This is book two of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past series that began with The Three-Body Problem. It picks up nearly where the last left off, after the defeat of the rebel human groups – those who were keen on being taken over by aliens and actively helping them and putting humanity at risk. The aliens have very advanced technology, including surveillance systems that monitor and actively impede human technology advances. Through a “technology lockdown”, the aliens prevent any significant advancement of science, so humans must make advances based on what is already known. The alien invasion will happen in a little over 400 years (it takes a while to get across the Milky Way), so Earth has time to either figure out how to defend itself, escape, or come to terms with the pending defeat. Miraculously (and somewhat unbelievably), humanity comes together to work toward a common cause. They devise several approaches to a unified oversight (an actual United Nations), and work on several fronts of both offence and defence of Earth, including space stations and spaceships. They also conveniently create a mechanism for human hibernation, allowing people to be put in stasis now to be reawakened in the future for the final battle with the aliens (this technology is not explained at all, but is familiar from those companies that offer to freeze people till there’s a cure for what ails them). This technology element is more of a literary device to enable to story to continue with some of the same character long into the future.
The first 2/3 of the book is set in semi-current times, and the creation of the Wallfacer Project. Wallfacers – four seemingly random individuals – are charged with acting in defence of Earth but NOT sharing their plans with anyone as way of defeating the alien surveillance. Two of the approaches fail miserably, another is a dark approach to mind control, and the fourth is strangely unclear and look like a boondoggle. Then the novel leaps forward 200 years, bringing several characters out of hibernation to see and be part of the future. That future world incorporates many elements reminiscent of Black Mirror episodes. What follows is a devastating, but entirely predictable, failure of humans to work together and a massive victory for the aliens. By the end of the novel, there is a détente of sorts with the aliens but the remaining spectre of future threats from outside and inside humanity.
I don’t read a lot of sci-fi (although more lately), mostly what others recommend. Regardless, I found several elements here that are reflected in other recent reads and stories
- The “mental lock” created by one of the Wallfacers that enables people to have faith in humanity’s ultimate victory by encoding it directly into their brains, is highly reminiscent of the process used in the Apple TV show “Severence”.
- There are a few overlaps with Seveneves, including the surprising unification of the world towards a common problem (and the eventually breakdown of that very thing due to human nature), as well as the “swarm” approach to spaceship integration.
- Similarly, the unification of humanity in Project Hail Mary, as well as the design of the spaceships and the implementation of hibernation, were all familiar.
All of these have been written or produced since the English language publication of the Liu series. While this kind of “inspiration” is common in the genre, it does make me think perhaps the sci-fi imagination is pretty limited to the tech we know now. Even very early science fiction, back to Frankenstein, was limited very much by knowledge of current or emerging technology. A notable exception is the work of William Gibson, whose presaging of the internet and AI (among other things) was truly revolutionary.
Unlike the previous book, this one ends on less of a cliffhanger – the series could reasonably have ended here – so I’m curious as to how it carries on. I will read that third book, but later in the year after some mental palette cleansing with other novels.
As I’m discovering, the best science fiction books are ones with a good story focused on the people and society, with the science/tech as backdrop, almost incidental, to the story. Sadly, the best ones (in addition to being prescient) are also mostly dystopian (perhaps also a kind of prescience), not because of aliens or tech but because human being are flawed and dangerous – given any kind of technology, they almost always end up either arguing over it and/or turning it into some kind of weapon, the inevitable consequence of the survival instinct and hubris. Interestingly, this reflects part of the cosmic sociology axioms presented by Liu – that any discovery leads to a “chain of suspicion”, wherein knowledge of another’s existence or technology inevitably leads to competition and violence due to the inherent need for survival.
Fate: I’ll be hanging on to it until I finish the 3rd book, then the whole set will move on to another reader.
1 – a book with a murder
9 – made into film (miniseries)
13 – set somewhere I’ve never been (China)
21 – a translation
36 – part of a series
rclr 