A Positive Mental Attitude: The Three Body Problem and Project Hail Mary

i decided recently after years of avoiding it to try and tackle the three body problem. the book goes hard in the ‘hard science fiction’ in that it is literal fiction about science. almost all the characters are scientists and there is a lot of astrophysics and computer science and some material and quantum physics too. it is interesting and engaging but is definitely a slow burn. without giving too much of it away, “the thing” you are waiting on happening the whole book only finally happens in the last few pages leaving a cliffhanger ending that forced me directly into the second in the series the dark forest.

the dark forest is centered around a titular piece of ’extraterrestrial sociology’ maintained by one of its protagonists that presupposes that the universe is a dark forest in which all life is stealthy, cannibalistic jungle cats that because of “the chain of suspicion” have to remain completely silent while they murder and devour each other lest they give away their position to the next cannibalistic cat and end up devoured themselves.

in some ways the books are about resilience, and the people in them are constantly overcoming nihilism and despair in the face of seemingly hopeless odds, but still, almost everyone (human and non) in the book is selfish and self interested, and distrustful almost to the point of pathology. it is hardly a view of the cosmos that i would call “sublime” regardless of the plug on the cover.

the dark forest similarly ends with a cliffhanger and so i jumped directly into the third book death’s end but i only got 200 pages in before deciding it was just making me feel more and more depressed and decided to put it down. i needed a hard sci-fi antidote to this hopelessness and so i turned to andy weir and picked up project hail mary (warning: very minor spoilers below).

project hail mary is about a human scientist and his extraterrestrial deuteragonist “rocky”, who team up in deep space to figure out why their respective home worlds are dying and what to do about it. the plan, to quote the famous line from weir’s first novel the martian, is to “science the shit out of this”, and science the shit out of this they do covering disciplines including astrophysics, chemistry, extra-terrestrial biology, particle physics, and applied mathematics. but best of all it’s hopeful: instead of trying to quietly murder each other in the dark these two aliens lost in space find a fraternal love that is vita-universalis, to turn a phrase, and stay plucky by working together.

having finished project hail mary i find myself looking back on the dark forest metaphor and start to wonder if cixin liu has ever been in a dark forest or jungle. first, animals in dark forests and jungles are not quiet, they make a ton of noise. second any human who has spent enough time in the wilderness knows that there is one thing that you can have that has been statistically proven time and time again to increase your chances of survival. it is the first lesson of every survival class. it is taught to boy scouts and marines, it is taught to russian spies who loved me. your most valuable tool in the dark woods is a positive mental attitude.

unfortunately the dark forest theory in and of itself is a negative mental attitude. combine that with the distrust of all other life inherent in the “chain of suspicion” and you end up taking away the second most powerful factor in surviving in the wilderness: not being alone.

alone in the wilderness without a positive mental attitude: you don’t stand a chance.

maybe that’s part of why project hail mary felt like such a relief after slogging through liu’s cosmic paranoia. the three body universe feels like a narcissistic view of the cosmos. everyone assuming everyone else is out to get them: everyone hiding in the dark. weir offers the opposite: two plucky scientists, human and alien, with a ton of positive mental attitude deciding to “science the shit out of this” together. it’s cheesy and messy and earnest and weird but there is a kind of accidental vita‑universalis born out of necessity and curiosity rather than fear and i enjoyed that a lot more than the empty despair of the void that wants to destroy you.