Misanthropy in the Literary Trilogy "Remembrance of Earth's Past"

Abstract

The science fiction trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past by Chinese author Liu Cixin consists of the novels The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death’s End. The series depicts the first contact between human civilization and an extraterrestrial species, as well as the immediate consequences and ultimate outcome of this encounter. Written between 2006 and 2010, it was translated into English between 2014 and 2016, and into Serbian between 2019 and 2021. The author received the Hugo Award for the first novel and the Locus Award for the second—prestigious annual prizes for the best science fiction works—making these the only such works in history to receive these honors without being originally written in English. Based on critical reception, readership success, and its ability to attract attention beyond the science fiction genre, the trilogy is widely regarded as one of the most significant genre achievements of the twenty-first century. Spanning a temporal arc from the period of the Cultural Revolution in China to billions of years into the future, the trilogy engages with a wide range of themes, including the social history of communist China, the Fermi Paradox, theories of hegemonic stability, and the Hobbesian trap. It critically examines international political, cultural, and scientific relations, while constructing its speculative narrative upon the foundations of contemporary theoretical physics. Similar to other twenty-first-century literary and cinematic works, the human characters are portrayed as neither purely virtuous nor wholly villainous but rather as morally ambivalent figures. While not entirely opportunistic, they are nonetheless willing to employ any means necessary to achieve long-term objectives, regardless of the consequences for others or for humanity as a whole. These objectives transcend conventional notions of self-interest in economic or political terms and instead take the form of alternative ideologies conceived as socially soteriological. This study approaches the trilogy from a misanthropological perspective, with the aim of demonstrating how individual misanthropy, once embedded within ideological frameworks, evolves into ontological misanthropy. More precisely, it examines how disillusionment with humanity as a motivating force for social engagement transforms into a broader disillusionment with organic existence itself, ultimately culminating in a drive toward its total annihilation.