SPOILER WARNING: The following paragraphs contain spoilers for all of the novels discussed.
This summer, I’ve been reading a lot of (mostly sci-fi) novels. This year has rekindled my love of sci-fi in all sorts of media. I’ve been playing video games set in space (including Endless Space 2 and Everspace to name just two of them). There’s something calming about the vast, unknowable reaches of the universe.
I felt like writing a few words about the books I’ve read.
The Dark Forest (2008)
Liu Cixin’s follow-up to his 2006 novel The Three Body Problem
follows humanity’s response to the threat of invasion by the Trisolans.
Humans have about 400 years before the Trisolaran fleet will reach the
solar system.
The Wallfacer Program is an initiative designed to prevent Trisolarans from understanding humanity’s true strategy. Trisolarans, unlike humans, broadcast their thoughts to each other and lack the ability to hide their thoughts. Although Trisolarans are able to spy on humanity thanks to their subatomic artificial intelligences (the sophons, described in greater detail in The Three Body Problem), they still can’t penetrate human thoughts. The Wallfacers are given access to enormous power and resources in order to create strategies to fight the Trisolarans.
We spend most of the novel following Luo Ji, a lazy professor who breezes through life in a nihilistic funk. He is chosen as a Wallfacer because the Trisolarans seem intent on murdering him for reasons that become clear as the novel goes on.
The story starts to feel like one written by Philip K. Dick once Luo Ji enters hibernation for 200 years and is awakened in the future. In this future society, every surface can be used as an advanced touch-display computer. These surfaces constantly show advertisements. Most humans live in large underground cities, complete with artificial skies. Despite the passing of two centuries, people are still paying rent. Dick’s stories frequently feature bizarre dystopian societies like the one described here.
Luo Ji describes this horrifying world of the future as a “utopia.” Is this the author Liu Cixin revealing his own political views? It’s hard to look at the society described as anything more than “what if the status quo but with more technology?”
Luo Ji spends a fair amount of the story pining after a fictional woman that he dreams up. This section is fascinating and speaks to modern alienation and narcissism. It also feels like a plot thread that wouldn’t be out of place in a Murakami Haruki novel. Unfortunately, it becomes far less interesting because Luo Ji is able to use his Wallfacer status to find someone that matches this fictional creation perfectly.
Luo Ji’s fictional love interest made flesh is named Zhuang Yan and she’s easily the worst part of the story. It’s not her fault, of course. She doesn’t feel like a real person. She is a flat character without any motivations. She seems to exist only to make Luo Ji happy. Their rapid courtship and marriage feel unrealistic. Why would she marry this unremarkable professor who doesn’t seem to care about the future of humanity? I’m not entirely sure what the author was trying to accomplish with Zhuang Yan, but it ultimately didn’t work for me. Is her only purpose to give Luo Ji a reason to keep working?
Luo Ji is an interesting character – like most good characters – because of his flaws. For most of the novel he feels hopeless about humanity’s future and decides to stop worrying about it and enjoy his privileged life as a Wallfacer. He eventually figures out the Dark Forest theory of planetary civilizations. This theory argues that the universe is a dark forest and each civilization is like a hunter moving from tree to tree, trying to spot threats and avoid others entirely.
What makes the novel worth reading are all of the plans and
strategies people come up with to respond to the threat of imminent
destruction. Most of the plans fail in spectacular fashion. There’s also a healthy serving of weirdness throughout the story.
Echopraxia (2014)
This novel by Peter Watts is a sequel Blindsight (2006). We follow Daniel Brüks, an unlikable biologist who is swept up in events outside of his control and understanding. Brüks finds himself fleeing Earth on the ship Crown of Thorns after a confused attack on a Bicameral Order base in the Oregon desert. The Bicamerals are people who have modified themselves so much that they have become a sort of hive mind. They also eschew the scientific method in favor of a sort of faith-based research.
Blindsight asks, “Is consciousness an evolutionary dead-end?” Watts confesses in the appendix of Echopraxia that he doesn’t have much more to say about consciousness. Instead, Echopraxia is concerned with other questions about baseline (i.e., non-augmented) humanity’s eventual obsolescence. Watts even tackles questions about science-as-act-of-faith. For example, the idea that any data interpreted by a human can’t be trusted since our perception of reality is anything but reliable.
On board the Crown of Thorns are Jim Moore, a soldier and the father of Siri Keeton (which makes Jim our main connection to the characters of Blindsight); Rakshi Sengupta, the ship’s pilot; Lianna Lutterodt, an augmented woman who wants to eventually merge with the Bicameral hivemind; a collection of Bicameral hivemind members; and Valerie the “vampire.”
Vampires in this setting are described more thoroughly in Blindsight.
They’re another species of humanoids that were brought back from
extinction by humans. They’re far more capable than baseline humans:
stronger, faster, and – most importantly – smarter. Despite their
strengths, they suffer a condition called the “Crucifix Glitch,” which
causes their brain to short circuit if they see right angles. Only
medication can prevent this glitch from happening. Humans bring them
back from extinction to exploit them. There are hints at the end of Blindsight that the vampires on Earth have revolted against humans. Echopraxia continues that thread.
Watts’ prose is fresh as ever. The story has a brisk pace. The characters feel well-constructed. I ultimately enjoyed reading this one, but it still feels like it’s just not as good as Blindsight. For those who haven’t read Blindsight, it’s freely available (under a Creative Commons License) from the author’s website. (Echopraxia does not seem to be distributed under the same license.)
Starfish (1999)
Peter Watts’ first published novel is set in a deep-sea facility called Beebe that harvests energy from underwater thermal vents. The people that live and work in the facility to keep it operational are chosen based on their unique backgrounds. These people call themselves “Rifters” and it quickly becomes clear that they have all traumatic pasts. Although their reasons for staying in such a hostile and terrifying environment differ, most of them find the deep sea to be the only place they feel comfortable.
Content Warning: There are some heavy topics discussed. Although this review won’t get into the details, anyone interested in reading the novel would be wise to check out summaries online.
Despite its difficult subject matter, Starfish is an incredible book. It’s an easier read than Blindsight; it’s also more chilling. Watts does an admirable job at describing the horrors of the abyss.
It’s not only the fear of some gigantic sea creature that might take a
bite out of your leg: the constant darkness, high pressure, and isolation are arguably
more threatening. Even worse is the effect that this hostile environment has on the cast. The characters slowly embrace the abyss and eventually they
recognize that they’ve all changed irreversibly. Most of the characters take to sleeping outside the station at least part of the time. It feels wrong in a horrifying way.
Reading Starfish made me wonder what a darker, more psychological version of Subnautica might look like. People who enjoyed playing Subnautica may appreciate this book.
There are two sequels: Maelstrom and βehemoth. All of the novels in the Rifters series are freely available online (distributed under a Creative Commons license) from the author’s website.
Annihilation (2014)
Before getting to the novel, we’ll take a look at the film adaption which was released in 2018. The film follows a group of highly educated women specialists as they enter a mysterious Area X under the auspices of “Southern Reach,” presumably a secret organization run by the US government. Our protagonist is the biologist of the group, who has a personal connection to Area X: her husband is a member of a previous expedition to the quarantined zone who returns home unexpectedly after being missing for eighteen months.
I’ve seen the film twice since it released – most recently only a few months prior to this writing – and have greatly enjoyed it both times. The filmmakers working on this project were willing to eschew marketability for strangeness.
We need more weird films. I love to see movies that are unlike anything I’ve seen before. Annihilation fits into that category nicely. It’s an easy one to recommend to others since it has a digestible story. Although it leaves some room for interpretation and doesn’t explain everything, most viewers should be able to explain briefly what happens in the plot. Of course, films that leave us with more questions than answers are a treat.
I’m a big fan of “what if” stories that wonder how difficult it would be to communicate in any meaningful manner with intelligent life from other planets (Blindsight may be the gold standard in this category that I’ve read so far). The best stories are the ones that wonder if communication wouldn’t be utterly impossible. Our feeble human brains can’t fathom exactly how alien that other life might be. There may be no common ground whatsoever. In fact, we may never know that attempts to communicate were even made. The film Arrival from 2016 was a big let-down due to how easily the humans overcome the language barrier.
Annihilation imagines alien life as being incomprehensible. During the conclusion of the film, interviewers ask the biologist what the creatures wanted. She says she doesn’t know. She explains that she doesn’t know whether the alien life was even aware of her.
Jeff VanderMeer’s novel is quite different from the film. It’s not surprising; concessions have to be made when adapting any material from one medium to another. The DNA of the novel can be seen in the film. It feels like the filmmakers wanted the core feeling of the novel and the freedom to take it and do their own thing with it.
The characters are unnamed in the novel and instead are only referred to by their job title. The novel is presented as the written record kept by the biologist. The team sent into Area X is smaller, with only four members: the biologist, the psychologist, the surveyor, and the archaeologist. The psychologist is the leader and is slowly revealed to use hypnosis to control the others.
The characters spend a great deal of the story investigating a subterranean structure (the biologist insists on calling it a “tower” while the others refer to it as a “tunnel”). This structure is combined with the lighthouse in the film. We learn far more about the biologist’s past in the novel.
Both film and novel are easy recommendations. The novel is short — just shy of 200 pages — and is the first part of a trilogy; the sequels are Authority and Acceptance.