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Review: Liu Cixin (劉慈欣) - Death's End (死神永生) (2010, Translated in 2016 by Ken Liu)
I really liked this book! I loved how many creative sience fiction concepts Liu Cixin was able to fit in this story, and I also thought the characters in this story were very interesting. I thought it was cool how this book ended on such a finite yet also open ended note. I initially read it as an optimistic end, but I can see how some people can see it as pessimistic as well.
While the Three Body Problem was really good, I think Death's End was a lot more striking in a number of ways. The Three Body Problem was about the discovery of a world outside of the Earth, whereas by Death's End, humanity had already progressed much further beyond that and therefore there were a lot more creative ways to deal with humanity's problems. As well, while both the Three Body Problem and Death's End had undercurrents of dread throughout the story, Death's End had a far more optimistic outlook, and far more optimistic characters.
I know I had my gripes with the Dark Forest, but I've come to accept that that the things I disliked about the book still made sense in the context of the story, and it was a necessary part of the journey, to get from the Three Body problem to Death's End.
Overall, I would highly recommend this series for science fiction and non science fiction fans alike. I was not really a big fan of science fiction, but this book drew me in by how it never forgot to explore the human aspects of these colossal, grand scale cosmic decisions. There was hard science, but it was presented in a way where the readers only needed to understand the basic science.
Spoilers.
Story
I think this story was a bit unique from the Three Body Problem and the Dark Forest because it mostly followed the character of Cheng Xin. There were times when the story was not focused on her, but there was no other point-of-view character that came close to being as important as Cheng Xin.
Cheng Xin was a person who was given a lot of responsibility in her life, and perhaps in some ways, she can be interpreted as a character who was too much like a hero. She'd been a Swordholder, then the CEO of Halo, then tasked with escaping the collapsing Solar System with the artifacts. But the way I see it, as Guan Yifan mentioned, she was not solely responsible for the paths that humanity and civilization walked along. She was tasked with a decision, but there were also many people who made decisions that led her to be faced with those sorts of decisions, if that makes sense.
I don't think Cheng Xin acted and thought like a hero. I think she actually acted like how a lot of us normal folk would. Sometimes she panicked, sometimes she took the route of compassion, etc. She was after all, just a normal person like you or me.
I want to take a moment to talk about the human relationships in this book. The Three Body Problem was rather bleak, and the only human relationships that were really explored were probably the relationships between Ye Wenjie and her mother and daughter. The Dark Forest had some romance, but if you read my last review, I didn't like it, and in hindsight I think it was just supposed to flesh out Luo Ji instead of giving us any feeling of love.
The the relationships in this book were really emotional to read. Part of it might've been because we got to know Cheng Xin so well, and another part of it might've just been because Liu Cixin hadn't cared as much about these types of relationships until now.
The grand romance between Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming took me by surprise. I thought it was just going to be a one-sided love from Yun Tianming, but I was surprised by this courtly love they had between the two. We know that Yun Tianming had crushed on Cheng Xin from their college days, and he'd always held a flame for her. As for Cheng Xin, she'd only seen him as a friend, but over the course of the book, she started to see him differently. Not necessarily in a romantic sense, but I think she started to understand that Yun Tianming was a special person because of who he was, and because of what he would do for her.
I thought their relationship was going to end when Yun Tianming's brain was sent off into space, so that monitored call between them was one of the most touching things I'd read. They had so much to say and they couldn't say it. The thing about Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming is that from the beginning, they knew they would never be together. Cheng Xin was asking him to shoot his brain off into space, and Yun Tianming was expecting to die. Even after they'd had their video call, they never expected to make their date on Cheng Xin's star. All they wanted for each other was to keep on living. Isn't that so courtly?
I actually felt my heart wrench when Cheng Xin realized she had missed Yun Tianming on Planet Blue yet again. That moment when they checked the computer that told them that 18 million years had passed and that Cheng Xin now had lost Yun Tianming forever, oof. I really felt for her.
Aside from Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming, I also really liked Cheng Xin and AA's relationship! They met after AA discovered some planets around Cheng Xin's star, and I think AA was technically something like an assistant to Cheng Xin, but it's clear that AA had eventually become a friend to Cheng Xin. While Cheng Xin was withdrawn and quiet, AA was more peppy, and I loved how they always looked out for each other! I think that throughout the course of the book, they really had become something like sisters. They'd spent centuries by each other's side.
The science fiction concepts in this book were really cool. They were so creative and so mind boggling. I admit that I still don't fully understand curvature propulsion and I'm going to have to do some more reading about it. And obviously we don't know that these scientific concepts are possible, but it's fun to think about whether they would be plausible.
I wrote on my Tumblr that the dimension collapsing attack on the Solar System was maybe the scariest thing I'd read from the book so far. (The second scariest might've been entering a four-dimensional bubble and seeing the cross section of yourself) It was scary because up until now, humans had only expected an explosion attack on the sun. That is something we can grasp. We know what explosions are like. We've never seen a huge explosion, but we have a concept of what explosions look like and how we can protect ourselves from them. But we have never seen a dimension collapse. We do not mean flattening something. A dimension collapse means that the 2d plane has zero width. And nothing can hide from it. It is so unyielding, which is what freaked me out. Nobody can escape.
So anyway, much kudos to Liu Cixin for writing a story with not only heartfelt human interactions, but also exciting new science fiction elements, all presented in such interesting ways.
Writing
I felt like so many things happened in this book. In the Three Body Problem, the earth was learning about aliens, and in the Dark Forest, humans were preparing for a specific goal, which was to thwart the Trisolarans.
But in Death's End, the goal kept changing. The scale of time in the book was just so grand. Humans went from protecting themselves from Trisolarans to protecting themselves from potential attackers to protecting themselves from the specific attacker, to just learning to find a place where they could exist in this world, to letting go of that goal. The fact that Cheng Xin was the person who was experiencing all of these things helped make the book feel more cohesive too.
As I mentioned, I really liked that Liu Cixin fit so much in this book to give as a comprehensive view of what the end of the world would be like. We understood the gravity of the situation on a macro level, the ending of human society, but also the end of the universe as we knew it. But Liu Cixin also gave us information on Cheng Xin herself, her back story, her personal relationships, and her thought processes. It was just such a beautiful way to tie it all together.
I also thought it was really interesting that the book started with a storoy set during the Fall of Constantinople. As the reader, we knew that this story probably had little to do with the story that we had at hand in a literal sense, so what was the connection? I'll talk about it in the themes section, but I thought this was such an interesting way to start the book.
The translator for this book was Ken Liu, the same translator as the Three Body Problem. As usual, I think the translation went very smoothly. I do think that the translation was easier to read than the translation done by Joel Martinsen in the Dark Forest. I am not sure whether it was due to the contents of the book, or whether it was a matter of translation style.
I thought it was interesting that Ken Liu kept the Chinese characters in the mixed names (such as Ai AA and Bai Ice retaining the Chinese characters for their surnames). It was strange, and it took me a while to understand, but I see that there are limitations to these kinds of translations when you are only translating in one language.
But anyway, this book's writing was A+. I was at the edge of my seat more often than not.
Characters
Cheng Xin
Our main character. Cheng Xin was often characterized by her compassion. It was sometimes considered a weakness, but it was who she was, and that is not something she could change. Before Cheng Xin was a saviour of humanity, she was a human, and therefore she had her share of personality traits that coudl both be strengths and weaknesses.
Like many of the other characters in this series, Cheng Xin was a scientist by trade, an aeronautical engineer. She was first noticed when she'd suggested the idea behind the Staircase Project, which ended with Yun Tianming's brain being launched into space and eventually getting picked up by the first Trisolaran fleet.
Cheng Xin was considered a candidate for the Swordholder position. Her selling point was her compassion. She'd been photographed holding a baby, which basically represented what people thought of her. In her first moments of becoming a Swordholder, she panicked and did not launch the location sequence which would broadcast the Trisolaran coordinates into space, but would also reveal Earth's location. Due to her inaction, the Trisolarans were no longer threatened and took over Earth, forcing all humans to live in Australia while Trisolarans would live in the rest of the world. That did not last long as Blue Space and Gravity launched the location sequence, and Cheng Xin's mistakes were soon forgotten.
Cheng Xin went into hibernation yet again, but was awoken because of the deal she'd made with Thomas Wade. She would yield her assets to him so that he could carry on research with her company Halo, and she would only be awoken when the situation at hand could involve hurting people. Halo wanted to separate from the Bunker Colony so that it could continue its research, but Cheng Xin shut it down because she did not want to see a war break out.
At the time, Thomas said “You see, I’ve kept my promise, little girl." It was so chilling because it seemed like he had something up his sleeve. But he died not long after. I think this was a long con here. Thomas knew that Cheng Xin would regret her action when she eventually escaped on the Halo ship that was able to travel at light speed. He knew that she would feel responsible for the death of the Solar System civilization.
From the time that Cheng Xin escaped Pluto to the end of the book, I think Cheng Xin was already prepared to die. Even if there was a chance that she would see Yun Tianming, I think she also knew that she had little control over what would happen. At this point in the story, her compassion counted for nothing, not when civilization as a whole was so dispersed. So I think that's why Cheng Xin really didn't have much to do, other than to survive.
However, Cheng Xin's final decision, whether to return to the old universe or not, was one in line with her values. She'd always tried to think of other people, and by returning all of the matter from Universe 647, she was trying to do her part in ensuring that the universe would reset.
I hopped on over to Reddit and found that some people felt that Cheng Xin was a weak character who didn't do things that made sense, but I felt that was realistic. Many of us panic when we're faced with decisions that are accompanied by grave repercussions. We can only attempt to do what is right for as many people as possible, and that was what Cheng Xin was trying to do.
Cheng Xin was hated by the people in the book and by readers for three reasons.
The first was that Cheng Xin did not press the button to broadcast the Trisolaran location while a Swordholder. Cheng Xin did panic, yes. But remember that pressing the button would ensure that Earth would be destroyed (based on Dark Forest Theory), whereas if she did not, there was a chance that Earth could still survive. In this book, we saw the effects of pressing the button, whihc was the entire annihilation of the Solar System. So I don't think this was an easy decision with a clear right or wrong.
The second was that Cheng Xin had stopped Halo and Thomas Wade from separating from the Bunker World and continuing their research of light speed ships. Cheng Xin had allowed Thomas Wade to use her resources to do research, but she had asked that he wake her if people would be hurt. Clearly, she hated seeing people hurt more than she cared about light speed ships, so her stopping Thomas Wade was in line with her values. Yes, she was short-sighted, but that's Cheng Xin's flaw as a human. People have flaws.
The third was that Cheng Xin had left a 5kg sphere of data in Universe 647 documenting the history of Earth and Trisolaris. Apparently some people interpreted this to mean that the Big Crunch would not happen because of her selfish urge to protect that ball of data. Cheng Xin had asked Guan Yifan if it would be alright, and Guan Yifan, having considered the worst, still said it was okay. I'm not saying this was all Guan Yifan's fault, but I think that if Yifan had told Cheng Xin no, that she would not have pushed.
Yes, maybe Cheng Xin leaving that data was a sign of human arrogance, but Cheng Xin herself was a product of humanity. Cheng Xin's hand had been forced in so many high tension situations, and she reacted as a normal human did, not as someone who was trained to lead a civilization. Yifan had considered that the 5kg ball of data could lead to the big crunch not happening. He had also considered that other humans or Trisolarans would not have returned their mass, and that hopefully the Returners had taken that into consideration. In that moment, I think Yifan wanted to make Cheng Xin happy, and is that not a sign of humanity, and more specifically, a sign of the kind of humanity that Cheng Xin wished to save? It's stupid, but humans are stupid. We're irrational, we're emotional, and Cheng Xin is a sign of that. But we're alive and we exist in this universe.
Anyway, I enjoyed Cheng Xin as a character. I read in a Reddit thread that apparently Liu Cixin had considered making Cheng Xin a man, which I thought would've been even more interesting, as women are stereotyped as being more compassionate and emotional anyway, but I still enjoyed reading Cheng Xin in her current form.
Yun Tianming
We first got to know Tianming as he was dying of a terminal illness. He didn't really have much ambition in life, particularly because he was dying, and thus he considered the assisted dying program. He had a poor relationship with his family though, so he didn't want to spend the money on them, and instead, he spent the money on buying a star for Cheng Xin. It was kind of a novelty thing, a way for the corporations and organizations at the time to raise money, but Tianming was going to die anyway, so this was his gesture of love to Cheng Xin.
It was only by chance that Cheng Xin came back into his life, asking if he would agree to send his brain out for the Staircase project. During that time, Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming got to know each other. I wouldn't say that Cheng Xin fell in love with Yun Tianming at this time, but she started to see that he was special, and I think she wanted to know him more. That scene when she was trying to chase after him, but Yun Tianming's brain had already been extracted - I thought it kind of forbode how their relationship was going to be. It was always going to be about missed opportunities and being apart from each other.
Since the Staircase Project had veered off trajectory, it was by chance that Yun Tianming's brain was picked up by Trisolaris, and it was by luck that the Trisolarans had the technology to rebuild Yun Tianming's body from his brain. It must've been so shocking to Cheng Xin to see Yun Tianming in his full bodied glory, thriving in his field.
Anyway, Yun Tianming's fairy tale was amazing. As a story it was very interesting, but I really appreciate how Yun Tianming used it to express not only important scientific metaphors to Earth, but probably as a way to express himself and his longing for the things he couldn't have as a captive of the Trisolarans. And the more I think about the fairy tale, the more I see parallels with what actually happened in Death's End.
Yun Tianming had arrived at Planet Blue as Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan were returning from Planet Gray, but they'd been hit by the death columns and couldn't get out of orbit.
Once again, Cheng Xin had missed Yun Tianming, and this time it was for good, but I think the two knew that it was never meant to be. The both of them always had bigger responsibilities at hand. The way I see it, Yun Tianming understood that Cheng Xin felt something for him. It wasn't necessarily love, but it was a sense of understanding. And Yun Tianming expressed his love by his gifts, first giving a star, and then giving a universe to Cheng Xin.
I'm very intrigued by Yun Tianming. I think that by seeing him through Cheng Xin's eyes (i.e. not very often), I think I've come to understand what she felt for him, and why she cared for him so much.
Ai AA
At first, I thought AA was just going to be a passing character, as many of the characters in this book are, by virtue of Cheng Xin repeatedly going into hibernation for long periods of time. But AA stuck by Cheng Xin's side ever since they met, and they'd become close friends.
I think that without AA, Cheng Xin would eventually collapse on herself. Cheng Xin was a more introspective kind of person, and we know that she probably had trouble handling her responsibility. If she didn't have AA to balance her out, I think Cheng Xin might've imploded.
AA was more outspoken about her thoughts, but that was also how she learned about the world. She said and did more things, and that is how she does her research, that is how she makes friends, etc. She just a smart little chatterbox lol.
At times, AA was also more cutthroat and aggressive than Cheng Xin. That was how she helped protect Cheng Xin when she was seen with disdain after the Swordholder debacle and people were attacking her on Australia. And that was how AA chose three kids to join Cheng Xin and her on the spaceship when there was a false alarm for a dark forest attack.
Towards the end, I would get really emotional about Cheng Xin and AA's relationship. They'd been together through so much. Cheng Xin had Yun Tianming, but she never really had him. He was a distant dream. But she always had AA by her side.
On Planet Blue, it was said that AA started to have feelings for Guan Yifan, and I was so hopeful for her! Like I said, Cheng Xin had Yun Tianming, but AA's life was devoted to Cheng Xin and I just wanted AA to have something for herself. When Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan went to Planet Gray, AA gave both Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan a big hug, and I really felt for her. The omniscient narrator mentioned how at this scale, anytime any of them separated you never knew what was going to happen, and it was just so scary to be apart from anybody you considered a friend.
Unfortunately, Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan's last correspondence with AA was in that call where AA told them that Yun Tianming was arrived. When they landed, AA had already long been dead. But she left a message, similar to the huge letters that were on Pluto, telling Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan that she and Yun Tianming lived happily and that they'd left a gift for them. Isn't that beautiful? God, I just love Cheng Xin and AA's relationship so much.
Thomas Wade
Thomas Wade!!!!!!! What an awesome character. He was basically everything that Cheng Xin was not. When they first started working together, Cheng Xin had already thought him curious. He always had his own agenda, and he had a clear mind on how he was going to go about doing things.
After the Staircase project, Cheng Xin and Thomas Wade met when he tried to kill her because he saw that she was gaining popularity as a possible Swordholder. That's when I realized that Wade's ambitions went above and beyond. He wasn't working on behalf of or with anybody. He was working for himself only.
They met again after Thomas Wade finished his jail time, and he asked her to hand over Halo to him so that he could research light speed travel. Cheng Xin agreed on the condition that he would wake her if people were to be hurt, which he did. He also followed Cheng Xin's command when she told him to drop arms to prevent a war between Halo and the federation. Thomas Wade was then executed. As I mentioned, Wade had reminded Cheng Xin that he'd kept his promise, and he was killed, so why did he seem so smug?
I felt that Thomas had always understood who and what Cheng Xin was. He understood that she always put compassion first. He didn't hate her, though. He understood that compassion was a popular trait, and he respected the social currency she'd amassed from exhibiting those traits. But Cheng Xin was far more short sighted than he was.
Wade did love humanity, but in the sense that he would sacrifice the short term to ensure long term survival of the race. And Cheng Xin also acknowledged this, though she couldn't necessarily relate. In my thought post, I said that Cheng Xin couldn't sympathize with Wade because she didn't see him as a person, but more as a set of principles. He was so void of personality because his personality WAS advancing human technology.
They had such a good understanding of each other, even if Wade was always a few steps ahead of Cheng Xin in her understanding. As a character, I felt that Wade complemented Cheng Xin well, not because we needed an antagonist in this book, but because Wade forced Cheng Xin to understand herself and her values.
After being shot by Wade, Cheng Xin decided that she would accept the role of Swordholder to prevent people like Wade being in that position of authority. It may or may not have been right, but it was consistent with the Cheng Xin that we knew. Towards the end, I think that through understanding Wade, Cheng Xin also started to understand her drawbacks, but she accepted that neither humans nor humanity perfect, and there would always need to be people like Cheng Xin and people like Thomas Wade to collectively hold up a civilization. It was thanks to Cheng Xin that war was avoided, but it was thanks to Thomas Wade that some of humanity made it out.
Luo Ji
Luo Ji came back as a character, and I thought he was far more interesting in this book than the last book, even though he only had small parts here.
His first appearance was as the Swordholder. I believe he'd been in the role for over 50 years, and when Cheng Xin first met him, he was very focused and serious. And immediately after he'd handed the baton to Cheng Xin, he'd been arrested for mundicide, for that "spell" he'd cast to test his dark forest theory in the last book.
I was very intrigued by this Luo Ji, because clearly he had gone through some things to go from that selfish man from last book to the serious and responsible man of this book.
The next time we saw Luo Ji was on Pluto. He was an old man now, and his job was to guard the museum of human civilization on Pluto. He was a lot livelier, and he told Cheng Xin and AA that he had always been a chatty man, which I can believe based on the carefree kind of guy he was in the Dark Forest.
I'd written a post on this on my Tumblr, but his words when he found the Mona Lisa in his possession struck me quite a bit. He basically said that if he'd known that she was with him the whole time, he would've spent more time wiht her. The Mona Lisa was a call back to his wife Zhuang Yan. One of the first things he did with her was to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre.
I was always very wary of Luo Ji's relationship from Zhuang Yan, as she was essentially a stand in for his imagination. He'd created her in his mind first, before Da Shi had found Zhuang Yan and took her to Luo Ji's home, where he'd basically tricked her into thinking that she was helping him with his Wallfacer responsibilities to keep her there. It was rather freaky to me, and Zhuang Yan started to feel so too, as she had started to give Luo Ji the "Wallfacer smile," in which she never knew when he was telling the truth.
Regardless of whether Zhuang Yan loved Luo Ji, it's clear that Luo Ji had always loved Zhuang Yan, whom he saw as equivalent to the woman he'd fell in love with from his imagination. And in that moment when he found the Mona Lisa, I could tell that he'd rediscovered love, that part of his heart that was just for Zhuang Yan.
By the time Cheng Xin and AA arrived on Pluto, the Solar System was already soon collapsing into two dimensions, so they had limited time with Luo Ji. Luo Ji was content to die on Pluto. He was already very old by then, and he'd lived through a lot.
Sophon
Sophon was a physical manifestation of Trisolaran technology, including the sophons. Initially, when Earth and Trisolaris were doing a cultural exchange, Sophon was seen as a serene kind of figure, seeing as how Cheng Xin and Luo Ji had gone over to her place for tea and Sophon had been very cordial.
After Trisolaris launched their attack on Earth, she turned into a figure of terror. She was supposed to resettle all of the humans in Australia, and when it got unruly, she would not hesitate to use force.
Sophon did not really make an appearance until Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan arrived in Universe 647, where she was really just a program meant to manage the universe of the inhabitants.
Sophon as a character was interesting because she really was nothing more than a program, but in the context of this book, she was also a mouthpiece for Trisolaris.
Guan Yifan
Guan Yifan was originally a civilian scientist on Gravity. I don't remember how much involvement he had of discovering the four dimensional worlds. But in any case, many of the decisions made by Blue Space and Gravity were made on a democratic basis.
Guan Yifan ended up on Planet Blue, and was awoken when Cheng Xin and AA arrived. He showed them around a bit, and had intended to take them to one of the other worlds as soon as possible because Planet Blue and its system was too close to a commonly taken trail and it was not safe to stay there.
Guan Yifan and Cheng Xin ventured to Planet Gray but it was not safe there due to the death trails and they tried to escape but unfortunately the death trails dispersed which caused their ship to malfunction. Guan Yifan and Cheng Xin arrived on Planet Blue 18 million years later.
AA and Yun Tianming had gifted Universe 647 to Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan, and they lived there for a while until the Returners sent them a message to return the matter to the universe. As mentioned, Cheng Xin had consulted Yifan about whether it was okay to leave the 5kg data sphere in Universe 647, and after thinking it through, Yifan said yes.
I think part of it was Yifan feeling selfish. Like Cheng Xin, he wanted to leave a part of humanity for the next world to find. He'd considered the fact that not everybody was going to return their universe as the Returners requested. So he was counting on the Returners taking into account of those who did not comply to make himself feel better.
I don't think this makes Yifan bad, I think this makes him human. Not all humans can think entirely with the logical parts of their brains. Many of us crave to express ourselves, and this is Yifan wanting to leave a remnant of himself for the next era.
Other
I kind of wish we saw more of Bi Yunfeng and Cao Bin, who were other people who were considered as Swordholders. They came up again and again in Cheng Xin's life, probably because they were in similar fields of work. I was just very curious to know about how they thought and felt about all that was going down, and in particular, what their thoughts were on Cheng Xin and Thomas Wade's cold war.
There were also quite a few personnel from Blue Space and Gravity that were brought up. However, the story only focused on them sporadically. And only Guan Yifan left an impression on me because he joined Cheng Xin in the very end. Some of the personnel on Gravity were Dr. West (psychiatrist), Commander Devon (military), James Hunter (culinary controller but also had a secret mission), Joseph Morovich (captain). Some of the personnel on Blue Space were Reiko Akihara, Chu Yan, and Zhuo Wen.
We were also briefly introduced to Bai Ice and Vasilenko, who were the first to scope out what eventually became the collapse of the Solar System into two dimensions.
Themes
This book was absolutely packed with creative ideas, in terms of scientific concepts, humanity, and much more. So there is going to be a lot that I've forgotten, but this is what's been fresh in my mind after recently finishing the book (earlier today). This part is also going to be incredibly messy, because there are a lot of thoughts floating in my head and I am still in the process of connecting them together.
Morality
Crimes against humanity
When Luo Ji ended his tenure as Swordholder, he was charged with mundicide. In the Dark Forest, he had cast a spell on a planet by revealing its coordinates, and by doing so, an attack was triggered on them. To me, it felt like the authorities on Earth were trying to assert moral superiority. It felt like they wanted to show that humans were powerful enough to be responsible for the attack on their world. They technically were, but to claim ownership of it felt so presumptuous, because they were a whole other world. People aren't even always charged for crimes that they commit in another country on earth.
Blue Space was also charged with crimes against humanity, as they had killed the other ship in its cohort in order to escape when the droplet attacked Earth the first time. Earth tried to trick them into returning so that they could try them, but another ship, I believe it was the Bronze Age, had fallen for the same trap and warned them not to return. But as soon as Gravity and Blue Space were revealed to have broadcast the Trisolaran coordinates, the charges were dropped, because now presumably Blue Space was a hero. It was definitely very flimsy and not well thought out, and I did feel that Blue Space was charged because the people on Earth still held animosity towards escapism.
But I think it definitely showed us how humanity is not at all moral. We act on our feelings too much, many of them negative feelings.
Compassion
Luo Ji's name was a pun for logic, and Cheng Xin's name was a pun for sincerity. As I mentioned, a lot of people, both characters in the book and readers of the book, seemed to dislike Cheng Xin. Many readers in particular seemed to think that she was far too coddled.
Towards the end of the book, Guan Yifan told Cheng Xin that she was not responsible for humanity, and I am inclined to agree. Cheng Xin was not responsible for how humanity developed to where it was. There were may people who made choices that drove the trajectory of human civilization, not just Cheng Xin.
And contrary to how people felt, I did not think that there was such thing as a definite right answer to many of the decisions that Cheng Xin was faced with (I explained this in my character section). Cheng Xin just acted based on her own moral compass. Is that not a kind of consistent morality?
But there is another question. Who should humanity thank more? Should it be Cheng Xin or should it be Thomas Wade? The instinctive answer is Thomas Wade, since he'd pushed for the development of light speed travel which saved Cheng Xin and AA in the end. If you were a person living in the Bunker Era, what would you have said? Maybe you would've thanked Cheng Xin for preventing a war that you would've had to live through. Remember that Cheng Xin was elected as a Swordholder because people liked her compassion. She was a product of the time. She went in and out of style because her kind of compassion is short-sighted, but it doesn't make it any less valid. As humans, we need temporary comforts, and Cheng Xin could provide that, whereas people like Thomas Wade thought exclusively of the long run, and saving humanity as a whole.
As Cheng Xin stopped the war, Thomas Wade had said "If we lose our human nature, we lose much, but if we lose our bestial nature, we lose everything." And I think that kind of highlights the differences between them. Cheng Xin represents human nature, but it is short lived. She rose and fell in popularity very quickly in the public eye. But without people like Thomas Wade (and even Zhang Beihai from the Dark Forest), humanity would not last.
Civilization
I thought it was very interesting how Yifan considered the Galactic humans and the Solar System humans to be different races. He had to, as many of the people on Blue Space and Gravity did, so that they would not go crazy on their ship floating in space to nowhere in particular.
This was only covered briefly, but I would've been really interested to read about the psychiatrists and religious personnel on Blue Space and Gravity. How did they get the passengers to come to terms with their new homes?
The galactic humans and the solar system humans operated completely separately. However, the galactic humans would occasionally send messages back. They had done so when they'd discovered 4d space. So it makes me think that no matter how mentally strong the galactic humans were, they still longed for home at least a little bit.
When the earth was flattened into two dimensions, that's when Cheng Xin and AA cried for real. I would too. It must've been so hard to realize that the home you'd always loved was not only something that you couldn't return to, but it didn't exist anymore. They were no different from the galactic humans now, but I suppose the galactic humans had much longer to come to terms with their new situation.
Dark Forest
Guan Yifan told Cheng Xin and AA that it was bad manners to ask for a world's location, just like it was bad manners to ask a lady for her age or weight. I thought this was very interesting. Was this a new sort of etiquette that was drawn up by the galactic humans? It was definitely influenced by Dark Forest theory.
But what prevented the information from getting out? As long as people were travelling and broadcasting to and from these new worlds, the location would get out. I think that the solution was to limit the exact location to certain personnel, such as pilots. I'm just very curious about how civilizations would go about keeping their locations secret.
I also wanted to briefly mention the Singer, who was the one responsible for the attack on Trisolaris and the Solar System. The Singer was definitely from a more advanced race, as they used these types of attacks so simply and flippantly, like they were just doing regular house cleaning. We were given no information about this secret race, but I am so curious about what they are like. We still don't know a whole lot about Trisolarans, but we know more about them than we nkow about this secret race that the Singer was from.
Communication
Metaphors
The one advantage humans had over Trisolarans was that humans were able to hide information. But as time passed, Trisolarans started to learn how to do this too. So what is the next step? Perhaps it is to hide information in plain sight.
The book began with the story set during the fall of Constantinople. What was it supposed to mean? Why was it important? I think it represented some of the issues that we would incur during the course of the book.
As for Yun Tianming's story, humanity knew that it wasn't a simple fairy tale, but perhaps the Trisolarans did not know this. They did know that humans would be reading this story looking for clues that went beyond its literal interpretation.
With regards to interpretation of Yun Tianming's story, I thought it was interesting how Liu Cixin wrote that certain political factions would try to twist the story to fit their needs, which is something we see all the time. Even when something is written literally, humans always manage to spin them into something to suit what they want.
Non-verbal
When Yun Tianming and Cheng Xin had their video call, they were speaking with their eyes and body language too, as the words they were saying were heavily regulated. This was probably another kind of communication that the Trisolarans did not understand yet, because eyes and body language are a representation of our thoughts that are not said aloud in words.
In the scene that Cheng Xin and AA had come up with curvature propulsion, they were also doing a lot of non-verbal communication, communicating with their eyes, or talking about other mundane things to get to the points they wanted to talk about.
This reminded me of Luo Ji and Zhuang Yan in the Dark Forest. There was a part where they were trying to communicate with their faces playfully, though of course they didn't get too far.
Anti sophon room
Humans had developed technology that would shield them from sophon surveillance. Apparently, the people who entered the first sophon-free room spoke as if they were drunk, because they were spilling all of their innermost thoughts. It was a very interesting concept. We don't think of ourselves being under constant surveillance, but it seems that we are getting closer and closer, as people start to communicate online more, and in the presence of technology. What does it mean to speak entirely without surveillance? Interesting to think about.
The Fall of Constantinople
The book started with the story of a witch approaching Constantine XI. The witch, Helena, told him that she could kill the enemy leader. She had successfully killed a prisoner to prove to Constantine that she could do it, but she had failed to kill the enemy later.
It was on Reddit where I found out that the woman's magic was actually the existence of a 4D bubble on Earth. It had only existed there for a week, which was why Helena was unable to do it later on, and why she had to go to a specific place to carry out her witchcraft.
Initially, I had thought it was a metaphor for getting someone else to launch your attack for you. I thought that Constantine represented Earth, and that Helena represented whatever third alien race was going to take out the enemy, which was the Trisolarans. I'm not sure that parallel totally holds up though.
But finding out that there was a 4D bubble on earth made me realize that if I were to read this book a second time, I would discover so many things.
Yun Tianming's fairy tale
Yun Tianming's fairy tale is one of those stories that are extremely detailed and I'm going to be missing all of the metaphors and symbolism in it, so I'm not going to try to dissect it completely and utterly lol. Here are some of the scientific concepts that I remembered.
The boat with the soap represented curvature propulsion. I am still understanding this as I read more discussions about it. The first time I read an explanation, someone described it like rowing a rowboat, because the oars are manipulating the water around instead of the actual boat. I think this confused me though. A second discussion I read said that a ship travelling with curvature propulsion would basically travel in a path where the speed of light was slower, so that the ship could travel at that slower speed of light. It is not travelling at the speed of light as we know it, but in a different frame of reference, and that is why time outside of a curvature propulsion ship passes differently compared to inside the ship. I will try to read up on curvature propulsion more though.
As the Solar System was collapsing into two dimensions, Bai Ice realized the metaphor of Needle-eye's paintings. It was quite literal, which was probably why people didn't catch it. The world was being flattened, just as the people in the story were turned into a painting. I was surprised that the Trisolarans would let that fly, but first of all, Trisolarans don't really understand metaphors, and second of all, flattening might've not been a strange concept to them. Maybe they thought that the idea of a world collapsing was so natural and everyday that they didn't think it would be such a big revelation to humans.
I remember that when the Solar System was collapsing into two dimensions, Cheng Xin had observed that it looked a little like a waterfall or a whirlpool, and it reminded me of when Cheng Xin, AA, and associates visited Helseggen and Mosken, and were trapped in the whirlpool.
Something that I realized at the end of the book was that the Princess and the Captain in the fairy tale represented Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan. The Princess of course exhibited a lot of traits similar to Cheng Xin. They were both what humanity likes to think is a compassionate lady. Of course, like I mentioned, it's a more short-sighted version of compassion, but it's the kind of thing that gives people a sense of comfort that they can relate to. As for the Captain, "Fan" in Guan Yifan is the word for sail, so I think that's a pretty direct comparison. However, Yun Tianming wrote this fairy tale long before Cheng Xin even met Guan Yifan. Did he know, or was it just a coincidence? I was thinking about how the aliens in Arrival are able to see the future, because they see time all at once, and I had wondered if Yun Tianming had come across such a kind of intellectualism.
Again, I went on Reddit to see what people thought of the fairy tale, and I am surprised by how many people thought that the fairy tale was silly. Some attributed it to the translation, and some straight up thought it sounded dumb. I was actually incredibly drawn into the fairy tale, so I straight up cannot relate lol. As for the translation, Ken Liu has said before that when he translates, he wants the language to not sound like fluent English, but to sound like English that is being translated, to make the reader feel like they are reading something from a different language, and I do get that vibe from Ken Liu's translation. But I'm not sure if it's just because I know both Chinese and English that I understand what Ken Liu is going for.
Physics as weapons
Guan Yifan and Cheng Xin were discussing the ways in which manipulating the laws of physics was how wars in space were fought. In the context of Cheng Xin's experiences, collapsing of dimensions was an offensive weapon, and the black domain was a defensive weapon.
It reminded me a bit of the sophon lock back in the Three Body Problem, which appeared to alter the laws of physics on Earth (though it was just a trick to make scientists question themselves).
Then, Guan Yifan suggested the idea that the universe used to be many dimensions, but that as more attacks were launched, the number of dimensions grew smaller and smaller. I think it had been said that the dimension collapsing areas never stop. They just keep expanding, which is why the universe is just going to keep collapsing on itself too.
Earlier in the series, the Earth had considered a few strategies to defend itself. Luo Ji and Cheng Xin had considered a beacon indicating that it was not aggressive, but Sophon had refused to give them any information.
Another strategy was self-mutilation, which I thought was very interesting. Would any civilization purposely stop themselves from advancing to protect their longevity? Knowing the arrogance of humanity, that was shown time and time again in this book, I thought it was surprising that so many people were for self-mutilation. I think it involved cutting back on many advanced forms of communication, which I couldn't see people agreeing to, but I guess it depends on just how frivolous these advancements are.
The black domain was another strategy, but it was very difficult. Later, the book suggested that a black domain could've been created if many light-speed curvature propulsion ships travelled away from the Solar System, leaving the trails behind them in which light would travel at a slower rate. Those trails would create the black domain.
I am super curious about the zero homers and the returners. I suppose it does make some sense. Universe itself is supposed to be something of a timeless entity, so I can understand the logic behind not believing that the universe has a beginning and an end. There is the fear that if the universe collapsed into zero dimensions, it would just end, but then the universe would be finite. But then again, the zero homers and the returners are putting a lot of trust into something that is just a theory.
I am curious about the Returners though. How were they able to compile so much information about all of the civilizations that were in the universe, or still are in the universe? In addition, their message was worded in such a cordial way, it made me kind of chuckle a bit. They asked for the inhabitants of the pocket universes to return their matter so that the universe could continue on into the big crush.
Regarding whether the 5 kg data sphere would stop the universe from cycling into a big crush, I think that remains open ended. I don't think Liu Cixin gave us anything that would foreshadow what happened beyond the end of the book. I had initiatelly thought it to be an optimistic end. After all, if Guan Yifan was that worried about the 5 kg data sphere, he probably would've pushed Cheng Xin not to leave it. He was always very outspoken about his worries about the universe, and was often the one guiding Cheng Xin because he knew more about the outside universe than Cheng Xin.
I can also see it as being a pessimistic end. We only saw the story through Cheng Xin's eyes, but I could see how much of what happened to humanity was a result of humanity's flaws, and maybe Cheng Xin leaving that data sphere was just another flaw that would ruin it for everybody else.
That being said, like Guan Yifan had surmised, how can we be sure that the other Universe inhabitants would return matter as the Returners requested? The Returners must have some plan to gather the matter if they believe there is not enough, and they are likely much more technologically advanced than humans to be able to handle that.
Title
The title of the book is also a little ambiguous in how it makes me feel about this ending. At first, Death's End definitely feels pessimistic, but if death is coming to an end, does that meant he concept of death will no longer exist? In which case, isn't that kind of positive?
The Chinese title of the book is 死神永生, wich translates to something like "the god of death lives forever." Again, it sounds very ominous, since it means that death will prevail. But on the positive site, if death will prevail, that implies that life as a concept exists as well. Death cannot exist without life. So I think the Chinese name kind of alludes to the cyclical nature of the universe, which is in a constant cycle of life and death.
As you can see, I seem to be trying to put a positive spin on all of the possible ending interpretations lol. It's not that I can only accept happy endings. It's that the positive ending seems to make the most sense based on the information we were given towards the end of the book, particularly with regards to the zero homers and the returners. I just feel that at this point, it's out of humanity's hands. We can only do so much. That's not to say that the zero homers and returners are responsible for the big crunch, but it seems like they have more technology to be able to understand what we're dealing with. Yes, humans have stumbled, but at the end, they have tried their best. Humanity as a whole (and not necessarily its individuals) have tried their best.
Overall
Overall, this was a great book and a great series. I can't decide which book in the series I enjoyed the most, as all of them are very different. They showed different stages in the process of humanity learning about the universe around them.
In terms of this book, I loved how creative Liu Cixin was in the science fiction concepts, as well as the ways in which he showed them. In the first book, I really liked how he used all sorts of literary formats to convey information to us. In this book, a lot of it was conveyed in a more down low way, in line with how metaphors was one of the themes of this book.
I would highly recommend this book, not only for science fiction fans, but people who are interested in books about humans and humanity.
While the Three Body Problem was really good, I think Death's End was a lot more striking in a number of ways. The Three Body Problem was about the discovery of a world outside of the Earth, whereas by Death's End, humanity had already progressed much further beyond that and therefore there were a lot more creative ways to deal with humanity's problems. As well, while both the Three Body Problem and Death's End had undercurrents of dread throughout the story, Death's End had a far more optimistic outlook, and far more optimistic characters.
I know I had my gripes with the Dark Forest, but I've come to accept that that the things I disliked about the book still made sense in the context of the story, and it was a necessary part of the journey, to get from the Three Body problem to Death's End.
Overall, I would highly recommend this series for science fiction and non science fiction fans alike. I was not really a big fan of science fiction, but this book drew me in by how it never forgot to explore the human aspects of these colossal, grand scale cosmic decisions. There was hard science, but it was presented in a way where the readers only needed to understand the basic science.
Spoilers.
Story
I think this story was a bit unique from the Three Body Problem and the Dark Forest because it mostly followed the character of Cheng Xin. There were times when the story was not focused on her, but there was no other point-of-view character that came close to being as important as Cheng Xin.
Cheng Xin was a person who was given a lot of responsibility in her life, and perhaps in some ways, she can be interpreted as a character who was too much like a hero. She'd been a Swordholder, then the CEO of Halo, then tasked with escaping the collapsing Solar System with the artifacts. But the way I see it, as Guan Yifan mentioned, she was not solely responsible for the paths that humanity and civilization walked along. She was tasked with a decision, but there were also many people who made decisions that led her to be faced with those sorts of decisions, if that makes sense.
I don't think Cheng Xin acted and thought like a hero. I think she actually acted like how a lot of us normal folk would. Sometimes she panicked, sometimes she took the route of compassion, etc. She was after all, just a normal person like you or me.
I want to take a moment to talk about the human relationships in this book. The Three Body Problem was rather bleak, and the only human relationships that were really explored were probably the relationships between Ye Wenjie and her mother and daughter. The Dark Forest had some romance, but if you read my last review, I didn't like it, and in hindsight I think it was just supposed to flesh out Luo Ji instead of giving us any feeling of love.
The the relationships in this book were really emotional to read. Part of it might've been because we got to know Cheng Xin so well, and another part of it might've just been because Liu Cixin hadn't cared as much about these types of relationships until now.
The grand romance between Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming took me by surprise. I thought it was just going to be a one-sided love from Yun Tianming, but I was surprised by this courtly love they had between the two. We know that Yun Tianming had crushed on Cheng Xin from their college days, and he'd always held a flame for her. As for Cheng Xin, she'd only seen him as a friend, but over the course of the book, she started to see him differently. Not necessarily in a romantic sense, but I think she started to understand that Yun Tianming was a special person because of who he was, and because of what he would do for her.
I thought their relationship was going to end when Yun Tianming's brain was sent off into space, so that monitored call between them was one of the most touching things I'd read. They had so much to say and they couldn't say it. The thing about Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming is that from the beginning, they knew they would never be together. Cheng Xin was asking him to shoot his brain off into space, and Yun Tianming was expecting to die. Even after they'd had their video call, they never expected to make their date on Cheng Xin's star. All they wanted for each other was to keep on living. Isn't that so courtly?
I actually felt my heart wrench when Cheng Xin realized she had missed Yun Tianming on Planet Blue yet again. That moment when they checked the computer that told them that 18 million years had passed and that Cheng Xin now had lost Yun Tianming forever, oof. I really felt for her.
Aside from Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming, I also really liked Cheng Xin and AA's relationship! They met after AA discovered some planets around Cheng Xin's star, and I think AA was technically something like an assistant to Cheng Xin, but it's clear that AA had eventually become a friend to Cheng Xin. While Cheng Xin was withdrawn and quiet, AA was more peppy, and I loved how they always looked out for each other! I think that throughout the course of the book, they really had become something like sisters. They'd spent centuries by each other's side.
The science fiction concepts in this book were really cool. They were so creative and so mind boggling. I admit that I still don't fully understand curvature propulsion and I'm going to have to do some more reading about it. And obviously we don't know that these scientific concepts are possible, but it's fun to think about whether they would be plausible.
I wrote on my Tumblr that the dimension collapsing attack on the Solar System was maybe the scariest thing I'd read from the book so far. (The second scariest might've been entering a four-dimensional bubble and seeing the cross section of yourself) It was scary because up until now, humans had only expected an explosion attack on the sun. That is something we can grasp. We know what explosions are like. We've never seen a huge explosion, but we have a concept of what explosions look like and how we can protect ourselves from them. But we have never seen a dimension collapse. We do not mean flattening something. A dimension collapse means that the 2d plane has zero width. And nothing can hide from it. It is so unyielding, which is what freaked me out. Nobody can escape.
So anyway, much kudos to Liu Cixin for writing a story with not only heartfelt human interactions, but also exciting new science fiction elements, all presented in such interesting ways.
Writing
I felt like so many things happened in this book. In the Three Body Problem, the earth was learning about aliens, and in the Dark Forest, humans were preparing for a specific goal, which was to thwart the Trisolarans.
But in Death's End, the goal kept changing. The scale of time in the book was just so grand. Humans went from protecting themselves from Trisolarans to protecting themselves from potential attackers to protecting themselves from the specific attacker, to just learning to find a place where they could exist in this world, to letting go of that goal. The fact that Cheng Xin was the person who was experiencing all of these things helped make the book feel more cohesive too.
As I mentioned, I really liked that Liu Cixin fit so much in this book to give as a comprehensive view of what the end of the world would be like. We understood the gravity of the situation on a macro level, the ending of human society, but also the end of the universe as we knew it. But Liu Cixin also gave us information on Cheng Xin herself, her back story, her personal relationships, and her thought processes. It was just such a beautiful way to tie it all together.
I also thought it was really interesting that the book started with a storoy set during the Fall of Constantinople. As the reader, we knew that this story probably had little to do with the story that we had at hand in a literal sense, so what was the connection? I'll talk about it in the themes section, but I thought this was such an interesting way to start the book.
The translator for this book was Ken Liu, the same translator as the Three Body Problem. As usual, I think the translation went very smoothly. I do think that the translation was easier to read than the translation done by Joel Martinsen in the Dark Forest. I am not sure whether it was due to the contents of the book, or whether it was a matter of translation style.
I thought it was interesting that Ken Liu kept the Chinese characters in the mixed names (such as Ai AA and Bai Ice retaining the Chinese characters for their surnames). It was strange, and it took me a while to understand, but I see that there are limitations to these kinds of translations when you are only translating in one language.
But anyway, this book's writing was A+. I was at the edge of my seat more often than not.
Characters
Cheng Xin
Our main character. Cheng Xin was often characterized by her compassion. It was sometimes considered a weakness, but it was who she was, and that is not something she could change. Before Cheng Xin was a saviour of humanity, she was a human, and therefore she had her share of personality traits that coudl both be strengths and weaknesses.
Like many of the other characters in this series, Cheng Xin was a scientist by trade, an aeronautical engineer. She was first noticed when she'd suggested the idea behind the Staircase Project, which ended with Yun Tianming's brain being launched into space and eventually getting picked up by the first Trisolaran fleet.
Cheng Xin was considered a candidate for the Swordholder position. Her selling point was her compassion. She'd been photographed holding a baby, which basically represented what people thought of her. In her first moments of becoming a Swordholder, she panicked and did not launch the location sequence which would broadcast the Trisolaran coordinates into space, but would also reveal Earth's location. Due to her inaction, the Trisolarans were no longer threatened and took over Earth, forcing all humans to live in Australia while Trisolarans would live in the rest of the world. That did not last long as Blue Space and Gravity launched the location sequence, and Cheng Xin's mistakes were soon forgotten.
Cheng Xin went into hibernation yet again, but was awoken because of the deal she'd made with Thomas Wade. She would yield her assets to him so that he could carry on research with her company Halo, and she would only be awoken when the situation at hand could involve hurting people. Halo wanted to separate from the Bunker Colony so that it could continue its research, but Cheng Xin shut it down because she did not want to see a war break out.
At the time, Thomas said “You see, I’ve kept my promise, little girl." It was so chilling because it seemed like he had something up his sleeve. But he died not long after. I think this was a long con here. Thomas knew that Cheng Xin would regret her action when she eventually escaped on the Halo ship that was able to travel at light speed. He knew that she would feel responsible for the death of the Solar System civilization.
From the time that Cheng Xin escaped Pluto to the end of the book, I think Cheng Xin was already prepared to die. Even if there was a chance that she would see Yun Tianming, I think she also knew that she had little control over what would happen. At this point in the story, her compassion counted for nothing, not when civilization as a whole was so dispersed. So I think that's why Cheng Xin really didn't have much to do, other than to survive.
However, Cheng Xin's final decision, whether to return to the old universe or not, was one in line with her values. She'd always tried to think of other people, and by returning all of the matter from Universe 647, she was trying to do her part in ensuring that the universe would reset.
I hopped on over to Reddit and found that some people felt that Cheng Xin was a weak character who didn't do things that made sense, but I felt that was realistic. Many of us panic when we're faced with decisions that are accompanied by grave repercussions. We can only attempt to do what is right for as many people as possible, and that was what Cheng Xin was trying to do.
Cheng Xin was hated by the people in the book and by readers for three reasons.
The first was that Cheng Xin did not press the button to broadcast the Trisolaran location while a Swordholder. Cheng Xin did panic, yes. But remember that pressing the button would ensure that Earth would be destroyed (based on Dark Forest Theory), whereas if she did not, there was a chance that Earth could still survive. In this book, we saw the effects of pressing the button, whihc was the entire annihilation of the Solar System. So I don't think this was an easy decision with a clear right or wrong.
The second was that Cheng Xin had stopped Halo and Thomas Wade from separating from the Bunker World and continuing their research of light speed ships. Cheng Xin had allowed Thomas Wade to use her resources to do research, but she had asked that he wake her if people would be hurt. Clearly, she hated seeing people hurt more than she cared about light speed ships, so her stopping Thomas Wade was in line with her values. Yes, she was short-sighted, but that's Cheng Xin's flaw as a human. People have flaws.
The third was that Cheng Xin had left a 5kg sphere of data in Universe 647 documenting the history of Earth and Trisolaris. Apparently some people interpreted this to mean that the Big Crunch would not happen because of her selfish urge to protect that ball of data. Cheng Xin had asked Guan Yifan if it would be alright, and Guan Yifan, having considered the worst, still said it was okay. I'm not saying this was all Guan Yifan's fault, but I think that if Yifan had told Cheng Xin no, that she would not have pushed.
Yes, maybe Cheng Xin leaving that data was a sign of human arrogance, but Cheng Xin herself was a product of humanity. Cheng Xin's hand had been forced in so many high tension situations, and she reacted as a normal human did, not as someone who was trained to lead a civilization. Yifan had considered that the 5kg ball of data could lead to the big crunch not happening. He had also considered that other humans or Trisolarans would not have returned their mass, and that hopefully the Returners had taken that into consideration. In that moment, I think Yifan wanted to make Cheng Xin happy, and is that not a sign of humanity, and more specifically, a sign of the kind of humanity that Cheng Xin wished to save? It's stupid, but humans are stupid. We're irrational, we're emotional, and Cheng Xin is a sign of that. But we're alive and we exist in this universe.
Anyway, I enjoyed Cheng Xin as a character. I read in a Reddit thread that apparently Liu Cixin had considered making Cheng Xin a man, which I thought would've been even more interesting, as women are stereotyped as being more compassionate and emotional anyway, but I still enjoyed reading Cheng Xin in her current form.
Yun Tianming
We first got to know Tianming as he was dying of a terminal illness. He didn't really have much ambition in life, particularly because he was dying, and thus he considered the assisted dying program. He had a poor relationship with his family though, so he didn't want to spend the money on them, and instead, he spent the money on buying a star for Cheng Xin. It was kind of a novelty thing, a way for the corporations and organizations at the time to raise money, but Tianming was going to die anyway, so this was his gesture of love to Cheng Xin.
It was only by chance that Cheng Xin came back into his life, asking if he would agree to send his brain out for the Staircase project. During that time, Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming got to know each other. I wouldn't say that Cheng Xin fell in love with Yun Tianming at this time, but she started to see that he was special, and I think she wanted to know him more. That scene when she was trying to chase after him, but Yun Tianming's brain had already been extracted - I thought it kind of forbode how their relationship was going to be. It was always going to be about missed opportunities and being apart from each other.
Since the Staircase Project had veered off trajectory, it was by chance that Yun Tianming's brain was picked up by Trisolaris, and it was by luck that the Trisolarans had the technology to rebuild Yun Tianming's body from his brain. It must've been so shocking to Cheng Xin to see Yun Tianming in his full bodied glory, thriving in his field.
Anyway, Yun Tianming's fairy tale was amazing. As a story it was very interesting, but I really appreciate how Yun Tianming used it to express not only important scientific metaphors to Earth, but probably as a way to express himself and his longing for the things he couldn't have as a captive of the Trisolarans. And the more I think about the fairy tale, the more I see parallels with what actually happened in Death's End.
Yun Tianming had arrived at Planet Blue as Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan were returning from Planet Gray, but they'd been hit by the death columns and couldn't get out of orbit.
Once again, Cheng Xin had missed Yun Tianming, and this time it was for good, but I think the two knew that it was never meant to be. The both of them always had bigger responsibilities at hand. The way I see it, Yun Tianming understood that Cheng Xin felt something for him. It wasn't necessarily love, but it was a sense of understanding. And Yun Tianming expressed his love by his gifts, first giving a star, and then giving a universe to Cheng Xin.
I'm very intrigued by Yun Tianming. I think that by seeing him through Cheng Xin's eyes (i.e. not very often), I think I've come to understand what she felt for him, and why she cared for him so much.
Ai AA
At first, I thought AA was just going to be a passing character, as many of the characters in this book are, by virtue of Cheng Xin repeatedly going into hibernation for long periods of time. But AA stuck by Cheng Xin's side ever since they met, and they'd become close friends.
I think that without AA, Cheng Xin would eventually collapse on herself. Cheng Xin was a more introspective kind of person, and we know that she probably had trouble handling her responsibility. If she didn't have AA to balance her out, I think Cheng Xin might've imploded.
AA was more outspoken about her thoughts, but that was also how she learned about the world. She said and did more things, and that is how she does her research, that is how she makes friends, etc. She just a smart little chatterbox lol.
At times, AA was also more cutthroat and aggressive than Cheng Xin. That was how she helped protect Cheng Xin when she was seen with disdain after the Swordholder debacle and people were attacking her on Australia. And that was how AA chose three kids to join Cheng Xin and her on the spaceship when there was a false alarm for a dark forest attack.
Towards the end, I would get really emotional about Cheng Xin and AA's relationship. They'd been together through so much. Cheng Xin had Yun Tianming, but she never really had him. He was a distant dream. But she always had AA by her side.
On Planet Blue, it was said that AA started to have feelings for Guan Yifan, and I was so hopeful for her! Like I said, Cheng Xin had Yun Tianming, but AA's life was devoted to Cheng Xin and I just wanted AA to have something for herself. When Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan went to Planet Gray, AA gave both Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan a big hug, and I really felt for her. The omniscient narrator mentioned how at this scale, anytime any of them separated you never knew what was going to happen, and it was just so scary to be apart from anybody you considered a friend.
Unfortunately, Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan's last correspondence with AA was in that call where AA told them that Yun Tianming was arrived. When they landed, AA had already long been dead. But she left a message, similar to the huge letters that were on Pluto, telling Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan that she and Yun Tianming lived happily and that they'd left a gift for them. Isn't that beautiful? God, I just love Cheng Xin and AA's relationship so much.
Thomas Wade
Thomas Wade!!!!!!! What an awesome character. He was basically everything that Cheng Xin was not. When they first started working together, Cheng Xin had already thought him curious. He always had his own agenda, and he had a clear mind on how he was going to go about doing things.
After the Staircase project, Cheng Xin and Thomas Wade met when he tried to kill her because he saw that she was gaining popularity as a possible Swordholder. That's when I realized that Wade's ambitions went above and beyond. He wasn't working on behalf of or with anybody. He was working for himself only.
They met again after Thomas Wade finished his jail time, and he asked her to hand over Halo to him so that he could research light speed travel. Cheng Xin agreed on the condition that he would wake her if people were to be hurt, which he did. He also followed Cheng Xin's command when she told him to drop arms to prevent a war between Halo and the federation. Thomas Wade was then executed. As I mentioned, Wade had reminded Cheng Xin that he'd kept his promise, and he was killed, so why did he seem so smug?
I felt that Thomas had always understood who and what Cheng Xin was. He understood that she always put compassion first. He didn't hate her, though. He understood that compassion was a popular trait, and he respected the social currency she'd amassed from exhibiting those traits. But Cheng Xin was far more short sighted than he was.
Wade did love humanity, but in the sense that he would sacrifice the short term to ensure long term survival of the race. And Cheng Xin also acknowledged this, though she couldn't necessarily relate. In my thought post, I said that Cheng Xin couldn't sympathize with Wade because she didn't see him as a person, but more as a set of principles. He was so void of personality because his personality WAS advancing human technology.
They had such a good understanding of each other, even if Wade was always a few steps ahead of Cheng Xin in her understanding. As a character, I felt that Wade complemented Cheng Xin well, not because we needed an antagonist in this book, but because Wade forced Cheng Xin to understand herself and her values.
After being shot by Wade, Cheng Xin decided that she would accept the role of Swordholder to prevent people like Wade being in that position of authority. It may or may not have been right, but it was consistent with the Cheng Xin that we knew. Towards the end, I think that through understanding Wade, Cheng Xin also started to understand her drawbacks, but she accepted that neither humans nor humanity perfect, and there would always need to be people like Cheng Xin and people like Thomas Wade to collectively hold up a civilization. It was thanks to Cheng Xin that war was avoided, but it was thanks to Thomas Wade that some of humanity made it out.
Luo Ji
Luo Ji came back as a character, and I thought he was far more interesting in this book than the last book, even though he only had small parts here.
His first appearance was as the Swordholder. I believe he'd been in the role for over 50 years, and when Cheng Xin first met him, he was very focused and serious. And immediately after he'd handed the baton to Cheng Xin, he'd been arrested for mundicide, for that "spell" he'd cast to test his dark forest theory in the last book.
I was very intrigued by this Luo Ji, because clearly he had gone through some things to go from that selfish man from last book to the serious and responsible man of this book.
The next time we saw Luo Ji was on Pluto. He was an old man now, and his job was to guard the museum of human civilization on Pluto. He was a lot livelier, and he told Cheng Xin and AA that he had always been a chatty man, which I can believe based on the carefree kind of guy he was in the Dark Forest.
I'd written a post on this on my Tumblr, but his words when he found the Mona Lisa in his possession struck me quite a bit. He basically said that if he'd known that she was with him the whole time, he would've spent more time wiht her. The Mona Lisa was a call back to his wife Zhuang Yan. One of the first things he did with her was to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre.
I was always very wary of Luo Ji's relationship from Zhuang Yan, as she was essentially a stand in for his imagination. He'd created her in his mind first, before Da Shi had found Zhuang Yan and took her to Luo Ji's home, where he'd basically tricked her into thinking that she was helping him with his Wallfacer responsibilities to keep her there. It was rather freaky to me, and Zhuang Yan started to feel so too, as she had started to give Luo Ji the "Wallfacer smile," in which she never knew when he was telling the truth.
Regardless of whether Zhuang Yan loved Luo Ji, it's clear that Luo Ji had always loved Zhuang Yan, whom he saw as equivalent to the woman he'd fell in love with from his imagination. And in that moment when he found the Mona Lisa, I could tell that he'd rediscovered love, that part of his heart that was just for Zhuang Yan.
By the time Cheng Xin and AA arrived on Pluto, the Solar System was already soon collapsing into two dimensions, so they had limited time with Luo Ji. Luo Ji was content to die on Pluto. He was already very old by then, and he'd lived through a lot.
Sophon
Sophon was a physical manifestation of Trisolaran technology, including the sophons. Initially, when Earth and Trisolaris were doing a cultural exchange, Sophon was seen as a serene kind of figure, seeing as how Cheng Xin and Luo Ji had gone over to her place for tea and Sophon had been very cordial.
After Trisolaris launched their attack on Earth, she turned into a figure of terror. She was supposed to resettle all of the humans in Australia, and when it got unruly, she would not hesitate to use force.
Sophon did not really make an appearance until Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan arrived in Universe 647, where she was really just a program meant to manage the universe of the inhabitants.
Sophon as a character was interesting because she really was nothing more than a program, but in the context of this book, she was also a mouthpiece for Trisolaris.
Guan Yifan
Guan Yifan was originally a civilian scientist on Gravity. I don't remember how much involvement he had of discovering the four dimensional worlds. But in any case, many of the decisions made by Blue Space and Gravity were made on a democratic basis.
Guan Yifan ended up on Planet Blue, and was awoken when Cheng Xin and AA arrived. He showed them around a bit, and had intended to take them to one of the other worlds as soon as possible because Planet Blue and its system was too close to a commonly taken trail and it was not safe to stay there.
Guan Yifan and Cheng Xin ventured to Planet Gray but it was not safe there due to the death trails and they tried to escape but unfortunately the death trails dispersed which caused their ship to malfunction. Guan Yifan and Cheng Xin arrived on Planet Blue 18 million years later.
AA and Yun Tianming had gifted Universe 647 to Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan, and they lived there for a while until the Returners sent them a message to return the matter to the universe. As mentioned, Cheng Xin had consulted Yifan about whether it was okay to leave the 5kg data sphere in Universe 647, and after thinking it through, Yifan said yes.
I think part of it was Yifan feeling selfish. Like Cheng Xin, he wanted to leave a part of humanity for the next world to find. He'd considered the fact that not everybody was going to return their universe as the Returners requested. So he was counting on the Returners taking into account of those who did not comply to make himself feel better.
I don't think this makes Yifan bad, I think this makes him human. Not all humans can think entirely with the logical parts of their brains. Many of us crave to express ourselves, and this is Yifan wanting to leave a remnant of himself for the next era.
Other
I kind of wish we saw more of Bi Yunfeng and Cao Bin, who were other people who were considered as Swordholders. They came up again and again in Cheng Xin's life, probably because they were in similar fields of work. I was just very curious to know about how they thought and felt about all that was going down, and in particular, what their thoughts were on Cheng Xin and Thomas Wade's cold war.
There were also quite a few personnel from Blue Space and Gravity that were brought up. However, the story only focused on them sporadically. And only Guan Yifan left an impression on me because he joined Cheng Xin in the very end. Some of the personnel on Gravity were Dr. West (psychiatrist), Commander Devon (military), James Hunter (culinary controller but also had a secret mission), Joseph Morovich (captain). Some of the personnel on Blue Space were Reiko Akihara, Chu Yan, and Zhuo Wen.
We were also briefly introduced to Bai Ice and Vasilenko, who were the first to scope out what eventually became the collapse of the Solar System into two dimensions.
Themes
This book was absolutely packed with creative ideas, in terms of scientific concepts, humanity, and much more. So there is going to be a lot that I've forgotten, but this is what's been fresh in my mind after recently finishing the book (earlier today). This part is also going to be incredibly messy, because there are a lot of thoughts floating in my head and I am still in the process of connecting them together.
Morality
Crimes against humanity
When Luo Ji ended his tenure as Swordholder, he was charged with mundicide. In the Dark Forest, he had cast a spell on a planet by revealing its coordinates, and by doing so, an attack was triggered on them. To me, it felt like the authorities on Earth were trying to assert moral superiority. It felt like they wanted to show that humans were powerful enough to be responsible for the attack on their world. They technically were, but to claim ownership of it felt so presumptuous, because they were a whole other world. People aren't even always charged for crimes that they commit in another country on earth.
Blue Space was also charged with crimes against humanity, as they had killed the other ship in its cohort in order to escape when the droplet attacked Earth the first time. Earth tried to trick them into returning so that they could try them, but another ship, I believe it was the Bronze Age, had fallen for the same trap and warned them not to return. But as soon as Gravity and Blue Space were revealed to have broadcast the Trisolaran coordinates, the charges were dropped, because now presumably Blue Space was a hero. It was definitely very flimsy and not well thought out, and I did feel that Blue Space was charged because the people on Earth still held animosity towards escapism.
But I think it definitely showed us how humanity is not at all moral. We act on our feelings too much, many of them negative feelings.
Compassion
Luo Ji's name was a pun for logic, and Cheng Xin's name was a pun for sincerity. As I mentioned, a lot of people, both characters in the book and readers of the book, seemed to dislike Cheng Xin. Many readers in particular seemed to think that she was far too coddled.
Towards the end of the book, Guan Yifan told Cheng Xin that she was not responsible for humanity, and I am inclined to agree. Cheng Xin was not responsible for how humanity developed to where it was. There were may people who made choices that drove the trajectory of human civilization, not just Cheng Xin.
And contrary to how people felt, I did not think that there was such thing as a definite right answer to many of the decisions that Cheng Xin was faced with (I explained this in my character section). Cheng Xin just acted based on her own moral compass. Is that not a kind of consistent morality?
But there is another question. Who should humanity thank more? Should it be Cheng Xin or should it be Thomas Wade? The instinctive answer is Thomas Wade, since he'd pushed for the development of light speed travel which saved Cheng Xin and AA in the end. If you were a person living in the Bunker Era, what would you have said? Maybe you would've thanked Cheng Xin for preventing a war that you would've had to live through. Remember that Cheng Xin was elected as a Swordholder because people liked her compassion. She was a product of the time. She went in and out of style because her kind of compassion is short-sighted, but it doesn't make it any less valid. As humans, we need temporary comforts, and Cheng Xin could provide that, whereas people like Thomas Wade thought exclusively of the long run, and saving humanity as a whole.
As Cheng Xin stopped the war, Thomas Wade had said "If we lose our human nature, we lose much, but if we lose our bestial nature, we lose everything." And I think that kind of highlights the differences between them. Cheng Xin represents human nature, but it is short lived. She rose and fell in popularity very quickly in the public eye. But without people like Thomas Wade (and even Zhang Beihai from the Dark Forest), humanity would not last.
Civilization
I thought it was very interesting how Yifan considered the Galactic humans and the Solar System humans to be different races. He had to, as many of the people on Blue Space and Gravity did, so that they would not go crazy on their ship floating in space to nowhere in particular.
This was only covered briefly, but I would've been really interested to read about the psychiatrists and religious personnel on Blue Space and Gravity. How did they get the passengers to come to terms with their new homes?
The galactic humans and the solar system humans operated completely separately. However, the galactic humans would occasionally send messages back. They had done so when they'd discovered 4d space. So it makes me think that no matter how mentally strong the galactic humans were, they still longed for home at least a little bit.
When the earth was flattened into two dimensions, that's when Cheng Xin and AA cried for real. I would too. It must've been so hard to realize that the home you'd always loved was not only something that you couldn't return to, but it didn't exist anymore. They were no different from the galactic humans now, but I suppose the galactic humans had much longer to come to terms with their new situation.
Dark Forest
Guan Yifan told Cheng Xin and AA that it was bad manners to ask for a world's location, just like it was bad manners to ask a lady for her age or weight. I thought this was very interesting. Was this a new sort of etiquette that was drawn up by the galactic humans? It was definitely influenced by Dark Forest theory.
But what prevented the information from getting out? As long as people were travelling and broadcasting to and from these new worlds, the location would get out. I think that the solution was to limit the exact location to certain personnel, such as pilots. I'm just very curious about how civilizations would go about keeping their locations secret.
I also wanted to briefly mention the Singer, who was the one responsible for the attack on Trisolaris and the Solar System. The Singer was definitely from a more advanced race, as they used these types of attacks so simply and flippantly, like they were just doing regular house cleaning. We were given no information about this secret race, but I am so curious about what they are like. We still don't know a whole lot about Trisolarans, but we know more about them than we nkow about this secret race that the Singer was from.
Communication
Metaphors
The one advantage humans had over Trisolarans was that humans were able to hide information. But as time passed, Trisolarans started to learn how to do this too. So what is the next step? Perhaps it is to hide information in plain sight.
The book began with the story set during the fall of Constantinople. What was it supposed to mean? Why was it important? I think it represented some of the issues that we would incur during the course of the book.
As for Yun Tianming's story, humanity knew that it wasn't a simple fairy tale, but perhaps the Trisolarans did not know this. They did know that humans would be reading this story looking for clues that went beyond its literal interpretation.
With regards to interpretation of Yun Tianming's story, I thought it was interesting how Liu Cixin wrote that certain political factions would try to twist the story to fit their needs, which is something we see all the time. Even when something is written literally, humans always manage to spin them into something to suit what they want.
Non-verbal
When Yun Tianming and Cheng Xin had their video call, they were speaking with their eyes and body language too, as the words they were saying were heavily regulated. This was probably another kind of communication that the Trisolarans did not understand yet, because eyes and body language are a representation of our thoughts that are not said aloud in words.
In the scene that Cheng Xin and AA had come up with curvature propulsion, they were also doing a lot of non-verbal communication, communicating with their eyes, or talking about other mundane things to get to the points they wanted to talk about.
This reminded me of Luo Ji and Zhuang Yan in the Dark Forest. There was a part where they were trying to communicate with their faces playfully, though of course they didn't get too far.
Anti sophon room
Humans had developed technology that would shield them from sophon surveillance. Apparently, the people who entered the first sophon-free room spoke as if they were drunk, because they were spilling all of their innermost thoughts. It was a very interesting concept. We don't think of ourselves being under constant surveillance, but it seems that we are getting closer and closer, as people start to communicate online more, and in the presence of technology. What does it mean to speak entirely without surveillance? Interesting to think about.
The Fall of Constantinople
The book started with the story of a witch approaching Constantine XI. The witch, Helena, told him that she could kill the enemy leader. She had successfully killed a prisoner to prove to Constantine that she could do it, but she had failed to kill the enemy later.
It was on Reddit where I found out that the woman's magic was actually the existence of a 4D bubble on Earth. It had only existed there for a week, which was why Helena was unable to do it later on, and why she had to go to a specific place to carry out her witchcraft.
Initially, I had thought it was a metaphor for getting someone else to launch your attack for you. I thought that Constantine represented Earth, and that Helena represented whatever third alien race was going to take out the enemy, which was the Trisolarans. I'm not sure that parallel totally holds up though.
But finding out that there was a 4D bubble on earth made me realize that if I were to read this book a second time, I would discover so many things.
Yun Tianming's fairy tale
Yun Tianming's fairy tale is one of those stories that are extremely detailed and I'm going to be missing all of the metaphors and symbolism in it, so I'm not going to try to dissect it completely and utterly lol. Here are some of the scientific concepts that I remembered.
The boat with the soap represented curvature propulsion. I am still understanding this as I read more discussions about it. The first time I read an explanation, someone described it like rowing a rowboat, because the oars are manipulating the water around instead of the actual boat. I think this confused me though. A second discussion I read said that a ship travelling with curvature propulsion would basically travel in a path where the speed of light was slower, so that the ship could travel at that slower speed of light. It is not travelling at the speed of light as we know it, but in a different frame of reference, and that is why time outside of a curvature propulsion ship passes differently compared to inside the ship. I will try to read up on curvature propulsion more though.
As the Solar System was collapsing into two dimensions, Bai Ice realized the metaphor of Needle-eye's paintings. It was quite literal, which was probably why people didn't catch it. The world was being flattened, just as the people in the story were turned into a painting. I was surprised that the Trisolarans would let that fly, but first of all, Trisolarans don't really understand metaphors, and second of all, flattening might've not been a strange concept to them. Maybe they thought that the idea of a world collapsing was so natural and everyday that they didn't think it would be such a big revelation to humans.
I remember that when the Solar System was collapsing into two dimensions, Cheng Xin had observed that it looked a little like a waterfall or a whirlpool, and it reminded me of when Cheng Xin, AA, and associates visited Helseggen and Mosken, and were trapped in the whirlpool.
Something that I realized at the end of the book was that the Princess and the Captain in the fairy tale represented Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan. The Princess of course exhibited a lot of traits similar to Cheng Xin. They were both what humanity likes to think is a compassionate lady. Of course, like I mentioned, it's a more short-sighted version of compassion, but it's the kind of thing that gives people a sense of comfort that they can relate to. As for the Captain, "Fan" in Guan Yifan is the word for sail, so I think that's a pretty direct comparison. However, Yun Tianming wrote this fairy tale long before Cheng Xin even met Guan Yifan. Did he know, or was it just a coincidence? I was thinking about how the aliens in Arrival are able to see the future, because they see time all at once, and I had wondered if Yun Tianming had come across such a kind of intellectualism.
Again, I went on Reddit to see what people thought of the fairy tale, and I am surprised by how many people thought that the fairy tale was silly. Some attributed it to the translation, and some straight up thought it sounded dumb. I was actually incredibly drawn into the fairy tale, so I straight up cannot relate lol. As for the translation, Ken Liu has said before that when he translates, he wants the language to not sound like fluent English, but to sound like English that is being translated, to make the reader feel like they are reading something from a different language, and I do get that vibe from Ken Liu's translation. But I'm not sure if it's just because I know both Chinese and English that I understand what Ken Liu is going for.
Physics as weapons
Guan Yifan and Cheng Xin were discussing the ways in which manipulating the laws of physics was how wars in space were fought. In the context of Cheng Xin's experiences, collapsing of dimensions was an offensive weapon, and the black domain was a defensive weapon.
It reminded me a bit of the sophon lock back in the Three Body Problem, which appeared to alter the laws of physics on Earth (though it was just a trick to make scientists question themselves).
Then, Guan Yifan suggested the idea that the universe used to be many dimensions, but that as more attacks were launched, the number of dimensions grew smaller and smaller. I think it had been said that the dimension collapsing areas never stop. They just keep expanding, which is why the universe is just going to keep collapsing on itself too.
Earlier in the series, the Earth had considered a few strategies to defend itself. Luo Ji and Cheng Xin had considered a beacon indicating that it was not aggressive, but Sophon had refused to give them any information.
Another strategy was self-mutilation, which I thought was very interesting. Would any civilization purposely stop themselves from advancing to protect their longevity? Knowing the arrogance of humanity, that was shown time and time again in this book, I thought it was surprising that so many people were for self-mutilation. I think it involved cutting back on many advanced forms of communication, which I couldn't see people agreeing to, but I guess it depends on just how frivolous these advancements are.
The black domain was another strategy, but it was very difficult. Later, the book suggested that a black domain could've been created if many light-speed curvature propulsion ships travelled away from the Solar System, leaving the trails behind them in which light would travel at a slower rate. Those trails would create the black domain.
I am super curious about the zero homers and the returners. I suppose it does make some sense. Universe itself is supposed to be something of a timeless entity, so I can understand the logic behind not believing that the universe has a beginning and an end. There is the fear that if the universe collapsed into zero dimensions, it would just end, but then the universe would be finite. But then again, the zero homers and the returners are putting a lot of trust into something that is just a theory.
I am curious about the Returners though. How were they able to compile so much information about all of the civilizations that were in the universe, or still are in the universe? In addition, their message was worded in such a cordial way, it made me kind of chuckle a bit. They asked for the inhabitants of the pocket universes to return their matter so that the universe could continue on into the big crush.
Regarding whether the 5 kg data sphere would stop the universe from cycling into a big crush, I think that remains open ended. I don't think Liu Cixin gave us anything that would foreshadow what happened beyond the end of the book. I had initiatelly thought it to be an optimistic end. After all, if Guan Yifan was that worried about the 5 kg data sphere, he probably would've pushed Cheng Xin not to leave it. He was always very outspoken about his worries about the universe, and was often the one guiding Cheng Xin because he knew more about the outside universe than Cheng Xin.
I can also see it as being a pessimistic end. We only saw the story through Cheng Xin's eyes, but I could see how much of what happened to humanity was a result of humanity's flaws, and maybe Cheng Xin leaving that data sphere was just another flaw that would ruin it for everybody else.
That being said, like Guan Yifan had surmised, how can we be sure that the other Universe inhabitants would return matter as the Returners requested? The Returners must have some plan to gather the matter if they believe there is not enough, and they are likely much more technologically advanced than humans to be able to handle that.
Title
The title of the book is also a little ambiguous in how it makes me feel about this ending. At first, Death's End definitely feels pessimistic, but if death is coming to an end, does that meant he concept of death will no longer exist? In which case, isn't that kind of positive?
The Chinese title of the book is 死神永生, wich translates to something like "the god of death lives forever." Again, it sounds very ominous, since it means that death will prevail. But on the positive site, if death will prevail, that implies that life as a concept exists as well. Death cannot exist without life. So I think the Chinese name kind of alludes to the cyclical nature of the universe, which is in a constant cycle of life and death.
As you can see, I seem to be trying to put a positive spin on all of the possible ending interpretations lol. It's not that I can only accept happy endings. It's that the positive ending seems to make the most sense based on the information we were given towards the end of the book, particularly with regards to the zero homers and the returners. I just feel that at this point, it's out of humanity's hands. We can only do so much. That's not to say that the zero homers and returners are responsible for the big crunch, but it seems like they have more technology to be able to understand what we're dealing with. Yes, humans have stumbled, but at the end, they have tried their best. Humanity as a whole (and not necessarily its individuals) have tried their best.
Overall
Overall, this was a great book and a great series. I can't decide which book in the series I enjoyed the most, as all of them are very different. They showed different stages in the process of humanity learning about the universe around them.
In terms of this book, I loved how creative Liu Cixin was in the science fiction concepts, as well as the ways in which he showed them. In the first book, I really liked how he used all sorts of literary formats to convey information to us. In this book, a lot of it was conveyed in a more down low way, in line with how metaphors was one of the themes of this book.
I would highly recommend this book, not only for science fiction fans, but people who are interested in books about humans and humanity.