Death's End
by Liu Ci Xin · first published 2010
44% recommend50% neutral6% critical
Why HN recommends it
Final volume of the Three-Body trilogy, praised for page after page of ever more fantastical ideas and a huge sense of cosmic scale. Suits space sci-fi fans who want thought-provoking, big-concept storytelling.
Common criticism: Some find the pacing slow and the characters thin
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Soon to be a Netflix Original Series! “The War of the Worlds for the 21st century… packed with a sense of wonder.” – Wall Street Journal The New York Times bestselling conclusion to a tour de force near-future adventure trilogy from China's bestselling and beloved science fiction writer. With The Three-Body Problem, English-speaking readers got their first chance to read China's most beloved science fiction author, Cixin Liu. The Three-Body Problem was released to great acclaim including coverage in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and reading list picks by Barack Obama
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The Three-Body Problem series by Chixin Liu * The Three-Body Problem * The Dark Forest * Death's End Expanded my perception of life, death, love, time and our potential purpose, via some very well written fiction (space opera style). Chixin Liu nailed it!
on “Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?” ↗…- Binti: Home - Binti: The Night Masquerade --- Remembrance of Earth's Past by Liu Cixin (Humans make first contact and it doesn't go all that well) - The Three Body Problem - The Dark Forest - Death's End --- Imperial Radch by Ann Leckie (A spaceship's AI becomes confined to a single human body and seeks revenge) - Ancillary Justice - Ancillary Sword - Ancillary Mercy --- Broken Earth by N.K. Jemisin…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗…time favorite science fiction but what it is is just page after page of ideas that get more and more fantastical. Can't recommend this enough The Three Body Problem (PartI) The Dark Forest (Part II) Death's End (Part III)
on “Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?” ↗If you like SciFi, a relevant trilogy that I would highly recommend is The Three Body Problem/The Dark Forest/Death's End by Cixin Liu: https://www.amazon.com/Three-Body-Problem-Remembrance-Earths...
on “Newly-Discovered Planet Has 3 Suns” ↗…Reason Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind Impro Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China Invisible Cities Collapse of Complex Societies -- Favorites from this year: Death's End One Man's Meat Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery…
on “Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?” ↗I just finished Deaths End this morning so I'm experiencing that ponderous glow that you get after reading something thought provoking. Without going into spoilers, Death's End makes everything so... huge. It really made me feel tiny in our universe. These are good books with some flaws. You should read them.
on “Liu Cixin's War of the Worlds (2019)” ↗Death's End? I think it is, but previous books are amazing too.
on “Alien life could be so advanced it becomes indistinguishable from physics” ↗…a mark was tougher than creating a world. At the end of civilization, all they could do was the same thing they had done in the distant past, when humanity was but a babe: Carving words into stone.” Death's End -Liu Cixin - The third novel in the trilogy staring with The Three-Body Problem
on “Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?” ↗Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem trilogy explores this problem pretty strongly in the last book (Death's End), and also foreshadows it a bit in the first two. I recently binge-read them all and I give a very high recommendation for them. Calling the guy "China's Clarke" may not be a stretch.
on “Alien life could be so advanced it becomes indistinguishable from physics” ↗Actually, its from a full trilogy: “The Three Body Problem”, “The Dark Forest” and “Death’s End”. Wonderful books and indeed wholly recommended to any sci-fi buff.
on “Worms frozen in permafrost for up to 42,000 years come back to life” ↗…fascinating, but also the most "scientifically hand-waved" stuff in the whole series. I've never been a big stickler for "hardness" in my sci-fi, but I'd have liked to see the ideas expanded on more. Death's End is a hell of a book, really goes places.
on “Can Life Exist in 2 and 1 Dimensions?” ↗I really enjoyed The Three-Body Problem/The Dark Forest/Death's End and highly recommend them because of their unusual ideas. It was also refreshing to read a book coming from totally different cultural mindset that goes after familiar sci-fi goals. We all have biases…
on “Bringing Chinese Science Fiction to the West” ↗The best description of building something that lasts I've seen in recent fiction is Cixin Liu's Death's End [1] where he writes [2] about mankind's museum (a forever tombstone). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death%27s_End [2] https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nUkoCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT539&lp...
on “How to build something that lasts 10k years” ↗This reminds me a bit of the excellent first chapter of Death’s End by Cixin Liu. If this article sparked your imagination I suggest you check out the book and the whole trilogy.
on “1593 Transported Soldier Legend” ↗I found the next two books in the trilogy (The Dark Forest, Death's End) to go much more in depth on the sci-fi aspect; if you're willing to suspend a little disbelief the story is constantly engaging and quite thought-provoking. While the style is different from Stephenson's…
on “Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?” ↗