Tag: John C. Wright

Count to a Trillion as the American Three Body Problem

The Three Body Problem and John C. Wright’s Count to a Trillion are both about humanity confronting imminent invasion by highly advanced aliens.  However, Liu is an Atheist Chinese and Wright is a Christian American, so things don’t go quite the same way in the two stories.

I will point out one significant technical difference.  The Trisolarans in 3BP will arrive from Alpha Centauri in 400 years, while the much more massive Hyades Armada spends a leisurely 10,000 years en route to Earth.  Eschaton’s characters acknowledge that maintaining a single continuing civilization on this time scale is preposterous, something that 3BP’s characters don’t (think they) need to worry about.

Wright’s characters are much more proactive in attempting to control their destinies than Liu’s.  Fatalism, not to say nihilism, dominates the worldview of the characters in Liu’s series.  Ye Wenjie and the ETO betray humanity because she wants to see the world burn; Del Azarchel and the Hermeticists do it because they want power.  Both Azarchel and Montrose refuse to give up their attempts to assert their will against the powers of the heavens.

Count to the Eschaton

Science fiction author John C. Wright released the sixth and final book in his Count to the Eschaton series, Count to Infinity, in December.  Mr. Wright is one of the few contemporary SF writers I follow, and I haven’t seen much discussion of it, so I’ll throw out my thoughts.  This astonishingly ambitious series has a few flaws, but it’s overall an incredible work and deserves much more publicity than it’s gotten.

Count to the Eschaton is a six-book series spanning from a post-apocalyptic future in the 23rd century until the end of the universe billions of years later.  This astronomical scale defines the series.  Stephen Baxter did something similar with his Xeelee books, although Wright exceeds Baxter’s creation in every way here.

Count to a Trillion _ John Harris

Cover art of the first book by John Harris

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