The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary

by Ken Liu

A scientific invention makes it possible to virtually travel back in time and witness historical events. It is only possible to witness it once from the same perspective, because the process eats up the record. The inventor and her husband draw attention to the atrocities of Unit 731 during WWII. They hope that eyewitnesses will shut down denialists. But Chinese versus Japanese, and U.S. politics start their own games.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Time Travel, Historical Fiction, Historical, Novella

55 pages, ebook

First published September 1, 2011

About the author

Ken Liu (http://kenliu.name) is an American author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards for his fiction, he has also won top genre honors abroad in Japan, Spain, and France.

Liu’s most characteristic work is the four-volume epic fantasy series, The Dandelion Dynasty, in which engineers, not wizards, are the heroes of a silkpunk world on the verge of modernity. His debut collection of short fiction, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, has been published in more than a dozen languages. A second collection, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, followed. He also penned the Star Wars novel, The Legends of Luke Skywalker. His latest book is All That We See or Seem, a techno-thriller starring an AI-whispering hacker who saves the world.

He’s often involved in media adaptations of his work. Recent projects include “The Regular,” under development as a TV series; “Good Hunting,” adapted as an episode in season one of Netflix’s breakout adult animated series Love, Death + Robots; and AMC’s Pantheon, with Craig Silverstein as executive producer, adapted from an interconnected series of Liu’s short stories.

Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Liu worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. He frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, machine-augmented creativity, history of technology, bookmaking, and the mathematics of origami.

In addition to his original fiction, Liu also occasionally publishes literary translations. His most recent work of translation is a new rendition of Laozi’s Dao De Jing.

Liu lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Nika · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

What would you think of traveling back in time to a particular place and seeing certain events with your own eyes if such an opportunity presented itself? Would you agree to witness some of the most horrible pages of history? To stay in the city of Nanking as the Japanese Army was approaching? To see Dresden engulfed by fire? To spend a day in one of Stalin's camps in the far north?
Could you get the courage to personally bear witness to those and other atrocities of the past?

This short story, which weaves science fiction and the format of interviews, forces the reader to confront those questions.
It follows two American researchers - Dr. Wei, a Chinese-American historian specializing in Classical Japan, and his wife, Dr. Kirino, a Japanese-American experimental physicist. She is responsible for inventing a groundbreaking technique that allows people to "travel back in time and experience history as it occurred." Dr. Wei is determined to use this technique to shed light on historical truth, establish historical accuracy, and draw a line under controversy around the atrocities committed by the infamous Unit 731.

Unit 731, which conducted 'medical' experiments on the Chinese population during the Japanese occupation of China, is at the forefront of the narration. According to historians, hardly any of the victims of Unit 731 were able to survive the barbaric treatment.
"Historians estimate that between 200,000 and half a million Chinese persons, almost all civilians, were killed by the biological and chemical weapons researched and developed in this place and other satellite labs: anthrax, cholera, the bubonic plague."

Dr. Wei works to make Japan face up to her history and vocalize the extreme sufferings of the victims. Personal testimonies of the individuals who traveled in time and space lie at the heart of his experiments. Not everyone is ready to accept the results of such experiments. Some are openly suspicious about them.

Ken Liu also reminds us of the uneven distribution of empathy and compassion. Certain events from the past are well-known and talked about, while others are mostly forgotten. Biases and sympathies influence the ability to empathize. Dr. Wei may ask himself if antipathy towards the Chinese communist government may have somehow decreased the expressions of empathy with Chinese victims of the Japanese occupation.


The story can be read here.

[Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story is highly significant for 4 reasons:
1) it exposes war crimes
2) it exposes denialism
3) it refuses to allow the lives of the murdered to be forgotten
4) it refuses to allow the avoidance of remorse or repentance

⛓️ Where I live denialism chiefly involves: the Holocaust and the Nazi gas chambers; crimes and genocide committed against indigenous peoples; the possibility that any valid criminal charges can be brought against leaders and politicians of various movements their followers support.

⛓️Denialism on any number of issues is rampant in our day and age. The author does an excellent job in portraying how it works, how effective it is, and how numerous nations and individuals employ it, in order to waive any sense of responsibility, or the necessity for taking conscientious measures to right historic wrongs.

Highly recommended.

The whole story (55 pages) can be read here:

https://kenliu.name/binary/liu_the_ma...

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the translation Ken Liu did for Liu Cixin: his flawless language command and writing style made me love the books even more. This novella is also written perfectly, even if the subject will tear you apart.

A couple of American scientists, she a Japanese by origins and he a Chinese, discovered the possibility to travel back in time as an eye witness and they use it for bringing to public opinion the atrocities committed by Unit 731 in Pingfang during WWII – these are real facts; search the internet and you’ll be horrified – it was the Asian Holocaust, Japanese against Chinese. But instead of being praised for bringing justice to the victims and their descendants, it’s being turned into a public opprobrium and a political masquerade.

The story is written in the form of a documentary and Ken Liu says at the end of it that he was inspired by Ted Chiang's “Liking What You See: a Documentary.” It is being told from different point of views, partly in a trial court, from the American-Japanese scientist, to eye witnesses who traveled back in time and were part of those horrors, to the torturer-surgeons still alive, to different people from the general public, each one with her/his opinion.

It’s a very disturbing reading and not an easy one. As I see it, it’s not even a sci-fi story – that’s just the disguise. It’s a piece of history as real as you and me. It’s also a highly accurate observer of the human mind and behaviour and it rises a lot of ethical issues.

I can’t say I loved the subject of the story – I never enjoy reading about torture and crimes. But the way Ken Liu wrote it, it deserves the highest rating possible.

If it picked your interest, it can be downloaded from the author’ site: http://kenliu.name/binary/liu_the_man...

“Author's notes: This story is dedicated to the memory of Iris Chang and all the victims of Unit 731. “

[Althea Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Available for free on Ken Liu's site: http://kenliu.name/binary/liu_the_man...

Ken Liu starts with an idea first, and creates a story around it. Here, as usual, he does a mind-blowingly good job of it.

The point of this story is to draw attention to the atrocities committed by Japan's 'Unit 731' in Pingfang, preceding and during WWII. It also uses that era as a jumping-off point to explore the different (and largely avoidant) attitudes that humans take when dealing with almost unimaginable horrors of the past.

The science-fictional premise is that two scientists have made a discovery of particles, that, when utilized, give one witness - and one only, ever - the experience of being transported to a specific time and place. Through providing this first-hand experience, he hopes to gain closure for the families of the victims and have their eyewitness testimony shut down denialists.

This is long for a 'short story' - over 50 pages. From a 'fictional narrative' perspective, some of the middle section gets a bit waterlogged with the inclusion of facts and historical details; feeling more like an essay. However, as a piece of writing, it deserves fully five stars, for its unflinching (and, at times, extremely disturbing) look at the evil that humans are capable of, and how we all are capable of complicity. Unexpected insights and shifts in perspective raise this above many other writings on similar topics.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novella is a brilliant exploration of time travel and the ethics of historiography, told in the form of a documentary — interviews, Senate hearings, excerpts from TV documentaries, and journal entries. Ken Liu's notes at the end show that he did his research about a story that he obviously cared about, basing his fictional Senate hearings and textbooks and interviews on real ones.

The SF gimmick in the story is the discovery of the Bohm-Kirino particle, a sort of quantum particle traveling outwards from observable events along with photons. The scientists after whom the particle is named discover a way for people to directly observe the Bohm-Kirino particles from any given point in the past — in other words, "time travel." They are not actually traveling back in time, only observing, but they can be direct eyewitnesses to history. The catch is that by observing a particular point in time, they absorb, and thus destroy, the Bohm-Kirino particles they observe. Thus, no point in time can be observed more than once, and the original observer is the only eyewitness to it.

Liu does a good job of making this feel like a science fiction story with plausible quantum technobabble about the Bohm-Kirino particles and the process, but the sci-fi element is secondary to the real point of the story, which is our understanding of history, who owns the "truth" about historical narratives, and also a great big axe to grind with Japan.

Akemi Kirino, one of the scientists who discovered the Bohm-Kirino particle and the method of observing the past, is a Japanese-American physicist married to Evan Wei, a Chinese-American historian who specialized in Classical Japan. When his wife opens the past to direct observation, Wei becomes obsessed with one specific part of it: the activities of the infamous Unit 731 in Harbin, China, during World War II. He allows relatives of the victims of Unit 731 to go back in time to verify the truth of what happens, and in the process, reopens old wounds between Japan and China that have never really healed.

I was impressed with the emotional and philosophical weight of this story; Liu judiciously blends snippets of atrocity and inhumanity with anodyne news broadcasts, polemical Senate hearings, euphemizing politicians and diplomats, and very personal interviews. The personal consequences for Akemi Kirino and Evan Wei are woven into the international debate over allowing external "visitors" to go back and unearth (and indirectly, destroy) the past.

It is, of course, an assumption on my part that Liu, a Chinese-American SF author most famous for translating Cixin Liu's Hugo-winning The Three-Body Problem, had personal reasons for choosing Japan's wartime atrocities against China as the historical inflection point for this story. But it's a thoughtful and not entirely one-sided exploration of the issue (I say not entirely because it's pretty obvious the author has some feelings about Japan here), and the story does address what happens when other people — historical oppressors and oppressed alike — want their turn to revisit history.

[Kara Babcock · Rating 3 out of 5]

So we can’t go back in time—but what if we could see back in time? Glimpsing the past is almost as common as stories involving actual time travel. In The Man Who Ended History, however, Ken Liu puts a very intimate and emotional twist on reliving and remembering the atrocities of war. Coupled with the archaeological premise that these observational trips to the past are always a one-time affair—each act of observation destroys the particles that allow the observation to happen—this allows Liu to explore the ramifications of allowing the past to intrude on the present so vividly.

I’ve always been uncomfortable with the way we learn history in Ontario high schools. Grade 10 history is compulsory, but it seems like history ends after World War II—we just spend so much time on it. And yeah, it deserves to have a lot of time spent on it; it was a big deal. But so were many things that happened after 1950—things I have only vague ideas of, since we didn’t talk about them in history class. Recently, however, I’ve begun to notice that there is plenty I don’t know about World War II—and I’m not referring to all the details that get glossed over because there isn’t enough time. The entire Sino-Japanese War portion of the war is, as best I can recall, mentioned in nary a footnote in our history texts. Japan was involved, and not in a good way. That’s about all I learned in school.

If it weren’t for reading frivolous things like science fiction, I wouldn’t be aware that the Holocaust and similar ethnic cleansings in Europe were far from the only atrocities happening during that war. It took a novella with shady particle physics and time travel, of a sort, to tell me about Unit 731 and Pingyang. We’re so selective when it comes to “history” and the idea of “historical truth”, and this doesn’t even have to be the result of nefarious intentions. Simply put, humans have terrible memories, and we let our emotions and biases colour those memories. Liu himself makes this point through the unreliability of the people who back to witness the activities at Unit 731.

The device of making each trip a destructive excavation of the past presents an interesting dilemma to the reader. And therein lies my problem with The Man Who Ended History: I couldn’t agree with Wei. Sorry, but Yours Is Not Science if it is not verifiable. The emotional retellings of descendants of victims travelling into the past is not verifiable. Maybe sending trained historians might have worked better, but I doubt it. In the end, observing the past isn’t the magic bullet to historicity. As long as humans are the one compiling the history, we will never be objective.

Liu doesn’t claim we could be, though, and I don’t want to conflate my reactions against his main character with an idea that this story is poorly-written. On the contrary, it���s magnificently done. And it works well at its length—a short story would have been tantalizingly brief, a novel far too plodding. Plus, in its documentary format, it is more of a series of scenes than an actual narrative with any kind of plot. It’s a carefully designed and executed thought experiment, which is a grand tradition within science fiction.

Definitely Hugo material. Perhaps not Hugo-winning—we’ll see what I think of the other nominees in the novella category. But The Man Who Ended History takes real history—somewhat forgotten history, at least for this poor, publicly-schooled Westerner—and asks questions about how new technology might force us to confront our past. That’s what science fiction is all about.

[La.Silbia · Rating 5 out of 5]

La Storia non può essere recente o contemporanea a noi, in quel caso si chiama attualità, o cronaca. Questo, almeno, è quanto ho sempre sentito sostenere da chi la Storia la studia.
Ed eccomi qua ad aggiungere i miei two cents: allora, mi viene da dire, la Storia diventa tale quando è stata assorbita e metabolizzata dalle persone, dalla collettività che riesce a riequilibrarsi nonostante a questo fatto (perché, diciamolo, quando è "grazie ad un fatto" ci si impiega molto meno tempo e si è molto più lieti di ricordarlo per bene), che riesce a digerirlo e a trasformarlo, il più delle volte riducendolo, appunto, a un qualcosa di storico e quindi lontano da sé, a volte negandolo o sminuendolo, ma con lo stesso identico fine di allontanare l'immagine, la rappresentazione, spostandola su un'altra dimensione, quella storica in contrapposizione a quella umana. In realtà, Ken Liu lo dice meglio e più sinteticamente di me, "affrancarsi dal passato […] sarebbe come pretendere di spogliarci della nostra pelle".
Ma si tenta comunque e sempre di farlo.
A scapito, come in ogni buon meccanismo difensivo, della consapevolezza, e di una consapevole accettazione e ammissione di ciò che è successo.
A scapito, dunque, anche del pensiero che la storia non è un accumulo di fatti incontrovertibili e di accadimenti, ma che è stata creata, portata avanti e vissuta da persone i cui nomi non saranno nemmeno tramandati, ma di cui non si può ignorare l'esistenza, seppur passata, riducendole a specie di astrazioni, o nascondendone le identità parlando solo di asettici gruppi, popoli, stime di numeri eccetera.

Sotto forma di documentario e grazie ad una valida trovata sci-fi da cui scaturisce il tutto, questo libro illustra il tentativo di due studiosi di ridare un volto umano empatico ad una guerra brutale, molto triste soprattutto perché molto ignorata. Si offrono, insomma, per dare la possibilità ai parenti prossimi delle vittime di vedere e vivere quei momenti critici della guerra tra Cina e Giappone, che quindi diventeranno anche contestate e uniche prove viventi, oltre che a essere portatori del passato, della "Storia", nel presente. In poche e semplici parole, vanno a dire ai governi del mondo "mo' noi andiamo a dare una sbirciata qua e là, voi intanto siete fottuti".
L'evoluzione di questa storia rende veramente bene l'idea di quanto le responsabilità scomode - tra cui le vittime umane reali - vengano infilate in un vaso di Pandora, universalmente considerato intoccabile perché pericoloso per tutti quanti.


[E qua finisce il predicozzo gentilmente offertovi dalla mia mente iperstimolata da Ken Liu. Non ringraziate me, ma lui. Ci sarebbe molto altro da dire ma si fa prima a leggerlo.]

[Francesco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un sol levante su campo nero, nero come l'oblio della Storia. E infatti la storia parla della Storia che scompare. E scompare proprio quando l'umanità scopre i viaggi nel tempo. Vedi che sfiga.

La cosa è più complessa di come sembra. Quando l'unico modo per sbirciare nel passato consiste in operazioni quantistiche, anche un bambino dell'asilo sa che la sola osservazione basta a porre fine all'evento. E così, scoperto un modo quantistico di osservare il passato, questo scompare alla prima occhiata. E se il passato che si va a osservare è minacciato dai negazionisti, come ad esempio le barbarie commesse dall'Unità 731 dell'esercito imperiale giapponese sui contadini cinesi invasi? Chi crederà a una testimonianza oculare non riproducibile? Chi crederà a quella che scientificamente e filosoficamente non si può che definire un'illusione (l'osservazione di echi del passato)?

È una storia che abbiamo già sentito. Una scoperta eclatante, non suffragata dalle garanzie del metodo scientifico, ma che può aiutare l'umanità, come una bacchetta magica. Gente che vuole credere contro Gente che vuole garanzie. Cure miracolose del cancro, previsione oraria dei terremoti, motori di ricerca italiani migliori di Google.
Eppure ciò che il dottor Evan Wei (cinese) e sua moglie la dottoressa Akemi Kirino (giapponese) hanno scoperto è qualcosa che non è nocivo. Vogliono soltanto che si onori la memoria delle vittime delle atrocità. Che si condannino le atrocità. Ma i governi del mondo (quello giapponese, colpevole, ma anche quelli occidentali che oggi lo sostengono) non possono ammettere colpe che li porterebbero a rinunciare a quanto ottenuto in seguito a quelle atrocità. La centralità dell'Occidente per il futuro dell'Umanità è messa a rischio dall'ammissione delle colpe. Tabula rasa, ripartire da zero, tutti alle stesse condizioni, non garantirebbe il predominio delle culture occidentali che c'è oggi.

Chiedere scusa porta conseguenze. Cambia la Storia passata e soprattutto futura.

Una lezione non di poco conto per un racconto di fantascienza.

[Emanuela · Rating 5 out of 5]

C'è uno scoglio tagliente da valicare nella lettura del libro ma "qualcosa" impone di superarlo, non senza empaticamente sentire tutta la muscolatura contratta e gli organi interni retratti.

La stessa sensazione somatica e neurovegetativa l'ho provata leggendo un brano del libro di Murakami, L'uccello che girava le viti del mondo, in cui, a ruoli invertiti nella stessa guerra, l'autore descrive truppe russe che con l'ausilio di guerrieri mongoli torturano e uccidono soldati giapponesi.
La differenza tra le due situazioni è che questa che narra Liu, come per l'olocausto, è stata assunta a SISTEMA.

Ricordo inoltre di aver letto, purtroppo non riesco a risalire alla citazione, che i sopravvissuti dei campi di concentramento che venivano accolti nella neonata Israele e raccontavano le loro atroci esperienze, non venivano creduti dai loro stessi fratelli e compatrioti, aggiungendo angoscia ad angoscia.

Sono molte le problematiche che pone questo racconto: politiche, etiche, psicologice, ecc., ma una frase del libro mi ha colpito e riguarda proprio il valore della testimonianza di chi ha vissuto quel tipo di esperienze:
L'epoca contemporanea attribuisce grande valore all'autenticità e alla narrazione personale, incarnata dal genere del "memoir". I resoconti dei testimoni hanno un'immediatezza e un impatto che si impone come affidabile e siamo convinti che trasmettano una verità superiore a quella di qualsiasi narrazione inventata. Eppure, forse con un paradosso, siamo pronti a cogliere la minima deviazione e contraddizione nei fatti raccontati, per dichiararli complessivamente letterari. Questa dinamica è improntata a una desolante alternativa del "tutto o niente". Al contrario dovremmo riconoscere per principio che ogni narrazione è soggettiva senza alternativa e tuttavia portatrice di una sua verità.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't go into science fiction expecting to learn something about history. I also didn't expect anything quite this heavy; after all, Ken Liu is the person responsible for The Paper Menagerie and the cute little tinfoil shark!

This story addresses the horrors of Unit 731, the Japanese WWII unit that used human subjects for biological warfare testing, among other things. I'd never heard of it, not one bit, and kept interrupting my reading to look things up, all which appear to be based in actual events.

In the story, historical time travel has been figured out, but these particles can only be used one time before they are lost forever, or so the main character, Evan believes. He has taken it upon himself to take family members of the victims of Unit 731 back in history to experience it for themselves, in the service of eventually making the Japanese and American governments acknowledge their roles in events, and allowing for the honoring of the victims.

There is a lot of political complexity to the story, as well as theoretical physics that were a bit over my head. The acknowledgements also make me think Ken Liu was deeply effected by the story of Iris Chang, another figure I didn't know about until today. With all the pieces at work here, I'm not sure he manages to really pull it together into a cohesive novella. There are some interesting concepts here, time travel always is, but this went a different direction than most ideas I've read, and the extra layer of fairly unknown bits of history made it all seem more plausible.

[Math le maudit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Texte court, mais ô combien prenant que cet Homme qui mit fin à l'Histoire.

On y parle de crimes de guerre japonais pendant la seconde guerre mondiale, de devoir de mémoire, du travail de deuil et de ce qui fait le travail d'historien.

Ken Liu prend pour point de départ une découverte scientifique qui permet de revivre des événements passés comme si on y était. Je ne vais pas m'attarder sur le procédé complexe qui permet cette prouesse (ce n'est vraiment pas le plus intéressant), car plus que d'un voyage temporel stricto sensu, il s'agit de recréer un moment donné de l'Histoire, en un endroit précis, que le sujet de l'expérience vit comme s'il y était.

Le bon point de cette méthode : on est en prise directe avec l'événement. Le mauvais point : une fois qu'on a été une fois en un moment précis de l'Histoire, celui-ci disparaît à jamais, et il est donc impossible de revoir ce moment.

Dans le roman, les inventeurs de cette méthode choisissent d'implanter leur machine en Mandchourie, sur les lieux où était située l'unité 731, un camp d'expérimentation médicale japonais fondé en 1932 et démantelé en 1945. Durant toute sa période de fonctionnement, l'unité 731 a été le théâtre d'expérimentations en tout genre sur des cobayes humains (des Chinois surtout), qui n'ont pas grand chose à envier à celles menées par le sinistre docteur Mengele en Allemagne.

Leur objectif : prouver l'existence de ce camp et les crimes qui y ont été commis (encore largement contestés par les négationnistes), mais également permettre aux descendants des victimes de faire leur deuil en voyant pour une dernière fois, qui leur grand-père, qui leur frère, etc...

Le récit est bâti comme un documentaire, chaque chapitre nous livrant un témoignage autour de cette invention et des informations qu'elle a permis de récolter, mais aussi sur les polémiques que son utilisation a soulevée.

En effet, outre l'imbroglio diplomatique que l'unité 731 soulève entre le Japon et la Chine (litige toujours en souffrance), se pose aussi la difficile question du travail d'historien. Doit-on utiliser cette machine sachant que chaque utilisation détruit à jamais l'événement observé ? Devait-on y envoyer des "profanes", et surtout des proches des victimes ? C'est toute la question de la mémoire collective, du devoir de mémoire et de la responsabilité des nations face à leur passé (pour ne pas dire leur passif) qui est posée.

Les réponses sont évidemment complexes, et Ken Liu est assez malin pour laisser ses lecteurs faire le cheminement seuls, se contentant de donner des pistes de réflexion. N'en reste pas moins un texte fort, mémoriel en diable, qui éclaire un pan encore fort peu connu de la seconde guerre mondiale, et qui ne laisse pas indifférent.

[Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy sensato, muy cuerdo, muy duro. Quizá peca de ingenuo y sentimental en algunas partes, pero en general el tono de documental es un acierto para mantener la distancia. Tiene algo que siempre me gusta mucho, que es la CF como excusa, como recurso en una historia que no es puramente especulativa.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting and provoking ‚fictional documentary‘ (it‘s own genre, I suppose) on the (non-fictional) atrocities and war crimes commited by the Japanese research unit 731 during the Sino-Japanese War.

The actual philosophical provocation here lies within Liu��s examination of the tasks of an historian: Is it simply to research and discuss different aspects of our past? Or does he - in the case of a previously hidden and then widely denied war crime - automatically assume the responsibility to not only uncover the truth but also to fight for its public recognition?

[Roslyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

What if there was a way to go back in time to witness atrocities? What would be the human cost of that? The various human costs?

The novels is about time travel and genocide. Or really, it's about human beings. While reading it, I felt that this is (one of the many things that) SF is about. This isn't an easy read, but it's a passionate yet compassionate - and nuanced - study (in the form of a 'documentary') about a particular genocide in the past, and all the possible human responses to the possibility of visiting it.

Highly recommended, but it's a difficult and depressing read.

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un petit livre fort, bouleversant, à ne pas mettre entre les mains de personnes sensibles mais qui selon moi est à lire si on veut connaître la vérité sur une période très sombre de l'histoire japonaise et chinoise, sous fond de science fiction.

http://jenesaispointlire.fr/homme-fin...

[Jamesboggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary is a science fiction story about historiography. That is a fantastic idea! I was so excited to pick up this novella.

The story surpassed my expectations. It is a heavy and thought-provoking work. It uses science fiction to comment on trauma, history, and politics in ways nongenre stories simply could not. Author Ken Liu masterfully blends the personal, the historical, and the technological. He starts with an interesting science fiction concept - the Kirino process that allows a single viewing of any point in history - to a highly charged historical controversy - Unit 731 in Manchuria - and spins out the disagreements and debates that would naturally arise. This is the sort of story that really expands the mind.

Liu clearly thought this story through. He demonstrates considerable knowledge of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. He also presents the political situation deftly. He raises interesting ideas and questions throughout the slim volume. The faux documentary format serves the debates well, exploring each idea from multiple perspectives. I can see why Liu has said he is more proud of this story than any other.

I loved The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary. It is science fiction at it’s best - both introspective and speculative, thought-provoking, and challenging. The print run was limited, but I highly recommend everyone check out the ebook edition.

[Bebertfreaks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellente lecture.

J'ai été surpris par le style utilisé, cette forme de documentaire.
Surpris par ce que le récit dépeint.

Je m'attendais à autre chose et j'ai adoré lire ce livre. Agréable surprise.

[Skye26 (beereadsff) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ça m'a bouleversé

[Emile Wertz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pas trop compris l'intérêt du livre honnêtement

[L'ours inculte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ken Liu, c’est un peu l’auteur qui débarque en sournois. Alors qu’il n’a à son actif que des nouvelles et un recueil (La ménagerie de papier), le lectorat français est déjà conquis, et attend la traduction de son premier roman Grace of Kings de pied ferme. Mais voilà que Le bélial’ décide d’agiter ses petits bras pour attirer notre attention : « Hé, les jeunes, on en a encore dans les cartons nous ».

Oui, parce que le monsieur a écrit une tripotée de nouvelles et autres novellas qui ne sont pas encore arrivées chez nous, genre des dizaines, il arrête pas. Quoi de mieux qu’un récit inédit de l’auteur pour venir garnir la déjà très chouette collection Une Heure Lumière de l’éditeur ? C’est parti pour L’homme qui mit fin à l’histoire, récit d’une centaine de pages qui démarre comme de la SF pour finir en… Pas du tout de la SF… Nous sommes quelque part dans un futur proche, une scientifique (Akemi Kirino) et un historien (Evan Wei) mettent au point un procédé révolutionnaire pour « visiter » le passé. Grâce à cette technique, un visiteur peut voir, entendre, sentir un évènement historique.

Mais le but de leur démarche, dès le début, est d’aller témoigner des horreurs perpétrées par l’Unité 731 pendant la seconde guerre mondiale. En tant qu’européens, on connait bien les atrocités made in Nazis dans les tristement célèbres camps de concentrations. Malheureusement, les asiatiques ont aussi eu leur lot de gros tarés avec cette fameuse unité Japonaise qui, entre 1936 et 1945, s’est amusé à expérimenter toutes sortes de saloperies sur leurs prisonniers chinois. La différence est que cet épisode précis de la guerre est beaucoup moins connu que les camps d’Auschwitz, car jamais reconnu officiellement par personne malgré les témoignages. En envoyant des « témoins » assister à ces atrocités, les deux chercheurs espèrent mettre le nez des gouvernements dans leurs vieux cacas pour leur faire reconnaitre les faits.

Dans la forme, le récit se présente comme la transcription d’un faux documentaire avec témoignages, interviews et descriptions. On assiste à des conversations à posteriori, entre journalistes fictifs et scientifiques ou responsables politiques. On lit également les échanges et débats de différentes commissions pour retracer les évènements, de la création du procédé scientifique à ses répercussions des années plus tard sur le débat en question. La construction est brillante, Ken Liu nous fait suivre tout ça avec finesse et logique, on est captivés et, il faut le dire, un peu horrifiés. Oui parce que L’homme qui mit fin à l’histoire n’est pas non plus à mettre entre toutes les mains, âmes sensibles s’abstenir, comme on dit. L’auteur ne tombe jamais dans le gore gratuit mais pour appuyer le propos, on va quand même avoir quelques scènes bien choquantes avec viol, torture et autre franche rigolade (ou pas).

L’aspect SF et fiction n’est ici qu’un prétexte à un exercice d’écriture. Le procédé scientifique permettant ce transfert temporel est vaguement expliqué (une histoire de particules jumelles et de vitesse de la lumière), mais au final on s’en balance. Ken Liu utilise ça pour mettre en place un débat plus ou moins fictif (ils ont du avoir lieu dans la vraie vie aussi, à un moment) sur le devoir de mémoire, la responsabilité et les horreurs de la guerre. Le négationnisme d’état n’est pas le seul mis en cause, on assiste aux réactions des gens du peuple également qui tendent à relativiser la chose, ou à la mettre en doute. Pourtant l’auteur (lui même Sino-américain) n’est pas là pour pointer du doigt, il nuance les responsabilités et les mécanismes de déni, il montre les implications politiques dans les deux (trois) camps, il ouvre le débat sur le rôle de l’historien et le devoir de mémoire. Ken Liu fait un tour très complet de la problématique avec tact mais ne fait que mettre en forme des témoignages et débats réels avec un déclencheur SF qui permet d’étendre le débat.

L’homme qui mit fin à l’histoire est certes brillant, et salué par les critiques à travers tout le web, mais je suis sorti assez mitigé de ma lecture. Non pas que le récit soit mauvais, c’est clairement à cause de mes attentes : je pensais quand même y trouver plus de fiction et moins de débat. Et même si la problématique a le mérite d’être bien amenée et poignante, je ne suis pas vraiment client de ce genre de livres « coup de poing ». J’aime mes lectures divertissantes et enjouées, poignantes mais dans un sens positif. Je ne lis pas pour me rouler le cerveau dans la déprime et la merde humaine mais pour m’en évader.

Fiction prétexte à une réflexion sur les atrocités de la guerre et leur impact sur le temps, L’homme qui mit fin à l’histoire est un récit-débat sur le révisionnisme et plus généralement sur l’Histoire et son rôle dans notre société. Écrit objectivement brillant mais pas vraiment top moumoute pour poser une ambiance de fête, il faut savoir où on met les pieds…

http://ours-inculte.fr/lhomme-qui-mit-fin-a-lhistoire/

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first novella that I've read from this year's Hugo selection and if the others are of as high a standard, then it's going to be an extremely good year. I loved this story, from start to finish.

A lot of people have said that they found this very melancholy and very sad. I agree, but it didn't make me cry; it's not as sad as 'The Paper Menagerie', for instance. The ending is depressing but entirely believable; if the world was faced with the knowledge that it could explore its past, I find it hard to believe that the countries involved in the book would want to do that. Certainly I don't imagine any of the European powers being keen, and neither do I think China or the USA would want to reopen old wounds.

I heard Liu talking on the SF Signal podcast recently, and he was talking about people finding things out about history through his works; that was definitely the case for me with this novella. When a British school teaches students about World War II it tends to focus on the European side of the war, and so I don't know all that much about the Pacific. I definitely didn't know about the subject matter of the novella, and I'm glad that I now do.

I found the structure worked really well for the story, and made good use of the length of the work. I'm not sure this style would have worked for an entire novel (although, having said that, I do have World War Z coming up on my to-read list and I get the impression that's semi-similar). I liked the way that views were presented of the USA, China and Japan from both the political angle and the on-the-street angle.

I also found the central scientific idea completely brilliant. The concept of using quantum entanglement to go back in time on a one-time-only basis is completely genius, and makes excavations of the past possible. I must say that, on a purely scientific basis, I was disappointed with the central character's decision to dive straight into doing this -- I thought his rationale for doing so was completely believable, so this isn't a criticism of the author or the story, but of the character, if that makes any sense. The idea of using the human brain to automatically filter out all the extraneous information was a nice touch.

[Hedwig · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was deeply impressed by this book, as I don't think I've ever read anything where the content and the form of the story fit together so perfectly. Despite this being a work of science fiction, there was not a moment's doubt that the historic events described occurred in real life. There are many aspects about the storytelling that work very well, and I would definitely like to reread in time to find out why they work.

[Gregoire · Rating 4 out of 5]

ça fait froid dans le dos de lire ce que peut faire l'homme à l'homme C'est une nouvelle qui devrait être lue et largement diffusée afin que le "plus jamais ça" entre dans nos cervelles ! j'aime que l'auteur
1- se serve d'un épisode pratiquement inconnu (en tous cas jamais cité en France dans nos cours d'histoire lors de l'étude de la 2e guerre mondiale) comme sujet de sa nouvelle, classée SF uniquement par le procédé de "voyage dans le temps" qui n'est d'ailleurs qu'un prétexte pour mettre en exergue (sous la loupe) les expérimentations humaines commises par l'Unité 731 japonaise en Chine
et 2- explore toutes les réactions possibles sans faire de différences ni porter de jugement dans le style interviews qui permet de dire l'essentiel sous tous les angles et frappent ainsi plus fort le lecteur

Merci à Aelinel Retrouvez son commentaire sur son blog La bibliothèque d'Aelinel https://labibliothequedaelinel.wordpr...

Nota : On trouve cette novella en téléchargement (ou lecture) gratuit sur le site de l'auteur

[Stefano · Rating 5 out of 5]

La scoperta scientifica che permette di rivedere un evento del passato una sola volta, serve da espediente narrativo per raccontare alcuni avvenimenti storici sconosciuti ai più (io non ne avevo mai sentito parlare), le atrocità compiute in Cina tra il 1936 e il 1945 dall'Unita 731 dell'esercito giapponese.
Il racconto breve si legge di getto nonostante alcune scene siano piuttosto crude e si imprimano indelebilmente nella memoria.
Terminata la lettura mi sono rimasti alcuni temi su cui riflettere: se davvero fosse possibile asistere ad un evento storico una volta soltanto, chi dovrebbe assistervi? Chi dovrebbe avere la giusrisdizione su quel passato? Gli eventi, rivissuti in maniera così vivida, che reazioni potrebbero provocare in chi, magari a distanza di intere genereazioni, ne subisce ancora le conseguenze?
Non male per circa 50 pagine (equivalente cartaceo) di lettura!
Una menzione speciale alla traduttrice Elena Cantoni per l'ottimo lavoro.

[Dario Tonani · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Sconvolgente per originalità e tematiche. Come mangiare un sasso, digerirlo e volerne ancora. Non facile, se avete fame di bignè rivolgetevi altrove, questa storia rischierà di restarvi sullo stomaco. Ma se volete qualcosa che vi basti, vi nutra e vi faccia riflettere, buttatevi sulla storia di Liu. Un finale sfolgorante: dove vanno a finire le atrocità della storia? Nella luce delle stelle!". Consigliatissimo!

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few comments on Ken Liu's Nebula nominated novella The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary can be found here.

[The Vince · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ken Liu reste le maître des nouvelles
En plus bon essai sur le rôle du témoignage sur le travail de mémoire.

[Faiza Sattar · Rating 5 out of 5]

★★★★★ (5/5)
A selection of my favourite passages from the book

• Every night, when you stand outside and gaze upon the stars, you are bathing in time as well as light.
• The pairs of Bohm-Kirino particles are under quantum entanglement. This means that they are bound together in such a way that no matter how far apart they are from each other physically, their properties are linked together as though they are but aspects of a single system. If you take a measurement on one member of the pair, thereby collapsing the wave function, you would immediately know the state of the other member of the pair, even if it is light-years away.
• Who should have control over the past is a question that has troubled all of us, in various forms, for many years. But the invention of the Kirino Process made this struggle to control the past a literal, rather than merely a metaphorical, issue.
• One of the most vexing problems created by the violent and unstable process by which states expand and contract over time is this: As control over a territory shifts between sovereigns over time, which sovereign should have jurisdiction over that territory’s past?
• If these debates have a clinical and evasive air to them, that is intentional. “Sovereignty,” “jurisdiction,” and similar words have always been mere conveniences to allow people to evade responsibility or to sever inconvenient bonds. “Independence” is declared, and suddenly the past is forgotten; a “revolution” occurs, and suddenly memories and blood debts are wiped clean; a treaty is signed, and suddenly the past is buried and gone. Real life does not work like that.
• All along, we have made international law work only by assuming that the past would remain silent.
• Evan told the history of Japan to me not as a recitation of dates or myths, but as an illustration of scientific principles embedded in humanity. He showed me that the history of Japan is not a story about emperors and generals, poets and monks. Rather, the history of Japan is a model demonstrating the way all human societies grow and adapt to the natural world as the environment, in turn, adapts to their presence.
• Clearing away the superficial structure of the reigns of emperors and the dates of battles, there was the deeper rhythm of history’s ebb and flow not as the deeds of great men, but as lives lived by ordinary men and women wading through the currents of the natural world around them: its geology, its seasons, its climate and ecology, the abundance and scarcity of the raw material for life. It was the kind of history that a physicist could love.
• Our lives are ruled by these small, seemingly ordinary moments that turn out to have improbably large effects. Such randomness is much more common in human affairs than in nature,
• If we, for “strategic” reasons, sacrifice the truth in the name of gaining something of value for short-term advantage, then we will have simply repeated the errors of our forefathers at the end of the War.
• History is not merely a private matter. Even the family members of the victims understand that there is a communitarian aspect to history.
• Because of our limited capacity for empathy for mass suffering, I think there’s a risk that his approach would result in sentimentality and only selective memory.
• And so the People’s Republic’s approach to historical memory created a series of connected problems. First, the leniency they showed the prisoners became the ground for denialists to later question the veracity of confessions by Japanese soldiers. Second, yoking patriotism to the memory of the War invited charges that any effort to remember was politically motivated. And lastly, individual victims of the atrocities became symbols, anonymized to serve the needs of the state.
• without real memory, there can be no real reconciliation.
• History is a narrative enterprise, and the telling of stories that are true, that affirm and explain our existence, is the fundamental task of the historian. But truth is delicate, and it has many enemies. Perhaps that is why, although we academics are supposedly in the business of pursuing the truth, the word “truth” is rarely uttered without hedges, adornments, and qualifications.
• Those who have witnessed the ineffable have no doubt of its existence, but that clarity is incapable of being replicated for anyone else. And so we are stuck here, in the present, trying to make sense of the past.
• Evan tried to introduce more empathy and emotion into historical inquiry. For this he was crucified by the academic establishment. But adding empathy and the irreducibly subjective dimension of the personal narrative to history does not detract from the truth. It enhances the truth. That we accept our own frailties and subjectivity does not free us to abdicate the moral responsibility to tell the truth, even if, and especially if, “truth” is not singular but a set of shared experiences and shared understandings that together make up our humanity.
• We are born into strong currents of history, and it is our lot to swim or sink, not to complain about our luck.
• The truth is not delicate and it does not suffer from denial—the truth only dies when true stories are untold.
• The silence of the victims of the past imposes a duty on the present to recover their voices, and we are most free when we willingly take up that duty.

[michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

*4.5/5
TW: torture, rape, gore

an informative and powerful depiction of the horrors of Unit 731 that aptly encompasses the variety of perspectives and ideas that would be brought up if there actually was an invention that would allow people to relive history. i liked how thorough liu was in exploring the different issues that would certainly accompany this invention, as well as how governments routinely deny their involvement/complicity in war crimes.

“Labeling someone a monster implies that he is from another world, one which has nothing to do with us. It cuts off the bonds of affection and fear, assures us of our own superiority, but there's nothing learned, nothing gained.” i'm not sure i completely agree with this quote in the context of this novella, but it's definitely extremely relevant nowadays and something people should keep in mind. ironically, i feel like this quote highlights a weakness of this novella. it's said by a character whose grandfather was significantly involved as a perpetrator in Unit 731, which would give her reason to be empathetic to him even tho he committed massive war crimes. but i feel like it's kind of hypocritical bc he literally wrote a letter talking about how he's "doing this for his family"... but did he care about how the people he experimented on also had family? did he and the other members of Unit 731 have empathy for the people they tortured?? the use of this quote just feels weird bc it implies that we're judging the members of Unit 731 too harshly without considering their thoughts and possible pressure they were facing to obey, but doesn't actually explore that aspect. why should we have empathy for perpetrators of extreme torture and violence when they didn't display empathy for their victims? it's possible that IRL some of them did, but again, it is not depicted at all in this novella.

[Cel Kila · Rating 5 out of 5]

En 1932, a été créé l'Unité 731. Entre 1936 et 1945, les japonais y ont commis des atrocités envers les chinois, à travers des expériences scientifiques et médicales abjectes.
Le Japon n'a jamais reconnu réellement cette période et ce qu'il s'est passé là bas.

Le professeur Wei a trouvé le moyen, non pas de repartir dans le passé, mais de voir dans le passé. Celui qui se livre à l'expérience ne peut pas interférer dans le passé, il s'y glisse simplement comme un surveillant invisible, omniscient. Le moyen de connaître enfin la vérité, et de mettre de côté les suppositions des uns et des autres ?

Le problème ? Chaque "instant" ne peut être visité qu'une seule fois, ensuite il disparaît. De quelle façon utiliser cette capacité ? À des fins historiques, à travers des recherches et autres analyses, ou à des fins cathartiques, où chacun pourra faire le deuil de certains faits ?

Finalement c'est cette question qui est au centre du livre. L'histoire est tournée comme un documentaire, dans lequel plusieurs intervenants, plus ou moins légitimes, donnent leur avis sur la question. Au delà d'un simple livre d'anticipation sur le voyage dans le temps, "L'Homme qui mit fin à l'histoire" un livre qui fait avant tout réfléchir sur la portée philosophique de tout ça.

Clairement, j'ai adoré. Et je le relirai, car je suis certaine que beaucoup de choses m'ont échappées.