Reminds me too of Fred Saberhagen’s “Berserker” series, in which fully automated ships roam the galaxy, extinguishing life wherever they find it. They are doomsday devices leftover from an ancient galactic war. It’s up to us plucky humans to take on and defeat the Berserkers.

It was a popular series in the 60s and 70s. I’d bet Liu read Saberhagen. He seems like a thorough fellow and true sci-fi fan. Plus Saberhagen called his humans “Solarians” and Liu calls his beings from Alpha Centauri, a triple-star, “Trisolarians.” Hat tip?

I know that in SETI discussions, the argument is strong that humans should listen to the stars, but *not* broadcast/narrowcast intentional messages. Though recently the Norwegians did and there was a flap about it.

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/we-just-beamed-signal-space-aliens-was-bad-idea-ncna822446

Looking up Saberhagen, I see that he lived his writing life in Albuquerque and died here in 2007.

Haven’t got there yet in my reading, but I think we’re going to find that Chinese reluctant hero dude cursed the Trisolarans good and proper by telling everybody else where they live.

I wonder how long before Galactic Pest Control turn up to deal with us.

I’m reading “The Dark Forest,” the second volume of “The Three-Body Problem” trilogy. It offers an interesting take on the Fermi Paradox (if aliens exist, where are they?), apropos a recent Open Thread discussion. From a summary of the second book:
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…any spacefaring civilization must prioritize its own survival, and any alien civilization cannot be trusted to not exterminate your own civilization. Long interstellar distances make this suspicion impossible to dispel, so the best way to ensure one’s own survival is to stay silent (so as to remain undetected) and preemptively destroy any alien civilization one detects, akin to hunters stalking through a dark forest.

https://www.bookstldr.com/book/the_dark_forest
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A tad cynical, perhaps, but ingenious. Cixin Liu, the author, brings back old-school sci-fi imagination.

Reminds me of Andrew Schmookler’s “The Parable of the Tribes” which offers a dynamic to explain what drives all human groups to develop the capacity to wage war. Once one group learns to wage war on its neighbors, all others must develop the ability or perish.

Do you not like all disco, or just some? I certainly don’t like it all, and some was awful. But I like some of it, and the Bee Gees’ disco was great, IMHO. What don’t you like? The falsettos? The dance rhythms? The tunes are basic R&B (which I tend to like in general) plus dance rhythms. The Bee Gees’ other stuff is generally very different, and they only used falsetto for a few years and then reverted to their basic voices, which are beautiful.

I’m not requiring that you like it; just curious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBWWCaZwrx8

https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/15/san-francisco-mayor-announces-crime-crackdown-on-all-the-bullsh-t-that-has-destroyed-our-city/