Should have been Gilroy Part 2 of 3 Dark Forest

This blog series now jumps forwards exactly 20 years into David Benioff’s career and more than 20 centuries in terms of the source material he hacked at. When Benioff, his partner in crime D B Weiss and their crew cut A Song of Ice and Fire into Game of Thrones, they at least kept the essence of dread and wonder in George R R Martin’s dark high fantasy series. But Netflix’s 3 Body Problem told me that the Iliad Burner did not go anyway, he was just hibernating until the right victim came up. And boy, ain’t Remembrance of the Earth’s Past trilogy rip for this arsonist.

I documented my thought on the first book Three-body Problem more than a year before that shitshow dropped on Netflix. Again, the Gilroy brothers and “their” crew worked on Andor could have done a better job with at least first 2 books in the trilogy. The first book contains infighting within infighting, and the Tony Gilroy is good at handling such layers. The Star Wars show also weaves a grand narrative together with threads not directly connected across the galaxy, so a merely global trotting and later solar system hopping narrative should be up their alley.

An engineer author’s choice to be masturbatory or not

Liu Cixin, who family came from Henan province, grew up in the Shanxi province. With membership in Popular Science Authors’ Association of China and Authors’ Association of Shanxi, he works as a senior engineer.

-----First paragraph of Cornerstone series’ introduction of Liu Cixin up to Death's End first published 2010

While a wanker named Tom Cruise did not save cinema, he sure saved Joseph Kosinski’s career as a film director. Had 2013’s Oblivion stayed a graphic novel written by Kosinski instead of a flick starring (And thankfully not produced by) Cruise, the engineer-architect might have taken up science fiction novelist as his creative endeavor like Liu Cixin. Instead, he became a Hollywood director hellbent on mounting camera-rigs onto different vehicles.

Contrary to the English books saying that “Liu worked as engineer” “prior to becoming a writer”, his body of works were mostly written back when he still had that job “in a power plant in Yangquan”. (How he did not have that job anymore is another story for another time.) Most still-active Chinese science fiction novelist are engineers who wrote instead of writers who know one or two about engineering. Which is probably why a bit very early in Dark Forest can be described as “masturbatory” in more than one sense of the word.

Luo Ji is the closest character to protagonist in the Dark Forest, the titular name of interstellar zero-sum game is said by him after all. The background story of this character involves him writing a novel. The man’s then partner has a side gig as novelist and she dared him to write a novel featuring his dream girl. Mr. Luo did and fell in love with his own creation. Later as he got his hands on more resource, he actually found said dream girl in real life.

The bit being wanking is twofold. On one layer, this is pandering to the mostly well-educated young male readership who would buy a 470 pages long science fiction novel to read. While the girl is written to be Eastern Asian, her appealing er, social aspects can fit right into THAT Alexander Hamilton’s wish list of a wife back in the days. On other, this is a not-full-time novelist crying how hard it is to come up with characters in their works.

A hipster translator’s option be religious or not

So many people forget that the first country the Nazis invaded was their own.

----Stanley Tucci as Dr. Abraham Eriskine, Captain America: First Avenger (2011)

The 2 sequels to Three-body Problem were contemporaries to the first 2 Mass Effect, especially Dark Forest as it came out in the same month as Mass Effect’s PC port published by EA. Compared to Mass Effect series’ more fitting of the Heroic Epic mold (Or at least the gamer brained understanding of it), Dark Forest is its antithesis for being about a dystopia ushered in by alien invasion. No, not about the Half-life 2 style alien overlord took over either, just the knowledge extra-terrestrial being excuses for human cruelty.

Suppose Mass Effect 3 is a more fitting antithesis to this book. Commander Shepard has always been a swashbuckling space marine well taken care of even in his or her hopefully final outing during war time released in 2012. 2008’s Dark Forest, on the other hand, is about how much an alien invasion four centuries in the future would cost people way before those bastards reach our solar system. Building a space force for it alone means the return of war-time rationing. In other words, it would wage on its own kind long before it would face alien invaders.

Joel Martinsen is a white American who at least lived in Beijing back in the mid-2010s. Not too sure and not really care about his whereabouts since the Covid Pandemic. Anyway, his direction of migration alone seems “hipster” to yours truly who was born and raised in PRC. And his translating of military ranks does not persuade me from such view.

In modern Mandarin, the first 6 officer ranks in any armed service can be summed up as the 3 Wei and the 3 Xiao, with the latter outranking the former. There are also Shao(junior), Zhong(middle) and Shang(senior) as adjectives. “Army” below does mean “army and air force”. So here they are as listed:

Shao Wei, naval Ensign and army Second Lieutenant;

Zhong Wei, naval Second Lieutenant and army First Lieutenant;

Shang Wei, naval First Lieutenant and army Captain;

Shao Xiao, naval Lieutenant Commander and army Major;

Zhong Xiao, naval Commander and army Lieutenant Colonel;

Shang Xiao, naval Captain and army Colonel.

So, I yelled “You bloody hippie!” within when Mr. Martinsen called 2 Shang Xiao of Chinese Navy “Colonel” by rank and only lower-case c “captain” as in they had been in charge of at least one vessel in their career. The book expressively said that the space force ranks were modeled after navy but alas. “Commander” in this book is not a rank but referring to the high ranking officer in charge of an armed force.

Had Mr. Martinsen kept it all army ranks, I would not have any problem (Despite the fact that that translator Ken Liu used naval ranks for people on space ships and arm ranks for those on the ground in the next book). But, then a Shao Wei in the space force was called “Ensign”. Never yelled so hard about hipster since Rian Johnson (Also one of many executive producers of 3 Body Problem) wrote that someone can be demoted from Commander to Captain in the (New) Republic Navy.

On the other side of things, we got collaborators of the coming alien invasion who refer to the whole Trisolarisan species as a religious “Lord”. While the two Lius had done a fairly good job explaining the whys of worshiping alien overlord as God in the first book, the Baptist and Half-life 2 in me both dislike the L word.

Though the Zhu character in Chinese is heavily religious, the phrase “our benefactors” in HL2 was also translated into it. At least I think so, I had only heard a Mandarin dubbed Dr. Breen back when I saw a freshman in my dorm played the game back in 2009. Also “heavenly body” is just not my jam when it comes to astronomical objects, guess Mr. Martinsen just saw 4-stoke character pronounces Tian too often in Beijing and kept thinking about “better places”.

Dark Forest is a fairly serious book, yet the puns when it comes to character names are wildly funny to native Chinese speakers. We got the aforementioned Luo Ji and the Chinese expression of “logic” laid bare. But his love interest Zhuang Yan and the Chinese expression of “dignity” was not particularly well explained by Martinsen. Though someone Liu called “Ke Zi Mo” was handled well as Martinsen translated the name into “Cosmo”, this is a mad scientist who came up a way to do scotched solar system as a bargaining chip against alien invaders.

Also there is also a lady named Dong Fang Yan Xu (a “Lieutenant Colonel” in the space navy). Thought her was a Japanese named Higashigata Nobuo before I learned about the rather rare Chinese surname Dong Fang (Not even among 300 most commonly used surnames according to PRC’s seventh census back in 2020.). Guess Yan Xu is more of Chinese pun as well.

More than double the mystery boxes

What’s in the box? WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

-----Brad Pitt as Mills, Se7evn (1995)

Brad Pitt just cannot be kept off this blog series. For one, the F1 star is credited as an executive producer on that Netflix shitshow based on this book, right after one dead man and 3 “men from Shanghai” during first episode’s full opening credits. For another, I would not have considered quoting David Finch’s real directorial debut feature had Mr. Liu not adapted the mystery box approach of the aughts.

The Three-body Problem has 2 mystery boxes: one being what’s Red Coast (Martinsen called it “Red Shore” once is just one of vices this translation suffers.) up to? Searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. Another being what’s deal with the Three-body VR game? It’s the extraterrestrial intelligence Ye Wenjie found through Red Coast and she already sold the world to them. Yet, as her fellow alien collaborators grew far more radical, she had second thought.

Intended as a bigger and better sequel, Dark Forest up its mystery boxes number to about 5: 4 Wallfacers and someone named Zhang Beihai who I am going to talk about farther down. With Earth’s technology development being totally obscured and observed by alien invaders through their Sophon, 4 individuals were selected to come up ace in the hole so to speak. Luo Ji being the only earthling targeted by aliens were selected and he did came up that ace in the hole, but his story came after “Colonel” Zhang. The rest pretty much fit into types:

Freddy Tyler of USA, a snub with high ranking military service background; Manuel Rey Diaz of Venezuela, the engineer turned soldier and then politician with “dictator of a banana republic” mentality; Bill Hines, a British scientist about to bring on brave new world in term of both Huxley’s dystopia and space expansion. And alien collaborators dispatched Wallbreakers as they showed readers inside the boxes but something was out of course.

The Netflix show only has 3 Wallfacers, so there is a guessing game of who is cut. Hines is pretty safe as the show at least attempted the books’ dystopia fiction. Tyler’s “space Kamikaze” involves elements from another novel by Liu titled Ball Lighting. While the show says it is “Based on the books by Cixin Liu”, this one from 2004 is entangled on the “movie rights” front.

Manuel’s scorched solar system by dropping Mercury into the Sun using shit ton of new nukes can be also on the chopping block. It is not too rooted in the lore established in Ball Lightning and the Three-body Problem, yet it sound exactly like the bullshit world renowned military historian is up to and 3 Body Problem called one Wallfacer a world renowned military historian. Still, I doubt Liu wrote the bit just for the book.

Professor Yan Feng, who teaches Chinese Literature at Fudan University in Shanghai, is an advocate for Liu’s works. So much as he was asked to write the foreword for Death’s End. There, he praised Dark Forest’s Wallfacers’ plan exposures for bringing on endgame level set pieces before the middle point.

Given the sentiment, I suspect that this scorched solar system set piece was written by Liu as an endgame for another story, he just never found a plot right for him in that story. Or it was more likely written as an opening shocker.

In the early aughts, Liu was planning a novelette titled On Pluto We Sat Down and Wept (Taking after Lord George Gordon Byon’s poem titled By the Waters of Babel We Sate Down and Wept. Even among Chinese science fiction novelists, Liu is an odd one out for not doing biblical reference) about a er, cooked (literally or otherwise) solar system’s aftermath. The publishing back then was abandoned for his deeming the story too dark and melancholy (A thing I found hard to believe since his works paved my way into horror fiction.).

Then the “weeping on Pluto” part is all but confirmed to end up in Death’s End, Liu’s longest novel. Though the solar system went to hell in a different handbasket than literally cooked in that book.

Yours truly had gone through Liu’s whole body of published works and found out that he did recycle set pieces twice, one being the isomeric triumph of winged light infantry over an aircraft carrier, the other being the compactional formation. Not exactly despicable given the frequency but quite noticeable regardless. His second longest novel about humanity being desperate in the face of alien invasion was good a place as any to drop that scorched solar system set piece he worked so hard on.

Just leg it!

When all else failed, run!

----Stratagem 36 out of 36

Yeah, yeah, I do know that the more widely accepted translation uses another R-word. Still, for one reason, the original character pronounces Zou does mean “run” more than “retreat” and the Japanese still use this character when they mean the simple act of running. For another, people need to retreat to friendly territory in war while there is no such places in space of Dark Forest.

Anyway, one simply cannot tell an alien invasion tale without point-of-view characters in the military. Dark Forest mainly has 2, one being returning character Chang Weishi, the officer in charge of Chines Space Force, the other being Zhang Beihai who came from Chinese Navy. The younger Zhang being a mystery what this book insisted on, he threw one of his colleagues under the bus metaphorically, committed actual murders just so the space force can have better fusion engines. and suggested that people (Preferably like him.) shall enter cyro sleep to directly support the future.

Dubbed as “hibernation” in Liu’s body of works, cryo sleep is still very much science fiction as the time of writing. But it’s a plot device Liu deployed wilily nilly to bring relatively modern perspectives onto more out-there futures he had envisioned, The Dark Forest took a time jump of nearly two centuries around the book’s midpoint and Zhang is among the points-of-view for readers to follow there.

After the rather go-hu space force building 2010s and 2020s, the Earth did go to hell in a political, social and economic handbasket. But as industries moved into space, the planet eventually recovered and life became good again. From there the story is divided into 2 parts: earth and the fleet supposed to defend it.

Zhang would be the pov we follow regarding the fleet. He Hibernated after he burnt his decency for a future he would very much love to witness. After he saw was something not too far from the Expanse: 3 space forces dominated the solar system with their fleet powered by fusion engines, Earth is not among those but a pleasant backwater. Zhang was assigned to one of such ships, learnt the ropes and attempted to hijack it out of the solar system.

One major human infight in Dark Forest is the war between fight and flight. Alien bastards outgunning us are coming! Shall we leg it or fight them? Of course to fight, that’s what space force is built for. Or maybe not, given that the author spent no word on the development of rail gun and all that jazz. Zhang and those legged it with him are people dislike the devil they know, but they are put in a slightly more positive light for taking their chances with the big empty unknown to them rather than stamping out the devils they know as homo sapiens.

Goal, rules and game

Auteur theory is tricky thing in any media form. Those who consume always need to take in the good along with the bad from those who create. But I got to say, nothing good ever comes from a man projecting his family situation into his creative endeavors.

For Liu Cixin there are 2 things. Husband and wife sharing the bed but not the dream end up on opposite sides of a war is not exactly projecting, it’s just a dramatic trope. However giving Dark Forest theorist Luo Ji a wife and a daughter does feel like Liu projecting his wife not appreciating his science fiction novelist side gig. His daughter was only 5, maybe 6 when Dark Forest was published in Simplified Chinese, far too young to read this master of horror’s magnum opus.

Dark Forest opens with a double prologue. One being the still a hack Luo Ji being told the rules of interstellar zero sum by the woman who sold the world without realizing it at that time. Another being Mike Evans (Always seeing him as Hugo Weaving going full Agent Smith. So I don’t know what the fuck was a remorseful Jonathan Pryce doing in that role.) schooling Trisolarisan about conning. With Luo Ji being the only one on Earth who knows about zero sum game he ended up on alien invaders’ shitlist thus became a Wallfacer.

Liu like many of us here in China could only read Alfred Bester’s Stars My Destination after 2003 when an unabridged Simplified Chinese came out (I still remember the day I picked it up off a newspaper stand.) He seemed eager to mimic that book’s slapstick middle point by getting Luo Ji into some hijinks. Got to say that, with the big dick Nick style only savior, I do hope for a different but equally masturbatory method.

The space marine action in Bioware’s Mass Effect trilogy was not the only thing kept my younger self from fully enjoying Dark Forest. There is also Shogun by Jame Clavell. The eventually titular shogun Yoshii Toranaga did not charge into anything instead he saw his rivals making every mistakes possible and avoid those just like his real life counterpart Tokukawa Ieyasu.

Luo Ji in this book did step back, watched and waited for the right moment to act. I also prefer less whining, less wank and can do away with the plot of finding his dream girl through the global surveillance state then knocked her up. Not to mention to he just spam “part of the plan” as piss-taking.

Anyway, the titular Dark Forest was formed step by step. After Wallfacer Tyler killed himself for the exposure of his space Kamikaze plan and UN picked up Mrs. Luo along with Junior, Luo Ji fell into a river and floated in the seemingly endless darkness. He got rescued final got to work on some cast a spell on a star. The hit order from alien invaders finally got to him through a tailored virus and he was put into hibernation.

Then Diaz got stoned in his beloved banana republic for the scorched solar system and the Huxley side of Hines’ brave new world was broken by his own wife. Two centuries past, as Luo Ji was cured and released into a bright future with a nice earth and powerful space force cover the solar system. But the alien invaders sent a probe dubbed Droplet and it just decimated human fleet in my favorite bit of this book. 7 fusion powered legged far enough in 2 separate places and decided to leave their home world behind for good.

But there will be no fleet leaving. As the daunting realization about limited resource come like sledgehammers, only 2 ship crews in opposite sides of the solar system managed to survive with enough spare parts. Zhang Beihai’s life sure was burnt to create a sunrise he would never see. Knowing this miniature of space willing and dealing, Luo Ji finally coined the term Dark Forest, in which being discovered pretty much means doomed.

With the knowledge of star Luo Ji “cursed” no longer there, the alien invaders finally sat down and talked. Breaking his own wall, Luo Ji told the alien that the voodoo is a type of interstellar community method he worked on, and if the Trisolarians do not want to be taken down along with earthlings, they better back off. The aliens did, happy ending, except that Liu still got one last novel to sell you.

Play to the types

Among all the casting choices in Netflix’ 3 Body Problem. CCH Pounder as Secretary General Lilian Joseph is the only one I got no problem with. Her counterpart in the book is a pretty lady from Philippine named Say. Ms. Pounder was there playing her role in 1997’s Face/Off again, as a conning wench who talked people into harebrained schemes. And it’s this kind of play to the types casting being in line with Liu’s method.

I would rather see black actors like Lawrence Fishburne or Idris Elba as the character based on Shi Qiang with the ruthless no nonsense detective archetype fit both like a glove. Casting Benedict Wong then butchered the role is not even pandering to the ethic, it’s a bloody insult.

Play to the types is almost necessary in a high concept science fiction such as those. It’s just 101, with that out of the way, the author can finally unleash the madness they intent onto the pages. It’s a feature but a bug. So, Benioff and crew’s attempt at “real” dialogue while adapting high concepts felt so misguided. Yet Netflix did not even let some bit of those book having space to breath. This freak of nature shall be remembered as a “not to do” in the further cultural exchange between PRC and USA.

(To be concluded in Death’s End.)