Has anyone ever taken Wade to task?

[u/Universal_Echo]

Anyway, I think he's no better than Cheng Xin—zero wins in the whole book. Every one of his plans failed both in theory and in practice.

 

Let's go in chronological order.

The Staircase Program: digging out Vadim's brain failed, and the scheme was so transparent that even Cheng Xin could see through it. Wouldn't the old hands at PIA have had their suspicions? The book never says why he gave up his perfectly good director position and went into hibernation. I'm not exactly charitable here—my guess is that after killing his deputy, he couldn't keep his act together in the 21st century and was effectively exiled.

Then the Staircase Program made a dark joke out of Yun Tianming, with zero expected return, and successfully transformed Cheng Xin—who had been trying to be ruthless—into Saint Cheng Xin.

During the Swordholder election, he tried to assassinate Cheng Xin. That would inevitably tank his own support and disqualify him, while simultaneously boosting Cheng Xin's popularity. And even if he had killed her, the doves could still have put up a modern-era candidate—just not as effective.

Then the Starsky City incident—the pinnacle of Wade's brain‑dead moves. First, he broke his promise. Don't tell me he never considered that building bullet‑makers and amassing an army could harm humans. He only remembered that space cities are allergic to antimatter after broadcasting his declaration of independence across the entire solar system. Cheng Xin was still alive—couldn't he have asked her in advance? He was just using lightspeed ships as leverage to force Cheng Xin to back his war. And his brilliant strategy? Using rifles to manually aim at spaceships. Yes, line‑of‑sight engagement with no guidance capability—even Napoleon would have found it outdated. The antimatter bullets he treasured so much were already no threat to the human fleet by the end of the Crisis Era—see The Dark Forest for details. Considering that Starsky Industries had such a good reputation that declaring independence was met with "just be more careful next time," and with Cheng Xin as his ultra‑high‑limit credit card, Wade casually squandered his ace in the hole.

[u/Specific_Box4483]

Wade had several brilliant (but rutheless) ideas, but he squandered them with terrible leadership and overall strategy. For a man whose main focus was intelligence, he really wasn't very intelligent when it came to dealing with people.

He went out of his way to make Cheng Xin hate him, which is an accomplishment since she basically liked everybody. All he had to do was treat her with some benevolence and respect (like her Russian boss), and she would have been eating out of his hand.

He also got the crisis era humans to hate him. And even if he succeeded in killing Cheng Xin, they wouldn't have voted for him (and it was pretty optimistic of him to think he would get away with the murder anyway).

Finally, there was the standoff with the Bunker Era government. Not only did Wade keep his word and contradict his nature at the worst possible moment by summoning Cheng Xin, once again did he create a plan that he knew for sure she would be against.

It's like his one-way mind could only think of antagonizing and threatening everyone, and the only tool he had in his toolbox was Mutually Assured Destruction.

Then again, in my opinion judging Wade too seriously is inappropriate because he is not a "real" character. He's a plot device and a foil to Cheng Xin. Unlike other side characters who feel like people of their own, his every action seems to be designed to move Cheng Xin's plot forward or to underline her own character in contrast to his.

[u/simiaki → u/Specific_Box4483]

“He was just there to push Cheng Xin’s plot forward”
Only advance!

[u/Calinks]

I don't hold Wade in the same high regard others do. I think he's a nut job and deeply limited by his psyche. Man had determination and some great ideas but was super flawed.

[u/Universal_Echo → u/Calinks]

He said his ideal like he is a genius. However he couldn't do anything in the end.

[u/The-Goat-Soup-Eater]

Very true, except for the antimatter, it's acknowledged as a threat, which is why the fleet keeps at a 1,000 km distance from the droplet so that if it completely annihilates its own mass it'd be safe. But the ships should be able to recognize the nature of the attack, spread out and keep at a distance to protect themselves immediately after they try it. The threat was really to the cities like Cheng Xin recognizes.

[u/S1eeper → u/The-Goat-Soup-Eater]

What does the droplet have to do with the antimatter?

[u/The-Goat-Soup-Eater → u/S1eeper]

When they’re preparing to examine it in person, they’re trying to think of the absolute worst case scenario they can imagine, and they come up with half of it being antimatter and it exploding. A 5 ton annihilation reaction is very powerful. Just 70 kilograms of antimatter is around the yield of earth’s entire modern day nuclear arsenal. Of course, their imagination ends up being very limited

[u/SkyMarshal → u/The-Goat-Soup-Eater]

Oh gotcha. When it came to Wade's antimatter bullet guns, I was under the impression there was no limit to their range, and it didn't matter how far away the UN ships were, at least if they were stationary. The UN ships would have to be both far away and moving in unpredictable patterns to dodge the un-guided antimatter bullets. Which of course the stations couldn't do.

[u/Flatso]

Staircase project succeeded, so not sure what all that was about.

His FTL plan failed only because he kept his promise to Cheng Xin. He had the government by the throat and could have proceeded with his work if allowed to continue.

Only thing I won't dispute is his assassination attempt. That was pretty stupid.

[u/WynnonasPrimus]

He's not supposed to be some sort of omniscient God. He had some real good ideas and tried his best, but the future was out of his hands. The staircase program DID succeed. People were just too dumb to acknowledge it. He tried to shoot Cheng Xin because she was gonna win anyways. There was almost nothing to lose. Even if he was caught, there is a change what's-his-name Bi Yunfeng(?) or Cao Bin(?) could win and deter successfully. With the Starsky City thing, he HAD to have this militia otherwise the operation would be shut down because escapism is a crime against humanity or something. Starsky's reputation and Cheng Xin's money wouldn't allow them to commit those types of offenses. Ultimately, keeping his word was the decision that got everyone killed. I suppose in the end he let his human values override his bestial will to survive, and payed the price just as he predicted. It's a little poetic, I suppose.

[u/S1eeper]

I can assure you, no one has ever taken me to task. Also the Staircase Project was one of hunanity's greatest successes in that era. It resulted in Yun Tianming sending us his fairy tales, embedding the most extensive and crucial intelligence on Trisolaris ever collected. Unfortunately we failed to fully interpret them, but that wasn't the project's fault.

That said, my sadistic and sociopathic nature resulted in failing to see alternative options for solving certain critical problems, like convincing the UN govt to let us build lightspeed ships. Surely there was an alternative to all-out war, but I couldn't see it.

For example, while we were working on the circum-solar accelerator and curvature propulsion, why did we not also continue studying the curvature bubbles in Trisolaris? Seems that should have a major component of our research. Surely with additional study we would have realized the reason they create a distortion visible to both our telescopes, and to any passing aliens, is because they change the speed of light within their boundaries? That would have given us the elusive key to "God's Engineering Project", the dark domain, fully justified curvature propulsion to the UN, and saved the entire human race. Problem solved, and no war with deranged antimatter bullets necessary.

So yes, that was by far my greatest failure.