⛔ Spoilers ahead!! You have been warned.

Intro

Recently, I got the opportunity to read the renowned sci-fi series 'The Three Body Problem', an absolute masterpiece that has transformed Chinese Sci-fi literature and garnered generations of fans. Despite its brilliance, many parts still did not escape my judgemental eyes 👁️👃👁️. Here's a quick list of my issues with the series.

Rating System

To make my review of the books not an absolute jumbled mess of random thoughts, here is a quick rating system that I will use to categorize my feedback:

Types of commentary:

• PH: Plot holes, parts of the plot that logically don't add up
• Exp: Exploration needed, worthy of more exploration
• Cr: Critics, parts I did not like

Severity score:

• 🚨: Hmm that's a bit odd, but whatever. Carry on.
• 🚨🚨: Ok, I think that will effect my views of this book.
• 🚨🚨🚨: Major issue that effects my views of the entire series.

---

Book 1: The Three Body Problem

My grips 😠

📙 Plot

• 🚨 Exp: Did they ever explain why Radar Peak caused those weird phenomenon like snow fall that turns to ice and flocks of birds dying?
• 🚨🚨 Exp: Would have loved to know what would have happened after the count down in Wang Miao's eyes ended.
• 🚨 Cr: Why was the best idea to use nano-molecular threads to cut Judgement Day?? There really weren't any better ideas?
• 🚨🚨 PH: If Wang Miao could infiltrate the ETO, why didn't anyone else? Between all of the international central intelligence agencies, no one else sent in another spy?
• 🚨🚨🚨 Cr: Oddly convenient that Ye WenJie met this ultra rich billionaire Mike Evans who bought into the Alien destroy Earth idea so easily.
  • It's also weird that Evans invited Ye WenJie to visit him again years later despite them barely conversing during their first meeting.
• 🚨🚨🚨 Exp: So based on my understanding, Wei Cheng (Shen Yufei's husband) provided Wang Miao a copy of his solution to the Three Body Problem and Wang brought it into the 3body game, but nothing came out of that. Wouldn't the solution have brought great value to the Trisolarians? At the very least it could help them predict when their sun would consume their planet. That might have created ripple effects to the rest of the plot.
  • Also the Redemptionists, at the time, ran the 3body game, didn't they care the most about solving the three body problem and broking peace amongst the two civilizations?
• 🚨🚨 Exp: Would have loved to see them explore what could have been done to escape the effects of sophons hindering fundamental particle research.
  • For example, could any statistical models be created to predict which results are more likely to be correct vs incorrect by leveraging historical data.
  • Another example, since sophons get smashed during particle collision, could we create some high frequency and high energy collisions that break sophons into smithereens giving them no chance to reassemble (this method would require some level of deception).

🤴 Character

• 🚨 Exp: Wish there was more explanation around how Wang Miao's wife and son reacted to his strange behaviors: playing a 4d video game 8hrs a day, stopped going to work, and not coming home...
• 🚨🚨 Exp: How could Ye WenJie be so sure that the aliens could 'transform' humanity barely knowing anything about the respondents of her first message? You could attribute it to despair and desperation but still would have been worth more expansion considering the importance of this moment to the rest of the series.
• 🚨 Exp: Would have loved more explanation around Ye WenJie and her relationship with her daughter. Did she ever feel guilty about ruining the future for her descendants?
• 🚨🚨 PH, Cr: Why did so many high-society intellectuals subscribe so easily to the idea of letting aliens DESTROY ALL OF HUMANITY? Do they not have offsprings and family they care about?
• 🚨🚨 Cr: Felt really reductive to suggest that the lower-class and less-educated members of ETO formed the Survivors alliance and the intellectuals formed the Adventists. So more education makes you care less about legacy and survival? Lower-class == lower Maslow's hierarchy of needs?? Me no like.
• 🚨 Exp: The author mentioned that there was almost a mirror effect on Trisolaris when they discovered earth. Just like the ETO was formed on Earth there were Trisolarians that worshipped Humanity. Wish there was more development on what that looked like. Did they interfere with Trisolaris' military like how the ETO is interfering Earth's government?

My compliments to the chef 🤌

• 💖 Loved Part 1 of the book that go into an examination of the frenzy and hysteria that went on in the 60s. It gives a real example of how a society can devolve into mania and subscribe to illogical beliefs. Gives some credence to how some people can subscribe to the extreme beliefs of the ETO.
• 💖 Great character building for Ye WenJie. Such a well developed character whose extreme beliefs and actions are justified through the view into her life.
• 💖 Extremely creative concept for the sophons, intelligent multi-dimensional protons. I loved the scene where the proton was unfolded into 3-dimensional space and some form of microscopic intelligent society created the shape of giant eyes in the sky of Trisolaris. Amazing exploration of the philosophies of this world.
• 💖 Da Shi is a great comedic relief addition to the book. His presence lightened up an otherwise really grim plot.
  • I really loved the character's explanation of how although the Trisolarians perceive humanity as bugs, they failed to realize how bugs are some of the most reliant creatures on the face of this planet.
• 💖 I love the writing style of the author. There is never a dull moment, and you rarely feel like anything you read is 'extra' or irrelevant to the plot.

---

Book 2: Dark Forest

My grips 😠

📙 Plot

• 🚨🚨 Cr, Exp, PH: I find the Wallfacer project extremely unrealistic, in the sense that even in a semi-rational society this idea would never come to be.

  1. Seems arbitrary that you'd pick 4 people (why not 1, or 6) from this particular time period (why can't people from future time periods be selected/added to the Wallfacer project) to leverage all of earth's resources to conceive of a plan.
  2. What would happen in the case that the Wallfacers' plans conflicted with one another. In some sense, their projects did. Were there no considerations around this? You know communication can't solve this problem because the purpose of the Wallfacers is deception and concealment.
  3. In the UN's announcement ceremony for the project, all the Wallfacers seemed to know that they were going to be selected (they behaved normally) except for Louji. Why is that?
  4. Why were only two type of people selected for the project: military strategist and scientists? For a project whose main advantage lies in deception and concealment you'd think they'd select other personas like magicians, monks, or even con artists. It would have made for a way more interesting story if there was a more diverse cast of characters.
  5. Feel like it wouldn't have been the worst idea to conduct some form of psychiatric evaluation on the Wallfacers prior to their selection so that not absolute maniacs are selected for the project.

• 🚨🚨🚨 Cr, PH: So you are telling me that Da Shi was able to find an EXACT COPY of Louji's dream girl (in appearance and behavior), AND SHE WAS ALSO WORKING FOR THE UN THE WHOLE TIME?? How long did Da Shi even have to find this person? In the books it didn't sound like there was a large passage of time between him drawing the dream girl to bringing her to the Garden of Eden. Seems like quite a grave plot hole given that Louji's entire motivation to save humanity was contingent on this woman.

  • I did read on Reddit that it may be a translation issue as most Chinese readers interpreted her character as a UN spy who had plastic surgery to transform her physical appearance, and intel from Da Shi to learn how to behave.
  • Even if she is a spy, whose assigned mission is to motivate Louji to complete his Wallfacer duties, she not only spent 5 years with this man, had a child with him, and agreed to bring her AND her child to Doomsday to potentially suffer the ultimate destruction of humanity.

• 🚨🚨 Cr: After the time skip to 200 years in the future, and after finding out that Hine's had actually mind-sealed much of the Space Force with Escapist mentality, why would that still be a problem? The people with the mind-seals likely died off many years ago. Were they scared that their off-springs/descendants carried on that thought? I barely subscribe to a fraction of my parent's beliefs... seems like an overreaction.

• 🚨🚨 PH: When the probe was first launched George Fitzroy and Albert Ringier discovered that the date of the launch of the probe was on the same date that Louji casted the spell on the other planet. This seems like a significant discovery that would have been passed down, so why did they still terminate the Wallfacer project 200 years later?

  • It doesn't seem like the future peoples forgot about Fitzroy and Ringier since they named one of the Hubble Telescopes (13?) after them, so why was this important discovery forgotten?
  • Did no one look into this within the 200 years time jump?

• 🚨🚨 PH: When Louji thought the probe was coming to kill him, he already knew that his spell had worked. Technically, there really isn't anything special about Louji besides the fact that he was blessed with his interaction with Ye WenJie years back. So why didn't he just tell someone his about the important knowledge that he possessed (the two axioms + chain of suspicion + explosion of technology), that way at least these critical knowledge isn't lost to the world.

• 🚨🚨 PH, Exp: Why did Evans/ETO have to kill Louji in secrecy? What would have killing him publicly have done when he himself didn't even know what was special about him.

• 🚨 Cr: I feel like what Louji knew wasn't all that special... 1. the universe is abundant with life as apparent from the discovery of Trisolaris; 2. The only way to survival is mutually assured destruction. No one else figured this out? I feel like the Author undermines the collective intelligence of humanity.

• 🚨 Exp: Why did the Trisolarians abandon the ETO? Would have loved a bit more explanation around that.

• 🚨🚨 Cr, Exp: The author made very limited effort into explaining why humanity sent their WHOLE 2000 ship fleet to intercept the probe. I feel like even a 6th grader knows not to do that. And of the 2000 only 1 of those ships were prepared with deep space fluid??

  • Also why did humanity believe so quickly that it would be a peace probe with little to no threats? Doesn't seem like human nature to be so trusting.

• 🚨 PH: When Trisolaris was negotiating with Louji at the end of the probe, whey couldn't they have taken that time to use the probe to disarm the nukes that would have created the signals? Louji wouldn't have had to resources to know that that was going on. And no one else knew that Louji was having this conversation with Trisolarians. But this would involve deception which we already know that the Trisolarians were not adept at.

• 🚨 Cr: I understand that this book came out 15 years ago, but was there really that insignificant amount of progression in software in 200 years?? The author didn't even think a basic form of AI could be created from binary computing.

🤴 Character

• 🚨🚨 Cr: I am very displeased with the portrayal of women within this book, especially of the character Zhuang Yan. She essentially has no personality or mind (her speech replicates what Louji believes she would say), and her only purpose is to motivate the main character to complete his manifest destiny. She's purely a plot device.
  • Even the portrayal of Dongfang Yanxu seemed sketchy. There was a focus on her 'purity' that manifested into trustworthiness, and a hint at slight romantic chemistry between her and Zhang Beihai which seemed unnecessary.
• 🚨🚨 Cr: So Keiko, Hine's wife, was his Wallbreaker, and he had absolutely no idea of this?? Really? ok...
• 🚨 Cr: Near the end of the book when Trisolarians saw Louji and his family they asked "Is this love?" and Louji replied "Yes." Is it really though? Is having a family with your dream woman conceived from your very own fantasies the definition of love?? Seems like a somewhat shallow understanding of what love is.

🌲🪐 Dark Forest Theory

• 🚨🚨🚨 Cr: I don't like the book's interpretation of the Fermi's Paradox ("If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now."). In the book, they assume that no one has reached out yet not because life is scarce or maybe there is a Great Filter, but rather species choose to keep their mouth shut to avoid destruction by other more powerful species. And the Author comments on the fact that only Humanity is dumb enough to send signals out to the universe. By this logic, within the laws of the book's universe, if life is so abundant, there has to be at least a couple dozen of species equally as dumb if not dumber than Humanity. Then why haven't we received any signals from them?

  • Okay, you can say that 1. Universe is ever expanding and large; 2. The dumber species may have been destroyed before their signals reached us. BUT I would rebut, if we assume that most species follow a similar pattern of growth/development (akin to Erikson's Stages of Development within humans), most species would have gone through a phase of curiosity and outward benevolence like the humans in this book has. Now, following the logic that life is abundant in this universe, then more ancient civilizations would have existed in earlier phases of the universe when galaxies were closer together/more dense. If they sent a signal back then, you'd think their voices would have reverberated across the universe even as it had expanded. Why didn't humanity hear any ancient callings from eons before?

• 🚨🚨🚨 Cr: The character Louji disproved the Dark Forest theory within his very own actions, within this very book. At the end of the book, when negotiating with Trisolaris, he said, since your technology is progressing linearly but ours is exponential, if you don't kill humanity then we can help you develop technology that will eventually help you escape your predicament. Doesn't this collaboration prove that species actually benefit more from working together? Doesn't the collaboration between the ETO and Trisolaris also prove that better things can get done with collaboration? Wouldn't other species in the universe have realized this too?

  • I would also like to propose that species who fall into the trap of the chain of suspicion and determines that destruction of the other is the only logical course of action would have destroyed themselves before they can destroy others. We even see within the book that in an environment with scarcity like among the escaping fleets, the chain of suspicion manifests intraspecies just like it would manifest interspecies. Like how the Escaping fleets barely killed themselves, and has a narrow chance of surviving out there alone in the universe I think it can be applied similarly to a planetary level where the destruction of others leads to the destruction of self.
  • There's also the idea of the 'Ultimate Resource Theory' by Julian Lincoln Simon which proposes that large quantities of intelligence and ingenuity can lead to solutions to scarcity. For example, it's only with a population of billions that we can get great thinkers like Einstein or Steve Jobs, this is likely not possible with a population of thousands. So destroying and limiting intelligence is counter-intuitive to solving the problem of scarcity.

• 🚨🚨 Cr: Why would the distant alien planet destroy the planet where they detected intelligence. Isn't the purpose of dark forest a fight for resources. Wouldn't they want to "concur" the planets rather than to destroy it.

• 🚨🚨 Cr, PH: This critic goes back to the idea that cooperation/co-existence might benefit alien civilizations more than mutual destruction: but why couldn't Trisolarians have found another Trisolaris like planet with a better star and just terraformed it. It seemed like they definitely had the technology to do so (think unfolding of sophons, strong interaction force material, and ships that could travel 4 light years). It would have been x2 easier to do that then to take over Earth which involves killing all of humanity AND terraform the planet.

  • If they need water they can get it from icy comets.

My compliments to the chef 🤌

• 💖 I loved the Preface where the dialogue and meeting between LuoJi and Ye Wenjie is interjected with the description of an ants journey across the tombstone of Yang Dong. So beautifully writing and ties so well into the theme of 'life on different scales'.
• 💖 I loved the idea that in a species whose thoughts are transparent, there is no concept of lying, deception, or strategy. It's a skill that we do take for granted.
• 💖 I really enjoyed the scene where Zhang Beihai assassinated the government officials and made it seemed like a meteor shower. Was very creative and action packed.
• 💖 Loved the design of the future underground cities. Very cool to think how buildings would be in the shape of trees that stretch from the ground to the 'sky' with rooms as leafs on a tree.
• 💖 Loved how they brought back the character of Da shi. Good choice.

---

Book 3: Death's End

Reading it now :D