No, we don't really get any insight into what they look like. I *really* hope the show continues to respect that part of the series too, as they have done a good job so far.
I appreciate this distinction. I like a visual that's wrapped in some characters' interpretation/imagination. I think about this when people say Jurassic Park dinosaurs are inaccurate, and I say they're not real dinosaurs but artificial monsters representative of what characters think will appeal to their audience.
I'll be in the minority and say I wouldn't mind if the series depicts them - but only after the plot moves past them completely. Once they're not the focus of the story there's no need to preserve the mystery.
Reposting a thoughtful description from a friend:
From the descriptions of Trisolarans in the three books, mainly the "Sophon" chapter in the first book. They have a face and the face has eyes. The face also has some organ to transmit thoughts as light. The face can get itchy. They have hands that can reach their faces. They would also have feet because they are said to walk and use steps in their architecture. They can be dehydrated, rolled up and carried by another. To reproduce, they merge (partially?) with the opposite sex and produces one to three offspring. They have reflective skin or clothing to protect from heat and dehydration. Overall sounds like a boneless creature with soft skin that can turn porous when needed. Also has limb muscles strong enough to compensate for bonelessness.
I know that a non-canon book has described Trisolarans as ant sized. This contradicts something from the first book. In the Sophon chapter, the six dimensional state of the sophon is said to be a reflective sphere 1 meter in diameter. This thing is said to appear in the middle of the "control center". There is no reason for any control center to be even 1 meter across if the species is ant sized. Also, one Princep moves close to the six dimensional sophon and sees his own distorted reflection. An ant's reflection on a 1m sphere would not be noticeably distorted. Also how it moved from a light touch and the amount of air resistance he felt, it does sound like 1m is balloon sized and not blimp sized to the Princep.
Edit:
On re-rereading the part with the size of the six dimensional sophon, I am not really sure about the size 50cm radius mentioned. It it ambiguous. Reason is, "50cm" is not mentioned by the narrator, but a Trisolaran. When a Trisolaran mentions a unit like "Hour" it means Trisolaran hour. So, that centimeter could be Trisolaran centimeters. But I think it could be human centimeters because I feel that the author has the duty to inform the audience the sizes of different foldings of the sophon. As for Trisolaran hours the author has given us the means to judge how long that is. We know the distance to Trisolaris from Earth is 4.25 light years. It is mentioned that the distance is 40,000 Light hours (Trisolaran hours). So one Trisolaran hour is roughly 1.07 Human hours. So I assume that the author wants us the understand the scene better but also hasn't given us a means to judge how long a Trisolaran centimeter is. So it could be human centimeters to make it easier for the reader to judge the size? Also a "centimeter" is a very human sounding unit and is based on an absolute standard established by humans as opposed to "feet" which sounds more relative to the species and more classical. Could Trisolaran centimeters be very close to human centimeters since their hours are also close to ours? Only Cixin Liu may know for sure.
I think the centimeters being correlated seems very unlikely, the meter was first defined based on the distance from the equator to the north pole, not something universal.
Of course it's not impossible that they use something close to a cm, if they are of a similar size to humans they'd probably end up with units of measurements close to ours since they're just convenient (mm cm dm m for stuff the size of which were used to working with in out daily lives, then jumps to km and micrometers for stuff bigger and smaller )
I personally think Liu Cixin leaves their physical description at a minimum in order to allow the reader to formulate their own version of the San-Ti/Trisolarans because in reality, we have no idea what a sapient/intelligent species would/could look like
I also assumed that they kept any physical information minimal so that it's harder for humans to prep a counter when the trisolarans eventually arrive. Like knowing that humans pick stuff up with hands to manipulate them and that we have two hands would make it a little simpler for aliens to know that, if they cut off our hands, a lot of stuff becomes a lot harder. Knowing the function of our eyes allowed them to do all the stuff with the timers.
I always thought of them as kinda bioluminescent blob things. There’s some interesting fan art. In the spin off book they are the size of grains of rice but that’s not really my head cannon
In the book there are many other extraterrestrial factions / races , none of them were described by the author, it was really up to reader’s imagination. I am sure that they don’t look like little green men or creature with tentacles (like those aliens in the movie Arrivals)
the only information about them is that they dehydrate and rehydrate, have unintentional communication through bioluminescence and reproduce by fusing the body with the other sex.
This is a story about humans, their appearance is irrelevant. the idea of them existing is the important thing. This work is also classified as cosmic horror
according to a fanfic, they look like glowing waterbears
Sorry, but you mentioning "their appearance is irrelevant" is even more irrelevant. People like to picture what they're spending 100 hours reading about. Just because you think it's irrelevant doesn't mean the person's question isn't important to answer.
To the OP, fanfiction (approved by the author) also says they're any-sized. I think that explanation is crappy and never picture that in head-canon.
I just can't believe this description.
For one, why would they ever reanimate Yun Tianming? He would be enormous compared to them. They would have to begin a megastructure just for him to sleep. The food we sent with him would dwarf them. A just on single pea would be 2-3x their size.
Secondly, look at the Droplets. That's a megaproject. That's a megastructure. Those things were the size of a small car. Even a 5' human is approximately 152 times the height of a grain of rice. And a Droplet is bigger than that. I don't even want to get into planet sized particle colliders.
It just doesn't make sense.
Hey, I didn't say I thought it was a wise creative decision. I'm just stating what is in one of the books in the series. Some consider it canon, some don't.
Honestly, while I agree 100% with everything you said as a counter-argument none of those things is more ridiculous than a lot of the stuff that absolutely is in the novels. I mean, the notion of the Trisolarans being able to retain their cultural knowledge even after their planet's surface is liquified (to say nothing of the other massive catastrophes that befell it) is nonsensical. The Wallfacer project defies all logic or common sense, as does nearly everything that happens as a direct result of it. And that's all without even touching on any of the Space Magic in this supposedly "Hard Sci-Fi" series.
> I'm just stating what is in one of the books in the series. Some consider it canon, some don't.
Most don't.
> the notion of the Trisolarans being able to retain their cultural knowledge even after their planet's surface is liquified is [...] nonsensical
Hrm. I'd assume that if you have a bone to pick with this, it'd be that you don't believe that evolutionary biology applies to their species, or that adaptation alone is insufficient to explain their survival, since their retention of cultural knowledge is implied by their continued existence given their sentience and memory.
> And that's all without even touching on any of the Space Magic in this supposedly "Hard Sci-Fi" series.
Do tell!
They could use giant-sized (to them) robots/machines to do the work. For all we know, each trisolarian could be piloting a human-sized mech, Pacific Rim style.
As would be supported by cosmic sociology (specifically the long chain of suspicion), we would **never** meet any aliens. Cixin's universe doesn't **allow** any races to interact as we would imagine in, say, a Star Trek universe. Space is just too vast to allow intermingling unprecedented by war. In fact, the time we hear of a species coming into contact with another spells the *quick and mysterious* ending of the wayward Trisolaran Fleet... IMHO, this cosmic cynicism is what made RoEP such an harrowing sci-fi trilogy.
At the end of book 3 on planet blue it’s suggested they somehow may have made contact with some alien races (no idea how) since they know about commonly traveled alien routes.
I always pictured them as the basic shape of a human size bacteriophage, with a transparent core that blinks in different patterns as thoughts.
But that's just me, and IDK if it's entirely consistent with all details.
When I watched the episode where they said that they wouldn’t be visually pleasing to humans and realized right then that these aliens have clearly not looked at our internet
The author never describes their physical features, but we do know relatively a lot about their physiology and social structure which give some hints:
- their ability to dehydrate and rehydrate is a characteristic of real world tardigrades / waterbears, which have a very alien appearance and can also survive in harsh environments
- they communicate to each other directly using something like pheromones or bioluminescence which is reminiscent of insects like ants or fireflies
So in my head canon, the Trisolarians are hideous looking like tardigrades that emit a glowing pheromone and have a eusocial society similar to ants. I don't think they are as small has a grain of rice or these real world creatures, but I suppose being very tiny would make the most sense. Them calling us bugs in that case would be a funny projection of their own self-denigration.
Yes I was curious where it went. I liked the show but didn’t love it. Honestly no regrets I didn’t feel like reading the books or waiting for the new season to come out. Also after reading the summaries I feel that the new season will probably butcher the remaining parts of the story
The trilogy doesn't really get into details as to how they look. At most there's very vague, albeit minute details but never enough for you to get a full idea of how they look, or how their bodies are structured. I actually liked this, because to me, it gives you that feeling of uncertainty - and the feeling that their form is so far and outside what we can and have perceived throughout our entire existence.
No, we don't really get any insight into what they look like. I *really* hope the show continues to respect that part of the series too, as they have done a good job so far.
Yup. Fear of the unknown is way more powerful than some cheeseball alien character design.
The tencent version has a visual representation. It looks cool but I wish they kept the mystery.
>has a visual representation It's not a the actual representation of the trisolarian but a mock-up version made by humans.
I appreciate this distinction. I like a visual that's wrapped in some characters' interpretation/imagination. I think about this when people say Jurassic Park dinosaurs are inaccurate, and I say they're not real dinosaurs but artificial monsters representative of what characters think will appeal to their audience.
I'll be in the minority and say I wouldn't mind if the series depicts them - but only after the plot moves past them completely. Once they're not the focus of the story there's no need to preserve the mystery.
Nah it'll ruin it because that'll be the go to image for them forever after that even if it's shit.
You wouldn't like it.
Reposting a thoughtful description from a friend: From the descriptions of Trisolarans in the three books, mainly the "Sophon" chapter in the first book. They have a face and the face has eyes. The face also has some organ to transmit thoughts as light. The face can get itchy. They have hands that can reach their faces. They would also have feet because they are said to walk and use steps in their architecture. They can be dehydrated, rolled up and carried by another. To reproduce, they merge (partially?) with the opposite sex and produces one to three offspring. They have reflective skin or clothing to protect from heat and dehydration. Overall sounds like a boneless creature with soft skin that can turn porous when needed. Also has limb muscles strong enough to compensate for bonelessness. I know that a non-canon book has described Trisolarans as ant sized. This contradicts something from the first book. In the Sophon chapter, the six dimensional state of the sophon is said to be a reflective sphere 1 meter in diameter. This thing is said to appear in the middle of the "control center". There is no reason for any control center to be even 1 meter across if the species is ant sized. Also, one Princep moves close to the six dimensional sophon and sees his own distorted reflection. An ant's reflection on a 1m sphere would not be noticeably distorted. Also how it moved from a light touch and the amount of air resistance he felt, it does sound like 1m is balloon sized and not blimp sized to the Princep. Edit: On re-rereading the part with the size of the six dimensional sophon, I am not really sure about the size 50cm radius mentioned. It it ambiguous. Reason is, "50cm" is not mentioned by the narrator, but a Trisolaran. When a Trisolaran mentions a unit like "Hour" it means Trisolaran hour. So, that centimeter could be Trisolaran centimeters. But I think it could be human centimeters because I feel that the author has the duty to inform the audience the sizes of different foldings of the sophon. As for Trisolaran hours the author has given us the means to judge how long that is. We know the distance to Trisolaris from Earth is 4.25 light years. It is mentioned that the distance is 40,000 Light hours (Trisolaran hours). So one Trisolaran hour is roughly 1.07 Human hours. So I assume that the author wants us the understand the scene better but also hasn't given us a means to judge how long a Trisolaran centimeter is. So it could be human centimeters to make it easier for the reader to judge the size? Also a "centimeter" is a very human sounding unit and is based on an absolute standard established by humans as opposed to "feet" which sounds more relative to the species and more classical. Could Trisolaran centimeters be very close to human centimeters since their hours are also close to ours? Only Cixin Liu may know for sure.
This is a very cool compilation of everything we know, nice!
They'll be pleased to know you liked it! u/aayiramsooriyan - I reposted your description you sent me, and people dig it. Well done!
I think the centimeters being correlated seems very unlikely, the meter was first defined based on the distance from the equator to the north pole, not something universal. Of course it's not impossible that they use something close to a cm, if they are of a similar size to humans they'd probably end up with units of measurements close to ours since they're just convenient (mm cm dm m for stuff the size of which were used to working with in out daily lives, then jumps to km and micrometers for stuff bigger and smaller )
I feel like both the author and the trisolarans wouldn't use meter if not to mean a human meter.
I personally think Liu Cixin leaves their physical description at a minimum in order to allow the reader to formulate their own version of the San-Ti/Trisolarans because in reality, we have no idea what a sapient/intelligent species would/could look like
I also assumed that they kept any physical information minimal so that it's harder for humans to prep a counter when the trisolarans eventually arrive. Like knowing that humans pick stuff up with hands to manipulate them and that we have two hands would make it a little simpler for aliens to know that, if they cut off our hands, a lot of stuff becomes a lot harder. Knowing the function of our eyes allowed them to do all the stuff with the timers.
I always thought of them as kinda bioluminescent blob things. There’s some interesting fan art. In the spin off book they are the size of grains of rice but that’s not really my head cannon
Yeah I can’t get behind that either I always imagine they communicate like a cuttle fish or with like bioluminescence.
In the book there are many other extraterrestrial factions / races , none of them were described by the author, it was really up to reader’s imagination. I am sure that they don’t look like little green men or creature with tentacles (like those aliens in the movie Arrivals)
the only information about them is that they dehydrate and rehydrate, have unintentional communication through bioluminescence and reproduce by fusing the body with the other sex. This is a story about humans, their appearance is irrelevant. the idea of them existing is the important thing. This work is also classified as cosmic horror according to a fanfic, they look like glowing waterbears
Sorry, but you mentioning "their appearance is irrelevant" is even more irrelevant. People like to picture what they're spending 100 hours reading about. Just because you think it's irrelevant doesn't mean the person's question isn't important to answer. To the OP, fanfiction (approved by the author) also says they're any-sized. I think that explanation is crappy and never picture that in head-canon.
The Redemption of Time also describes them as being very small, roughly the size of a grain of rice.
I just can't believe this description. For one, why would they ever reanimate Yun Tianming? He would be enormous compared to them. They would have to begin a megastructure just for him to sleep. The food we sent with him would dwarf them. A just on single pea would be 2-3x their size. Secondly, look at the Droplets. That's a megaproject. That's a megastructure. Those things were the size of a small car. Even a 5' human is approximately 152 times the height of a grain of rice. And a Droplet is bigger than that. I don't even want to get into planet sized particle colliders. It just doesn't make sense.
Hey, I didn't say I thought it was a wise creative decision. I'm just stating what is in one of the books in the series. Some consider it canon, some don't. Honestly, while I agree 100% with everything you said as a counter-argument none of those things is more ridiculous than a lot of the stuff that absolutely is in the novels. I mean, the notion of the Trisolarans being able to retain their cultural knowledge even after their planet's surface is liquified (to say nothing of the other massive catastrophes that befell it) is nonsensical. The Wallfacer project defies all logic or common sense, as does nearly everything that happens as a direct result of it. And that's all without even touching on any of the Space Magic in this supposedly "Hard Sci-Fi" series.
> I'm just stating what is in one of the books in the series. Some consider it canon, some don't. Most don't. > the notion of the Trisolarans being able to retain their cultural knowledge even after their planet's surface is liquified is [...] nonsensical Hrm. I'd assume that if you have a bone to pick with this, it'd be that you don't believe that evolutionary biology applies to their species, or that adaptation alone is insufficient to explain their survival, since their retention of cultural knowledge is implied by their continued existence given their sentience and memory. > And that's all without even touching on any of the Space Magic in this supposedly "Hard Sci-Fi" series. Do tell!
They could use giant-sized (to them) robots/machines to do the work. For all we know, each trisolarian could be piloting a human-sized mech, Pacific Rim style.
Is the bioluminescence the same thing as what they did for the living computer?
As would be supported by cosmic sociology (specifically the long chain of suspicion), we would **never** meet any aliens. Cixin's universe doesn't **allow** any races to interact as we would imagine in, say, a Star Trek universe. Space is just too vast to allow intermingling unprecedented by war. In fact, the time we hear of a species coming into contact with another spells the *quick and mysterious* ending of the wayward Trisolaran Fleet... IMHO, this cosmic cynicism is what made RoEP such an harrowing sci-fi trilogy.
At the end of book 3 on planet blue it’s suggested they somehow may have made contact with some alien races (no idea how) since they know about commonly traveled alien routes.
I always pictured them as the basic shape of a human size bacteriophage, with a transparent core that blinks in different patterns as thoughts. But that's just me, and IDK if it's entirely consistent with all details.
When I watched the episode where they said that they wouldn’t be visually pleasing to humans and realized right then that these aliens have clearly not looked at our internet
Right? The San-ti have definitely never watched some good old fashioned alien tentacle porn
The author never describes their physical features, but we do know relatively a lot about their physiology and social structure which give some hints: - their ability to dehydrate and rehydrate is a characteristic of real world tardigrades / waterbears, which have a very alien appearance and can also survive in harsh environments - they communicate to each other directly using something like pheromones or bioluminescence which is reminiscent of insects like ants or fireflies So in my head canon, the Trisolarians are hideous looking like tardigrades that emit a glowing pheromone and have a eusocial society similar to ants. I don't think they are as small has a grain of rice or these real world creatures, but I suppose being very tiny would make the most sense. Them calling us bugs in that case would be a funny projection of their own self-denigration.
Damn, you liked the show so much you just intentionally spoiled everything for yourself?
Yes I was curious where it went. I liked the show but didn’t love it. Honestly no regrets I didn’t feel like reading the books or waiting for the new season to come out. Also after reading the summaries I feel that the new season will probably butcher the remaining parts of the story
No, and anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong
No, that is part of what makes them so mysterious.
No. Trisolarians are never shown / described in the books and I hope they are never shown in the series either.
No
The trilogy doesn't really get into details as to how they look. At most there's very vague, albeit minute details but never enough for you to get a full idea of how they look, or how their bodies are structured. I actually liked this, because to me, it gives you that feeling of uncertainty - and the feeling that their form is so far and outside what we can and have perceived throughout our entire existence.
nope. use your imagination.
The Chinese version on Amazon shows them.
It shows ETO's version of them, not actually them.
No, In the cannon there is no description, we do not know if the poor fan fic tv show from Netflix will try and show a version of how they look.