Remembrance of the Earth’s Past
The Three Body Problem Series
I am not sure how I stumbled on to this series, but I am glad I did. I didn’t even read the description on Goodreads, which now retrospectively I can say is a good thing, because it feels very ‘spoiler-y’.
Book 1: The Three Body Problem
I was about 70% across the book one night when I decided to close it and get some sleep. And it was really hard to actually fall asleep, as my mind kept on playing Anthem by Michael Abels from the movie Us (dir. Jordan Peele). The genius page of the music says it’s supposed to make you think of the ominous arrival of something insidious. Which is really how I felt after realizing the aliens were coming (reminder: I didn’t read the description so all of that was a bit of a surprise for me). Since I was really trying to sleep, my eyes were closed and during all of these imaginations, the aliens looked like the ‘locusts/buggers’ from the Ender Game series. Very absurd.
When I read that Ken Liu had translated this story, I knew it would be very faithful to the source. To people like me, who are from the subcontinent, Eastern media feels much more relatable and palatable. There was a sense of uneasiness from the very beginning, a palpable discomfort, which felt pleasant. Which sounds contradictory.
I am not a physicist but at some point, in college, I liked toying with the fancy words, ideas and terminologies in quantum physics. I mean who didn’t, right? So, I am not sure how sound the physics is in it. It is logical though…does stretch the margins of imagination into multiple dimensions folding and unfolding at the end but its easily palatable. Touche.
I am going to refer this to any and all of my friends who are even remotely interested in physics as academicians.
I really like Ye Wenjie as a character. I think her thought processes throughout the novel are coherent and easy to root for even if you don’t always necessarily see eye to eye with her actions/views. Wang was the fulfilment of the classic sci-fi trope (Arthur Dent), where you need a male ‘protagonist’ to act dumb (despite being a nanotechnologist(?)) and confused and be ‘you’ throughout the novel. I liked the little civil war arc, and I wonder if it will be fleshed out better and more in the next books. Also liked the little creative metaphors like the Farmer Shooter hypothesis. I think it was the perfect blend of philosophy and science fiction.
My favourite part about the novel was obviously the Three Body Problem Game. I wish it lasted longer, had more time in the novel, maybe that would have caused it to lose some charm, but I crave more. I wish a real life version of it existed. I probably wouldn’t make it far, maybe I would.
Despite being like two decades old, I still felt so many parallels from that time and today, and it doesn’t feel too farfetched to me that some otherworldly assistance may be needed to solve some of our long-drawn-out problems and already some factions amidst us maybe prepping us or ripening us for harvest for any such Trisolarian invasion.
In any case, for the record, I would like to categorize myself as a Redemptionist.
Yeah, I am a softie.
Book 2: The Dark Forest
I have got a lot to say about this one.
Which is a surprise because around the 80% mark, I had very little to say asthe book had started to feel unremarkable and like any other science fiction book with elements of space war and aliens.
I will obviously start with the Wallfacer project. At the end of the last book, I started thinking that if the sophons were really giving omniscient omnipresent knowledge to the Trisolarans, how does humanity move ahead? And I did think about the human mind being a vaulted maze. And so, the idea of the Wallfacer project in itself isn’t too surprising…but its execution is probably impossible. I would also add that more than their surveillance which I thought was scarier, the technological block that the sophons had on human frontier science was far more debilitating. I really loved Ding Ye’s dialogue near the end where he mentions how its been centuries but he can still teach physics at a university no less. So, if you sit down and think about how you could potentially fight off an alien invasion from a fleet much larger and technologically advanced than yours and who also have continuous surveillance of you…there’s really not much that comes to mind.
I love how the four wallfacers working independently more or less agreed with common sense and logic:
Humanity was doomed and couldn’t survive such an assault.
Obviously, each in their own way still managed to find ways to at least tackle the ominous Trisolaran fleet in one way or another. As someone with a biological background, I felt like Hines plan had the most creativity and maybe the final say as well. I think there’s still unexplored ends there that I expect will be addressed in the final instalment of the trilogy. (Mehwar from the future: Surprise, it didn’t)
About Lou Ji. I didn’t like him as a protagonist for most of the book. There didn’t seem much point to his actions. In retrospect I am sure even Luo Ji didn’t know, maybe this fact also makes his redemption (in my eyes) much more heartwarming. The fact that he had no Wallbreaker assigned felt like plot armour to me. His plan is also probably the most obvious one. I think…maybe that’s how it was meant to be, the reader was the Wallbreaker of Luo.
I am also dancing around the elephant in the room here, the ending.
There’s a lot to say and unpack but I’ll say, I loved every aspect of it. Maybe not the bits where they deified Luo for no reason. I think I started to sympathize with him when he started isolating in the village. When he started digging the grave, I realised I actually felt sad for him. By this time, he had explained cosmic sociology to Da Shi, and that part (and the whole ending is really what turns this book from an average 3 star to a 4.5ish star). The whole arc of the Battle of Darkness and Spaceship Earth Fleet (which I believe we will see more of in the next book too) was poignant in its own way but when explained by Luo under the context of the axioms of cosmic sociology and the sub context of the two books, it felt like pieces of puzzle had started to glue together. Similarly, the metaphor of there being scared alert hunters, in the dark forest of this universe, felt viscerally scary, something the rest of the book failed to do until this point, and beyond this point, the title made sense.
The ‘Anthem’ part that I mentioned in the review of book one felt relatable again. The cherry on the top at the end was Luo’s negotiations with the Trisolarans who honestly at this point, feel more like an immature and infantile yet very technologically advanced race.
I also found an interesting device that the author used multiple times in the book. He kept using contrasting elements to highlight points of emphasis. The nonchalant of Luo Ji when he was initially a Wallfacer only revelling in spending time with his family and then his maniacal devotion at the end, just because now his family was on the line. Showing that the human civilization had progressed at breakneck speed after centuries into the future (which was in itself a twist, and maybe the biggest plot twist in the entire book, because I like the hibernators had started to imagine a dreary Mad Max world) the entirely digitized utopia-esque world immediately stood in stark difference to the actual sandy world on the surface. The unwavering confidence of most of the populace in victory or peace compared to the trepidation that the hibernators and the reader (both relics of the twenty first century) felt at the approaching Trisolaran probe and how it was very clear that destruction was inevitable.
Some other titbits worth mentioning are:
I don’t understand the parts where the author talks about the three old men and their lives. Is he trying to give us a glimpse into the life of a commoner? They felt incomplete or unnecessary.
Zhang Beihai gave me strong Roy Mustang vibes, he was probably the most bad-ass character in the book, and I was sorry to see him go…right? I don’t think the author will indulge in sensationalism and somehow revive him. He was my favourite character, and he felt like a Wallfacer too despite not being one. Maybe his plan was also the soundest one. In any case, his character motives despite being so vague felt right and you couldn’t help but root for him throughout. I keenly looked forward to the parts where he featured.
Speaking of favourite characters, it would be a crime not to mention Shi. I am glad he is alive at the end of Book 2, and I am pretty sure he’s going to feature in the third one too. He has to, I don’t know how, but he has to. Its funny how out of all the cool scientists and politicians and commanders, the one guy making it through the trilogy is a regular policeman(ish), maybe there’s a point there too.
Luo’s writer girlfriend asking him to write a novel for her hit me somewhere deep and as someone who dabbles/d in writing, I realised how valuable such a gift would be. The part where the character he makes takes over his life feels exaggerated but maybe that lack of imagination explains why I am not good at writing, or maybe its just the kind of person Luo was. Standing in front of Mona Lisa and looking at your beloved with a mysterious smile definitely goes into some bucket-list somewhere.
Finally, my actual realest favourite character in the book was the ant at Dong’s grave, at the start of the novel and at the end. Everything really did come full circle.
Book 3: Death’s End
I am kind of glad the series is over. The last bits of this felt dragged and clearly at that point the hibernation technology was being used more as a plot device than…well really any other purpose in the plot. I have a lot to say too.
Let’s start with the sexism. It started from the very start of the book, with how Cheng Xin was introduced to us. When she jumped into the future and the constant repetition of how men in future were less of a man or had less of the ‘worthwhile’ traits just because they were feminine. The author might be using this as a justification to show why Common Era men were still the main and the supporting characters in the series but really there could have been better ways to explain how that happened without resorting to such blatant remarks. Cheng was the protagonist in the story, and really the only woman in the entire trilogy who got any meaningful spotlight after Ye Wenjie. The characters around her were patronizing her and making remarks about her youth and its beauty, specially the fact when it was men that were previously her age and then had grown up while she hibernated was really creepy.
Plus, the author gave this little event of a random mother holding her child outside the UN to Cheng and let that single experience dictate most of her decisions. Which didn’t really matter because no matter what Cheng did, she was never really blamed. This is further proved in the very end when the characters assure her again that what she did was right. I mean it kind of makes sense, really anything anybody did in the trilogy eventually did not really mean a whole lot as humanity stood helpless but that the onus fell on Cheng all the time was frustrating. Maybe she was the epitome of what being a human feels like. Maybe Liu Cixin tried too hard to give Cheng stereotypical feminine traits, showed that they lead towards problems, but never really gave her any meaningful consequences. Except at the very end, the part where they are stuck in the black domain and end up rotating for millions of years. But that in itself was so unnecessary, and just felt like a flagellation that the characters and the story didn’t deserve. Or a twist that was there just for the sheer shock value of it. There could have been harmonious ways to reach the same conclusion that Liu Cixin did eventually for the series without putting Guan Yifan and Cheng through that ordeal.
The other thing I need to bring up is the difference in translation that I realised retrospectively between the first and third books and the second book. There are other factors at play here, and although my favourite part about this book is the thrilling and horrifying concept of the dark forest theory, I still think the second book was the weakest in the trilogy. And that is despite the glaring problems I’ve written about in the previous paragraph.
I was surprised there was no Da Shi. Not the good kind of surprise. Luo Ji did return, and I think I just like his character now. Despite the allegations against him, it was clear that he was meant to be glorified in the reader’s eye. His samurai and sensei like transformation coupled with his part in the final portion of the novel where he reveals how he played a part in Halo acquiring lightspeed propulsion was quaint. What really sold me over to his side was him still clutching the Mona Lisa despite all these years and all that had occurred. However, I did not like how his wife and daughter had been conveniently disposed off. I understand it makes the story easy to tell, and I also want to believe that it was just Luo who told them to go away for their own sake, instead of them leaving him. One quote associated with Luo in the book that just proves my point that the author was fixated on showing his image of an ideal man include:
“From now on, even if the feminized humankind saw him as a devil and a monster, they all had to admit that his victory was unsurpassed in the entire history of civilization.”
And I think it was okay for Halo to have lightspeed. I would have also been okay if everyone in the Bunker Worlds including Cheng had died by the attack, and just the part of humanity that left for stars earlier had survived. Speaking of them, I just really think that Zhang Beihai from last book had the right idea from the very start. At the end of the day, humanity did have to leave the solar system, one way or another. The part at the start of the book where the ramifications of the Doomsday Battles play out, and then Gravity gives chase to Blue Space, only to be ambushed and become a part of their plans was exciting.
The introduction of fourth dimension, its implications to the rest of the universe (especially the bit of dialogue about the fish and the puddle, which really made sense in the end), to the story and the description as well as the way the author handled it was so good. I think this is the only reason why this book isn’t like a two or a one star. The science fiction concepts do start going over your head, but they are still interesting enough to keep me hooked, and the way they are applied to the story is always so captivating and makes me want to talk to real scientists and ask the viability of their possibility. I have started playing this mental game where I would put myself in the Three Body world every time a new science fiction concept was introduced, to see how I would make use of it, either as a character in the story or just as a writer.
The conversion of Yun Tianming from really an incel, and a sad man to the literal messiah of humankind was crazy. Felt like there was some projection going on there. I do think this is a common theme in a lot of Asian story writing where the loser ends up being the biggest winner at the end (Ken Kanaki, thoughts??). I am just not a big fan of it. You don’t have to provide such a stark contrast for the final outcome and influence to stand out. Maybe I am just jealous. How does one literally give their loved one a star and then tops it with a universe in the same life?? Moving on, I do not understand why Liu Cixin kept glorifying Wade. The author kept bringing him up as a solution to all problems. Making him the emblem of the ‘ends justify the means’. He was really the antithesis of Cheng. And he didn’t have to be turned into an anti-hero, when the character was written as a genuinely problematic psychopath from the beginning. Maybe he was just trying to make Wade seem like a ‘chad’. I also just found the name really funny: Thomas Wade. Now that I think about, his surrender and eventual demise was a bit sad. He did keep his promise to Cheng, and at the end of the day, it was mostly his ideas that were helping humanity save themselves. Maybe his was the most profound death in the entire trilogy.
It would be a tragedy to not talk about the Trisolarans. My favourite part about them is that we never actually see them or get a description really of any alien civilization in the entire trilogy. The Trisolarans are specifically this ominous threat that just stay and even after their planet is destroyed, the fact that humanity was still wary of sophons was a nice touch to show the impact they had on Earth. I did see their betrayal coming from a long way. The Deterrence era ‘pseudo-cooperation’ felt like it was just not based on any meaningful logic. Still, the fact that they chose to do it as soon as Luo wasn’t the Swordholder adds another point to the heroification of Luo in my mind.
I also liked the concept of Sophon (with a capital S) being this android type being that the Trisolarans controlled from faraway and that represented their interests on Earth. It was high-time we got an entity that was just the Trisolarans. The Resettlement Era storyline was depressing, and I was totally ready for everyone I know to die in that era, and the story to continue through the Trisolaran perspective with humanity living through the Resistance fighters. Her return as a manager of the mini-universe, specially after her final dialogue to Luo and Cheng was a pleasant surprise. I felt like the Trisolarans were crazy technologically advanced and yet the fact that they were more or less suffering the same fate as humans feels so scary in the long span of things and speaks about the advancement of the other civilizations in space.
Although, humanity did come full circle and returned to its ‘original’ or common era lifestyles as described by Cheng after her umpteenth hibernation, there was still a lot of science fiction to unpack. Which was my favourite aspect of the trilogy. Liu Cixin is insanely creative for coming up with all of this stuff. I probably reread the single chapter from Singer’s perspective many times. It is so exhilarating and just exciting. Also, horrifying. He is the lowliest of their workers and yet he possesses the ability to simply annihilate solar systems with a single press of a button. For a second, I thought Singer was also human, and that would be an ongoing plot in the rest of the book, but I am glad that wasn’t the case. The use of basic laws of physics as weapons, the changing of dimensions as an aggressive manoeuvre and the changing of speed of light as a defensive manoeuvre were new ideas to me. And tie into the suicides of all the scientists in the first book. It shows their insight, and it is something that one of the Common Era physicist also kind of remarks on.
The last attack of the ‘piece of paper’ on humankind and their complete submission and surrender felt so calming.
It felt like this fate that humanity had been running from, from the first book and so many pages had finally caught up to them.
And I don’t see any reader who would not be content with that finally. If anything had happened then to save them, I would have been very disappointed. This is what they should have gotten for not building the Black Domain. (which would have been my go-to plan, but I am also an introvert). The little theorization and cryptic little details like the self mutilation theory during the safety notice figuring out storyline, the fairy tales and their interpretations, cemented Liu Cixin as an excellent writer in my mind. I mean he doesn’t really need my validation, but it just proved how good he was at melding these various concepts seamlessly into this very nuanced and intricately detailed story. The fact that the lightspeed planes left trails that were easy to detect was such a nice plot device. And lastly, the return of Cheng and Guan Yifan to universe, as return of mass back was very symbolic, though I do wish it would have been just people from Blue Space and Gravity or just some new humans who had escaped into mini-universes, not Cheng. I just didn’t like any of the main protagonists that Liu Cixin had in any of the books in the trilogy (at least in their own book, because Luo was ok in this one).
When I started this trilogy, I did not understand why the series was called ‘Remembrance of Earth’s Past’. I thought it would be something to do with time travel. Now that I have finished the book I know why. It is because all of the trilogy and all of these words had a very simple lesson.
Civilizations yearn to be remembered and known.
And they will go to extreme measures to ensure the survival of their memories. It is like evolution making us want to have kids to propel our progeny and make sure our legacy (and species) lives on…but at a much larger scale.
