Remembrance of Earth's Past (Chinese: 地球往事; pinyin: Dìqiú Wǎngshì; lit. 'Earth's Past') is a science fiction novel series by Chinese writer Liu Cixin. The series is also popularly referred to as Three-Body from part of the title of its first novel, The Three-Body Problem (Chinese: 三体; pinyin: Sān Tǐ; lit. 'Three-Body'). The series details humanity's discovery of and preparation for an alien invasion force from the planet Trisolaris.
Books
Original trilogy The books in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy are:
Extended series Ball Lightning, a 2004 novel by Liu Cixin, set earlier in the same universe. The Redemption of Time, originally posted to an internet forum as fan fiction by Baoshu, later published by the original trilogy publisher with the permission of Liu Cixin in 2011.
Synopsis
The Three-Body Problem
Astronomer Ye Wenjie is brought to the military's top-secret Red Coast Project after suffering an attack during the Cultural Revolution. She achieves a significant advancement in the search for extraterrestrial civilization when she uses the Sun as an amplifier to send the first sounds of Earth's civilization into space. Meanwhile, the planet Trisolaris, located four light years distant and dominated by the chaotic orbits of its three suns, experiences ever-recurring destruction and rebirth, thus forcing the planet's inhabitants to flee their home planet. As they prepare their exodus, Ye Wenjie, despairing of humanity's ability to save itself from itself, exposes the coordinates of the Earth to the Trisolarans, completely changing the fates of both worlds. When anomalies begin to disrupt the ability of Earth's scientists to conduct fundamental research, nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao plays the mysterious online game "Three-Body Problem" and starts to explore the nature of the game's world. Wang Miao meets the secretive Earth-Trisolaris Organization (ETO), created to support the impending arrival of Trisolarans, while attending a player meeting. "Operations Guzheng" allows the Operations Centre to partially defeat the Adventists (who want the Trisolarans to wipe out humanity) and the Redemptionists (who seek to help the Trisolarans find a computational solution to the three-body problem plaguing Trisolaris). It also reveals that the Trisolarans have launched their invasion of Earth in search of a stable place to live. The end of humanity draws near as the huge Trisolaran fleet approaches Earth after using their superior technology to shut down Earth's advances in fundamental science.
The Dark Forest
Following the Trisolarans' use of technology to lock down Earth science and launch a huge space fleet straight into the Solar System, human beings also create a huge space fleet to react to the unprecedented Earth civilization crisis, while the Planetary Defence Council (PDC) uses the fatal flaw in the Trisolarans' logic to create the "Wallfacer Plan". Astronomer Luo Ji is unexpectedly selected as one of the four "wallfacers" to launch a secret counteroffensive against the Trisolarans. The Trisolarians respond by deploying "wallbreakers" chosen by Earth's betrayers to make up for the Trisolarians' inability to see through human tactics. In the fight for survival, Luo eventually recognises his responsibilities from escaping and hedonism at first and devises a strategy to fight the invasion of Trisolaris civilization. Luo Ji also confirms the Dark Forest Rule, which states that any civilization that reveals its location will be wiped out. With this discovery, he threatens to reveal the Trisolaris' position coordinates to the whole universe, temporarily delaying the Trisolaran's invasion of the Solar System and establishing a precarious strategic balance between Earth and Trisolaris.
Death's End
Using the life of human Cheng Xin on Earth as its main line, this book continues human history after the establishment of deterrence in the second work, Dark Forest, and further reveals the truth of the Dark Forest predicament in the cosmos. Humanity's first glimpse of the truth of the dark universe came from the fight with the Trisolaran civilization, which made Earth's civilization shiver in the dark night like a scared child. They believe they have discovered the key to survival, but in fact, they are far from qualified for an interstellar fight. On the cosmic battlefield, the attack in the Dark Forest that has threatened the survival of two civilizations is simply a minor episode. As the techniques and weapons of war have far outpaced human imagination and the day of witnessing the battlefield is the day of extermination, no one has ever seen a real interstellar war, and it is impossible to see one. Although the solar system does not survive in the book, Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan from the Starship civilization manage to keep the flame of human civilization in the Solar System. A Past Outside of Time, which is excerpted throughout the book, is revealed to be a record written by Cheng Xin.
Science fiction concepts
Sophons
Sophons are created from eleven-dimensional protons dimensionally unfolded down to two-dimensional protons with Trisolaran particle accelerators. While in the two-dimensional form, they are embedded with circuitry to create a supercomputer. Once online, the embedded supercomputer could control the proton's dimensional level and could fold itself back into an eleven-dimensional proton. To be seen with the naked eye, the protons could unfold themselves down to a fourth-, fifth-, or sixth-dimensional form, becoming larger with each subsequent lower dimension without changing mass. They can visually record anything and thus their secondary purpose is to act as surveillance devices, beaming the information they gather back to another sophon instantaneously via quantum entanglement. Their primary purpose for their Trisolaran manufacturers is to disrupt Earth's particle accelerators, capable of straying into the paths of fired particles and scrambling the results of experiments before re-assembling, effectively blocking advancement of the science. Since they can move through three-dimensional space at the speed of light, a single sophon is capable of disrupting all of Earth's particle accelerators.
Droplets
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