Death's End by Cixin Liu

Translated by Ken Liu.

0. This is the second novel that I’ve read this year that was nominated for the 2016 Hugo Awards. The first was The Obelisk Gate by NK Jemisin, which won, but it wasn’t the best book I’ve read.
—Preamble: Okay, the guiding question to the notes for the two prior books in this series: “I don’t know how much of my confusion is from translational ambiguity, unknown differences in narrative traditions between Western and Chinese stories, or this tale itself being told poorly.” The first book was a mess. I enjoyed the second book. Between reading The Dark Forest and this novel, I asked around for some input. My friend Peter told me that Chinese narrative tradition usually focuses less on plot and character, and more on mood or theme or idea. With that in mind, on to discussing Death’s End, the final book in the trilogy.

1. This novel follows Cheng Xin in her life, pausing when she sleeps in suspended animation, and tracking with history when she is awake. It’s organized in terms of the time periods involved—split between these sections by headers and Cheng Xin's sleep cycles. But she is not just a lens to view the events through, she is a character with some depth. She struggles with guilt pretty heavily, having—in her mind—doomed the whole human race. But her guilt faces off against the reasons she failed at holding off the Trisolar invasion fleet: namely, love and her application of it to the whole world—empathy, or motherly feelings towards the whole human race. (As a reminder, her suspended animation sessions leave her vastly older than the people who surround her every time she wakes.) This central wrinkle to her character is present even before she is elected swordholder: her failures and successes all hinge on her empathy and brilliant contributions to science. For instance, one of the things she does earlier in the book, not her failure as a swordholder, leaves her thinking:

She had done nothing that she ought to be ashamed of, nothing that should trouble her conscience. But she also understood that this was how someone could sell their mother to a whorehouse.

This central wrinkle of intertwined guilt and love carries a lot of the book, and it is partly solved near the end when prior swordholder, and total badass, Lou Ji forgives her by saying,

“Love isn’t wrong. A single individual cannot destroy a world. If that world was doomed, then it was the result of the efforts of everyone, including those living and those who had already died.”

This time, she cried not only for Tianming. She cried out of a sense of surrender. She finally understood how she was but a mote of dust in a grand wind, a small leaf drifting over a broad river. She surrendered completely and allowed the wind to pass through her, allowed the sunlight to pierce her soul.

She finally comes to terms with her actions after this conversation with an aged Lou Ji, perhaps the man who has the most reason to not forgive her. But that tension does not entirely leave—like it did in the weird section of the second book. Rather, her personal tension over Yun Tianming—the terminal cancer patient whose brain she sends to the stars—and her tension over the fate of humanity still doesn’t leave. So, this conversation with Lou Ji becomes merely a way for her to look at this event, this failure as a swordholder, in a different way; a way for her to learn the proper places of empathy and love and guilt. Yet, she still feels that her empathy applies to every human: her failure to save one, Yun Tianming, still haunts her for most of the book.

Even though both crews were in the cold vastness of space, voyaging in the same direction at approximately the same speed, the natures of their voyages were completely different. Gravity had a spiritual anchor, while Blue Space was adrift.

2. A couple of secondary characters also held my interest: Wade and Sophon. Sophon is an animatronic embodiment of Trisolaris. She embodies the other side of Cheng Xin’s empathy: not caring for the individual human, but for humanity as a whole. What is best for the whole is what is best for the one, even the one who has to die. At one point, during the resettlement of all humanity to Australia, humans are swarming a supply drop, at which point Sophon jumps out of a helicopter onto the pile, and takes out a katana, killing a few of the refugees. Then,

Sophon jumped back onto the pile and pointed at the line with her bloody katana. “The era for humanity’s degenerate freedom is over. If you want to survive here, you must relearn collectivism and retrieve the dignity of your race!”

In other words, Sophon views collectivism in light of empathy for the whole instead of the individual. She sees the necessity for all rather than one. Sure, she doesn’t much care for humanity, but her statements seem more in line with realism, or reasonable action for a group in extreme situations.
—Wade, on the other hand, exemplifies a brash, results driven, buck the rules when you can get away with it, Western stereotype. The line I quoted earlier references selling one’s mother to a whorehouse, which is something he believes is a positive in his secretive, espionage based career. He tries to murder Cheng Xin mostly because he believes she will fail as a swordholder, but maybe partly because he wants that prestige and power. In some sense he echoes Sophon in this group-focused, screw the individual mindset. But he seems more selfish in his application: rather than shouting, “relearn collectivism” while waving a bloody sword at a bunch of refugees, he tries to shield Cheng Xin from the necessities of selling one’s mother to the whorehouse, while still being willing to sell his own mother to a whorehouse. Like Sophon, Wade acts like a foil to Cheng Xin. And he gets really interesting when he ends up aligning with Cheng Xin in some aspects later in the novel.

It appeared that there were other low-entropy entities with even sharper intuition than he; but that wasn’t strange. It was as the Elder said: In the cosmos, no matter how fast you are, someone will be faster; no matter how slow you are, someone will be slower.

3. The writing alternates between the plot, characters, and themes—but also scientific exposition of these fantastical goings on. For instance, all of the solar system is turned into a two-dimensional area of space. Don’t ask me how it works, but Liu Cixin will tell you:

As soon as the Sun began to two-dimensionalize, a circle expanded on the plane. Soon, the planar Sun’s diameter exceeded the diameter of the remaining part of the Sun. This process took only thirty seconds. Based on the mean solar radius of seven hundred thousand kilometers, the rim of the two-dimensional Sun grew at the rate of twenty thousand kilometers per second. The planar Sun continued to grow, forming a sea of fire on the plane, and the three-dimensional Sun sank slowly into this blood-red sea of fire.

These expositional, scientific portions are less engaging to me, but if you really liked Seveneves, then these portions will be right up your alley. Narrative maths is not what gets me hot about writing. The rest of the writing is fine. More fine than the translation of The Three-Body Problem. Less interesting than the translation for The Dark Forest.
—A problem with the structure of eras is that each new awakening by Cheng Xin needs a couple of pages of exposition to catch the reader, and Cheng Xin herself, up to the present. It’s told in the classic amnesia trope and gives the book an uneviable, stop and go pacing. One of these portions I noted was this:

Ever since the Great Ravine, although history had taken multiple big turns, humanity, as a whole, had always lived in a society that was highly democratic, with ample welfare. For two centuries, the human race had held on to a subconscious consensus: No matter how bad things got, someone would step in to take care of them. This faith had almost collapsed during the disastrous Great Resettlement, but on that darkest of mornings six years ago, a miracle had nonetheless taken place. They were waiting for another miracle.

By having clear headers for each new section, Liu Cixin effectively billboards the pacing, but the reliance on exposition doesn’t keep the whole flowing in a way I appreciate as a Westerner.
—The only other annoyance with the writing is a translational thing of not transliterating two names throughout the book: two people have a Chinese character in their name. This is a book published in English, and it makes sense to get as close in English in the translation, not leave some Chinese characters in there for the reader to try and remember. I had a couple of deaths in the family while reading this book, and did not remember how the Chinese characters were supposed to be pronounced when I returned to this novel.

What was there to say? Civilization was like a mad dash that lasted five thousand years. Progress begot more progress; countless miracles gave birth to more miracles; humankind seemed to possess the power of gods; but in the end, the real power was wielded by time. Leaving behind a mark was tougher than creating a world. At the end of civilization, all they could do was the same thing they had done in the distant past, when humanity was but a babe: Carving words into stone.

4. The mood oscillates between hope and despair. Some of the discussions deal with these topics too, but to me the main theme is what makes humans human—though this comes out in part through their experiences of hope and despair. This theme makes sense as it’s related to Cheng Xin’s central tensions and the novel follows her, but it’s also a book with both aliens and humans in it, so that humanity question seems destined to come up. Where this theme became most interesting to me was in the way humans apply love: to the whole or to the parts, like the difference between Wade, Sophon, and Cheng Xin. The reason this thread interests me the most is because it’s the most varied: both positives and negatives are shown for all three main sides to this argument, and these three examples are shown against a background of selfishness and other points of view like Lou Ji and Ai AA. Cheng Xin endangers the world, killing millions through her actions which are based on love, but she is torn apart by her guilt; Sophon kills individuals to help the whole, but never makes many close, personal connections and seems to regret that lack; Wade endangers trends within humanity, but allows his personal connections to undo most of his plans. These complex glimpses of applying love sustain much of my interest in the novel.
—The novel also ties up the themes from the prior two novels—Dark Forest thinking is obliterated by both the four dimensional alien encounter, and the three dimensional alien bombing team that leaves the solar system two dimensional, tying it into the entropic nature of matter; while the hopelessness that has been dogging the whole series is finally banished by both the Galactic Humans and faster than light traveling Cheng Xin, because though humans end up making a wrong choice about how to avoid dark forest strikes, they still manage to survive and thrive.

He waved his cane around in a circle. “At every moment in history, you can find endless missed opportunities.”

“Like life,” said Cheng Xin softly.

“Oh, no no no.” Luo Ji shook his head vigorously. “At least not for me. I don’t think I’ve missed anything, haha.” He looked at Cheng Xin. “Child, do you think you’ve missed out? Then don’t let opportunities go by again in the future.”

5. In all, I think I’ve finally answered my central question with these books. After reading Death’s End, I cast about and came across a 1977 collection of essays usefully named Chinese Narrative, published by Princeton, which helped contextualize my friend Peter’s helpful statement about the topic:

Chinese stories and novels no doubt belonged to a minor tradition rather than to the central elite culture of historiography, philosophical prose, and lyric verse. [...] One problem is certainly unique to the Western reader. Conditioned by his own culture, he has certain expectations that Chinese fiction will not necessarily meet. The kind of suspense he is used to may not occur. Concluding chapters may give a sense of anticlimax instead of a resounding resolution to the action. Rather than develop, individual characters may appear throughout a work as “whole” as they will ever be. [...] Even the category of novel as such may be inappropriate to the fiction of China prior to the twentieth century.
(Foreword by Cyril Birch)

These essays further imply that some plots can be chronicles instead of leading the reader along a concise plot like Western novels do. This makes sense in regards to the first novel and my reaction. After reading this third novel, I believe I have answered this central guiding question:
● First, Ken Liu’s translation of the first book is ambiguous, but not terrible in terms of reflecting the Chinese narrative tradition. He is better as a translator here. I’ve read his published book of short stories and have many of the same complaints about his writing there as I do his translation here.
● Second, the story strikes an engaging balance between Western and Chinese narrative traditions: this third book is less Western than the middle book, and less Chinese than the first. Yet the tale itself may be no greater or worse than any other Hugo winner, an awards tradition that is as full of hits as it is misses.
● Third, I think Liu Cixin is not a great writer, but he has a shotgun blast’s way of embedding interesting ideas and discussions into his works that I enjoy. And there are a couple of phrases here or there that do make for nice touches. Like this paragraph:

Cheng Xin was taken aback by the chaotic arrangement of the pipes. It wasn’t the result of carelessness; on the contrary, to create this kind of utter chaos required great effort and design. The arrangement seemed to find even the hint of a pattern to be taboo. This suggested an aesthetic utterly at odds with human values: Patterns were ugly, but the lack of order was beautiful.

—In short, I like this book, but it isn’t perfect. The pacing annoys me, as do the scientific exposition sections; but Cheng Xin carries many of these annoyances out of mind with her depth, which Liu uses to set up the main theme of the novel. It’s a strong final novel, even if the ending is a little cosmically “so what?” The whole series starts with an ant crawling on a tombstone, and ends with the universe barreling towards heat death, a progressive expansion of scope that I do appreciate as a writing tactic because Liu Cixin keeps cutting from micro to macro and back. I look forward to reading Liu Cixin in the future, and to watching Ken Liu grow as a translator. But I’m not going to immediately buy the next Liu Cixin novel that hits America until I’m in the right mood. Though I am glad that I now have some experience with Chinese narrative tradition to base future book buying decisions off of. I should finally read Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

“But we’ve long been called on to think about matters that belonged to the province of God.” They sat by the brook until the moon turned into the sun again.

+++

All my life has been spent climbing up a flight of stairs made of responsibility. When I was little, my only duty was to study hard and obey my parents. Later, in high school and college, the responsibility to study hard continued, but there was also the added obligation to make myself useful rather than a drain on society.

The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu

Translated by Joel Martinsen.

0. Preamble: When I finished my notes for The Three-Body Problem, I was left with a couple of frustrations and criticisms: it told too much with inconsistent quality; that it started with a murder, or three, before the writing, world, or characters mattered to me was annoying; I was confused by the structure throughout; and I was left with the overarching question: is this just strange, or is it unsuccessful? I concluded that it was probably a little bit of both, but that “I don’t know how much of my confusion is from translational ambiguity, unknown differences in narrative traditions between Western and Chinese stories, or this tale itself being told poorly.” I had hoped that this second novel, with a different translator, would illuminate that question for me. I was also genuinely interested in the story—Liu crafted an interesting story, at least what of it I could tell through my confusion. So I got the second book right away and found it to be a much more pleasurable read. On to discussing The Dark Forest itself!

1. The structure is more straightforward, but still strange. About halfway to three-fifths of the way in, the story seemingly ends. But with so much book left physically in my hands, the tension—though evaporated entirely from the words on the page—was still present thanks to the physical characteristics of the book. Without writing something like, “But human hope in assured victory was premature,” Liu communicated this through the context of the physicality of the book. This is a cool tactic. As the reader keeps reading and the new world builds more full, the tension grows. It raises a distinct feeling of wanting to shout at the screen, “Don’t go in there!”
—But it’s not all awesome. In terms of pacing, the tensionless time after Luo Ji wakes up goes on far, far too long. It really risked losing my interest. Which is a shame because: I feel that’s the only pacing problem in the book, I feel the mid-epilogue-gone-south tactic has a lot more potential than what Liu does with it, and because it takes up so much of the book with what quickly feels like a cheap trick. It begins to feel like a trick because of two reasons: he only uses it to create that one wonderful feeling in the reader, nothing more—I’m still left wondering what the Rift was and how this world is governmentally organized on any level other than the broadest strokes; and because he belabors the point for so long—which reminds me of his unfortunate heavy-handedness in the first book.
So the structure is strange. It does some cool things, but it also takes a risk that doesn’t quite work out fully. The rest of the structure of the book is successful, and without a translator’s note like the last one had, explaining how translated the structure is, I am still left wondering if my problems with most of the structure of the first book, and this central portion of the structure of the second book are due to differences in the narrative tradition, translational skills, or just poor writing.

2. On the other hand, he starts the book brilliantly. Instead of destroying something, he creates something—that graveyard conversation that invents cosmic sociology is told well from an interesting perspective and the rest of the book reflects on it well. The opening shows the power of beginning in a positive place. Sure the book had some negative aspects—it's filled with death and destruction—but by starting positive, I start the book with a positive outlook and that helps me remain positive throughout the book. Wonderful. Though it’s probably only so wonderful because so many books don’t start this way. If every book started this way, I’d be just as bored of it as I am of the opening murder tactic. [12/5/15: Oh hey! The opening has been put up online]

3. He still tells an awful lot, but I feel he is less ham-fisted here. He allows the reader a little more space, respects their intelligence more, and this creates a much more pleasurable read. I really enjoyed this book on a level I didn’t enjoy the first one. The first was a slog at times, but this was something I couldn’t wait to get back to reading. I was excited about it and thinking about it when I wasn’t reading. Some things I want to have explained more are brushed over, and some things that are explained are done so too fully, but that’s probably just personal preference. Throughout he foreshadows well, sets the stage for coming revelations well, and leaves enough hints that reflection is rewarding: I was guessing where things were headed and enjoyed that process because of his hints. So I would say the writing improves here, which is probably due to the translator. No offense to Ken Liu, but this book was more enjoyable to read. I’ll be interested to read the next one when it comes out next year, to see if Ken Liu modifies his translation to read more like this one does.

4. Where the first book focused on humans and how they would react to alien contact and aggression, this book’s theme continues that somewhat, but also focuses on Liu’s theory of galactic survivalism. The galaxy itself is the eponymous “dark forest”, a fearful place of shoot first and ask questions later. In other words, he's focusing on Luo Ji's theories of ET life and galactic survivalism, and these ideas are the central theme of the book: the name of the book, the opening scene, and the way that certain portions of the book’s plot focus on humans acting the same way and it’s a pretty depressing conclusion: survival requires lots and lots of murder. The theme is successfully illuminated through the spell, the probe, and the humans—especially the escapees. Because Liu has thought deeply about this and shows that in his writing, the theme really works well.

5. Like Iain M Banks’ The Player of Games, he has really long chapters here. And I appreciate this tactic simply for breaking away from the typical chapter structure of ending cliffhangers. This is a novel, why not let the story roll instead of trying to break it up into chunks?

6. In all, I really enjoyed this book. Where The Three-Body Problem was a dense puzzle, this is a sprawling adventure. Liu keeps tension in the book really well, except that overly long middle portion where he wanted to drop all tension. The writing fixed my major issue with the first book, the ham-fisting, but still wasn’t anything great. I look forward to the third book and will pick it up next year.

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

Translated by Ken Liu.

1. I really appreciate the way Liu deals with video games. Instead of some starry-eyed, over-the-top, unnecessary and long description of the game-world as an unknowable pseudo-fantasy-land, he describes it the same way he describes spaces in the physical world: as a place the character is experiencing for the first time. It’s not this special, magical place whose description shows only that the author clearly doesn’t understand how humans interact with games; but an honest, down-to-earth portrayal of a video game. His descriptions are William Gibson-esque in approaching the game-world like the character approaches any other space. Instead of mysticism, Liu describes the video game world for why it’s interesting. For instance, the world is initially esoteric, so the descriptions are. But the character views video games as mundane, a known part of the world, so the descriptions of it are mundane. Also, the VR tech is just a matter of course, not a life-altering wonder-tech: it’s a mundane technology in a mundane world. You know, like the world Liu has created is actually real with real people in it: the technology is used, not revered. This is not some shiny new world, but it’s a world populated by real people and real objects and the relationships the character has to the world feel true and honest. This is refreshing and important to remember.

2. My biggest complaint is a tendency in the writing to ham-fist things, which feels insulting to the reader. For instance, when Wang talks to Shen, it’s clearly shown who she is through how she interacts with others. However, later he decides to describe these aspects of her character. He starts with the beautiful telling-phrase, “She spoke like a telegraph—”. This confirms what I already knew with a novel phrase—a great tactic. However, he goes on: “and gave him the impression that she was always extremely cold.” Okay, now that's just redundant. But he doesn’t end there: he keeps hammering the point home through four more long sentences that feel like he’s belaboring the point unnecessarily because he doesn’t believe the reader understands yet. Sure, the C-Prompt analogy is a beautiful one, but it’s too much. This tendency is annoying throughout. He tells well, he just tells too much. Other than this ham-fisting, the writing seems passable, but in translation it’s impossible to judge writing much beyond that.

3. Liu starts the story with one of my least-favorite moves: beginning with a murder before the reader has been given a chance to care about anything yet. I don’t yet care about the world, any characters, or the plot by the time the first murder has occurred. This is difficult for me because it’s such a cliche in speculative fiction right now. It seems like three-quarters of the novels I buy that are from the last five years start with a dead body. This one though, it starts with not just one death, but three! Is this a pun on the title, which is the famous physics-problem and what the plot of the book revolves around? Anyways, he later tries to tie in two of these murders to the life of Wenjie, one of the two main characters. I think these murders try to drive home his perspective on the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. But he does this much more effectively later through showing some specifics that relate to the characters and themes the reader already knows and cares about. These later instances of showing are more effective because the reader is invested, not because he shows better. However, he does show quite well.

4. Structurally, I’m confused. And I don’t know how much of my confusion is from translational ambiguity, unknown differences in narrative traditions between Western and Chinese stories, or this tale itself being told poorly. Primarily, I think I'm confused at the pace of information and the pauses between the first instance and the explanation:
—One example is the countdown, experienced in the first hundred pages, then explained in the last-hundred pages of this four-hundred page book. This is a long wait for what seems a minor plot point. It attempts to set up mystery, but missed that for me by being seemingly dropped and not mentioned again until the end. Only after I got to the second explanation did I realize that I should have been feeling mystery over this throughout. It initially felt like Liu didn't know where he was going.
—Another example is that the ETO is explained as a two-faction group throughout, until about the 300 page mark, when a third faction suddenly appears, and is promptly dropped in a way that billboards a sequel.
—My third example is that Liu often reveals something ambiguously, “Physics doesn’t exist,” then seemingly drops it until five to ten pages later when he gives some exposition, then again until a couple of hundred pages later when he reveals more about this concept. This adds confusion to the story. I’m already confused because the story is paced oddly, and this extra confusion doesn’t add any more mystery, but raises questions in my mind as to whether the author knows where he’s going. I assumed he did and read on, believing that by the end my understanding would come.
And it did satisfactorily. This shaped up by the end into a rather interesting tale. But those early struggles obscured important revelations and aspects of the world and plot for me. The translator, Ken Liu, states in his translator’s notes, “The Chinese literary tradition was shaped by its readers, giving rise to different emphases and preferences in fiction compared to what American readers expect. In some cases, I tried to adjust the narrative techniques to ones that American readers are more familiar with. In other cases, I’ve left them alone, believing that it’s better to retain the flavor of the original.” At the end, I can’t tell which portions of the novel are either of these techniques. Ken Liu is a good writer on his own, so I can’t blame all my struggles on his translation. I believe this question to be unanswerable by me. Perhaps what Kim Stanley Robinson says on the cover is most informative here: “familiar but strange all at the same time.” I can agree with that. But I still don’t know how much of my confusion is from which of these three issues.

5. The themes of the novel are human interactions and possible responses to the existence of aliens. This is explained fully and concisely in the author’s postscript, where he talks about how humans should be more friendly to each other and all life on their planet, and less optimistic about aliens. And I believe Liu nailed this theme. So, despite the structural confusions I experienced and annoyance I felt at the writing’s redundancy, this is a successful novel in that it communicates its point clearly and adequately, while telling an interesting and engaging story. But in this theme, he doesn’t ever lose sight of the human aspect and delve into what makes Wenjie, Wang, and Shi tick. He delves into their psychology effectively. This melding of alien and human interactions is well-done.

6. This novel is also hard science fiction, and Liu does a good job of explaining these physics concepts and what makes them interesting. I came away from this book with a deeper understanding of the three-body problem in physics. But the novel is wonderfully diverse in the number of science topics it discusses, giving them all an introductory treatment instead of a deep exploration of one theory. Liu does a good job of explaining these through focusing on the interesting aspects and using these properties in the story to show understandable examples of the physics theories discussed. This is effective and separates his writing from a textbook’s.

7. In all, this novel is well-written. Despite spending half the book or more telling people who asked, “I don’t yet know what it’s about, or who the main character is.” I eventually believed, “but I think he knows where he’s going and those last fifty pages are going to be super-important and dense.” And they were. I think almost everything tied back in by the end. It was done in an interesting way and it led to an interesting conclusion—it illuminated that wonderful theme through showing. In short, this strange novel all works out in the end, it makes sense by the end, but it requires a lot from the reader due to its strangeness. It ain’t a bad book, but I am still slightly bemused. And I'm not sure it's in the good way.