Questions tagged [remembrance-of-earths-past]
For questions about the science fiction novel series "Remembrance of Earth's Past" by the Chinese author Cixin Liu. This includes its first novel, "The Three-Body Problem." For questions about the 2024 Netflix TV series based on this series, use the [3-body-problem-2024] tag instead. If your question is overlapping in scope, you may use both tags.
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Why can the sophons not enter the sophon-free room?
In Death's End, we are introduced to sophon-free rooms where sophons are unable to enter. Given their small size, what is stopping them from entering the room when the door opens for someone to enter ...
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Why exactly could Sophon not tell Luo Ji and Cheng Xin how to send a safety notice?
In Death's End, Luo Ji asks Sophon if there's a way to send out a 'safety notice' to the universe and she responds in the affirmative. But then proceeds to say that "I can tell you nothing more. ...
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Why didn't Luo Ji tell everyone what Ye Wenjie told him?
In The Dark Forest, while Luo Ji was trying to figure out the significance of what Ye Wenjie told him about cosmic sociology, why didn't he just publicly announce the few things she had said so the ...
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Why is it impossible to escape a Black Domain?
While reading Death's End, I realised that there seems to be a big problem with the concept of a domain.
My understanding of the concept of escape velocity is that it is the minimal necessary speed ...
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What was the "safety broadcast"?
In Death's End, the final installment of the Remembrance of Earth's Past series, there is a scene in which Cheng Xin and Luo Ji are invited to tea with Sophon, an embodiment of the Trisolaran's sophon....
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What is "Military Democracy" as referenced in Death's End?
In Liu Cixin's Rememberance of Earth's Past series book 3: Death's End, Cheng Xin has joined the PIA – planetary defence intelligence agency – as an intern. Her boss presents as an acerbic yet ...
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How is this fission-drive supposed to work?
In the second installment of Remembrance of Earth's Past (AKA the 3-Body Problem series), The Dark Forest, one of the scientific advances is a fission-driven spacecraft. That is that a "non-...
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Why did Ye Wenjie give Luo Ji the axioms of cosmic sociology?
In the prologue of The Dark Forest, Ye Wenjie has a conversation with Luo Ji in which she reveals the "axioms of cosmic sociology" as well as the concepts of "chains of suspicion" ...
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Why was the name for Death's End changed in translation?
The final book in Cixin Liu's Three Body series was titled in Chinese, 死神永生. The first 2 characters translated literally mean "death spirit", a personification of death. In English an ...
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Why did the Trisolarans announce their one weakness?
Early in the novel, Ye Wenjie makes a brief appearance and suggests to astronomer Luo Ji that he consider creating a new branch of science, the sociology of interplanetary society. This would be based ...
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In "Death's End" by Cixin Liu, is there a fundamental issue with the "sheet of paper" mechanics/physics? [closed]
The issue is with the "sheet of paper" concept. Spoilers ahead.
In the story, a two-dimensional plane is shot into the solar system and as it interacts with three-dimensional matter, it ...
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Why were the authorities so lenient towards Ye Wenjie?
During her interrogation, Ye Wenjie confesses to at least the following:
This is in addition to the fact that she has been caught red-handed
It would seem that she would meet easily the threshold ...
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Is Trisolaris an allegory of the Cultural Revolution?
The defining characteristic of life for the Trisolarans is that it is chaotic. Phenomena of the natural world which most humans would instinctively think of as fixed and eternal, such as tides and ...
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Why didn't the Trisolarans use sophons as probes?
As soon as the Trisolarans receive Ye's transmission, the supreme leader orders their migration/invasion fleet, still under construction, to set out in the direction of the radio transmission as soon ...
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Why is the "listening device" on Trisol also a transmitter?
The "listening device" on Trisol was used to send transmissions to Earth. Later those transmissions were observed by another distant civilization.
Why did it even have the ability to ...
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Why not use sophons to freeze the whole planet?
Trisolarans knew about the rule "sit silent," so they should not allow Earth to send another transmission. That means they must use sophon to freeze Earth (just like what happened with the ...
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Was Battle Command Centre aware they were dealing with an extraterrestrial civilization?
Early in the book, protagonist Wang Miao is introduced to Battle Command Centre and given to understand that there is some kind of war or struggle going on, although he's unclear who or what they are ...
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Why did the Trisolarans allow the Judgment Day to be destroyed?
Mike Evans, an embittered environmentalist, hopes that the Trisolarans will destroy human life. To that end, he sets up a powerful transmitting and receiving station aboard a converted oil tanker, ...
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On what basis did the Trisolarans conclude that humans were warlike?
After receiving a radio transmission from Earth, the operator of a Trisolaran listening station chooses to send a warning against further transmissions. Summoned to explain himself, he says:
We ...
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Are there inconsistencies in folding matter in "Remembrance of Earth's Past"?
I just finished reading the Three-Body Problem and its sequels. I am a little confused about the nature of the Dual Vector Foil and why it's such a terrifying weapon.
In The Three-Body Problem, the ...
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What was going to happen when the countdown ended?
In Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem, protagonist Wang Miao starts having strange experiences, beginning with a "timestamp" appearing on photographs taken with his old-fashioned non-...
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Are there any erotic/sex scenes in the second and third books ("The Dark Forest" and "Death's End")?
I have already read the first book (The Three Body Problem), and I'm thinking of buying the whole series for someone I know and respect. The problem is that relations might be genuinely strained if I ...
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What was the rationale for the Red Coast programme?
In Liu Cixin's novel The Three Body Problem, astrophysicist Ye Wenjie is snatched up by agents of the Chinese government to take part in a special weapons programme involving the use of high-energy ...
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In Cixin Liu’s “Remembrance of Earth's Past" trilogy, why does it take the Trisolaran fleet 400 years to reach the solar system?
In Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, why does it take the Trisolaran fleet 400 years to reach the solar system if it can achieve a speed of 1/10 the speed of light, given that Alpha ...
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What is the meaning of "the mouthpiece of certain power"?
From Joel Martinsen's English translation of Liu Cixin's The Dark Forest (page 231 in my paperback edition):
Einstein said, "I have thought this over for a long time, and I believe that the Lord'...
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How did Ding Yi and the Lieutenant Colonel know what was going to happen?
All they had deduced is that:
Did they simply mentally exhaust the other potential reasons for its behaviour?
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Why does 4D navigation work like this?
At one point in Cixin Liu's novel "Death's End", humans enter a bubble of four-dimensional space.
The author explains that, as their equipment is only designed for three dimensions, they are ...
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Why is a wallbreaker's success implied to be "final"?
In Cixin Liu's Trisolaris novel trilogy, in particular in the second book "The Dark Forest", a small number of humans acts as so-called "wallfacers". They are supposed to devise a (...
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What American film was mentioned in Cixin Liu's "The Dark Forest"?
In The Dark Forest, p. 298, Cixin Liu's character, Rey Diaz, described a dead man's switch.
Rey Diaz brought down his left hand and covered the cradle with his sleeve. "I was taught this ...
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What is the "three and three hundred thousand syndrome"?
I am reading Death's End, the third book of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, and I have come upon this concept again, but I have since forgotten its meaning (I am reading things in a very ...
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What does "Death's End" refer to?
In the book "Death's End" there certainly are a LOT of endings to things (the story, the solar system, certain people's lives, etc.) but death isn't specifically one of them.
So what is the title ...
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Significance of characters names?
Although the books of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy were brilliantly translated into English, of course the Chinese (and presumably other) names of the characters seemed to be unmodified.
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Why did the Trisolarans share information with humans during the Deterrence Era?
They shared, at least, the science behind gravitational wave transmission and neutrino communications. Possibly other things.
It is not clear to me what their motivation for this was. Although for ...
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What was the chronology & dates of the various eras of human history?
What is the chronology & dates of the various eras of human history from the start of the first Trisolaran contact?
e.g., "crisis era", etc.
As far as I am aware these gradually emerge ...
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Why did the droplet allow itself to be inspected?
In The Dark Forest (second part of the Remembrance of Earth's Past series), the Trisolaran 'droplet' probe was briefly examined by humans before it began its systematic and devastating attack on their ...
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In the novel The Three-Body Problem, does the Sun's amplification of radio transmissions have a scientific basis?
Per Wikipedia
[...] However, she is rescued at the last minute by Yang Weining and Lei Zhicheng, two military physicists working under Red Coast (a Chinese initiative for alien communication ...
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Why didn't the droplet kill Luo Ji in Dark Forest?
I just finished reading The Dark Forest, second part of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy.
My question is, (spoiler alert):
It seems like it could have done away with him once and for all. A ...
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What are the light and short membranes in Death's End?
In Death's End, the waves being transmitted for communication are classified as medium, long, light and short.
Picking up coordinates was the job of the main core, which swallowed all the messages ...
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How much is a "grain of time" in Death's End?
In Cixin Liu's novel Death's End, an alien creature that goes by the name Singer measures time in "grains of sand". How much is this unit in human time?
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What is the significance of the V-suit?
The 3body online game is accessed exclusively through so-called V-suits: a made-up term for a made-up VR system comprised of a HMD and a haptic feedback full-body suit.
The law of conservation of ...
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In The Three Body Problem, why didn't they simply do this to solve their problem?
At the end of The Three Body Problem, we discover that the Trisolarans are able to 2-dimensionalize a proton and make it into a computer called a sophon.
The 2-dimensional sophon stretches across the ...
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Where did the term "sophont" originate?
I recently finished Ken Liu's phenomenal English translation of Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem, and the term "sophon" to describe an AI constructed out of a sub-atomic particle reminded me of the ...
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What is the Charles Miser research that the end space from Death's End based on?
Toward the end of the last book of the Remembrance of Earth's Past series, Death's End, there is (spoiler):
The cosmologist in that part recognizes the cubic space through the research of Charles ...
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Did Luo Ji know Yang Dong?
In The Dark Forest, Ye Wenjie passes along the "axioms of cosmic sociology" to Luo Ji while visiting Yang Dong's grave.
Why was Luo Ji at Yang Dong's grave? Did they know each other?
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