Death's End

死神永生 (Sǐshén yǒngshēng), the final volume of Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy has a slightly different name in English than it has in Finnish. Google translate says the squiggles mean 'death immortality' so I'm not sure which is more accurate: Death's End or Kuolema on ikuinen ('death is eternal', or maybe 'death is forever' like how one James Bond novel by John Gardner is titled and translated). A character in the novel does say death to be the only lighthouse that is always lit so I'm kind of favoring the Finnish name.

With a name like that, I had a hunch that the novel wouldn't have a great ending. I also suspected that it wouldn't be a conventional one, like the Trisolaran fleet arriving and that being it; The Dark Forest had already spread the stage to galaxy-wide at least. The listing of humankind's current and future eras at the start of book confirmed my suspicions: the last one begins at year 18 million something. The ending was definitely going to be beyond current human comprehension. And it was. Rather Clarke-like too in fact.

Death's End is more about the journey. And there is a lot going in the novel, its length alone hints of that: The Three-Body Problem has about 450 pages in Finnish, The Dark Forest is 700, and Death's End nears 900 pages. The story is quite a rollercoaster for humanity. There are times of prosperity but also serious fighting for survival -- for what it's worth in the end.

Technological advancement is the key to that survival but I personally don't believe it is ever possible to reach many concepts that this and other scifi novels present. Sure, if you look at humankind's history, we're certainly living in a technological explosion. But I don't think that guarantees any further advancement. There has to be a limit somewhere. Interstellar travel for instance feels like a thing never reachable by humans even if our civilization existed, say, until the death of the Sun. Then again, seeing is believing.

Death's End opens -- rather surprisingly -- with a prologue during the Fall of Constantinople. It's not a purely historical setting as there's fiction mixed in, I suppose to give a hint of things to come. I don't think the prologue was needed at all though. It continued feeling way too arbitrary and out of place even when Liu Cixin much later mentions it again to tie it into the unfolding events.

Eventually, after introducing few minor characters, the novel gets to its protagonist who is this time Cheng Xin, a Chinese aerospace engineer who is involved in Earth's first attempt to deal with the Trisolarians.

Staircase Project's goal is to send a human ambassador and spy to meet the coming alien fleet. There are many big hurdles to overcome, including the requirement for 1% of lightspeed. The project does see a launch in the end but its difficult execution goes awry just enough for it to be considered a failure. The Staircase Project is forgotten (which explains it not being mentioned in The Dark Forest). Cheng Xin however remains an important person and gets to travel to the future in hibernation and see the coming eras.

One, again and again surfacing theme in the trilogy has been that if everyone can't escape, then no one gets to escape. Attempting to flee to the stars is considered a crime against humanity. Everyone has to face the end together.

Death's End introduces -- or maybe brings forth more strongly -- an additional, related dilemma: if survival is possible, what can it cost? In the previous novel, from hibernation woken Luo Ji had noted how men had become feminine, hard to distinguish from women. Cheng Xin notices it too in Death's End. I considered it to be some commentary on good times creating weak men, even in this novel when Liu Cixin first set up a situation where the new feminine society has to make hard choice. But later it started to feel less a commentary and more about the values of humanity.

Luo Ji had been chosen as the first Swordholder, a person who will cause the coordinates of Earth and Trisolar to be transmitted into outer space if the Trisolarans don't stop their hostilities. Him being the first Swordholder was natural since he was the one that successfully finished his task as Wallfacer and put the mutually assured destruction threat in place. He has grown too old to hold the position (even though he gets to live really long in the novel) and needs a successor. Earth votes for Cheng Xin -- among other things, for being a "softer "candidate. An absolute disaster follows.

Earth had chosen a person who deep down didn't believe that they had to actually assure the mutual destruction. I don't think it was because Cheng Xin is a woman: it could've been a man as well. Paul Harrell, a firearms channel on Youtube, has an anecdote how him and his pals were shot at while camping and one of them couldn't act in a manner the situation required even though he, like Harrell, had marine training: he simply couldn't believe that such a situation was possible.

Another important character in Death's End is Thomas Wade, a former CIA chief who is Cheng Xin's boss in the Staircase project. He similarly appears in later eras and was also one of the candidates to be the second Swordholder. Wade is Cheng Xin's counterpart in about everything. He's callous and impossible to read. He's a man one can task humanity's survival and he will make sure it happens -- no matter the price.

Much later on, after few twists and turns, Cheng Xin hands Wade resources to develop the means for humankind to travel to the stars. She sets a condition to be waken up from hibernation in case Wade ends up in trouble with officials though. That happens and Cheng, shocked by what Wade is about to do, puts an end to it.

It is interesting that Liu Cixin always chose to go with Cheng Xin's side. Is the story's moral a warning or a suggestion? Cheng Xin's choices always feel like failures (to herself as well) yet in the end she is there, 18 million years into the future, maybe standing on moral high ground, in a place where human ethics matter very little.

Death's End was hell of a journey but I think I still consider The Dark Forest the best in the trilogy. All of the books are definitely worth reading though -- extremely thought-provoking science fiction. Thanks to that person on r/suomi who mentioned them.