If you've not been following my attempts to read more stuff, you may not be aware that I recently got through the Three Body Problem in audio book form, and well, I was impressed. It was a surprise, then; that I was even more impressed by the sequel, The Dark Forest.
In Death's End, the author continues along the timeline through imaginative, yet incredible, scientific prose that almost on a page by page basis breaks ground across the fields of physics, quantum mechanics, string theory, and the properties of light itself.
What I first thought was an extended history of the events occurring in the prior titles, turned rapidly into an interesting conclusion to the trilogy.
I am not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination, but Death's End certainly makes me feel one. This is much harder science fiction than the previous titles in the series, with a lot more telling and not much showing, but the telling that occurs is captivating.
Again, I find the ability to relate to the characters a little difficult due to the cultural divide of hundreds of years between the setting of the book and the present day, but this is not due to the fact that I am a simpleton, but instead, is the result of the generational trauma stacked upon generational trauma which each of the figures in Death's End has in their past.
While the real Earth has experienced unmitigated, unforeseen crises in just the time I've been alive; the worlds in this series have suffered on an unrelatable scale. The fact that in some sequences of the tales woven throughout this trilogy, people have hibernated for centuries, space-port evacuations resulted in tens of thousands of death, and of course, the unending, ever present threat that the flame of humanity could be extinguished at any moment by an ultra-advanced Alien species.
How can you comprehend a fourth dimension collapsing into a third? Or a third dimension collapsing into 2D space? All this, and an enormous amount more is all explored through this book. The scale of its meditations and propositions is entirely unsurpassed.
All along the way, Liu accelerates the scientific intrigue and profound revelations. It is a beautiful tale, woven well; and something that I will instantly reccomend to anyone who wants to know what science fiction is truly capable of doing to you.
Not only is it a good story, but these few books have been a rather life-changing experience for me, and taught me to value different things.
As a child, I distinctly remember opening a book at the library on the solar system. In it, there were some words. I read them eagerly. They spoke of the sun, and said something like - "In five billion years, the sun will explode, become a red giant, and its heat will engulf the Earth".
I stopped reading that book very quickly, as it disturbed me, and scared me. It immediately made me want to start researching rockets and to get off Earth before it is too late - to find another planet to call home, and one that wouldn't be at risk of such a fate.
The reason I'm writing about that child hood memory here is that after getting through Liu's book, I've come to one very important revelation.
It doesn't fucking matter, because the same thing will happen to every star, in every solar system, in every galaxy. Perhaps in the proposed alternate realities and other dimensions we aren't even sure exist, the same will happen.
Instead of looking at this as a nihilistic horror, I turn my views to somewhat different things - to appreciate the beauty with which we are surrounded by every day, while we can still enjoy it - be it natural, man made, or humanity itself.