The Three-Body Problem

[Fish]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three ... em_(novel)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death%27s_End

Best thing since Frank Herbert's Dune, IMHO.

Opening up a thread for discussion if anyone's interested. Dear Leader has made multiple positive comments about the books so I had to check them out. This series is fiction and has nothing to do with FI/RE, but it engaged me and made me really think. The amount of science that the author was able to weave into the stories is impressive... it can very accurately be categorized as "science fiction." The third book was by far my favorite. After I finished it the first time, I immediately reread it.

If you want an idea of what it's about, Jacob explains the premise of the story in the Elon Musk thread. (Warning: spoiler alert.) The warning is provided out of an abundance of caution. That link doesn't give too much away and the first book can definitely be enjoyed starting with that knowledge... however you will not experience the fun (or frustration) of being confused and having to work out what is happening based on the limited information.

[TheWanderingScholar]

I have read the summary of this series, and it is up there with The Expanse series as books I need to read when I have time to work on them.

[Peanut]

Last year I became friends with a woman from China whose husband came to the States to study film and when I asked her about what was new in Chinese film she mentioned this series was huge over there and it was being adapted for the big screen. From IMDB it looks like the movie is in post-production hell, but Amazon may develop it into a tv series...

https://io9.gizmodo.com/report-amazon-m ... 1824110293

[Bankai]

Spoiler allert

It's a very well written sci-fi (won the hugo award after all) and both me and my wife enjoyed it tremendously. Although we only read the first 2 parts of the trilogy.

Not sure if it's very scientifical though - correct me if I'm wrong but afaik it takes a while for life to develop (hundreds of millions of years or more?) so would it be even possible on such a volatile and unstable planet as the one where the aliens came from? Not to mention the whole idea of dehydration. There were other bits that made me think 'that's not possible' so it was helpful to follow Adler's advice of suspending logic/reason and immense in author's world.

The second part is around author's own proposed solution to the fermi paradox (not 100% sure if it's a new idea or just a variation of something proposed before - there were hundreds of possible solutions to the paradox suggested over last 60+ years so it's possible someone already thought/wrote about it). It's probably a good idea to know something about the fermi paradox before reading it. Waitbutwhy had a good piece about it:

https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

Also there were some books written about it, the one I started reading a while back presents few dozens of possible solutions:

https://www.amazon.com/Universe-Teeming ... 0387955011

Anyway, the books are really good and definitely worth a read for anyone interested is sci-fi. Just remember it's a fiction.

[TheWanderingScholar]

@Bankai:

Agreed. The Fermi Paradox solution is kind of iffy to stand upon; honestly I believe humans are the first species around in our local cluster as the least logical flawed solution.

As for the specific the science? I imagine in this case it is mostly just a case of science serving fiction.

[jacob]

@TWS - We're only reasonably sure that we are the first species with a industrialized civilization on this planet
https://phys.org/news/2018-04-ancient-i ... gical.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian_hypothesis
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.03748.pdf

[prognastat]

Interesting, it looks like my local library has it so I may check it out. It looks like they even offer it in ebook format.

[jacob]

Netflix turned the first book into an 8 episode series, which is out now.
https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/ ... lease-date

Having read the books, my only disappointment would be if it wasn't renewed for at least a second season(*), since part 1 kinda leaves things hanging. (Compare to the Lord of The Rings trilogy.) Having not read the books, DW, who otherwise has Holmesian skills in movie watching, struggled a bit to figure out what was going on along the way but it will all be explained in the end. (IIRC, it was explained more upfront in the book.) Perhaps this is intentional in order to make it rewatchable for the non-readers.

(*) A major problem being that each episode apparently cost $20M to make. Since this has the potential to become a cult classic, maybe it would have been better to spend $6M per episode and guarantee all three parts even if it meant giving up some spectacular scenes at the cost bringing in more conceptual ideas. But what do I know.