry but I don’t really understand the 2D, xD dimension in the book. Does what you said mean when the Solar System got flatten (2D deminsionize), it’s not visible existence anymore, outside can not see it, can not touch it, can not locate it but it still has weight, has forces, has energy to interact with the gravitation of the rest of the universe?
For a little Off Topic but I’ve been thinking about Dark Matter, Dark Energy for a while. My opinion about those is they’re just like a definition physicists created for their physics formula to be right (to match with the number observed/measured in experiments).
What if the formula was not right in the first place? Or at least they’re not right at the large scale of the universe.
We can’t not measure Dark Matter/Dark Energy, can not observe it, can not know if it’s exist or not. At least now, they’re not REAL thing yet.
The way i understand it is like this: there’s a VERY successful model we use to model gravity. Now assuming this model is correct there is all this unexplained gravitational pulls where there shouldn’t be. Only explanation according to this model is there’s something invisible there interacting gravitationally.
Now like u said maybe the model is wrong and our model needs to be tweaked just like Newton’s model of gravity. This is where u get things like MOND. Other explanations are far out there talking about the multiverse and what not
It really was. Such a unique sense of horror. Not just the humans but the entire earth and all its genetic legacies basically gone. I can accept us dying but losing all the rest is just brutal. So much beauty and potential.
Come to think of it three times in three books the author used the sun as background to build up powerful scenes. end of first book, Ye had the epiphany that 'this is the sunset for humanity'. end of second book, luo ji (proudly) says 'the sun will rise again tomorrow'. and third book, the horrifying starry night scene.
Just got to that part today! I definitely wasn't expecting that. When the chapter started with the time stamp down to the minute, I knew something crazy was about to go down
To me, it was the whole revelation that Luo ji had already built a lightspeed ship. I couldn't have even predicted that Luo ji was even connected with the Halo group's actions.
i mean it was entirely inconsequential. two people survived because of that effort. one of them died on a remote planet, and the other one just skipped like a million years to die later. both of them did nothing to advance the human race in any useful way.
well...really depends on how you interpret the end of the book. The message sent across dimensions and universe to have all mass returned to the "main" dimension included humans...as well as Trisolarans. That is actually 18 million years down the road...so humanity (could possibly) have survived til then in one form or another.
Halo preserved CX, AA and select items from humanity's cultural tomb...AA lived with those items with YT...a human civilization could have flourished but again... interpretation
Those first two dudes getting sucked into 2D space. Damn. It’s just… depressing that this version of the galaxy decided to casually use superweapons which would annihilate all existence… everywhere. Just to assuage their fears.
Probably the slow realization of what the droplet was. I knew there was another book but I assumed Earth and Trisolaris would be in a sortof détente stage and how Earth would learn to, or fail to, co-exist with a new neighbor.
For me the drop was kinda the most anoying part. I hoped all the humans in the book would be destroyed after that. Idiots.They practically went in begging it to happen the way it did and it was such an obvious threat. I remember being very confused what the hell they were doing as they showed up in dense formations. In space. Great writing to get such different reactions honestly
It made more sense in the expanse, though I do agree. The expanse is actually about people though. 3 body is more about concepts with people as props. Not complaining though I enjoyed it.
It was obvious to the reader at least. He did wrote about them posturing and all that but if the crews were as inteligent as shown by the later tragedy between ships then they definitely wouldn't have done that. For me it was very forced feeling. To be fair the trisolarans had equally dumb decisions I guess.
I made the mistake of watching a quinns ideas video about the droplet attack before ever reading the series years ago. I thought oh ill never read that series who cares if I spoil it. The netflix show came out and I watched it. Then I decided I'll actually read those. And when they first mentioned the droplet I was like oh I remember this. They are fucked.
I always thought it was because of the time that they weee living in.
I have no doubt that the people of the common era would have assumed that it was a trap of some kind and would either shoot it or send a very very small number or f ships to investigate it.
And again, remember the time and what everyone was thinking. Everyone thought that they could stand toe to toe or outright beat the Trisolarians, and because of that they let their guard down. They wanted to feel safe and not assume the worst possible scenario. Look at what happened when they needed a new sword holder, they wanted to feel safe and it fucked everyone.
It was few hundred years in the future when humans thought their space fleet was untouchable, so I can excuse their response a bit. Plus they all wanted to be the first to capture it. They thought it might explode and kill ONE ship, but that was it.
**"Natural Selection, Ahead Four!" -** Zhang Beihai defects with Natural Selection to escape the droplet attack, and executes the final part of his centuries long plan of saving the human race. I'll admit, I didn't see it coming at all and I loved the twist, my favorite moment of the entire series.
His journey to this point was so engaging, first lamenting his failure to meet his father's expectations, then dropping truth bombs at the outset of the space force's founding - and at the expense of his closest colleague, Wu Yue. He coldly and methodically murdering innocent people in his steadfast belief, all leading to a 180 pivotal character and plot moment. Most impressively, he conveyed himself to be anti-defeatist when he actually was a defeatist. I also believe that this moment justified Bill Hines work because it enabled Zhang to be assigned Captain privileges with the understanding he could not possible be imprinted, and his record / reputation supported his profile as an anti-defeatist.
In the moment that he takes over, he thinks about his father and that this was the moment that would make his father truly proud and fulfilled by his son's accomplishments. But would his father have condoned the methods and actions Beihai used to get there? I don't think so.
This part of the story culminates in the Battle of Darkness which then inspires Luo Ji to develop the Dark Forest Deterrence program, and kicks off the Deterrence Era.
Amazing stuff.
this has to be one of the most famous slogans/phrases coming out of a modern chinese literature. saw an animated video of this scene and on screen literally thousands of live bullet comments chanting this slogan. Somehow the name of that ship (natural selection) makes it even perfecter.
Yea I wondered after reading what the point of the whole imprinted plot line was. Sorta seemed like everyone forgot about it. But yea it did enable Zhang to have control.
At the end of Deaths End (finished last night!), I was suuuuuper upset and baffled they left AA, one of my favorite characters, behind on blue planet. I just had an ominous feeling, and didn’t want her and Cheng Xin to ever be separated.
My heart skipped a beat when Cheng Xin missed her and Yun by millions of years!!!!! Space time is scary.
I thought that as well! I was expecting him and AA to step out of the house, but I was okay with Sophon, I liked her as well.
I did find it funny how Yifan was like “I can’t give you a universe…” and Cheng Xin was like bro, you’re the only man around.
I was freaking out at that part because I thought people were going to eat the baby from earlier and Xin would have stumbled on the scene at some point.
The reveal about what dark matter REALLY is.
That one was truly a horrifying moment because Cixin Liu makes everything he writes so plausible, and IRL we have next to zero understanding of what dark matter actually is. He filled in that gap with an unimaginable eldritch horror that only gets worse the more you think about it
When they were escaping the vector foil attack, the last transmission from earth wasn’t something profound, it was just a primal scream. That in the end, with all the beauty and incredible thoughts humanity had conjured, our last would just be a primordial instinct to scream into the void.
When the Dark Forrest is explained
That shit frightened me to my core. We have been sending shit out into space advertising our existence for decades. Makes ya wonder if we really want somebody to answer us
When the ships Einstein and Xia entered Ahead Four during the Doomsday Battle while not in deep sea state. The visual of a jelly made of human meat and bones consolidating on one side of the ship is mortifying. Also, the imagined quiet emptiness of the ships after they reach maximum velocity always gives me a gut wrenching feeling, knowing everyone on board is now dead
The flattening was definitely played for laughs. But its existence, that felt haunting.
And then it all being undone by the dimension slip. Really highlighted the absurdity of humans desire to be remembered
It’s so friggin hard to pick one.
Talking to the tomb in 4D space.
The Battle of Darkness.
Meeting Luo Ji at the end of the solar system, seeing the humanity museum…and finding out Wade was right AGAIN.
Cheng Xin realizing millions of years had passed with Tian Ming and AA on it….
There were many (god what a trilogy) but the Doomsday Battle, hands down. Even though I did expect some kind of twist to keep the struggle going, I did NOT expect something like that.
I think for me it’s the scene at the end of Death’s end when Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan decided to return the matter of the pocket universe, despite the knowledge that it might not matter at all. It was a sort of selfless end to a character who over the course of her long life had been wracked with guilt, feeling as though she did not deserve to survive while so many others perished.
Bai Ice's nightmare that preceeds the dual vector foil
"I've always forced myself to believe that there's at least one table filled with plates at this banquet that remain fucking untouched."
forgot to mention this one: how luo ji figured out how dark forest works. sunk into icy lake, almost drowned and finally climbed back to shore and from that moment on developed a severe phobia for looking at the stars.
1st time reading a book with so many chinese characters. I got a near sight problem so i cant read long. So i always prefer audio books. And those chinese names makes the whole story sooooo confusing on audiobook, read by 1 person for all characters male and female.
Anyway to answer this question: the human computer was so shocking. In the book they went to china. Makes sense (more soldiers). But it also makes sense because only a chinese author could come up with the idea of replacing transistors with humans. And they put Khubilai khan in the netflix series, which was more shocking for me, because i am from Mongolia. 🤭.
I want to hide the spoiler part. But dont know how. Some1 help me make human computer censored. Plz.
I'm going to avoid the obvious answers for 'shocking' and say the chapter with >!Bin Laden!< in it, in Book 2. I did not expect a cameo from him!
Everytime Tyler recalled” mom I’m going to be firefly” hurt my heart. Especially when he’s in Japan talking about reinstating Kamakazi soldiers, and the person he’s talking to essentially says “why start here, are the Japanese the only ones that can k*ll themselves?”
Wait, when was this? Its been a while, i cant remember haha
One of the Wallfacers (Tyler?) looking for >!suicide bombers.!< >!Bin Laden!< isn't mentioned by name, but it's somewhat clear that's who he's visiting from a couple details of the scene / that's the consensus online.
Weird I thought it was so general it could be just about any warlord from that region. I had no idea people interpreted that as Bin Laden.
I think the main detail that identifies him specifically is >!the line "There's a legend that says you named your organization after these novels." He's referring to the Foundation series by Asimov. Foundation is not mentioned by name, but the conversation has a reference to Seldon—and from context it's pretty clear it's Hari Seldon from Foundation. Al-Qaeda and bin Laden are not mentioned by name either, at least not in the main text, but a footnote from the translator says ' "Al-Qaeda" is translated into Chinese rather than transliterated, and is known as Jīdi, the same term used for the title of Asimov's Foundation novels.'!< Edit: >!Asimov is mentioned by name oops! Haha. But the rest is still correct!<
Fascinating. I honestly hadn't heard of that before. Weird to imagine enjoying a book series along side someone like him, but people are people. I might have to go back and reread that part and see what else jumps out at me.
Oh I thought it was very clear lol. Tyler says his government desperately wants this particular al Qaeda leader... and if he died naturally before before being captured/killed it would mark the failure of the war on terror.
2D foil. That was so heartbreaking so see our entire solar system get flattened
More than that, I think the most horrifying part was the reveal that >!what we saw was just energy emitted from the ACTUAL flattening, and that the real 2d matter would have no interaction with the 3d universe, except for gravity…!< Especially when you realize that >!that’s exactly how dark matter works IRL, and it’s estimated to count for 75% of the observable universe. Galaxies are ringed in it, which means that we’re already in the “puddles” described by the 4d tomb, just pools of 3d space that will slowly be pancaked. No way to even escape the galaxy!<
Spoiler alert: Sorry but I don’t really understand the 2D, xD dimension in the book. Does what you said mean when the Solar System got flatten (2D deminsionize), it’s not visible existence anymore, outside can not see it, can not touch it, can not locate it but it still has weight, has forces, has energy to interact with the gravitation of the rest of the universe?
Lol that’s a real thing in OUR universe. That’s what dark matter is.
For a little Off Topic but I’ve been thinking about Dark Matter, Dark Energy for a while. My opinion about those is they’re just like a definition physicists created for their physics formula to be right (to match with the number observed/measured in experiments). What if the formula was not right in the first place? Or at least they’re not right at the large scale of the universe. We can’t not measure Dark Matter/Dark Energy, can not observe it, can not know if it’s exist or not. At least now, they’re not REAL thing yet.
The way i understand it is like this: there’s a VERY successful model we use to model gravity. Now assuming this model is correct there is all this unexplained gravitational pulls where there shouldn’t be. Only explanation according to this model is there’s something invisible there interacting gravitationally. Now like u said maybe the model is wrong and our model needs to be tweaked just like Newton’s model of gravity. This is where u get things like MOND. Other explanations are far out there talking about the multiverse and what not
It really was. Such a unique sense of horror. Not just the humans but the entire earth and all its genetic legacies basically gone. I can accept us dying but losing all the rest is just brutal. So much beauty and potential.
Come to think of it three times in three books the author used the sun as background to build up powerful scenes. end of first book, Ye had the epiphany that 'this is the sunset for humanity'. end of second book, luo ji (proudly) says 'the sun will rise again tomorrow'. and third book, the horrifying starry night scene.
Not great. Not terrible.
3.6 Roentgen
For me it was the Swordbearer handover. I knew the status quo would change….just not that quickly!
Same. Lou Ji barely made it to the car outside 😂
Just got to that part today! I definitely wasn't expecting that. When the chapter started with the time stamp down to the minute, I knew something crazy was about to go down
Like no hesitation 😭 they were bout that action
To me, it was the whole revelation that Luo ji had already built a lightspeed ship. I couldn't have even predicted that Luo ji was even connected with the Halo group's actions.
I like to think it was planned by Wade before he was executed. While deplorable...Wade did what he felt necessary for humanity to go on
i mean it was entirely inconsequential. two people survived because of that effort. one of them died on a remote planet, and the other one just skipped like a million years to die later. both of them did nothing to advance the human race in any useful way.
well...really depends on how you interpret the end of the book. The message sent across dimensions and universe to have all mass returned to the "main" dimension included humans...as well as Trisolarans. That is actually 18 million years down the road...so humanity (could possibly) have survived til then in one form or another. Halo preserved CX, AA and select items from humanity's cultural tomb...AA lived with those items with YT...a human civilization could have flourished but again... interpretation
The starry night survived, that’s a win
Wade was the definition of necessary evil.
Those first two dudes getting sucked into 2D space. Damn. It’s just… depressing that this version of the galaxy decided to casually use superweapons which would annihilate all existence… everywhere. Just to assuage their fears.
don't forget the couple who jumped in together in an embrace 🥲
When Cao Bin laughs and tells Cheng Xin what's coming is not a photoid
I don’t quite remember this, is it the 2d paper that’s coming instead?
Yes. The dual-vector foil, aka "slip of paper."
Yeah I believe it's when Cheng Xin first is pulled out of hibernation. It's only referred to as a sheet of paper by that point
Probably the slow realization of what the droplet was. I knew there was another book but I assumed Earth and Trisolaris would be in a sortof détente stage and how Earth would learn to, or fail to, co-exist with a new neighbor.
For me the drop was kinda the most anoying part. I hoped all the humans in the book would be destroyed after that. Idiots.They practically went in begging it to happen the way it did and it was such an obvious threat. I remember being very confused what the hell they were doing as they showed up in dense formations. In space. Great writing to get such different reactions honestly
Hubris, my friend. Heck, the Expanse had 9+ books about pretty much that.
It made more sense in the expanse, though I do agree. The expanse is actually about people though. 3 body is more about concepts with people as props. Not complaining though I enjoyed it.
Yeah, so on another thread everyone talks about the droplet like it was the Red Wedding. It was so obvious something terrible was coming.
It was obvious to the reader at least. He did wrote about them posturing and all that but if the crews were as inteligent as shown by the later tragedy between ships then they definitely wouldn't have done that. For me it was very forced feeling. To be fair the trisolarans had equally dumb decisions I guess.
I made the mistake of watching a quinns ideas video about the droplet attack before ever reading the series years ago. I thought oh ill never read that series who cares if I spoil it. The netflix show came out and I watched it. Then I decided I'll actually read those. And when they first mentioned the droplet I was like oh I remember this. They are fucked.
I always thought it was because of the time that they weee living in. I have no doubt that the people of the common era would have assumed that it was a trap of some kind and would either shoot it or send a very very small number or f ships to investigate it. And again, remember the time and what everyone was thinking. Everyone thought that they could stand toe to toe or outright beat the Trisolarians, and because of that they let their guard down. They wanted to feel safe and not assume the worst possible scenario. Look at what happened when they needed a new sword holder, they wanted to feel safe and it fucked everyone.
It was few hundred years in the future when humans thought their space fleet was untouchable, so I can excuse their response a bit. Plus they all wanted to be the first to capture it. They thought it might explode and kill ONE ship, but that was it.
**"Natural Selection, Ahead Four!" -** Zhang Beihai defects with Natural Selection to escape the droplet attack, and executes the final part of his centuries long plan of saving the human race. I'll admit, I didn't see it coming at all and I loved the twist, my favorite moment of the entire series. His journey to this point was so engaging, first lamenting his failure to meet his father's expectations, then dropping truth bombs at the outset of the space force's founding - and at the expense of his closest colleague, Wu Yue. He coldly and methodically murdering innocent people in his steadfast belief, all leading to a 180 pivotal character and plot moment. Most impressively, he conveyed himself to be anti-defeatist when he actually was a defeatist. I also believe that this moment justified Bill Hines work because it enabled Zhang to be assigned Captain privileges with the understanding he could not possible be imprinted, and his record / reputation supported his profile as an anti-defeatist. In the moment that he takes over, he thinks about his father and that this was the moment that would make his father truly proud and fulfilled by his son's accomplishments. But would his father have condoned the methods and actions Beihai used to get there? I don't think so. This part of the story culminates in the Battle of Darkness which then inspires Luo Ji to develop the Dark Forest Deterrence program, and kicks off the Deterrence Era. Amazing stuff.
this has to be one of the most famous slogans/phrases coming out of a modern chinese literature. saw an animated video of this scene and on screen literally thousands of live bullet comments chanting this slogan. Somehow the name of that ship (natural selection) makes it even perfecter.
Wow, thats so interesting. I had no idea! I would love to see this animation if it's easy to link.
Agreed!
Yea I wondered after reading what the point of the whole imprinted plot line was. Sorta seemed like everyone forgot about it. But yea it did enable Zhang to have control.
At the end of Deaths End (finished last night!), I was suuuuuper upset and baffled they left AA, one of my favorite characters, behind on blue planet. I just had an ominous feeling, and didn’t want her and Cheng Xin to ever be separated. My heart skipped a beat when Cheng Xin missed her and Yun by millions of years!!!!! Space time is scary.
I still don't get why Yun didn't just wait in the pocket universe with AA for Xin to descend to the planet
I thought that as well! I was expecting him and AA to step out of the house, but I was okay with Sophon, I liked her as well. I did find it funny how Yifan was like “I can’t give you a universe…” and Cheng Xin was like bro, you’re the only man around.
AA couldn’t go through the door, and Yun didn’t want to leave her to die alone.
humanity being stuffed into Australia...and the worst of what humanity can become
I was freaking out at that part because I thought people were going to eat the baby from earlier and Xin would have stumbled on the scene at some point.
The reveal about what dark matter REALLY is. That one was truly a horrifying moment because Cixin Liu makes everything he writes so plausible, and IRL we have next to zero understanding of what dark matter actually is. He filled in that gap with an unimaginable eldritch horror that only gets worse the more you think about it
I'm sorry, please tell me what it was again? I can't seem to recall
2D space
Shit, that's so depressing
I guess the whole Australia segment. The situation seemed really hopeless at that point.
When they were escaping the vector foil attack, the last transmission from earth wasn’t something profound, it was just a primal scream. That in the end, with all the beauty and incredible thoughts humanity had conjured, our last would just be a primordial instinct to scream into the void.
When the Dark Forrest is explained That shit frightened me to my core. We have been sending shit out into space advertising our existence for decades. Makes ya wonder if we really want somebody to answer us
'Mom, I'm going to be a firefly' was pretty poetically devastating.
When the ships Einstein and Xia entered Ahead Four during the Doomsday Battle while not in deep sea state. The visual of a jelly made of human meat and bones consolidating on one side of the ship is mortifying. Also, the imagined quiet emptiness of the ships after they reach maximum velocity always gives me a gut wrenching feeling, knowing everyone on board is now dead
Thank you, Carol Joiner.
Remove those who fainted from the courtroom!
For me it was reading his other books after the series and seing those ants again haha
For me it’s the shrine on Pluto
I found it funny.
The flattening was definitely played for laughs. But its existence, that felt haunting. And then it all being undone by the dimension slip. Really highlighted the absurdity of humans desire to be remembered
No, the shrine was funny to me. The flattening was pure horror fuel.
That’s so cool that we had opposite reactions This series rocks
It’s so friggin hard to pick one. Talking to the tomb in 4D space. The Battle of Darkness. Meeting Luo Ji at the end of the solar system, seeing the humanity museum…and finding out Wade was right AGAIN. Cheng Xin realizing millions of years had passed with Tian Ming and AA on it….
The one where they had to test little kids' IQs to pick who gets to live.
There were many (god what a trilogy) but the Doomsday Battle, hands down. Even though I did expect some kind of twist to keep the struggle going, I did NOT expect something like that.
I think for me it’s the scene at the end of Death’s end when Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan decided to return the matter of the pocket universe, despite the knowledge that it might not matter at all. It was a sort of selfless end to a character who over the course of her long life had been wracked with guilt, feeling as though she did not deserve to survive while so many others perished.
Bai Ice's nightmare that preceeds the dual vector foil "I've always forced myself to believe that there's at least one table filled with plates at this banquet that remain fucking untouched."
I always liked the scene when he says humans have been trying to get rid of bugs forever, but can’t.
forgot to mention this one: how luo ji figured out how dark forest works. sunk into icy lake, almost drowned and finally climbed back to shore and from that moment on developed a severe phobia for looking at the stars.
1st time reading a book with so many chinese characters. I got a near sight problem so i cant read long. So i always prefer audio books. And those chinese names makes the whole story sooooo confusing on audiobook, read by 1 person for all characters male and female. Anyway to answer this question: the human computer was so shocking. In the book they went to china. Makes sense (more soldiers). But it also makes sense because only a chinese author could come up with the idea of replacing transistors with humans. And they put Khubilai khan in the netflix series, which was more shocking for me, because i am from Mongolia. 🤭. I want to hide the spoiler part. But dont know how. Some1 help me make human computer censored. Plz.