A Book Review: The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (Remembrance of Earth's Past #2)

In 2015, Cixin Liu's The Three Body Problem won Hugo Award for Best Novel, but it was only the beginning of a sci-fi epic in three acts. The second installment in this trilogy is called The Dark Forest. Like its predecessor, The Dark Forest was originally written in Chinese, and it received an English translation. This is a “hard” sci-fi novel (think of hard sci-fi as something like Arthur C Clarke's 2001 Space Odyssey).

The Three Body Problem was great, but I like The Dark Forest even more. This book is mind bending. I am going to avoid spoilers in my book review. This is why, this review will be devoid of a synopsis. Meanwhile, I find it difficult to describe my feelings after reading this book. Fortunately, I came across a video tribute for this book, it is called “Waterdrop”. The video captured my feelings; it is free of spoilers, and it is stunning.

I will start my review this way

Take a minute and think about these 2 questions:

Question 1 – if intelligent, extra terrestrial life exists elsewhere, then what would be humanity's position within this vast, and dark, universe?

Question 2 - if there exists a technologically advanced alien civilization, then why haven't they contacted us?

Now imagine this scenario. An alien civilization, with technology more advanced than ours, is coming to earth to wipe out humanity. We have 450 years until the alien fleet arrives on earth. The clock is ticking. How will we ensure humanity's survival? How will such an event affect us? This is the premise for The Dark Forest, and it revolves around 2 axioms for cosmic civilization:

Axiom A – Survival is the primary need of civilization

Axiom B – Civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.

These 2 axioms provide a key to humanity's salvation. Can you figure what it is? Halfway into the book, I figured out the solution to the problem, but it did not diminish my enjoyment of this book. Not at all. This book had me eagerly turning the pages because its plot twisted and turned unexpectedly. Meanwhile, the book's deeply flawed, but humane characters sank me right into this story, where I stood on these characters' shoulders, and witnessed the struggle for humanity's survival. This book seated me on an emotional roller coaster, some chapters landed me in a bottomless despair, while others lifted me to the crest of hope. What a remarkable journey this is!

In terms of its storytelling, The Dark Forest differs greatly to The Three Body Problem. This is a character driven story, and it thoroughly explored each character's life, thoughts, and emotions. I like what Cixin Liu has done here, it shows that he is a versatile author capable of varying his storytelling method, to establishing a different ambiance in the sequel.

The Dark Forest also differs to The Three Body Problem in terms of its themes. While The Three Body Problem was based on theoretical physics and numerical methods, The Dark Forest is mostly about evolution and sociology. This also means, some readers may find The Dark Forest more accessible than The Three Body Problem. For me, while I found the themes in both books equally attractive, but I did find the themes in The Dark Forest more thought provoking than its predecessor, it invites an exploration in philosophy.

I am going to stop my review here lest I spoil the story. Let me just say, The Dark Forest is a stunning piece of work in the sci-fi genre. This is one of the most satisfying, fun, and thought provoking book I have read. I highly recommend this trilogy.

End of book review

Below is an extra section, this is where I will share my personal reflection on this book. If you don't want spoilers, then please refrain yourself from reading this section.

WARNING: spoilers ahead:

Humanity has been asking this question: “Are we alone in this universe”?

This question has prompted numerous scientific researches into ET life, and it also inspired a generation of science fiction stories. Personally, I think it is very likely that we are alone. That is, we are most likely alone even if intelligent alien life exists elsewhere.

Huh? How can that be?

We have the tendency to anthropomorphizing the universe. We project our human morality (or, local morality) to the universe, believing that our local standard on earth, about kindness and generosity, is some sort of a cosmic standard to measure how things ought to be. The extent of this romantic notion can be seen in our popular sci-fi movies, such as Star Wars and Star Trek, where it imagines a galactic civilization in which various species of sentient creatures can peacefully co-exist. Yet, this is a scenario entirely based on the human values.

Think of it this way. Morality and cultures are products of adaptive challenges, for survival. It is a product of nature as well as nurture. Most human cultures share similar moral values, because we have similar biological makeup; we all live on earth, where the geological environments are similar and our distances from each other aren't so great. But if there exists some intelligent alien life on some planet thousands of light years away, then there is no guarantee they would be similar to us in anyway, both biologically and culturally.

This means, who knows what moral value may exist in an alien civilization, whose biological makeup and planetary environment are utterly “alien” to ours?

This is why, even if alien civilizations exist, then their values may not align with ours, leaving us "alone" in this universe.

Now, given those 2 axioms for cosmic civilization, is it really wise to persist in our romantic notion about the universe? Or perhaps such a romantic notion could invite our extinction?

The universe is 13 billion years old. If intelligent alien life exists elsewhere, and their civilization is older than ours, then there is no telling how technologically advanced they are. For the last 50 years we have made tremendous progress, reaching the information age. Yet, according to Kardashev Scale, for all of our progress in computers, energy generation and space flight, we haven't even reached type 1 civilization! So imagine, what would a type 2 or type 3 civilization look like? The depth of their technological prowess may be beyond our wildest imaginations!

In fact, if there exists an older, and more technologically advanced alien civilization than ours, then could it be that they are hunters stalking the dark forest that is the universe, scourging for its limited supplies and resources? Meanwhile, humanity, whose progress is comparable to a young child, lit a bonfire for the hunters and shouting naively: “hey I am here and I am nice, come to me and let's be friend!”.

Is that really wise?

This is why, I think we should discard our romantic notion about the universe. Just because our value is X doesn't mean others' value is X too. Instead of naively extending our invitation and generosity to the sky above, we ought to extend our standard, that of kindness and generosity, chiefly to our fellow human beings. Meanwhile, we should forever stay vigilant against the vast universe, to safeguard our fragile civilization therein.