Remembrance of Earth's Past: A Trilogy

Cixin Liu

I finished it!!!!! Gentlefriends, in this era where exclamation marks are frivolously tossed around by those uncultured texters, I know you must be shaking your heads at my exorbitance. I thought you were different you must be saying wearily. But after trawling through 1851 pages,  I think I can indulge. 

1851 pages. I had to take a few breaks and read fluffy rom-coms to keep my sanity. But I came back to it. And in the end, it was worth it.

Three Body Problem

China, during the Cultural Revolution: Ye Wenjie watches as her family and community are torn apart for being part of the bourgeoise. The daughter of academics, and an astrophysicist herself, she tries to survive the tumultuous redistribution, while caught up in a scientific revolution of her own. 

Four decades later, Wang Miao, is suddenly asked to investigate the mysterious spurt of suicides among a group of scientists. He finds his familiar world slipping away, caught up in dangerous new politics and technologies. Humanity is hurtling toward something. Something it has long dreamed of. Contact with those who live among the stars. But will this be a new dawn for humanity, or the beginning of the end?

The Dark Forest

Luo Ji is one of humanity's last hopes. In a world where nothing is safe from alien eavesdroppers, only the human mind is impenetrable. So thus the Wallfacer project. Four men are chosen to plot the course of humanity, and are given enormous power and resources, to plan a way to save the world. Three of these are politicians, powerful, brilliant men. And then there is Luo Ji. A bright but lazy scientist, no one, including Luo Ji himself, knows why he was chosen. Yet, he's the only one the aliens are trying to kill.

Death's End

Humanity is flourishing. Peace and harmony define the era. But all good things come to an end. 

Cheng Xin, an aeronautical engineer, awakes from hibernation to this new golden world. Her very presence could be a catalyst that will bring disaster crashing down. Will humanity carve its place in this harsh universe or will it be stamped out of existence?

I think I heard a crash. Oh wait, that was my jaw hitting the floor. And also the table collapsing under the immense weight (not counting all the metaphorical mass) of this boxset.  

The first novel and the third are quite different, with the second acting as a sort of bridge. The page count progresses arithmetically from approximately 400 to 600 to 800 pages. The first novel's scope is only about  seventy years; the second, 200 years; the third, a few million.

 
With these huge time gaps, Liu brings out the way society and culture change. He looks at society through a lens of  masculinity and femininity, an interesting perspective. He describes complex scientific concepts with an elegant flourish. The novel is pretty heavy science fiction that way. The author also describes fascinating sociological and philosophical concepts. The style is quite lovely on the whole, it's not too jargon-happy and has a poetic flair.

The characters are also pretty interesting. In the first book, Ye Wenjie is a brilliant but misled scientist. Wang Miao is a normal man who has been put into a situation he is not prepared to deal with . The hero of the second book, Luo Ji, my favourite character, is a clever, lazy, self-interested scientist who has been volunteered to do one of the most vital and selfless jobs on earth. And finally, the heroine of the third book, Cheng Xin, the tragic martyr.

I would say the plotlines are the best bit. Brilliant, unique and well paced, the plot keeps you hooked. the first and second novels and smaller in scale and more gripping, mainly following people's personal missions, while the third is vast and majestic, following Cheng Xin's centuries-long, painfully human quest to lead mankind on the right path

Overall 4.5 on 5. A must for hardcore science fiction fans, and a great read for anyone else (but keep a few frothy dramas at hand, just in case).