The novel “The Dark Forest” by Liu Cixin was published for the first time in 2008. It was translated into English by Joel Martinsen. It’s the second book of the trilogy known as The Three-Body Problem or Remembrance of Earth’s Past and follows “The Three-Body Problem”.

The threat of the Trisolarans has become public knowledge, and this includes the use of sophons by the aliens to interfere with scientific advances on Earth. The aliens’ strategies have been discovered but it’s difficult to find countermeasures knowing that the enemy is listening.

The strategy that is established is to create a very small group of Wallfacers, four people who can have access to any resource to create a defense plan that must not be communicated to anyone. However, the humans who work with the Trisolarans assign each of them a Wallbreaker to discover their plan and make it public.