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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Liu Cixin
Read between
August 16 - August 23, 2025
“Do you know how old this tree was?” “You can count the rings.” Ma pointed to the stump. “I did. More than three hundred and thirty years. Do you remember how long it took you to saw through it?” “No more than ten minutes. Let me tell you, I’m the fastest chain saw operator in the company. Whichever squad I’m with, the red flag for model workers follows me.” Ma Gang’s excitement was typical of most people Bai paid attention to. To be featured in the Great Production News would be a considerable honor. “More than three hundred years! A dozen generations. When this tree was but a shrub, it was
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The trunk was dragged away. Rocks and stumps in the ground broke the bark in more places, wounding the giant body further. In the spot where it once stood, the weight of the fallen tree being dragged left a deep channel in the layers of decomposing leaves that had accumulated over the years. Water quickly filled the ditch. The rotting leaves made the water appear crimson, like blood.
this was so, then how many other acts of humankind that had seemed normal or even righteous were, in reality, evil?
Is it possible that the relationship between humanity and evil is similar to the relationship between the ocean and an iceberg floating on its surface? Both the ocean and the iceberg are made of the same material. That the iceberg seems separate is only because it is in a different form. In reality, it is but a part of the vast ocean.…
It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race. This thought determined the entire direction of Ye’s life.
“Astrophysics. Useless now.” Ye did not even lift her head. “You study the stars. How can that be useless? Colleges have reopened recently, but they’re not taking graduate students. For highly educated and skilled individuals like you to be sent to a place like this…”
What’s done is done. When you make a mistake, what’s important is to recognize it and correct it.
The coldness penetrated into her bones, and the world in her eyes turned milky white. She felt that the entire universe was a huge block of ice, and she was the only spark of life within it. She was the little girl about to freeze to death, and she didn’t even have a handful of matches, only illusions.…
As Ye watched, the figure waving the flag became Bai Mulin, his glasses reflecting the flames raging below the building; then it turned into Representative Cheng; then her mother, Shao Lin; then her father. The flag-bearer kept on changing, but the flag waved ceaselessly, like a perpetual pendulum, counting down the remainder of her short life. Gradually, the flag grew blurry; everything grew blurry. The ice that filled the universe once again sealed her at its center. Only this time, the ice was black.
Her father said, “Theory is the foundation of application. Isn’t discovering fundamental laws the biggest contribution to our time?”
“You’re right. Even a fish can be used to commit a crime.
Which is more real? The world inside or outside these walls?
“She was like a star, always so distant. Even the light she shone on me was always cold.” Ding walked to one of the windows and looked up at the night sky.
“If you know more, you’ll only get pulled in deeper. Right now you’re just superficially involved, but with more knowledge your spirit will be drawn in as well, and then it will mean real trouble.”
Can the fundamental nature of matter really be lawlessness? Can the stability and order of the world be but a temporary dynamic equilibrium achieved in a corner of the universe, a short-lived eddy in a chaotic current?
The farmer hypothesis, on the other hand, has the flavor of a horror story: Every morning on a turkey farm, the farmer comes to feed the turkeys. A scientist turkey, having observed this pattern to hold without change for almost a year, makes the following discovery: “Every morning at eleven, food arrives.” On the morning of Thanksgiving, the scientist announces this law to the other turkeys. But that morning at eleven, food doesn’t arrive; instead, the farmer comes and kills the entire flock.
He believed that technological progress was a disease in human society. The explosive development of technology was analogous to the growth of cancer cells, and the results would be identical: the exhaustion of all sources of nourishment, the destruction of organs, and the final death of the host body.
http://www.qsl.net/bg3tt/zl/mesdm.htm.
“Her father left behind some records. She listened to all of them and finally picked something by Bach as her favorite, listening to it over and over. That was the kind of music that shouldn’t have mesmerized a kid. At first I thought she picked it on a whim, but when I asked her how she felt about the music, she said that she could see in the music a giant building, a large, complex house. Bit by bit, the giant added to the structure, and when the music was over, the house was done.…”
“But she was a woman. A woman should be like water, able to flow over and around anything.”
“The Stable Era will continue. The universe is a machine. I created this machine. The Stable Era will continue. The universe…”
“No, emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness is a type of existence. You must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself.”
“Why did you have to come to the East to build a computer?” Wang asked Von Neumann. Von Neumann and Newton looked at each other, puzzled. “A computer? A computing machine! Such a thing exists?” “You don’t know about computers? Then what did you have in mind for completing the vast amount of calculations?” Von Neumann stared at Wang with wide-open eyes, as though his question made no sense. “Using people, of course. Other than people, what else in the world is capable of performing calculations?”
The content was not what anyone had imagined. It was a warning repeated three times. Do not answer! Do not answer!! Do not answer!!! Still caught up by the dizzying excitement and confusion, Ye deciphered a second message. This world has received your message. I am a pacifist in this world. It is the luck of your civilization that I am the first to receive your message. I am warning you: Do not answer! Do not answer!! Do not answer!!! There are tens of millions of stars in your direction. As long as you do not answer, this world will not be able to ascertain the source of your transmission.
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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.
YE: I don’t know. I really don’t know. In the eyes of Trisolaran civilization, we’re probably not even primitive savages. We might be mere bugs.
From the perspective of a more advanced civilization in the universe, bonfires and computers and nanomaterials are not fundamentally different. They all belong to the same level. That’s also why they still think of humans as mere bugs. Unfortunately, I think they’re right.”
The message flashed into existence for only two seconds and then disappeared, but everyone got it. It was only a single sentence: You’re bugs!
“I just want to ask the two of you one question: Is the technological gap between humans and Trisolarans greater than the one between locusts and humans?”
Over the western horizon, the sun that was slowly sinking into the sea of clouds seemed to melt. The ruddy sun dissolved into the clouds and spread over the sky, illuminating a large patch in magnificent, bloody red. “My sunset,” Ye whispered. “And sunset for humanity.”
