The Three-Body Problem (book 1)

Highlights

“So complicated!” His wife, a doctor, couldn’t understand why anyone would use such expensive but outdated equipment when ten- or even twenty-megapixel digital cameras were common. And he even used black-and-white film.

He once again felt the warmth that he had missed. In his current state, his mental stability depended on two pillars: this old woman, who had weathered so many storms and become as gentle as water, and Shi Qiang, the man who feared nothing because he knew nothing.

“Do you know about microwave ovens?” Ye shook her head. “They are a luxury plaything of the capitalist West.

She learned about something called FORTRAN, which allowed you to program using a language close to natural language. You could even type mathematical equations directly into the code!

Message to Extraterrestrial Civilizations First Draft [Complete Text] Attention, you who have received this message! This message was sent out by a country that represents revolutionary justice on Earth! Before this, you may have already received other messages sent from the same direction. Those messages were sent by an imperialist superpower on this planet. That superpower is struggling against another superpower for world domination so that it can drag human history backwards. We hope you will not listen to their lies. Stand with justice, stand with the revolution!

Fourth Draft [Complete Text] We extend our best wishes to you, inhabitants of another world.

The country that sent this message is engaged in this effort.

humanity live in poverty and misery. Human societies are working hard to resolve the difficulties and problems they face, striving to create a better future for Earth civilization. The country that sent this message is engaged in this effort.

Human societies are working hard to resolve the difficulties and problems they face, striving to create a better future for Earth civilization. The country that sent this message is engaged in this effort.

How wonderful it will be if the universe really contains other intelligences and other societies! Bystanders have the clearest view. Someone truly neutral will then be able to comment on whether we’re the heroes or villains of history.

This kind of thinking infused the second half of my life with a conflicted mentality: Sometimes I thought life was precious, and everything was so important; but other times I thought humans were insignificant,

I thought that life was truly an accident among accidents in the universe. The

universe was an empty palace, and humankind the only ant in the entire palace. This kind of thinking infused the second half of my life with a conflicted mentality: Sometimes I thought life was precious, and everything was so important; but other times I thought humans were insignificant, and nothing was worthwhile. Anyway, my life passed day after day accompanied by this strange feeling, and before I knew it, I was old.…”

I was too lazy to talk. I’ve always been lazy.”

The truly peaceful can find peace in a bustling city. And to attain that state, you need to empty yourself.”

Although the method is simple, it shows how, mathematically, random brute force can overcome precise logic. It’s a numerical approach that uses quantity to derive quality.

“Buddha, please help my Lord break away from the sea of misery.”

“The bus architecture is a great invention. New plug-in components, which can be made from up to ten divisions, can quickly be added to the main operation

“If even an extremely simple arrangement like the three-body system is unpredictable chaos, how can we have any faith in discovering the laws of the complicated universe?” “God is a shameless old gambler. He has

Ye’s rational consideration of humanity’s evil side began the day she read Silent Spring.

A single Lafayette- or Yankee-class submarine held enough warheads to destroy hundreds of cities and kill hundreds of millions, but most people continued their lives as if nothing was wrong.

In the face of madness, rationality was powerless.

As she pondered human nature, Ye was faced with an ultimate loss of purpose and sank into another spiritual crisis. She had once been an idealist who needed to give all her talent to a great goal, but now she realized that all that she had done was meaningless, and the future could not have any meaningful pursuits, either.

The message that was winging its way to the sun said, Come here! I will help you conquer this world. Our civilization is no longer capable of solving its own problems. We need your force to intervene.

Da Shi grinned. “Fucked if I know. Just a guess. A girl like that most likely has mother issues. After doing this for more than twenty years, I’m pretty good at reading people.”

In this tiny mountain hamlet deep in the Greater Khingan Mountains, something finally thawed in Ye Wenjie’s heart. In the frozen tundra of her soul, a tiny, clear lake of meltwater appeared.

“You’re right,” Shao Lin’s husband said coldly. “I’m only passing on a message from your mother.”

The small sliver of hope for society that had emerged in her soul had evaporated like a drop of dew in the sun. Her tiny sense of doubt about her supreme act of betrayal had also disappeared without a trace.

The period we live in now is far more frightening. Right now, species on Earth are going extinct far faster than during the late Cretaceous. Now is truly the age of mass extinctions! So, my child, what you’re seeing is nothing.

The ETO had once tried to develop membership among the common people, but these efforts all failed. The ETO concluded that the common people did not seem to have the comprehensive and deep understanding of the highly educated about the dark side of humanity.

Also unlike other human religions, it was the Lord who was in crisis, and the duty of salvation fell on the shoulders of the believer.

The mental states that Trisolarans needed were calmness and numbness.

The mental states that Trisolarans needed were calmness and numbness. The history of the past two hundred-some cycles of civilization proved that civilizations that relied on these two states as their spiritual core were the most capable of survival.

“The plan focuses on emphasizing the negative environmental effects of scientific development and showing signs of supernatural

power to the population of Earth. In addition to highlighting the negative effects of progress, we’ll also attempt to use a series of ‘miracles’ to construct an illusory universe that cannot be explained by the logic of science.

The Trisolarans who deemed the humans bugs seemed to have forgotten one fact: The bugs have never been truly defeated.

And so, satellite, hunger, stars, kerosene lamps, the Milky Way, the Cultural Revolution’s factional civil wars, a light-year, the flood … these seemingly unconnected things melded together and formed the early part of my life, and also molded the science fiction I write today.

I’ve always felt that extraterrestrial intelligence will be the greatest source of uncertainty for humanity’s future. Other great shifts, such as climate change and ecological disasters, have a certain progression and built-in adjustment periods, but contact between humankind and aliens can occur at any time. Perhaps in ten thousand years, the starry sky that humankind gazes upon will remain empty and silent, but perhaps tomorrow we’ll wake up and find an alien spaceship the size of the moon parked in orbit.

Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains.