Universe 647

I can confidently say that Remembrance of Earth's Past is my favorite science fiction series that I've read in years. It's been both surprising and satisfying, insightful and thrilling, human and epic, audacious and inevitable. When I started reading The Three-Body Problem I wouldn't have imagined ending up where I did by the end of Death's End, and I feel impressed by the ride.

MINI SPOILERS

Throughout the series there's been a strong focus on basic research: not so much a specific invention created by a brilliant engineer, but rather, groups of scientists gradually delving into the fundamental mysteries of the universe. From the problems with particle accelerators in the first book through the strong nuclear force of the second book and various experiments with universal constants and the curvature of space in the third book, the most exciting question tends to be how the universe works rather than how we can exploit it. This research ultimately has practical applications, but the fundamental models are the most important part.

I love how the science gets more ambitious and stranger as the series goes along. It dovetails nicely with the telescoping time periods throughout the series: we advance through months, then years, then decades, then centuries, millennia, eons. Late in the series the characters describe things that seem bizarre and impossible; but, just think of how much commonly-accepted science today would have seemed bizarre and impossible in Benjamin Frankin's day. There's a humility in Liu's gaze, recognizing how inferior we are to the people we will become. I also really like how, even in this fantastic future, there are detours and dead ends: Earth civilization wastes time investigating theories that prove to be unfounded, and invest in ventures that prove fatally flawed. It feels so much like real life: Yes, science advances and gets better over the time, but not every step is a step forward, and while we're shaking our heads at the fools before us who believed the wrong thing, we should remember that they were fixing earlier problems from the fools before them, and one day our new ideas will seem just as flawed to those who understand more deeply than us.

In particular, I thought the presentation of lightspeed travel was especially interesting. Throughout The Dark Forest, I thought it interesting that, while this is a hard sci-fi series, it doesn't seem to grapple with the implications of relativity as much as other sci-fi books have, as we would expect travelers to experience less time than those who stay still. That does get addressed in Death's End, and in some ways the third book is about that problem, with some explanations that seem to contradict Einstein; but it's very earned, it doesn't feel hand-wavy, but rather a plausible idea for another sort of science. Just like we used to think that atoms were indivisible, we may learn one day that universal constants are not, in fact, constant.

MEGA SPOILERS

Mostly some random thoughts in here:

I was a little surprised that the fall of Byzantium wasn't referenced again later in the book after that startling prologue. But we the reader can parse it: it seems like there was a fourth-dimensional collapse in our spacetime coinciding with the siege, leading to the exposure of previously hidden ways and contents. I wondered at the time whether there was anything special about that one woman in particular that allowed her access to such a state; but, given the later events on board Blue Space and Gravity, it was probably just that a portal opened in that one place inside a tower, and she happened to find it. That portal decayed like the fourth-dimensional space around Blue Space decayed. (It's interesting to think of how Earth's history might have been different if it had decayed slightly more slowly!)

I really enjoyed the characters in this book, and it felt like we had more access to Cheng Xin's thoughts and feelings than we have to previous protagonists. Her introduction seemed a little stiff, as she's mostly presented as an idealized feminine object of Yun Tianming's affection, but once she takes center stage she really earns it. Late in the book we're reminded that, thanks to her hibernation and light-speed travel, she's somehow still only in her thirties, which seems extraordinary considering all she has done and the outsized responsibilities she's held.

Similarly to how Shi Qiang bridged the first two books, Luo Ji bridges the last two. He does take a more active role in this book, which is cool; he's a fun and explicitly nuanced character, and it's interesting to see him play multiple roles over time. But it does make me freshly surprised at how Wang Miao completely vanished from the series after being a protagonist for the first book. It's not bad, and as I noted in my previous post I do like how the epic scope of the story is reinforced by all the fresh faces, but the disparity between Wang and Luo is curious.

Cixin Liu continues to innovate and surprise with the form of the novel, weaving in new elements. The first book stirred historical fiction and detective stories into hard sci-fi, while the second book used political thrillers. Death's End once again brings in a new genre from left field: this time, it's fairy tales! Roughly midway through the book, the main narrative pauses for a long and shockingly well-written fantastical story, presented as three separate fairy tales but really one continuous story about the Storyless Kingdom. The stories are so striking and so pertinent that they remained fresh and sparkling in my mind throughout the entire rest of the novel, much like how the Cultural Revolution loomed over the events of The Three Body Problem.

The fairy tales are well-written, but also very cleverly constructed, packed with allegories and clues and hints. I felt really impressed once they were revealed, much like how I feel impressed at, say, a long-laid David Mitchell revelation. The main thing that I'm left wondering at the end of the novel is the significance of the umbrella. Painting into two dimensions seems quite clear, an unheeded warning about the flattening threat. Given that, it seems like the spinning umbrella offers a solution of some sort. Spinning and rotating is significant throughout, like the watery vortex in the Norwegian sea. I wonder if, given enough time, Earth's scientists could have prepared some defense against this, or at least a way to buy more time. Perhaps curving space within the Solar System could have slowed the advancement enough to leave another way?

In other allegories, Prince Deep Water seems more clear. He was unaffected by the painter because he was already two-dimensional. That seems like another missed opportunity for escape: if Earth had somehow anticipated the strike, they could have followed the nihilistic strategy described by Guan Yifan and voluntarily reduced themselves to two dimensions. Which would have been an incredible loss, but would have guaranteed the continuation of Earth civilization.

Part of me was hoping that Bill Hines would make a reappearance in this book, as I also felt like there were some loose ends from his Escapist nam-shub as a Wallfacer. He doesn't, but I was extra-surprised to see Manuel Rey Diaz, out of everyone, providing a critical component to humanity's salvation. There's so much misdirection in this series, I love it!

The progression from Wallfacer to Swordholder was also really cool. It's probably just as well that Swordholding wasn't the main focus of the book, but I enjoyed this other sort of psychological contest. It's a game theory-y thing rather than an obfuscation thing; or rather, there's still some obfuscation since sophons can't see inside someone's mind, but it's reduced to a binary yes/no with catastrophic consequences, rather than an elaborate and hidden scheme. Anyways, the game theory part is really cool, explicitly harkening back to the Mutually Assured Destruction of the mid-20th-century, and realizing that mankind rationally chooses to place its fate on an irrational choice is hella exciting. Vindictiveness becomes a virtue, revenge a sacrament, one's capacity for evil the only plausible route to a good outcome.

There's a brutality running through the book. Over and over again, Wade is proved right and Cheng Xin wrong. A cold-hearted decision with limited casualties would have spared an entire civilization from extinction. It seems like the end of the book is on Cheng Xin's side, though. She "loses" every battle she's in: the high-stakes standoff of the Swordholders, gambling on the future with Halo City, and so on. But the ultimate long-term stakes are the heat death of the universe versus the big crunch, and only Cheng Xin's policy of love will lead to the right direction. Who knows, maybe those few kilotons of mass will be the deciding factor after all.

END SPOILERS

So, yeah! I do feel a little wistful at having finished this series and no more books to read in it. Which is kind of surprising; the second book ended on a thoroughly satisfying note, and I was wondering if the third entry would spoil that and follow a good note with a bad one. Not at all! It somehow manages to get even better and more ambitious, drawing me in to its telescoping story. It goes deep, it gets broad, but still stays personal, anchored to characters who we know and love dearly by the end. It's a really remarkable work.

Wallfacer

When I find an author whose work I enjoy, I'm tempted to read as little of their work as I can, as slowly as I can, to drag out a supply of fresh good novels as long as possible. So it's a little unusual that I would so quickly return to Liu Cixin so quickly, but here I am, just a month after finishing The Three Body Problem and wrapping up the sequel, The Dark Forest. Part of that might be because of COVID focusing my attention, part might be the sci-fi kick I've been on lately, but I think the most compelling thing is just that 3BP was a damn fine book, and I wanted to read another one.

MINI SPOILERS for The Dark Forest, MEGA SPOILERS for The Three Body Problem

I put this book on hold at the library the moment I finished the first one, but I also was a little skeptical about just how Liu would manage to follow the first book. 3BP had so many wonderful tricks that seemed impossible to repeat. Even though it was nominally a science-fiction book, it opens during the Cultural Revolution and feels like a historical fiction novel for a long time, and then like a mystery novel for quite a while. It isn't until near the end of the book that we finally learn what the Three Body Problem is and who is behind the events of the story. But now that we do know, how can the mystery be maintained? I was curious if the series would transition into a more typical sci-fi novel with space battles, or if he would try to repeat the historical and mystery aspects again.

As it turns out, he does neither, and instead segues into still another genre. Most of this book feels like a political thriller, on a global scale grander than anything this side of seveneves. Earth is nominally united against the Trisolaran threat, but old divisions still exist, and we see the tacit struggles occurring between West and East, global North and global South, between established industries and nascent ones, between various ideologies. Political capital is gathered and exploited and expended and lost as various leaders and strategies rise and fall.

There is a pretty solid break from the previous book, both in the structure and tone, and also just in the characters. Most of the major people from 3BP are missing in TDF or just have brief cameos, with Shi Qiang the one major recurring character. But it also adds to the sense of scope and scale of the story: this is an enormous crisis gripping all of humanity for centuries, so of course different people will be involved at different times.

There is a nice mystery aspect that continues in this book, though. The mystery in 3BP mostly revolved around the titular game, what was killing the scientists, and how it related to the Red Coast Base; it's a mystery about an adversary. In TDF, the mystery is about the allies. The single most creative and exciting idea in this novel is the "Wallfacers", four men who have been selected to create and carry out secret plans to thwart the Trisolaran invaders.

Doing a bit of recap for my own benefit: At the end of 3BP, we learned that the Trisolaran fleet is en route to the Solar System, with the stated goal of destroying all of humanity and settling on Earth. Their technology is vastly superior to ours, but they are concerned about mankind's fast progress: The Trisolarans have been more advanced than us for hundreds of thousands of years, but in the last 200 years we have progressed more rapidly than they had in thousands of years, and if that trend continues then by the time they arrive (around 2400 AD) humanity will have become vastly more powerful than them and easily able to crush the invasion.

It will take centuries for the Trisolarans to arrive, but thanks to their mastery of subatomic physics, they are able to manipulate events on Earth at the microscopic level. (Think quantum entanglement.) That isn't enough to take macroscopic action like assassinating a head of state, but through their sophons they are able to spy on humanity, seeing and hearing everything that takes place; and they can interfere with subatomic experiments, thwarting the efforts of particle accelerators and colliders to plumb the mysteries of neutrinos and other fundamental elements of the universe. Thanks to this, they effectively place a lock on humanity's progress: we can continue developing the existing technology we have, but entire fields of study are closed off, including quantum research (and its computational advantages), strong nuclear forces, and so on.

But, there's one thing the Trisolarans can't do: they can't peer inside our minds. They can observe what a human says and what he does, but the "why" remains a mystery to them. So, the Wallfacers exploit this weakness. They carry out their plans in plain sight, but everyone, human and trisolaran alike, is aware that there are other angles and wrinkles to those plans, and are constantly kept guessing what their true aim is.

This all ends up being incredibly fun, with wheels within wheels, as we try to guess what the various Wallfacers are up to.

MEGA SPOILERS

Hines is probably the most interesting Wallfacer to me. When reading the detail about how Keiko's eyes flashed open as soon as she was going to sleep, I guessed that she was his Wallbreaker, though I still wasn't sure what the implications of that were. One random idea I had was that, since Luo Ji was chosen because Trisolaris was scared of him, Hines might have been chosen if the PDC know that Keiko was a member of the ETO. In this scenario, part of Hines' deception could have been feeding misinformation through Keiko back to Trisolaris. Or, another thought was that maybe Hines was the Wallbreaker all along and Keiko was secretly the Wallfacer. Of course, neither of those scenarios is true, but it was fun to think about! So many of the plot twists in this story were wild, so it felt like no possibility was out of bounds.

Even at the end of the novel, I'm still not totally clear on exactly what Hines' plan was and what its status is. Where are the sleeper agents? At first I thought that they had fully permeated society and implanted the mental seal on everyone, but that doesn't seem to be the case, given how virulently everyone reacts against Escapism near the end. And I don't think it had a major impact on the actions of the ships escaping the teardrop assault, as the main actors there were all hibernators who had gone to sleep prior to the seal's invention. It feels like this might be something coming back in the third book.

Of course, Liu ends up being the most successful Wallfacer of the four. His "spell" seemed simultaneously obvious and opaque. I was certain that some greater power would respond to his message by wiping out the planet he indicated, and that is in fact what happened. But I wasn't expecting the cosmic sociological theory behind it, which turned out to be shocking and fascinating. I'd thought that it would be some sort of higher-dimensional entity, somewhat like when the Trisolarans summon the sophons in the previous book, or if, like, a colony of ants were to form an arrow pointing at a thing they didn't like, and some giant human then casually destroyed that thing. But it turns out to be a matter of numbers rather than a matter of scale, which is really interesting to think about. After reading Liu's afterword to 3BP, I thought he was probably too pessimistic about encountering alien life, but the explanation in this book is definitely sobering, and makes one reconsider the wisdom of our constant broadcasting.

This is, of course, the Dark Forest of the title. I spent most of the book wondering what that referred to. Late in the novel, after Liu reawakens in the future, we learn about the tree structure of the underground city, so for a while I thought the "Forest" referred to the city, and mused that "Dark" could refer to it being underground, or engaged in sinister activity, or some future event that would cut out the limitless power from the city and plunge it into eternal gloom. But, yeah, the title ends up referring to the entire universe, so that's pretty cool. It's another thing that reminded me of 3BP in how late we learn about something huge that causes us to rethink the entire galaxy.

Besides the epic distance and physical scale of the book, the span of time is also really epic and intriguing. I almost immediately thought of A Canticle for Leibowitz, which also had multiple-century jumps through time and radical changes in the social and technological order. TDF has a lot more interweaving between the eras, though, thanks to hybernation technology. Though, now that I think of it, the Lazarus/Benjamin character in ACfL could perhaps be playing a similar role, but without offering a point-of-view perspective. And the hybernation of humans could have some parallels with the Trisolaran cycle of dehydration and rehydration.

END SPOILERS

Liu kept the magic going for the second book, which is really impressive, given how moved I was by the first one. I'm really curious where they'll go from here in the third book! It would be a fairly satisfying ending on its own, with a vision for the future sketched out, some cool callbacks to the previous book and the major characters being in appropriate places. But there are definitely some loose threads out there (Garden of Eden, anyone?), as well as the bigger implications of sociology, so I can see the potential for the stakes to, incredibly, get even higher. I've already put the third book on hold and am very eager to find where it goes!

Ye

One of the less significant casualties of the coronavirus, but one I've been thinking about lately, is my attention span. I feel like it was weakening before and has finally been destroyed; it can be hard to even sit through an entire thirty-minute TV show episode, let alone watch a movie or read a book. My novel-reading in particular has dried up to almost nothing. I used to mostly read novels, but looking back through my post history, it's been five whole months since the last fiction book I finished, and the one before that was back in 2019.
 

So, it was even more exciting than normal to finally pick up a book and be completely swept away by it. I've had The Three-Body Problem on my to-read list for years and years. After the local library system re-opened for (outdoor and socially-distanced) lending, I set a hold for it and eventually picked it up. Once I did start reading it, I was hooked! I had a hard time putting it down and would keep reading late into the night. I can't remember the last time a book has grabbed me that strongly.

MINI SPOILERS

All I knew about the book going in was that it was a Chinese science-fiction novel. It is that, ultimately, but also feels hard to categorize. It opens with a really compelling and intense historical fiction setting, morphs into a mystery novel, becomes a political thriller, and even feels like an urban fantasy for a stretch of time. But a foundational love of and fascination with science underlies it all, and by the end it's really clear that it's a science fiction book, but one different from any other one I can recall.

The story begins during the Cultural Revolution in China, which I was somewhat familiar with, but mostly in a dry, academic way. It feels very visceral here, and it was a little surprising to see a Chinese author portraying the terror and madness of the time. It reminded me slightly of the Holy Mountain chapter in David Mitchell's Ghostwritten, but with a broader perspective.

I really loved the modern-day sections, with Wang on the periphery of various movements and plots, sensing the action afoot but lacking a complete picture of what was going on. I was especially struck by the game, Three Body itself. This reminded me of the video game in Ender's Game: its origin and purpose is very different, but I'm really fascinated by both, particularly how the game shapes the player as the player shapes the game, and out-of-the-box thinking is necessary to advance.

I enjoyed the book from the start, but really got hooked once Wang started experiencing seemingly supernatural phenomena. Up until this point the novel had felt very grounded, so it was especially surprising and unnerving to see what was happening to him and his increasingly frantic and worried reactions. This part was starting to seem kind of Murakami-esque to me, as some strange and unseen world was starting to manifest in familiar surroundings.

MEGA SPOILERS

The big difference is, that strange and unseen world is eventually shown and described. I was reminded of that famous Arthur C. Clarke phrase about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic. What's cool about The Three-Body Problem is that this is not merely used to hand-wave away some superpower, or trotted out as a pithy saying, but is actually demonstrated: it takes some time, but he eventually breaks down exactly what physical properties caused those phenomena to manifest, how they worked and why they were deployed.

I was a little startled by just how explicitly and thoroughly everything is explained at the end. To make another David Mitchell reference, it reminded me of the last act of The Bone Clocks, where everything that previously was mysterious is now revealed: not just facts, but systems, rules, and processes. We learn not only that the Trisolarians exist, but how they think, how their society has functioned.

Unlike Mitchell, though, Liu is writing science fiction. I don't know enough science to be able to evaluate his system, but it certainly all sounds plausible. He's already led us through real-world discoveries and real-world theories, with SETI and protons and strong nuclear forces and quantum entanglement and such. He introduces us to the discoveries that might be awaiting us in the future: higher-dimensional objects (with some interesting ethical implications!), shifting dimensionality, massless objects, and so on.

Stylistically, it felt a little odd to get such a solid block of exposition at the end of the story; but it isn't bad, just different. And there are so many differences before it too, with the shifts in perspective and time and genre, that it doesn't feel that out of place in the big picture. I tend to think of the desire to tie up all loose ends and make everything perfectly clear at the end as a distinctive characteristic of American (or Anglophone) art, in contrast to more ambiguous and open-ended stories from other cultures like Japan and Latin America. But I guess I don't have much exposure to Chinese fiction, and of course there are different people making different types of things in all cultures, so I shouldn't be surprised.

That actually ties in with an explicit point that Liu makes in his afterword, which is really fascinating. He eloquently suggests that, while historically mankind has been cruel to other people on Earth and hopeful about alien life, it should really be the opposite: we should be kind to one another and cautious about what lies outside our planet. It was cool that he ends on a note on the importance of loving one another; if it wasn't for that afterword, I think I would have walked away from the book with the impression of Liu as a misanthrope, pointing towards the cruelty of the Cultural Revolution and the disdain the ETO has towards humanity. But on further reflection it's really the opposite. He's pointing out problems that need to be fixed, not embracing their nihilism but exposing it.

Likewise, within the body of the book I thought that science in general and environmentalism in particular come off rather poorly; the ETO leaders talk about how they use environmentalism to destroy faith in human progress and depress the species from further advancement. But again, the afterword suggests that Liu's own feelings lie elsewhere, as he carefully describes (without specifically criticizing) the rise in pollution and loss of trees in his own lifetime during China's aggressive industrialization. As I interpret it, there is a dangerous instability from environmental criticism; but that should be solved by addressing the root cause and caring for our planet.

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At least, that's what I think! I enjoyed this book immensely, but I think I should also write about it with humility. It isn't from my culture and it's probably doing things that I'm not aware of or can't fully appreciate. But I do love it and have enjoyed letting it fill my thoughts during the last week or so.

Since finishing it I've learned that there are actually two more books in the series, and needless to say I'm very interested in checking them out! I'm already curious whether they will continue with the diverse settings, eras, tones and styles of the first book; or if they will lock into the plot that this one kicked off and focus on how the story continues. Either way, I'm eager to see what comes next!