Saturday, May 13, 2017

A Book Review: Death's End by Cixin Liu (Remembrance of Earth's Past #3)

Imagine a life in a bubbling lake of hot tar. Is that even possible? Surely, life cannot exist at such a place, right? Yet, scientists discovered, at Pitch Lake, the world's largest naturally occurring asphalt lake, up to 10 million microbes live in every gram of this black, sticky goo. But Pitch Lake is just one of the many unthinkable places where scientists have discovered life. On the other hand, I think we can say, life finds a way to adapt and survive in the harshest circumstances - Life IS survival, those who didn't aren't alive anymore.

There are, however, many says to survive, and not all life forms are the same, so what is the best way for the intelligent life to meet the adaptive challenges? In Death's End, the conclusion to the phenomenal sci-fi epic, Remembrance of Earth's Past, author Cixin Liu explored this question, not only for the humankind, but for the survival of the entire universe. This book's scope is breathtaking, I have never read a book as vast as Death's End. This novel brings the trilogy to a satisfying (and mind-bending) conclusion. Meanwhile, I think this trilogy is a magnum opus in the science fiction genre.

Like its 2 predecessors (The ThreeBody Problem and The Dark Forest), the plot in Death's End revolves around a mystery. I racked my brain and I am still unable to write a spoiler-free synopsis for this book, so my review will just have to go without it. I think it will suffice to say, we meet a new protagonist in Death's End. Her name is Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer. From here, we follow Cheng Xin to the end of the universe.

Author Ken Liu once again took the helm for translating the book from Chinese into English. I have not read Death's End in Chinese, but I thought the English translation is seamless, it is very smooth and well written. The book made occasional references to Chinese cultural items unfamiliar to the western readers, but Ken Liu included useful footnotes to helping English readers understanding its significance.

This trilogy is “hard” sci-fi. The first book, The Three Body Problem, was about theoretical physics. The second installment, The Dark Forest, was about evolution and sociology. In Death's End, it talks about both theoretical physics and evolution. From evolution to the string theory, Death's End covered a broad range of theories in science! Some of the sciences mentioned in this book are established theories, while others are probably speculative. There are a lot of hardcore science theories in this book. Yet, Cixin Liu has this amazing ability to graft a scientific theory from its spatial/mathematical presentation to the bone and marrow of literature, allowing his readers to envision the extent of it through literary devices.

Let me put it this way, you can read a journal paper about the string theory, or the 26 dimensions of the universe. You can read the mathematical equations that model these theories, but it is impossible to “visualize” what it actually looks like. For example, we can visualize a 2 dimensional world, something like a painting, from our 3 dimensional perspective. But can you imagine what a 4 dimensional world looks like from our dimensional perspective? It is impossible, right? But in this book, Cixin Liu transplanted these ideas into literary terms, which helped his readers to visualize what it “could” look like. His writings captured the grandeur and the vastness of the mysterious universe, it made me reflect on the reality that by comparison, humanity is so small and our history within this universe is so very, very brief.

The story in Death's End is rich as its scope is expansive. There are many characters in this book, and every one of them received a vivid and well-rounded portrayal. None of them are caricatures. Some parts of this book are outright frightening, while others are hopeful. Throughout the whole book, it depicted the characters' feelings and experiences genuinely. As readers, we accompanied these characters on their journey through despair as well as hope. By the time I turned to the last page in this book, I found it hard to part ways with some of these characters. I look forward to the day when I will be re-reading this trilogy and visiting these characters again.

Death's End is an interesting book. It is inherently thought-provoking. From my interpretation, at its core is a story that unifies science and philosophy, to exploring a question. That is, the question at the beginning of my review: What is the way to survival? In our world, we talk about survival with ideas such as altruism/love and selfishness. Some people assert, altruism/love is incompatible with survival. These people claim, if survival is the only thing that matters, then altruism/love is a mistake so in order to love we must subscribe to some mystic/religious view. They want to force us into believing it is all or nothing!

Well, I strongly disagree!

Why? This is because these people forgot to mention, survival have 2 levels; individual survival as well as group survival, and these 2 are not the same. Selfishness may benefit an individual's survival within a group, but on the other hand, we all need group survival, collectively, or our existence will cease; and group survival requires altruism/love. We can observe this tension, between love and selfishness, in humanity. To use an analogy, we are 90% chimps and 10% bees. The “chimps” part of us has allowed us to individually thrive in the society, but the “bees” part of us has improved our chance at survival by being collective as a group, as a civilization. I think the truth is, our fragile existence in this universe stands on the tension between altruism and selfishness, and we will probably die out without either one of them. In my interpretation of the book, I think this is where Death's End is pointing a direction to the answer to survival. I think this book provides a thought experiment, showing us that love doesn't come from some mystic/religious origin. In the face of survival, love is not a mistake. 

Instead, the instinct of survival dictates that we ARE love. 

Love may appear counter-intuitive and impossible, but to survive we have become love (and selfishness), just like the microbes at Pitch Lake has found a way to adapt and live in a sea of bubbling hot tar. It is mind-bending, rendering this naturalistic view about love equally as majestic as (if not more majestic than) the mystic/religious view about love.

I highly recommend this trilogy to the fans of the sci-fi genre, especially to those who are fond of hard sci-fi stories.













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