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.
“The Three-Body Problem” stimulated a lot of interest even beyond the field of science fiction starting a trilogy in which the author sees in his own way the discovery of the existence of an alien species and the consequences of the discovery of the existence of humanity by the Trisolarans. The centrality of China, to the point of including elements of recent Chinese history, made it original. This sequel continues the story by addressing the crisis that began with the discovery of the Trisolarans’ plans for humanity.
“The Dark Forest” includes some great concepts but the initial part often seems trivial. This second novel has an even greater number of important characters than the first with several subplots that intertwine in various ways. Among these characters, you can say that Luo Ji, one of the Wallfacers, can be considered a sort of protagonist since his story is the one that is most often central.
The author follows Luo Ji’s personal story as well with his inability to have a stable relationship with a woman, to the point of not even remembering the names of women he had short relationships with. In general, there are very few significant female characters, a perplexing feature in a recent novel.
Meaningful male characters aren’t necessarily developed. Many of them come and go throughout the novel and only a few were introduced in the first novel. Not all of them are what they seem and in some cases, they hide important secrets that are revealed in twists but in my opinion, they lose strength precisely because they have a poor development that makes it difficult to be surprised by any behavior.
The author’s choice regarding the characters is curious thinking that
in many ways “The Dark Forest” is a psychological novel that tells the reactions to the threat of the Trisolarans. Humanity’s survival is at stake, so the consequences of an alien attack that starts from far away take centuries to develop.
On the bright side, the author describes in an interesting way the reactions of humanity on a social and political level, with factions carrying out very different plans. The problem is that reactions are described mainly at the level of groups of people leaving limited space for individuals but this makes it difficult to feel a connection with the characters.
In various cases, I wondered if I missed some pieces due to not having understood some cultural references. The novel contains many footnotes explaining some of those references but my doubt remains. In the first book, the Chinese setting made the story more interesting because it included parts of recent Chinese history but in this sequel, there’s no longer that reason of interest.
“The Dark Forest” offers a dark interpretation of the Fermi paradox. Personally, I hope that sentient species make other reflections and can find better solutions in their relationship with alien species. Liu Cixin’s ideas are sometimes interesting but overall, this novel left me far more perplexity than enthusiasm. If you liked the first novel and you’re interested in the themes related to the Trisolaran threat, you might like this sequel as well. It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.
