Science Fiction: The Remembrance Of Earth`s Past By Cixin Liu

(Drivebycuriosity) - Are we alone in the universe? There is a lot speculation about possible life somewhere outside. The Chinese author Cixin Liu wrote a trilogy about this topic, called  "The Remembrance Of Earth`s Past". Book one, "The Three Body Problem", received the Hugo Award, it was followed by "The Dark Forrest" & "Death`s End" (amazon You can find synopses here wikipedia).

The trilogy is build around these axioms: We are not alone - there are plenty other civilizations in the universe. Each civilization's goal is survival. Like hunters in a "dark forest", a civilization can never be certain of an alien civilization's true intentions. Therefore it is in every civilization's best interest to preemptively strike and destroy any developing civilization before it can become a threat, but without revealing their own location.

Liu wove a huge space opera - a scifi epic on a grand scale comparable to Homer´s Odyssey and  Richard Wagner´s Ring cycle. He plays with the laws of physics and mathematics and translates  relativity, string theory, quantum physics and much more science into speculative & fascinating fiction, often apocalyptic and bizarre. 

Even though I got sometimes exhausted by the tsunami of  events and by a long list of Chinese names and characters I really enjoyed the massive plot. Reading the trilogy was not only fun, it animated me also to think again about the universe around us, about possible aliens and how they might respond to us.

The "Remembrance Of Earth`s Past" comes up to the classical masterpieces by Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clark and belongs to the milestones of science fiction.