Beyond time
Beyond time ( Chinese 死神 永生 / 死神 永生 , Pinyin Sǐshén yǒngshēng , 'Death lives forever') is the third part of the Trisolaris trilogy by the Chinese writer Liu Cixin . The first two volumes of this trilogy are called The Three Suns and The Dark Forest . The science fiction - novel describes the development of mankind after the arrival of aliens .
action
Fifty years after the destruction of the terrestrial space fleet, the theory of deterrence in the dark forest leads to a stalemate. The Trisolarians do not attack, instead a coexistence develops: The people receive the knowledge and technology of the Trisolarians, who in turn adapt human culture.
The newly founded global space research organization, embarrassed about the technological deficit compared to the Trisolarians, develops the "staircase plan": A small probe with a huge radiation sail is accelerated to 1% of the speed of light using a large number of atomic bombs that are positioned along the flight route . A scientist who was doomed to die was selected. Originally, his body was supposed to be deep-frozen after death to fly with the probe to the Trisolarians. Since the technically required possible payload of the probe is very small, only the brain of an already doomed candidate should be sent on this journey. Yun Tianming, a former fellow student of Xin, was selected by a scientific committee that also included space engineer Cheng Xin. Shortly before his death, he surprisingly got too much money, with which he bought the property of a sun for Xin, with whom he was in love when he was young - DX3906. The sale of property rights to (inaccessible) suns was operated by the United Nations to finance projects. The certificate was sent to Xin, but it wasn't until very late that she found out from whom the gift was coming. In order to have a knowledgeable person available at the time of the encounter of the probe with the aliens on Earth, Xin is put into cold sleep for years .
After many years, Xin wakes up, has to find her way in the new times and is surprisingly chosen as the “sword holder”. The only task of a sword holder is to trigger the signal in order to make known the position of the Trisolaris home system in the universe according to the deterrent doctrine of the “dark forest”. The term sword holder alludes to the legend of the sword of Damocles , the threat of which is an analogy of the threat posed by the deadly signal for the earth and the Trisolaris system, which can be triggered at any time if an attack is discovered. The Bronze Age spaceship returns to Earth long after the lost battle. But the crew is not greeted with joy, but brought to justice for high treason. Their ship's captain then warns the second returnees spaceship. At the same time, the spaceship Gravitation is tracking the fleeing Lan Kong - both reach a “blind spot” in the Oort cloud , where the accompanying sophons no longer have real-time monitoring contact with the Trisolarians. Therefore the earth loses contact with gravity .
Shortly after Cheng Xin's appointment as sword holder, the Trisolarians attacked surprisingly and their "drops" destroy the five terrestrial gravitational antennas and thus the basis of deterrence. At the same time it is known that a second Trisolaris space fleet is on its way to Earth - with that the Trisolarians have gained the upper hand, which they underline with several demonstrative attacks with hundreds of thousands of victims. The Trisolarians order through their representative Tomoko, an android , that all people move to Australia , where most of them have to live in unworthy circumstances. When the "drops" destroy the power plants of the people, the true plan of the Trisolarians becomes apparent: the extermination of a large part of humanity.
The crew of the Lan Kong takes over the gravitation and after a coordination of all crew members of both spaceships - according to the deterrence in the dark forest - the gravitational wave transmission is activated. As a result, the trisolarians withdraw from the solar system, the people are saved and can return to the previously evacuated continents. Indeed, the trisolarians' home planet is soon destroyed. However, this means that the solar system, whose position is not too far from it by astronomical standards, is presumably doomed. On the two spaceships, a chance find is being investigated that turns out to be access to a four-dimensional bubble. (This closes an arc to the prologue of the novel, which took place in 1453 shortly before the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople.) In this stellar space bubble, the space travelers will find a huge ring. A contact is established and the ring describes itself as a "grave". The investigation has to be terminated prematurely because of the threatening shrinkage of the bubble and the ships leave the fragment.
Tomoko wants to say goodbye to Xin and, with a complete surprise, announces that Yun Tianming, who was found and revived by the trisolar 1st fleet, wants to speak to Xin. The Trisolarians negotiate the exact course of the contact with the representatives of the earth. The general condition applies that the entire conversation is monitored and nothing can be said about the concrete current situation. So both talk about personal matters and Yun tells three fairy tales he invented . A group of experts then examines the fairy tales for hidden clues, initially unsuccessfully. Allusions are later discovered, for example the curvature drive that enables journeys at the speed of light and the mosque dreams as an allusion to a black hole .
To avoid the threat of annihilation like Trisolaris, humanity has three options:
- The bunker plan: the retreat in space cities behind the outer planets to be protected from the imminent explosion of the sun.
- A Black Domain project : the reduction of the speed of light , which would transform the solar system into “a kind of black hole”, which would not pose a threat to other planets, into which no attacks could possibly penetrate and in which neither the sun nor the the planets would be destroyed, as would be the case in a real black hole.
- Space travel at the speed of light : in order to be able to escape the solar system in time. Since only a few people would benefit from this, this option is discarded.
In the following, the efforts of the people fail because the attacking aliens notice the possibilities of human defense in time and have decided on a completely different form of attack. It turns out that a single spaceship could be secretly developed at the speed of light, among other things by escaping Cheng Xin in order to maintain the memory of mankind far away. She decides on "her" star DX3906. There she meets other refugees who come from the Lan Kong and learns the full extent of the interstellar war in which far more civilizations than previously known take part. The use of devastating war techniques has advanced so far that their use now threatens the very existence of the entire universe. When DX3906 is converted into a black domain , Xin and someone stuck there with her threatens to remain trapped there forever. But there is an exit into an artificially separated, very small parallel world that is outside of time and in which you can wait for the end of the universe, which would presumably be renewed in a subsequent Big Bang after the Big Crunch .
Outer frame of the novel
The story spans a long period:
- Age of Crisis: until 2208
- Age of Deterrence: 2208-2270
- Post-Deterrent Age: 2270-2272
- Age of Transmission: 2272-2332
- Age of bunkers: 2333 - 2400
- Age of the Milky Way: 2273 - unknown
- Galaxy black domain DX3906: 2687 - 18,906,416
- Timeline of Universe 647: from 18.906.416
The chapters contain sections of the actual narrative, the headings of which take up the name of the respective age, as well as excerpts from Cheng Xin's autobiography called "A Past Out of Time", from which the prologue already quotes.
background
The original Chinese version of the novel was published in 2010.
Stephan Martinière designed the cover picture of the German paperback edition.
Reviews
- Sebastian Pirling says on Zukunft.de: "In a huge panorama, Liu brings not only the fate of Cheng Xin and all of humanity, but the future of the entire cosmos to an end."
- Christian Endres writes in the same place: “In his impressive, inspiring science fiction novel [...] [he] creates an overwhelming panorama of the future. [...] Sometimes you have to pause, read again and check your own imagination to make sure that you correctly imagine the dimensions of what is being portrayed in the head cinema ”.
- Britta Kretschmer writes on fischpott.com: "New, overwhelming and crazy are all the scientific and imaginative details [...] Beyond Time is a worthy last volume of this galactic trilogy."
German first edition
- Liu Cixin: Beyond Time , novel, translated by Karin Betz , Heyne, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-453-31766-6
The book has a volume of 990 pages and begins with a two-page directory of persons and an “overview of the ages”; the prologue follows, then the six parts; At the end there is the appendix with explanations of the spelling and pronunciation of the Chinese names as well as comments by the author and the translator.
An audio book was produced with the speaker Mark Bremer .
radio play
As for the previous volumes The Three Suns and The Dark Forest , WDR5 is also planning a radio play adaptation for Beyond Time . A publication will not take place before the Christmas holidays 2020.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sebastian Pirling: Cixin Lius “Beyond Time” is here. In: the future. Random House Publishing Group , April 8, 2019, accessed May 25, 2019 .
- ↑ Christian Endres: Cosmic Panorama. In: the future. Random House Publishing Group, April 20, 2019, accessed May 25, 2019 .
- ↑ Britta Kretschmer: Beyond the time of Cixin Liu (Trisolaris trilogy, volume 3). In: Fischpott. May 3, 2019, accessed May 25, 2019 .
- ↑ Announcement. In: Audible . April 5, 2019, accessed May 25, 2019 .
- ↑ The conclusion of Cixin Liu's Trisolaris trilogy is coming! In: WDR5 . Archived from the original on April 27, 2020 ; accessed on June 22, 2020 .