The Dark Forest (The Three-Body Problem Book 2)

“You mean, ‘If I don’t go to hell, who will?’*5 Is that it?”

“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.

But it wasn’t a language of this world. It constructed a world that gave it meaning, and only in that rosy world did the words of the language find their corresponding referents.

The universe had once been bright, too. For a short time after the big bang, all matter existed in the form of light, and only after the universe turned to burnt ash did heavier elements precipitate out of the darkness and form planets and life. Darkness was the mother of life and of civilization.

The past was like a handful of sand you thought you were squeezing tightly, but which had already run out through the cracks between your fingers. Memory was a river that had run dry long ago, leaving only scattered gravel in a lifeless riverbed. He had lived life always looking out for the next thing, and whenever he had gained, he had also lost,

“Hiding the self through a faithful mapping of the universe is the only path into eternity.”

cogent

Mahan’s theory of sea power

Luo Ji didn’t want to listen, but he was like a candle on a summer night. The words, like insects crowding around the flame, kept working their way into his head: