★★★★★.
the three body problem
the first installment, now a netflix show. read this a few years back and tried (unsuccessfully) to get my friends to read it. they’ve since come around…
the dark forest
Chinese science-fiction writer Liu Cixin elaborates his dark forest theory in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy as an answer to the Fermi paradox—if we are surrounded by life, why is the universe silent? Shouldn’t the whole universe be a noisy social media feed, everyone vying for everyone else’s attention? The dark forest theory flips the underlying assumption, explaining that communication, because it reveals our existence to others, is a sign of stupidity rather than intelligence. This is not because all alien civilisations are hostile, but because the laws of the universe necessitate mortal conflict among all civilisations that share the same dimension. - source