Cheng Xin Doomed Earth, the Solar System, and the Universe with Her Three Decisions
Let's be straight up: I'm a female reader and I hate Cheng Xin. It is women like her that give the rest of us a bad name, e.g. "women cannot lead because they are too emotional". There are plenty of women who are feminine but DGAF about "feelings" and "love" and "what about the children" if that's what it takes to make the right choice. As someone in a leadership role, the only right way is to treat people the way they have shown they should be treated, i.e. if they act with integrity they should be rewarded, but conversely if they are deceptive and act with ill will then of course they need to be stopped.
Edit: upon further reflection, perhaps what makes me angry is that Liu chose such an inept character to be the protagonist of the third book and made her a woman. Luo Ji was also incredibly unlikeble but at least he ended up saving the earth.
SPOILERS AHEAD
I'm honestly baffled by the number of people defending Cheng Xin for her having "empathy" and "love" for living things as a morally sound reason for making her choices. Every single time she has been in a position to make an influential decision she has royally effed up by only considering her feelings and NOT what's best for humanity. These feelings only extend to people she feels she has a personal connection to, e.g. the random baby, the Australian aboriginal, AA, the schoolchildren, lady you don't even know the children... She literally sacrificed her friend, who was in love with her, because she wanted to feel special, not out of any selfless desire to do something positive for humanity.
Not pressing the button Her reasoning to herself was all the "beautiful art made by the Trisolarans" etc. Um, girl, did you know that Hitler was an artist too? They are literally coming to invade us. Same with her tea ceremony conversations with Sophon. She is too easily distracted by superficial courtesy to understand what really matters.
Forcing Wade to give up lightspeed travel research Once again, she does not care what happens to the greater world as long as the people in front of her do not suffer. She is so self-centered and has this martyr complex. While it was not her fault that the part of the fairy tales pertaining to lightspeed travel was not decoded in time, her reason for stopping Wade's research is just that there will be people dying in front of her. She has a pattern of only considering what triggers her monke brain emotionally by what she can see in front of her, i.e. asking Sophon to save two people only, just because she knows them. What about the rest of humanity, Mother Xin, they deserve to be eaten by each other?
Keeping an aquarium in a pocket universe despite her companion telling her the fate of the universe is very, very sensitive to mass balance See, I didn't know about this one at first but came across some information on a Chinese social media website. The ending of the last book is oddly positive for an author who has made humans kill each other incredibly quickly as soon as things went south, don't you think? It turns out, it wasn't the real ending! See below for the exchange:
Reader: 刘老师您好！我是一位科幻爱好者，也是您的忠实读者，在拜读过您的三体3死神永生之后，有若干疑惑，望您能点拨一二。您所著的三体系列，毫无疑问是中国科幻文学难以超越的经典。以学生浅见，您似乎对近代文学，包括很多欧美经典的科幻作品中表现出来的以展现人性和人文主义抱有相冲突的绝望主义。您在三体结尾部分，表现出的似乎又是另一种观念，而且与您的一贯文法有所不同，这是否是您内心挣扎的反馈呢？还是有外在因素的干扰导致？您是否认为已经出版的结局才是您心中最完美的结局呢？望刘老师能在百忙之中，抽得片刻，以解学生之困惑，万望万望！至此致以最高的敬意。知名不具
Liu Cixin: 2011年3月16日刘老师全文回复如下：你好：来信获悉。很高兴你们能喜欢这本书。也很欣慰的看到中国年轻一代中还有这么多热爱科幻的读者。关于信中所问，回答如下：并非我对人性或人文主义抱有敌意，相反，你我都是普通人，普通人一样具有人性的光辉。我所致力于思考的，是在末日下的极限环境中人类的选择和转变。关于结局，确非我所愿。因编辑三番五次催稿，也确实拖得太久，故将稿件提前发出，发出时结局是尚未完成的，你们所看到的结局，是编辑在经我本人同意之后代为捉刀的。在我本人的构思当中，将保持宇宙进入坍缩状态所需物质的临界值，是宇宙中所有物质的总量的，即在宇宙爆炸之初，喷出去多少，就得收回多少。宇宙的规则是容不得半点虚假的，而所有文明建造出的小宇宙都归还了，在宇宙膨胀超过了那个临界值之后，所有文明观测到宇宙并未如他们所想的那般坍缩，最终查找到的原因就是地球人类在三体文明建造的小宇宙中存留有物质，从而导致回归运动失败，宇宙最终陷入冷寂，死神还是获得了最终的胜利。请代我向大家问好！刘慈欣2011年3月20日全文如上。
TL;DR translation: reader asks Liu Cixin why the ending of the third book was so different from his usual style, was it because he was undecided about human nature or was there something else at play? Liu Cixin replies that he ran out of time, and so the book had an ending that was crafted by the Editor (still approved by Liu).
In Liu's mind originally, the threshold for whether the universe continues expanding or begins contracting does not allow for any flexibility. It's like the harmonic series, put a tiny bit of an exponent (>1) on the denominators and it will converge, otherwise it diverges. It turns out that every other civilization did decide to return all matter from pocket universes to the main universe, EXCEPT for Cheng's 5kg 🤦♀️🤦, so the universe undergoes a heat death eventually.
So in summary, Cheng Xin first dooms humanity to be conquered by the Trisolarans, then she dooms the only chance of escape for humanity when the entire solar system gets flattened, and finally she dooms the universe to an otherwise escapable heat death. Thanks Cheng Xin, I hope I get to stay away from people like you in real life.