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With The Three-Body Problem , English-speaking readers got their first chance to experience the multiple-award-winning and bestselling Three-Body Trilogy by China's most beloved science fiction author, Cixin Liu. Three-Body was released to great acclaim including coverage in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. It was also named a finalist for the Nebula Award, making it the first translated novel to be nominated for a major SF award since Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities in 1976. Now this epic trilogy concludes with Death's End . Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge. With human science advancing daily and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations will soon be able to co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But the peace has also made humanity complacent. Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the early 21st century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings with her knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, and her very presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?… (more)
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Observation 1: Almost all
Observation 2: Ideology doesn’t appear much, and when it does it’s again not what I expected. I assume this book had to get through Chinese censors to get published, but one of the heroes (sort of, he’s eventually punished for “crimes against humanity” because he violated UN laws on forbidden research) is a wealthy Western capitalist (to be fair, he’s portrayed as acquiring his wealth in an unusual fashion, and he’s also portrayed as having unpleasant personality characteristics). And one of the villains announces “The era for humanity’s degenerate freedom is over. If you want to survive here, you must relearn collectivism…”. And the results of that “collectivism” are pretty grim – just like the actual results of collectivism in the recent past. The era of the “Cultural Revolution” in China affects some of the protagonists, and they’re not very happy about it.
Observation 3: Cixin Liu is very hard on environmentalism and anti-intellectual/anti-science movements. These are consistently portrayed as anti-human, and are generally terminated with extreme prejudice by the powers that be. Since the PRC is technocratic society, I imaging that had no trouble getting past the censors.
Observation 4: The trilogy deals with the Fermi paradox from the very beginning, and in what I consider a more logical fashion than Western science fiction. In our popular science fiction – you can take Star Trek and Star Wars as examples – alien civilizations are portrayed as having roughly the same degree of technological development as the Earthlings that encounter them. In actuality – assuming there are alien civilizations at all – that’s vanishingly unlikely. If you consider the entire history of Earth, and the history of technology, alien life forms will most likely be either single celled organisms – that’s what the average living thing on Earth is, over time – or beings so advanced they are indistinguishable from God. Or Satan. All it would take in the four billion years or so of Earth history would be a minor difference – the development of intelligence occurring a little earlier or a little later, by a factor of 0.00001, say – and we’d be either at the Mesolithic level or have 40K years of further advance under our belts. It’s scarcely imaginable what technology will look like 40 years in the future, much less 40000. If you extend that across the entire galaxy, it’s likely there will be some civilization out there (again, assuming that there are any at all) that’s billions of years more advanced than ours. A corollary to that is Western science fiction usually assumes that advanced alien civilizations will be benevolent – or at worst neutral – toward humanity; the trilogy does not make that assumption and the results are viscerally horrifying. It’s one thing to imagine aliens invading Earth for resources or slaves or Lebensraum; it’s another to find them treating us as something like cobwebs in the corners – needing to be swept up to make things neat.
Very enlightening and thought-provoking, although sometimes the thoughts are nightmarish. I had a minor problem dealing with names; although international in scope many of the characters are, understandably, Chinese and it was hard to remember who’s who.
The
Well, Death’s End picks up where Dark Forest leaves off, in fact with a little overlap in order to introduce the main protagonist in the final work. For three hundred pages, Death’s End was every bit the equal of Dark Forest, but then there occurs a roughly 100 page segment that is so dumb, so contrived and so out of character with the other 1500 pages of the trilogy that it made me question who had written it and why it was there.
It is not really a spoiler to reveal that the referenced 100 pages involve a rather silly fairy tale (for some reason they refer to three tales, though there is really only one, split into three chapters). The fairy tale is part of an inter-stellar conversation between two of the book’s main characters in which one is trying to convey a message through the use of metaphor. The Trisolarans have allowed and even initiated the conversation, but under very strict guidelines that limit information that can be conveyed, under penalty of death. Then, they allow a 50 page fairy tale to be conveyed, and memorized word for word by one of the characters. Sure, that makes sense. I guess the incredibly advanced Trisolarans don’t understand the concept of metaphor and think telling a 50 page fairy tale would be normal conversation under the circumstances.
There follows another 50 pages in which the Earth Federation goes about deciphering the fairy tale in such a way that is even dumber and even more senseless than the fact that the fairy tale was conveyed in the first place.
SPOILER: In one of the most incredibly stupid moments of any book I’ve ever read, the experts are stumped by a particular place name in the fairy tale. Luckily for them, one of the analysts talks in his sleep. After muttering the mysterious place name in his sleep, he is informed by his live-in girlfriend that the name is actually a combination of two place names in Norway, and not just any place names; names that have not been used for centuries. Luckily for him, his Norwegian girlfriend is a scholar in ancient Norwegian place names. Lucky humans, what are the chances.
Then, like nothing ever happened, the novel returns to absolute excellence for the final 300 pages. It is the damndest thing; like listening to a two hour concert featuring the works of Mozart that is interrupted for ten minutes by a cacophonous din of meaningless music, and completely unnecessary as the author could have easily gotten where he needed to go without such a bizarre detour. For such a magnificent work to be marred in such a way is a shame, because one of the strengths of the trilogy is its believability and rock solid hard science fiction. Character actions and plot lines flow so smoothly because they are imminently believable and flawlessly crafted.
In any event, it is the best science fiction series I’ve experienced; far more complex and engaging than the Foundation works and so much more approachable and enjoyable than the Dune novels. If a 20 year old asked me where to start in reading science fiction, I would direct him to Foundation and other Asimov works. If a 40 year old, who had sampled much of the genre asked the same question, I would insist that he read this trilogy. Afterwards, he would thank me for the suggestion but ask, “What was up with that stupid fairy tale.”
In response to those reviewers who have criticised the "fairy tale" - it is perhaps slightly long, but there is a clear context for it. It certainly isn't 100
That is, until the end. The last couple hundred pages suddenly get weird and wacky and completely fascinating, with low-entropy entities and fantastic weaponry and beautiful imagery and a mind-boggling scale beyond anything seen in this series up to now by several orders of magnitude. If the whole book had been like that, or if we'd just gotten to that stuff sooner, this would have been a much better book, but it was just so boring to get there that I got intensely frustrated.
But these are just a few problems I had with the book - and I understand that this isn't a character-driven story, so I wasn't completely disappointed when nothing really panned out for any of the character aside from Luo Ji. I just wish the author would've given some closure to a few more of the many (too many) plots and characters that he had opened up throughout the three books.
Still, these books contain THE best space-stuff that I've ever read.
I was a bit disappointed that the game theory that permeated it did get stuck on the
The multi-dimensional twist to modern environmental concerns - people destroying their environment to retain a temporary advantage was really interesting and also somewhat distressing....
Although this writing is considered science fiction, the plot takes direction from
This is a kind of fiction that I find irresponsible. The more we are exposed to ideas, the more "normal" they feel (regardless of how far outside any natural thresholds or ethics they might fall). Liu's premise that life is inherently competitive to the point of galactic genocide says a lot about his psychology, but little about human nature, and even less about the alien society. It is a book that leaves the reader feeling as though the world is devoid of meaning, and that is not the energy we could use these days.
That said, the book is artfully written, especially the opening with the fall of Constantinople.
Parts of if were super compelling and I do want to know WHAT HAPPENED. But, it was about 3 months over due and I was only half way through.
It’s creative and deeeeeeeeply strange, but also weirdless regressive.
Anyway...maybe I’ll finish it at
Second, Ken Liu, who translated the first book, is back as the translator of this final work and to me he is the preferred
Third. This is a great book and a great read. The entire series reminds me of Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy in its scope, breadth, and audacity. There's a reason the author is considered China's greatest science fiction writer. This is that good. At no time did I know where the plot and characters were going or what was going to happen. The story unfolds as a vast panorama as seen through the eyes of a few characters. It is poetic, tragic, inspiring, and thought provoking (any more superlatives out there I should use?).
The scientific underpinnings of this final volume deserve a special shout out. There was little that was truly new to me, but it was obvious that Mr. Liu is attuned to some of the more interesting areas of science and physics in our post-Einsteinian civilization. As I wrote in my review of the first book in the series, his grasp of technology reminds me most of Gregory Benford.
Asimov? Benford? Liu!
Cheng Xin, an astrophysicist, began working on a probe to reach the Trisolaran fleet as it approached before entering hibernation. In the future, she finds society much changed and her place in society elevated as she owns the rights to a star that is discovered to have Earth-like planets. She gifts the planets to humanity and, for her generosity, the people of Earth want her to take over control of the mutually-assured destruction technology that preserves the peace with Trisolaris. Unfortunately, the Trisolans realize that she is unlikely to use the weapon, and prepare to invade the Earth. Meanwhile, the ships Blue Space and Gravity, the latter of which contains a gravity wave transmitter, encounter a pocket of fourth-dimensional space beyond the solar system. Realizing that the Trisolarans have invaded, they broadcast the location of Trisolaris, thereby committing the world to destruction under the dark forest theory while also putting the Earth at risk for the same fate. Trisolaris abandons its plans to invade the Earth, while humanity wonders if there’s a way to save itself. It finds a way through a series of layered metaphors transmitted from the only human aboard a Trisolaran ship, which draw upon Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Descent into the Maelström” in order to hide clues for explaining lightspeed travel (pgs. 446, 449). Unfortunately, the destruction of the Solar System follows a plan that the Earth spacefleet could not foresee.
Demonstrating the role of the media in shaping public perceptions of places, Liu references the 2008 film Australia as Cheng Xin’s only knowledge of the continent prior to the Trisolarans attempting to exile humanity to the continent (pgs. 236-237). Liu’s title, Death’s End, refers to some of the changes that hibernation technology caused in human society. He writes, “Once the technology was successfully commercialized, those who could afford it would use it to skip to paradise, while the rest of humanity would have to stay behind in the comparatively depressing present to construct that paradise for them. But even more worrisome was the greatest lure provided by the future: the end of death… those who chose hibernation were taking the first steps on the staircase to life everlasting. For the first time in history, Death itself was no longer fair” (pg. 77). Here Liu uses science-fiction to pose larger questions about the nature of humanity, how changing something as universal as death would affect all levels of society, and explores the concept in tandem with his plot about human advancement following first contact with an alien intelligence. Similarly, another character remarks about the nature of death, “Death is the only lighthouse that is always lit. No matter where you sail, ultimately, you must turn toward it. Everything fades into the world, but Death endures” (pg. 449). Similarly, Liu examines how other technologies, like lightspeed travel, contribute to inequality as the future of the solar system is in doubt. He writes, “The inequality here was seen as the greatest in human history: inequality before death. Historically, inequality mainly manifested itself in areas like economics or social status, but death basically treated everyone the same… But never before had a situation like this presented itself: less than one-ten-thousandth of the population could go into safe hiding, leaving billions on Earth to die” (pg. 473).
Liu also broadens his cosmology. The Trisolarans were the only alien civilization glimpsed in the series’ previous two novels, but here he offers glimpses of fourth-dimensional civilizations (pgs. 287-303) as well as one of the alien species that engages in Dark Forest Deterrence, destroying advanced civilizations before they become a threat (pgs. 555-564). In both of those cases, Liu carefully avoid describing the aliens’ physiology, giving just enough of a hint about their technology to fit the themes of his novel without portraying so much that it could become easily dated. This foreshadows his conclusion, in which the fate of the universe hangs in the balance. The end effect is a work of tragic beauty, befitting the themes Liu examined throughout the series. For those who aren’t ready to walk away from the “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” trilogy, Liu authorized Li Jun’s fan fiction, The Redemption of Time, as an official interquel to the series and Ken Liu also translated that work.