[whymad]

True for what it is, but this is handled in the books. They literally don’t want our planet, they want our star.

And the dark forest: without a history of correlated interaction we have no reason to believe they will allow us to live, so we can’t allow them to live, so they can’t allow us to live.

Eliding a more major spoiler, they absolutely intended to annihilate us on arrival and they would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for, ah, “those meddling kids”. Everything else was cloak and dagger.

They definitely would have terraformed every planet in the system once they were sure we were gone. Or more likely deconstructed them, at that point in their development.

[ansible]

> True for what it is, but this is handled in the books. They literally don’t want our planet, they want our star.

That's... an odd reason. There are plenty of stars out there, unless the aliens started out right next door (like in Alpha Centauri) there's not much reason to go after our star.

I haven't read the books...

[godelski]

> unless the aliens started out right next door (like in Alpha Centauri)

This is where the aliens are (a trinary system). It still takes them 400 years to get to Earth and so they are trying to stifle Earth's technological advancements because 1) we know they are coming 2) our technological growth is faster than them (this is partially explained due to different biological and environmental factors. The aliens can't lie to one another and have environmental factors that frequently wipe out or pause their technological advancements). The aliens in question are supposed to be only a few hundred years (max) ahead of us technologically (or smaller than the difference in time that it takes them to get here)

[mannerheim]

> unless the aliens started out right next door (like in Alpha Centauri)

They did.

[bkanber]

> unless the aliens started out right next door (like in Alpha Centauri)

:D

Strongly recommended reading.

[rsynnott]

They are indeed right next door. Also, it’s a crowded universe, and no-one wants to be noticed, so just showing up at Tau Ceti or whatever would be very unwise; there might already be someone there.

The major bit of artistic license is that their Alpha Centauri is way more broken than ours; the real one isn’t all that badly behaved.

It’s implied that the whole situation is very unusual; interstellar invasions don’t happen as a rule and they’re only doing it because their star(s) is basically broken.

[seanc]

Well, the thesis is that with exponential growth and a modest amount of time there _aren't_ plenty of stars out there.

[Dylan16807]

If you're growing that fast, then a system or two is a rounding error. You won't have plenty no matter what you do, so how about not wiping out other species for that extra smidge?

[wisty]

It's a good book, but while some elements are good sf it's not all hard sf. They're looking for a new planet and didn't even send a probe 50 years ago?

[EthanHeilman]

Because the trisolarans didn't know who was out there until they received a message from Earth. They were worried that if they sent a probe to another star then a more advanced civilization perhaps hiding around that star would see the probe arrive, trace the source and annihilate them.