[jamesdf]

> “What was there to say? Civilization was like a mad dash that lasted five thousand years. Progress begot more progress; countless miracles gave birth to more miracles; humankind seemed to possess the power of gods; but in the end, the real power was wielded by time. Leaving behind a mark was tougher than creating a world. At the end of civilization, all they could do was the same thing they had done in the distant past, when humanity was but a babe: Carving words into stone.”

Death's End -Liu Cixin - The third novel in the trilogy staring with The Three-Body Problem

[metalliqaz]

I recall some scifi where some Diety/SuperAI left 'commandments' for humanity carved into giant monuments made of diamond. I presume that was considered the only thing that would survive deep time.

[SavantIdiot]

There was an interesting article online a few years back, can't find it now. It claimed that humans can't make anything that will last more that 16 million years. This includes any kind of nuclear pollution. Sure we might get lucky like Jurassic fossils, but not intentionally.

[PicassoCTs]

Eschaton in Singularitys Sky?

"You shall not meddle with the lightcone of the recursive time-travelling super-intelligence you created?"

[freeslave]

not just sci-fi! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones

[Aachen]

Isn't it actually the case that diamond isn't the strongest material? Just scratch-resistant if memory serves. Not that it's weak either, of course, but I'm curious if it's the best choice.

[ahmedfromtunis]

I don't think it's necessary to go into all this trouble. Tablets made of the much, much cheaper clay are still accessible today—4000 years after they were created.

[mleonhard]

Posting spoilers without a warning is extremely rude.

[honkdaddy]

Tbf, as someone who's never read or heard of the book, it just seemed like an interesting quote about a hypothetical future for humanity. Definitely didn't occur to me it might be a spoiler.

[endisneigh]

without context would it's pretty meaningless imho

[CamperBob2]

Worse, the past tense of "begot" is "begat."

[mitchellst]

These were such legit books. This description, in context, being like... the 5000th reason why.

[taneq]

Uuugh, I just finished reading them and, while the first one was pretty good, the second one dragged a bit and the third was interminable! It felt like the author had a laundry list of ideas that he hadn't fit into the story yet, and with the third book was on a mission to cram in every last one. It's something like 2-3 times longer than the first one and by the end I was only reading out of determination to finish it.

There were also a lot of odd assumptions/conclusions about how people would behave but I put that down to a different cultural mindset (and in this sense it was pretty interesting), however some of the recurring social themes stretched credibility a bit. Also for a book that's generally held up as being hard sci-fi, the actual science aspect had some glaring flaws in pivotal events which really strained belief. (Well, either that or my understanding of astrophysics is way off...)