Yep, that's it! I'm just blown away by this book (and The Three Body Problem), and really looking forward to the next one in the trilogy.
Along the same technical lines, have you read A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge? I love the idea of "programmer-archeologist" on a 5000 year old spaceship.
No, I haven't, but will definitely check it out. I did finally read Neal Stephenson's Seveneves before I started the Trisolaris Trilogy. I find them excellent at conveying the sense of vastness of space and time and how truly fragile human civilization is. In a way, this Notre Dame tragedy calls up the some of the same helpless (but not hopeless) feeling as reading about the existential dangers faced by humanity in these books.
