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The four-hundred-year period between the Trisolaran fleet's launch and its arrival — humanity's window to prepare, panic, hibernate, and finally produce one functional deterrent.
The Crisis Era is the period the book lives in. It begins with disclosure of the Trisolaran threat and the renumbering of the calendar; it includes the Great Ravine — a population-collapse generation in the middle decades — and ends, technically, with the Doomsday Battle at Year 205 and the arrival of deterrence at the spell. The era's mood swings between desperate optimism, manic militarization, and exhausted defeatism, sometimes within the same year.
A historical epoch — visible through institutions: the Planetary Defense Council, the Wallfacer Project, the Solar Fleet, the Hibernation Centers, the Mental Seal trials. Calendar dates renumbered from 'Common Era' to 'Crisis Era Year 1'.
Also known as: Crisis Century, the Era