Cixin Liu - The Dark Forest

“Of course she’s not afraid. She knows that the sun will rise again tomorrow.”

“A milestone in Chinese science fiction.”

“The best kind of science fiction.”

“Vivid, imaginative and rooted in cutting-edge science… Cixin stands at the top tier of speculative fiction in any language”

“Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.”

“This is a must-read in any language.”

“Liu Cixin’s writing evokes the thrill of exploration and the beauty of scale…. Extraordinary.”

CIXIN LIU is the most prolific and popular science-fiction writer in the People’s Republic of China. Liu is an eight-time winner of the Galaxy Award (the Chinese Hugo) and a winner of the Nebula Award. Prior to becoming a writer, he worked as an engineer in a power plant in Yangquan, Shanxi.

JOEL MARTINSEN is the managing editor of Danwei.org, a website that publishes translations from the Chinese print media and online forums and blogs. He has been a fan of Chinese science fiction since 2003, when he attended a science fiction studies course at Beijing Normal University. His translation of an excerpt of Liu Cixin’s Ball Lightning appeared in the December 2009 issue of Words Without Borders.

1967: University student Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during the Cultural Revolution. His crime? Failure to recant his belief in science. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.

Four decades later, after a spate of apparent suicides among elite scientists, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of international scientists.

During the course of his investigation, Wang is inducted into a mysterious online game that immerses him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns.

This is the Three-Body Problem and it is the key to everything. The key to the scientist’s deaths, the key to humanity’s place in the cosmos and the key to the extinction-level threat it now faces.

The universe is a forest, patrolled by numberless and nameless predators. In this forest, others are hell, a dire existential threat. Stealth is survival. Any civilisation that reveals its location is prey.

Earth has. And the others are on the way.

The Trisolarian fleet has left their homeworld and will arrive… in four centuries’ time. But the sophons, their extra-dimensional emissaries, are already here and have infiltrated human society and and de-railed scientific progress. Only the individual human mind remains immune to the sophons. This is the motivation for the Wallfacer Project, a last-ditch defence that grants four individuals almost absolute power to design secret strategies, hidden through deceit and misdirection from Earth and Trisolaris alike. Three of the Wallfacers are influential statesmen and scientists, but the fourth is a total unknown. Luo Ji, an unambitious Chinese astronomer, is baffled by his new status. All he knows is that he’s the one Wallfacer that Trisolaris wants dead.

Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge. With human science advancing daily and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations will soon be able to co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But the peace has also made humanity complacent.

Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the early 21st century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings with her knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, and her very presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?

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This publication was arranged by Hunan Science & Technology Press. Originally published in China as 黑暗森林 in 2008, by Chongqing Publishing Group.

First published in English the United States in 2015 as The Dark Forest by Tom Doherty Associates.

The edition first published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by Head of Zeus

Copyright © 2008 by 刘慈欣 (Liu Cixin)

English translation © 2015 by China Educational Publications Import & Export Corp., Ltd.

Translation by Joel Martinsen

Cover art by Stephen Martiniere

The moral right of 刘慈欣 (Liu Cixin) to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

The moral right of Joel Martinsen to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.