The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)

by Liu Cixin

“Wait!” A man wearing a strangely shaped hat and a long beard stood up and spoke for the first time. “I’m Leonardo da Vinci.

The sizzling grease from the dead man inside oozed out on the ground and caught fire, giving the armor a pair of burning wings.

The abbot laughed and said, “Don’t worry. He has found emptiness.”

“Ah, good!” Von Neumann gave Wang a thumbs-up. “Computer—that’s a great name.

Wang performed some computations in his head and realized that even if the entire population of Earth were arranged into such a phalanx, the whole formation would fit inside the Huangpu District of Shanghai. Though it was powerful, the phalanx also revealed the fragility of civilization.

As the bodies drifted, their blood boiled in the vacuum and their inner organs were vomited out, until they turned into strange blobs surrounded by crystalline clouds made from the liquid they exuded.

Right then, at the frequency of 12,000 MHz, the sun was the brightest star in the entire Milky Way.

In the face of madness, rationality was powerless.

The thin curve, rising and falling, seemed to possess a soul. She was certain that the radio signal before her had been modulated by intelligence.

The sun had added a sine wave.

“I would never have thought that actual fucking aliens would be involved!”

After they left the gatehouse, Ye heard him say to the students: “Children, that was a scientist. A real, bona fide scientist!”

In Ye’s memory, these months seemed to belong to someone else, like a segment of another life that had drifted into hers like a feather.

In the frozen tundra of her soul, a tiny, clear lake of meltwater appeared.

No, humans do not need saving. They’re already living much better than they deserve.”

how are things any better in the wealthy countries? They protect their own environments, but then shift the heavily polluting industries to the poorer nations.

“Yes. The focus of Christianity is Man. Even though all the species were placed into Noah’s Ark, other species were never given the same status as humans.

This civilization possesses the terrifying ability to accelerate their progress.

Fifty Trisolaran hours later, the second attempt to unfold a proton into two dimensions began.

When the perspective has been raised to nine dimensions, a fundamental particle’s internal structures and complexity are equal to the whole universe.

The immense mirror that appeared over Trisolaris was the proton being unfolded, a geometric plane without any meaningful depth.

“This is the six-dimensional body of the proton projected into three-space.”

“My sunset,” Ye whispered. “And sunset for humanity.”

The key to a wonderful life is a fascination with something.