Every Era Puts Invisible Shackles On Those Who Have Lived Through It, And I Can Only Dance In My Chains.

Unfortunately, I cannot see the Milky Way from my backyard because of light pollution.

Juo Li, cosmic sociologist from the sequel to The Three Body Problem

Read an interview with Cixin Liu, the author of The Three-Body Problem!

我点燃了火，却控制不了它。

I started the fire, but I couldn’t control how it burnt.  

Stephan Martinier’s cover art for the Tor versions of the Rememberance Of Earth’s Past (a.k.a. Three Body) trilogy by Liu Cixin.

[Top to bottom:  The Three-Body Problem; The Dark Forest; Death’s End.]

The ultimate art gallery, the wonders and magic of space

Well I just finished The Dark Forest (3 body problem bk. 2) and now have nothing to do until September 20th.

Cixin Liu [x]

“Oh, heavens! Starry Sky!” AA cried out.

Cheng Xin knew that she was referring to Van Gogh’s  painting. True, the universe really did look like the painting. The painting in her memory was almost a perfect copy of the two-dimensional Solar System before her eyes. Giant planets filled space, the areas of the planets seeming to exceed even the gaps between them. But the immensity of the planets did not give them any sense of substantiality. Rather, they looked like whirlpools in space-time. In the universe, every part of space flowed, churned, trembled between madness and horror like fiery flames that emitted only frost. The Sun and the planets and all substance and existence seemed to be only hallucinations produced by the turbulence of space-time. 

Cheng Xin now recalled the strange feeling she had experienced each time she had looked at Van Gogh’s painting. Everything else in the painting - the trees that seemed to be on fire, and the village and mountains at night - showed perspective and depth, but the starry sky above had no three-dimensionality at all, like a painting hanging in space. 

Because the starry night was two-dimensional.

How could Van Gogh have painted such a thing in 1889? Did he, having suffered a second breakdown, truly leap across five centuries and see the sight before them using only his spirit and delirious consciousness? Or, maybe it was the opposite: He had seen the future, and the sight of this Last Judgment had caused his breakdown and eventual suicide.

Death’s End (p. 529), Cixin Liu