Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson

Seveneves begins on what will become Day Zero, or 0.0, as the Earth's moon is destroyed by an "Agent," which we don't learn much about. The moon breaks into pieces and popular scientist, Doc Dubois, (clearly based upon Neil Degrasse Tyson) predicts these parts will fall to Earth in an event two years later, known as "Hard Rain."

Thus, the premise of the first third of the novel is humanity's preparation for its own demise. We're told the Earth will be uninhabitable for ten thousand years, so man takes to space on an expanded version of the ISIS, called Izzy. Then we're taken through the early days of human life in space after seven billion people have been killed by the "Hard Rain." Various catastrophes occur, bringing the human population down to just seven women. Suddenly, for the final third of the book, we're catapulted five thousand years ahead to explore the future, as humans have proliferated once again, only broken into seven races based upon the traits of those surviving women - the titular seven eves. These races are tasked with terraforming Earth as it once again becomes habitable.

The book is densely descriptive and the initial concept is fascinating. It is clear that the author has a solid grasp of physics in space, as the ideas are plausible. Yet this detail can get extremely tedious and overwhelming. Still, most of the book is enjoyable. The final third, however, seems totally unnecessary. Through all the changes in the first two thirds, we have several consistent characters to follow, yet these are all lost as we move into this last section, and it is hard to care about anything that happens without a familiar character. 

Redshirts, by John Scalzi

Redshirts begins with a thrilling action scene wherein it appears we are being introduced to the novel's protagonist. Alas, he soon trips, falls, and has his face eaten, causing his death by means of giant worm. It's an hilarious opening to a brilliantly funny book.

Without giving too much away, it follows the bizarre adventures of an apparently doomed crew on a spaceship, who are being picked off in over-the-top death scenes, before they travel through time and perhaps even realities.

I'm not a sci-fi fan (in spite of my recent reading list, but this book blew me away. I read it in a day, which is incredible for someone who reads so slowly. I was simply glued to the screen by the witty writing and ridiculously inventive plot.

Unfortunately, the last 25% of the book drags on, losing the wit in order to wrap everything up across all the timelines, really taking the steam out of an otherwise fantastic story.

Foundation, by Isaac Asimov

In contrast with the previous book, where action exploded off each page, in Isaac Asimov's Foundation, not a lot of action actually occurs. I'ts all talk, all postulating, all philosophizing. Whereas Ready Player One was dumb but fun, Foundation is dull but thoughtful.

Perhaps "dull" is too harsh. The book is interesting, entertaining even. It's comprised of several stories across many years concerning the rise of a civilization called Foundation on the edge of a declining space empire. The stories feature different sets of characters facing different problems over the course of Foundation's history.

Asimov's vision of the future, 12,000 years from now, isn't particularly inventive... People still smoke cigarettes and dial telephones to talk, and nuclear power is still the hot new technology - the best that advanced civilizations travelling light years across space can somehow muster. Women apparently have no role in this new world. All the characters are male except for a few secretaries and other unimportant roles.

Foundation seems to be Asimov's attempt at transposing his ideas about our world onto another, which I suppose is true of much science fiction. He tackles religion, science, philosophy, government, etc, and plays with them all 12,000 years into the future.

Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline

This book was gifted to me by a friend with a very enthusiastic recommendation. Which is fortunate, because honestly it's not the sort of thing I would otherwise have chosen to read. I never buy science fiction books, and yet this one sent me on a real sci-fi kick for two weeks.



Ernest Cline's book is the first in a long time that I could hardly put down. I read a lot, but seldom do I enjoy books as much as this one. The story of Wade's - aka Parzival - quest to win the greatest competition in human history is riveting. It starts with a bang and constantly drops shock cliff-hangers to keep the reader engaged.

Sure, it's cheesy and ridiculous in places, and often badly written, and some of it just doesn't make sense... but that's actually quite endearing. It makes the book rather like the 80s songs, TV shows, and movies that it frequently references. It is fun, exciting, thrilling in the same way they were. 

Death's End, by Liu Cixin

This is a vast and fascinating book - the third in an engaging, far-reaching trilogy by the greatest Chinese sci-fi writer, Liu Cixin. I will try to review it without spoiling anything for those who haven't yet had the pleasure, although the title rather gives away the inevitable ending.


 
Across his Three Body Trilogy, Liu Cixin has offered a story of earth-versus-trisolaris, and later, in the second book, this scope is expanded with the dark forest philosophy to a chaotic, over-crowded universe of every-civilization-for-itself. In this final book, the seeds that were long ago planted have now come to be fully grown plants. It has been an incredible journey.

Yet Death's End (or The Birth of Death, as its Chinese title goes), is far grander in scope than the previous two novels, which now seem rather dull and uneventful by comparison. In the first book, which was probably the conventional best of the series, Liu took us back to the Cultural Revolution, and how the cruelty of humanity essential brought upon its own downfall. In the second, we saw how humans dealt with the inevitability of death from the cosmos, reeling in the knowledge that we were not alone, and suddenly rather tiny and fragile.

The third book in the trilogy spans tens of millions of years. Its protagonist takes advantage of hibernation technology to travel through time, visiting all of the most important moments in earth's history since "the Common Era" (ie what readers know as now). This is Cheng Xin, a woman who for some reason is constantly tasked with saving the world, and who constantly makes poor decisions. She is a quite likable character, but rather weak - perhaps believable but perhaps a little too "girly". I get the distinct impression that Liu is trying to make a strong female character but it is clear he really doesn't understand women very well. Through all his books, the women are rather poorly written.

In fact, that's this novel's greatest downfall - as with the previous two. Liu is obviously a great mind and he can theorize incredible happenings in the universe. His ideas are spectacular and he describes them pretty well... yet, he seems to struggle with humans. He's better at talking about the technology required to travel at the speed of light or destroy a galaxy than he is at putting two people together and having them talk. So be it. This is sci-fi after all.

Another downfall - and this may be the translator's fault - is that the metaphors liberally employed throughout are rather obviously stated. This occurs first in a strange opening scene, where a puddle is drying on a floor. We are twice informed that this is a metaphor for a dying civilization. Any writer worth his salt knows not to deliberately state that a metaphor is a metaphor.

Granted, this is a translation from Chinese to English. There are certain cultural quirks to understand, and certain translation issues. Stating the obvious and repeating the obvious is not considered a bad thing in Chinese, so maybe that caused this little issue. Anyway, this translation is superior to those of the previous two novels. It is also interesting to see the future from a Chinese perspective, as China may actually have far more of a role in the future history of the earth than Hollywood and Western novels like to suggest. Liu envisages a world where people speak a hybrid of Chinese and English, and where a rather large percentage of the clever folk have Chinese names... Not too give too much away, but by the end of the book it's really only Chinese characters who have anything to do with anything. The non-Chinese characters mostly avoid stereotypes but often speak in odd, clunky ways that are not really believable.

Regardless of its faults, this was a long, long, long trilogy which held my attention and entertained me throughout. I probably enjoyed the first book the most, and the second disappointed me quite a bit, but the third was a gripping story with an absurdly large number of events unfolding over tens of millions of years. I'm absolutely not a fan of science fiction, yet this managed to entertain me immensely, and I highly recommend it.

The Dark Forest, by Liu Cixin

Last year I was on a Chinese novel kick and read Liu Cixin's (or Cixin Liu, depending on how you want to Anglicize his name) The Three-Body Problem. Whilst not exactly the greatest work of literature, it was very enjoyable. I'm honestly not a science-fiction guy, and I didn't really expect to like it, but it was good. The story barreled along, and I very much enjoyed the fact that Liu really knows physics, making the ideas unique and plausible.


This year, while travelling around Africa (see my other blog for info about the trip), I read the second book in what was Liu's trilogy. The Dark Forest leaves off more or less from where the first book ended, with the Earth stunned by the news that it will be invaded by an alien power in 400 years.

"Four hundred years?!" you may well ask. "That's not exactly moving along at a riveting pace!"

The book covers some of those years, jumping about a bit through the same characters as they engage in hibernation to brace against the passage of time. Primarily we follow Luo Ji, a Wallfacer. Wallfacers are the humans chosen to engage in planning the Earth's defense. Due to the presence of "sophons" on Earth, Trisolaris - the enemy power on its way to the Solar System - is able to monitor human activity but not thought. A few humans are chosen as Wallfacers and granted certain power to secretly plan Earth's resistance.

What's interesting to me is that these books view humanity's future from a very Chinese perspective. Yes, it's a global fight, but when you read books in English, usually the future concern a plucky band of white men... In this case, most - but not all - of the characters are Chinese, and the world's language is a hybrid of Chinese and English.

I also like that Liu is very well-versed in science and makes very detailed and plausible guesses about technology in the future. These are all pretty believable and make it easy to engage with the book as it passes through time.

However, as with the first book, Liu's new one falls down in regards characterization. The characters are all pretty flat and predictable. Some of them seem to be carbon copies of cliches from old movies. His dialogue is dull, too. The women in the book largely exist to be beautiful, while the men go out and solve problems. It makes the book rather frustrating. Some of this might be down to translation - and not just translation of language, but the culture wrapped up in it.

Altogether, the first book in this series was, despite some flaws, a very good book that I highly recommended. The second not so much. I'll give the third a shot when it comes out this summer, but I'm not hugely enthusiastic.