“It’s a wonder to be alive. If you don’t understand that, how can you search for anything deeper?”
“Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is”
The English translation of Chinese author Cixin Liu’s SF
series, collectively known as ‘Remembrance of Earth’s Past’ – comprising
‘The Three-Body Problem’, ‘Dark Forest’ & ‘Death’s End’ – is purported as a
milestone in the history of sci-fi literature. The Three-Body Problem
(translated by Ken Liu) became the first non-English novel to win the Hugo
Award (for best sci-fi). Soon, everyone from Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama to
established authors like George R.R. Martin and Kim Stanley Robinson heaped
praise on the Cixin Liu for masterfully weaving a complex web of science,
philosophy, and history. The three books were published in China between 2008
ad 2010 and its English-translated counterparts were released between 2014 and
2016 (Ken Liu translated the 1st & 3rd books, while
Joel Martinsen translated the middle part, and all 3 books published by Tor
Books).
Cixin Liu’s multi-layered novels are exactly the kind of books
that immerses its readers into the highly imaginative, confounding issues of
galaxies and cosmos that our very reality and suffering becomes a trifling
matter during that time. It was a torturous nine days for me, because I had to count the passing
of hours and minutes dedicated to fulfill the day-to-day obligations, before
getting the chance to sit peacefully and read the riveting SF epic. I got
chills from going through many of the spectacular, pull-the-rug-from-under kind
of moments. It’s important to note that the trilogy is a tragedy of epic
proportions. The tone alternates between lyricism, somberness, hope, passion,
and despair. The foremost question of the books has been asked for many
decades by people of science: Will humanity reach for the stars or
face ruthless decimation by confining itself to home-planet? The answer Liu
provides is by turns terrifying and subversive. Remembrance of Earth’s Past
trilogy presents a dazzlingly complex scenario to postulate on the future of
humanity, solar system and even the cosmos. Despite the vast, macro scale of
issues dealt in the novels, Cixin Liu elegantly guides into this imaginary
realm, contextualizing high-end, theoretical physics for readers only armed with
basic scientific knowledge.
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| Author Cixin Liu |
The three novels are best read without getting acquainted
with great number of its plot details. Even divulging what Three-Body Problem is
about would somehow affect the thrilling reading experience. Those who’d like
to receive maximum thrills from a hard sci-fi could just skip any reviews (including this one) and even avoid reading the blurb at the back of the book or in wikipedia,
goodreads pages. ‘The Three-Body Problem’ purports a grimly fascinating
scenario, already familiarized by Hollywood high-budget features: Alien
Invasion. But the book doesn’t open straightly from the threat. It rather
commences from the era of China’s merciless Cultural Revolution (between 1966
and 1976, following the ‘Great Leap Forward’). Cixin Liu brings us to witness
one cruel moment in the Cultural Revolution: a distinguished physicist and
university professor is tortured and humiliated by Red Guards in front of his
family and delirious mass of students. Ye Wenjie, the scientist’s daughter, watches her
father’s persecution and death at close range. Skeptical of Ye Wenjie’s
political stance, Mao’s China ostracizes her to a remote rural mountain
region to do hard labor. The rapid deforestation she sees there alongside the
government’s stringent economic, political policies totally erodes Ye Wenjie’s hope
in humanity.
Nevertheless, chain of events allows her to join a secret
science project. It’s similar to America’s SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial
Intelligence) institute, although the Chinese heavily lack in terms of
technology and proper knowledge. Ye Wenjie’s recruitment renews the project’s scope
for development and the political prohibition placed upon her is easily
bypassed. Using her knowledge and newly-gained power, Wenjie craftily sends a
message, announcing human existence, to perfectly reach into the distant corners
of universe, unlike the usual radio-wave messages. To her surprise, eight years
later, Wenjie receives a message back, which starts: “Do not answer! Do not
answer! Do not answer!”. An alien pacifist warns her about reaching out to
other intelligent life in the universe. But Wenjie’s complete loss of faith in
humanity makes her ignore the warning and to send another clear-cut message
into space. What follows is utter chaos and forces Earth civilization to
comprehend the darkest rules driving the cosmic civilization at large.
Cixin Liu’s narration is RR Martin-esque, especially in the
way he wipes out little rays of hope through sudden onslaught of unpredictable
dark turns (and of course, he kills off large number of characters). Apart from
efficiently presenting complex scientific theories, some of Liu’s speculations
seem scientifically plausible. He also excels in portraying the reality of
political machinations that would plague and distort human societies forever. The
foremost joy in reading the trilogy rests in the clever depiction of series of
ideas that would even amaze seasoned sci-fi readers. Cixin Liu’s narration is
unparalleled when it comes to delivering the big, unprecedented ideas about
life's expansion in cosmos. He also conveys a sound macro picture so as to explore how
human civilization would contract and expand, in the face of disorder. In fact, the trilogy of novels
is all about mesmerizing large-scale ideas, whereas the character realizations
are mostly uninteresting or blank.
Of the three protagonists in the three novels, I only liked
Luo Ji, who despite his hedonistic and nihilistic streak stays as a complex human
being till the end. His despair, dilemma, and craftiness raises acute philosophical questions .
Ye Wenjie & Wang Miao in ‘Three-Body Problem’ and Cheng Xin in ‘Death’s end’
don’t have much of a personality (Liu’s ideas about gender has attracted many
criticisms too). At times, they seem to be just there to acclimatize readers to
each ‘New Age’ and confounding scientific theories. The sensitive and lovely
Cheng Xin is the blandest central character in the series (of course, the worst
decision-maker in the whole universe), making us experience her leap through
time only from an emotionally detached point. However, as I mentioned earlier, it’s
the brilliant ideas that drive the three novels. I liked ‘Dark Forest’ – middle
book – the most. It swiftly escalates the complexity of the scenario developed
in ‘Three-Body Problem’. Particularly, the last third of Dark Forest is not
only one of the best segments in the series, but in the whole of SF literature.
Starting from the international star fleet’s rapid annihilation to Luo Ji’s
spine-chilling delivery of ‘dark forest theory’, I was suspended on a state of
unease and tension. The game universe in ‘Three-Body Problem’ and the space-fleet crew members’ trip into the fourth dimension in ‘Death’s End’ are
some of the other spectacular portions to originate from Cixin Liu’s superior
imagination.
I didn’t much enjoy the conclusive chapters in Death’s End.
The ideas were ambitious but it also felt over-stuffed. The light-speed travel,
Black Domain, Universe 647, etc were all immense in terms of scope and
conception, but it didn’t possess a shred of emotional underpinning, found in
the ending portions of the first two novels. Eventually, the author attempts to
not only tell the whole story of humanity’s future, but also travels across
billions of years to envision the future of cosmos, which unexpectedly feels a
bit frivolous and tedious (I had the same feeling while reading the final part
of Neal Stephenson’s thought-provoking hard sci-fi ‘Seveneves’). But even after
taking all its flaws into account, Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy is a
great spectacle, which couldn’t be easily outmatched in terms of narrative
magnitude and scientific notions. Amazon’s $1 billion dollar TV adaption might
hopefully release this year, but books are generally the better choice.
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