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I have read Cixin Liu’s entire “Three Body Problem” trilogy twice, but the novel that I was most astounded by was the middle book: “The Dark Forest”. The novel weaves together tales of the varied efforts by humanity to thwart the inevitable invasion by an alien species who have sabotaged human’s ability to advance technologically. The aliens’ planet, at the mercy of the three stars from which the title is derived, is such a brutal place to live that they see the Earth as an appealing paradise populated by a technologically inferior species. While the Trisolarians have space travel, they do not have subterfuge or game theory, and in the end, humanity is able to gain footing in a war of wills because the scientist who invited the forthcoming disaster left a critical clue to a man who has little more than an opaque, unprepossessing personality and obscure cleverness as weapons.