Notice how sophisticated this material has become. By my WAITING this long (6 years?) I have allowed my cultural peers to contribute technology and intelligence that I’ve been incapable of mastering. Now that I am TOO OLD to learn such complex video techniques, I must draw from the culture, which is predominantly secular… but I have nothing to fear, because although they seem quite capable of confronting the most horrific ideological mysteries (“horror of the shade”/ nihilism/ existentialism/ hopelessly dystopian futures) they do not have the antidote to the cosmic tragedy─ a universe full of death and evil and hopeless endless competition for ever-dwindling resources.

       For instance, @15:34 Quinn comments:

“A terrifying revelation comes at the end of the final book in the series, DEATH’S END. ‘The universe had once been 10 dimensional─ a state of perfection…but due to the destructive nature of life itself, those dimensions have collapsed and the universe will continue to collapse until only a single dimension remains. Countless ancient civilizations potentially possessed the capability of initiating dimension collapses in parts of the universe. It was one of the methods that hunters in the Dark Forest used to eliminate other intelligent species. The problem was that once a dimension strike occurred, it never ended. The universe itself was dying. Drying up in patchwork formation as the Earth had done during the Great Ravine. The endless cosmic darkness that we saw as the universe today had been the result of the endless battles of the Dark Forest and we as humans would never know the true beauty and perfection of the original cosmos.’

And this is how the trilogy ends, with the idea that it is the interference of intelligent species that eventually causes the “collapse of the universe” . This is very similar to previous fictional SF depictions of  “the heat death of the universe” and the theoretical  restoration by another “big bang”, like in James Blish’s Cities in Flight.

However Cixin Lui’s “universe”, which has been decimated by internecine Dark Forest warfare, is by the end of the last book beyond recovery. But because of the extensive quantum technological wizardry described earlier in the trilogy (quantum phenomenon /multiple dimensions/ multiple universes, etc)  Lui is able to end Death’s End  with the two surviving characters enclosed in a cube about a kilometer wide on each side, (─  “this is an entire universe.” Guan Yifan tells Cheng Xin, “ It might be small but it’s a complete universe.”[1] ─)  which will allow them to survive the destruction of the old Universe and live through the big bang explosion which will create the next universe.

Cixin Liu calls  the last book of his “Memories of Earth’s Past” trilogy “Death’s End”  because by the end of the book his characters have supposedly found a way to escape “the big crunch”. Here’s how NASA explains The Big Crunch: “If the universe had enough matter in it, gravity would overcome the expansion, and the universe would collapse in a fiery “big crunch.” The universe will continue to expand until it has reached its maximum diameter, and then collapse into a “singularity”, which will then precipitate another “big bang”. The present universe will then start over again in a fiery big bang. But this time (and this is Cixin Liu’s proposal)  because of modern science’s discovery of the realm of quantum physics, evolution (which guided the first Big Bang to produce its’ greatest achievement, intelligent life) will guide the universe into “its Edenic Age”[2]. How? Survivors of the collapse of the old universe will bring a gigantic cache of information and technology across the multi-universe (or multi-dimension) in the “cube” described earlier.

       The point is, Liu has intimated that Evolution will always find a way for life to survive.  Think about the tightly knit Axioms of Cosmic civilization. They led to the idea of the Dark Forest, and the idea of the Dark Forest as an explanation of the Fermi Paradox led to a universe full of (supposedly) intelligent lifeforms hiding in paranoid fear from each other. Which led to their hunting each other down and even destroying each other with dimensional collapses ─ which inevitably contributed to the development of an even greater horror─ a universe that doesn’t collapse, but expands forever.

      When you read Death’s End carefully you will discover that whole civilizations of   “intelligent life” tampering with multiple dimensions and universes had depleted the matter in the natural universe and the universe was at risk of never collapsing.

       What?

      You see, the “big crunch” is only one of two possible scenarios. The other theory proposed by modern cosmologists is that the present universe will continue to expand indefinitely. Galaxies will grow further and further apart (and in fact modern cosmologists have discovered that the galaxies are racing away from each other─ the universe is expanding at an ever increasing velocity).

       So you see Cixin’s “science fiction” is based as close as possible to modern cosmology─ but even that field of science doesn’t have all the answers yet.