“The Universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life — another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod — there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out.”
Bleak, isn’t it?
Thus begins Liu Cixin’s Dark Forest, the second book in his Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. Humanity is facing its greatest existential threat from a hostile alien civilization.
The thrust of Liu Cixin’s novel follows his proposed theory of “cosmic sociology”. Cosmic sociology consists of two basic axioms:
- Survival is the primary need of civilization
- Civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant
Like mathematics, cosmic sociology builds upon its two axioms to induce truths about the world (or universe). The most essential conclusion: in the vast expanse of the universe, communication breaks down and civilizations have no choice but to destroy each other. While it would be nice for civilizations to cooperate and merge into one bigger, better civilization, the vast distance of the universe hinders communication so much that each civilization is left guessing at other civilizations’ intentions, creating a “chain of suspicion”.
Faced with this reality, Liu Cixin reflects that humanity should stop their search for extraterrestrial life altogether. Instead, humanity should focus their attention inwards, onto Earthly issues, and count ourselves lucky that no-one has responded to the messages and missions already sent into space.
While I agree that for now, it is in humanity’s best interest to avoid alien contact, Liu Cixin’s conclusion strikes me as overly pessimistic. Is there really no way for alien civilizations to co-exist?
In his story, Liu Cixin makes a couple of critical assumptions:
- The chain of suspicion is virtually indestructible.
- There is a limit to how fast information can travel.
Based on our current understanding of physics, the second assumption is, for all purposes, true. Einsteins’ theory of special relativity says that light moves at constant speed, and light-speed represents the absolute upper threshold of how fast something can travel through space. There are no experimental results or observations to suggest otherwise.
But Liu Cixin’s first assumption, while well-reasoned, is not entirely convincing.
Yes, there is a long delay for interplanetary, inter-galactic, or even inter-star-cluster communication. Productive communication between two civilizations would certainly be difficult, but that does not mean it is impossible. Just take a look at human history — a long history of violence and conquest, but behind that narrative, efforts to communicate across large cultural, linguistic, and geographic boundaries always persist. There have been many instances where humanity has faced a “chain of suspicion”, most recently during the Cold War, yet the species has still found a way to survive.
While interspecies communication poses a novel challenge, I see no reason why principles of diplomacy and peace-making cannot be employed. Liu Cixin’s bleak analysis is based on the irreconcilable geographic and cultural distance between two alien civilizations. There are strategies to bridge those differences.
Here is a possible solution: embassies. If two civilizations are initially friendly to each other, they move quickly to establish embassies. They can each send inter-galactic ambassadors, who will cross the physical distance to bridge communication, reducing the chain-of-suspicion.
Of course, once they arrive, ambassadors themselves will themselves experience time lags communicating with their original civilization. And this whole thought experiment is premised on initial benevolence. Still, there are ways to break the “chain-of-suspicion”, a fact that provides hope for the future.
What future does Liu Cixin provide for Earthlings and their Tri-Soloran invaders? I invite you to read Remembrance of Earth’s Past to find out!