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A Curious Case of Canonical Fanfiction: Baoshu’s The Redemption of Time
The story of how Baoshu’s The Redemption of Time came to exist will ring true to anyone who has even fallen in love with a series of books.
When the final installment of Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy (often referred to as the Three-Body novels) was published in China in 2010, Baoshu was studying in Belgium and couldn’t get his hands on a copy. The series was already a sensation in China, with its own well-established fandom; Baoshu had long been a “magnet,” the name die-hard Liu fans gave themselves. In lieu of flying home to China to buy a copy of the novel—a possibility he seriously considered—he arranged for a friend to photograph every single page of Death’s End and email it to him. I’ve done some time in midnight release lines, but nothing as beautifully devoted as this.
The closure of a beloved series often induces a strange ambivalence in fans. While Death’s End sticks the landing on an already prodigious series—the scale is downright universal—it marks the end of the trilogy. The online forums where Baoshu debated and explored the novels began to disburse. To stave off this melancholy, he wrote a dialogue between two characters in the series and posted it under the name Three-Body X. With encouragement from other Liu fans, he continued developing the story, and three weeks later, he completed what had bloomed into a novel. With the blessings of Cixin Liu, Baoshu’s paraquel was eventually released by the same publisher as Remembrance of Earth’s Past.
The Three-Body Problem (Three-Body Problem Series #1) (Hugo Award Winner)
Cixin Liu
3.6
Paperback
$18.99
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After the celebrated translation of the Three-Body trilogy to English , it seems only natural that Baoshu’s loving and timely fanfiction would follow suit. (A quick note on the translation: Ken Liu—no relation—who translated both The Three-Body Problem and Death’s End, has returned to translate The Redemption of Time; as ever, the resulting text is approachable and accomplished.)
The Redemption of Time follows a secondary character from Death’s End, Yun Tianming, during the timeline of that novel and after. Admittedly, though I have read Liu’s saga, I found it difficult to dive right into this book, which presupposes an obsessive fan’s intimate knowledge of its universe—a status I may have obtained three years ago upon closing Death’s End, but my familiarity has most definitely faded with time. Which is, admittedly, right in line with one of the major themes of Baoshu’s book: the perception of time’s dilation and contraction.
Because the events covered take place during or after the final volume of a trilogy with an incredibly broad scope, some exposition is in order. (Extensive spoilers for the trilogy follow.)
The Three-Body Problem, introduces us to the central conflict of the series: Aliens from an unstable system in Alpha Centauri called Trisolarans are mounting an invasion of earth. Because interstellar travel is relativistic, the Trisolarans have deployed quantum AIs known as sophons both to surveil humanity and to interfere with any and all scientific advancement during the hundreds of years it will take the Trisolaran fleet to reach Earth. Humanity is divided in its reaction to this threat (she said, understating things).
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The Dark Forest, which takes place in the 400 years leading up to the invasion, examines these divisions more closely. Because of the sophon surveillance, no two humans can plan a defense of Earth; the Trisolarans will overhear and counter any defensive move. The governments of Earth chose several people to be Wallfacers: polymaths given broad discretion and virtually unlimited funds to develop a way of defeating the Trisolaran fleet. The pro-invasion factions then deploy an equal-but-opposite to the Wallfacer: the Wallbreakers, tasked with divining the Wallfacers’ intensions. The Dark Forest follows a Wallfacer, Luo Ji, who eventually positions the Trisolarans in a stalemate of mutually assured destruction if they try to invade Earth. (Luo Ji’s first reaction to being named a Wallfacer is to blow a decade doing whatever he wants with his unlimited funds, which I always thought was hilarious and awesome; still, he comes around in the end.)
Death’s End follows the scientist Cheng Xin. During the Crisis Era, when the fleet was on its way, she worked on an initiative called the Staircase Program, which planned to send a human to the Trisolarans in an attempt to gather data. Because of weight requirements, only a brain can be make the journey. This task ends up falling to Yun Tianming—Baoshu’s protagonist, you’ll recall–who has been in love with Cheng Xin since college. Cheng Xin falls in and out of hypersleep for the rest of the novel, reawakening as Earth’s conflict with the Trisolarans ripples out through the galaxy and is in turn influenced by other aliens in the dark forest of the universe. Yun Tianming returns, cloned by the Trisolarans, at a pivotal point in the Broadcast Era. He delivers three parables to Cheng Xin about the fate of the world. His part in the story ends with him trapped in a miniverse with his wife, 艾 AA, an astronomer and once-companion to Cheng Xin.
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It is in this miniverse, on Planet Blue, that we are reintroduced to Yun Tianming and 艾 AA in The Redemption of Time. (You see why the exposition was necessary, no?) Much as it was in Death’s End, his role here is as a storyteller: he relates to 艾 AA his experiences while being held by the Trisolarans. This first third of the novel is the most dependent on the original trilogy; it is here that the novel’s origin in fanfiction is most evident. Though some of the parables and descriptions of Yun Tianming’s mental tortures are compelling, his interactions with 艾 AA are clumsy and embarrassing. Some of the recitation is dry, and I found myself skimming sections where his experience of the events Death’s End weren’t materially different. It feels almost as if Baoshu had to get this section out of his system before he could leap out into the more interesting possibilities presented by the Three-Body universe.
The last two sections of the novel are more original, and better for it. They concern Yun Tianming’s interactions with the Master and the Lurker, two entities locked in a conflict over the fate of the very universe. Here, Tianming is joined by Sophon (an avatar of the Trisolaran AI), who tells him of the conflict between the dueling galactic forces. Like the opening section, much of the action takes place in the guise of storytelling, though Sophon and Tianming are more balanced interlocutors (AA sometimes seemed to exist for the reaction shot).
As the novel barrels toward an ambitious conclusion, some seriously hard science fiction is balanced with fables and poetry; at times they seem to collapse together. The scope of the conflict, if anything, is broader than that of the original trilogy, an accomplishment to be sure. Just like his antagonistic almost-deities, Baoshu pushes the boundaries of the universe. Once he pulls away from the action of Death’s End, he comes into his own as a writer.