Death’s End is the third and final part of the epic trilogy written by Hugo award winning Chinese author Liu Cixin. The first and second parts of the trilogy that covers a period of over 18 million years are The Three Body Problem and The Dark Forest respectively. The series is a breathtaking mixture of novel scientific concepts, rich cultural references and a shocking plot that goes through many unexpected twists and turns and keeps the reader on the edge of her seat.
At the heart of the series lies the Fermi Paradox. In the summer of 1950, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi was chatting with his fellow physicists when he came up with this concept. (I am in awe of the genius of Fermi whose casual conversations gave rise to groundbreaking concepts.) Simply put the paradox is this. By various estimates the probability that intelligent life exists in many places in the universe is very high. These estimates can be calculated rigorously using the Drake equation but we all have seen the breathtaking pictures of galaxies like the one below. It stands to reason that some percentage of these galaxies will have habitable planets and life. So why have we not seen any evidence of it? Hence the paradox.
Many explanations have been proposed for the Fermi paradox such as we have not looked long enough or the aliens may be too far away. Liu proposes a daring explanation. The universe is teeming with intelligent life forms but it is like a dark forest. Shining a torch in a dark forest reveals your position and makes you vulnerable to attack from wild animals. Similarly, sending out signals reveals the position of Earth, making it possible for aliens to invade. This explanation requires a little leap of faith because of its daring nature but once you accept it you are in for a thrilling ride spanning galaxies across the universe.
Ye Wenjie, an astrophysics graduate in Tsinghua University in China discovers that radio waves can be amplified using the sun. She also receives the first alien message sent by someone on the planet Trisolaris in the Alpha Centauri system 4.37 light years from Earth. The message is from a good-natured alien, warning the Earthlings not to respond and avoid revealing the position of the Earth. Unfortunately, Ye does the exact opposite, inviting the Trisolarans to invade the Earth. This starts a cascade of events that spans 18 million years.
What I love about hardcore science fiction is the new scientific and technological ideas that it introduces. The Three Body Problem series is replete with them. Some of them are improvements in our daily routines, like clothes that clean themselves. Others are grand ideas that take your breath away, like having a particle accelerator around the sun. On the plus side, you don’t need to worry about maintaining vacuum. On the minus side, its construction will be a monumental task.
As the story progresses, the human civilization on Earth achieves the technological capability to accomplish all this and much more. We have bases on not just Moon and Mars but also on Pluto, Neptune and moons of Jupiter. We mine the material from asteroids to build space stations and colonies around the planets. Human longevity is now around 150 years and you also have the option to hibernate yourself. Many people who are diagnosed with terminal illness opt for this in the hope that when a cure is found in future, they can be woken up and get cured.
Much has been written about the importance of reading fiction. It allows you to broaden your perspective, experience the times long gone. If you want to know what Russia was like during the French invasion, War and Peace is a great choice. Admittedly, this is a very simplistic description of what War and Peace offers. The genius of Tolstoy covers many fields and disciplines. Still, one of the main features of the novel is the accurate description of the Russian society at the time.
Science fiction goes a step further. Barring some exceptions like fantasy or magical realism, mainstream literature has to follow the laws of the universe. Pip in Charles Dickens’ masterpiece Great Expectations cannot go back in time and fix things. And time passes the same way for everyone. Science fiction need not follow these rules. Einstein’s law of special relativity states that if you are in a spaceship traveling close to the speed of light, time inside the spaceship will slow down.
When I was studying special relativity for a physics course, a popular exam question on the so-called Twin Paradox was something like this. (c is the velocity of light, nearly 300,000 m/sec.)
It’s a very straightforward problem. You simply plugin the values in the formula that was given by Einstein and get the answer, which is 50 years. So when the twin returns, he is 42 and his brother is 50. While studying this topic, after the initial shock of learning that time does not pass the same way for everyone wore off, I never gave another thought to this problem. For instance, how would the twin brothers react when they learn that there is now an eight years difference between them?
Until I read the Death’s End.
The problem in Death’s End is much more devastating than the twins. Near the climax of Death’s End, Cheng Xin and Yifan are orbiting a planet at the speed of light. They spend 16 days orbiting the planet at the speed of light while on the planet 18 million years go by. When they return to the planet, it is unrecognizable. In place of a mountain range there is a dense forest over a plain. The vegetation is a colour of deep purple. There is no sign of recognition left for them to hold on to. For the first time in my life, I realized the consequences of traveling at the speed of light.
This is the power of science fiction.
The Three Body Problem series is great the pushing the boundaries of physics. Advanced alien civilizations use laws of physics as weapons. So instead of attacking a planet with spaceships, they send projectiles that would reduce the speed of light on that planet. When this happens, all communication speed on the planet slows down. Light from the planet cannot get out and it becomes invisible and incommunicable to the rest of the universe.
Theoretical physics tells us that 10 dimensions exist even though we can experience only three. In Death’s End, the aliens send a two dimensional object to a planetary system they want to destroy. This two dimensional object swallows the three dimensional space and the objects it contains making them two dimensional.
We need such science fiction now more than ever. Why? Because the world is changing at a breakneck speed and we need to keep up. In 1865, Jules Verne wrote From the Earth to the Moon. The fact that Verne could think about space travel even before the invention of aeroplane is a testament to his genius. The moon mission is organized by the Baltimore Gun Club, a society of weapon enthusiasts. It would take a little over 100 years for man to land on the Moon. Isaac Asimov started writing about robots in the 1950s and it is just about now that we are beginning to appreciate the possible consequences of AI and robotics.
I remember when the Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990. The only indication was a news bulletin on TV and a news article the next day. Fast forward to 2021. The James Webb Telescope is launched and the technology has advanced so much that you can watch it in almost real time as it is released in its orbit.
These days my constant expression while reading the news feed is one of awe. So many amazing breakthroughs are happening all over the world in such diverse areas that it is hard to keep up. I have already written about how Star Trek anticipated today’s technology. Now even the famous dermal generator will soon be a reality.
The gap between science fiction and reality is getting smaller every day.
David Benioff and D. B. Weiss are the creators of Game of Thrones while Alexander Woo is best known for writing several episodes of the HBO drama series True Blood. Their adaptation of the Three Body Problem is streaming on Netflix.
