Book Review: The Three-Body Problem Part 2
We were left off with the pro-Trisolaron movement on Earth spreading and commiting terror attacks on programs that would advance human civilization. This pattern is noticed by the clever Da Shi, who is my personal favorite character. He notices that someone is trying to impede the development of science and teams up with Wang Miao to solve this mystery. They find out that Ye Wienje, a sweet old woman who was by this point an old woman, betrayed the human race by selling out their location to the Trisolarans during her time as a radio astronomer in the 1960s. After the use of Sophons were revealed, you couldn't help but feel a sense of dread and despair. An alien race is coming to eliminate the human race in 450 years’ time, and you cannot make the tools capable to defend yourself. No matter how many arrows you use those arrows will never rival a machine gun in power. Many people when revealed to this information ended by committing suicide, like Ye Wienje’s daughter: Yang Dong.
But Da Shi gives Wang Miao and the reader a sign of hope amidst this oncoming invasion:
“Look at them, the bugs. Humans have used everything in their power to extinguish them: every kind of poison, aerial sprays, introducing and cultivating their natural predators, searching for and destroying their eggs, using genetic modification to sterilize them, burning with fire, drowning them with water. Every family has bug spray, every desk has a fly swatter under it… this long war has been going on for the entire history of human civilization, but the outcome is still in doubt. The bugs have not been eliminated. They still proudly live between the heavens and the earth. The Trisolarans who deemed the human’s bugs seem to have forgotten one fact: The bugs have never been truly defeated.” - Da Shi
Even if we are bugs to the environment like the Pan-Species Communists believe or a bug in the way of a desirable life like the Trisolarans think; bugs have never been defeated despite humanity’s superior technology. Just like bugs, humans will persist and return like locusts to a crop.
Book Rating: 9.5/10
