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June 28, 2015

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Sci-fi writer living a fantasy

HAVE you ever gazed into the starry night sky and wondered if we are the only intelligent beings in the universe? What if we made contact with extraterrestrial beings from some other planet, would they be hostile or friendly?

“They would attack us. If any civilization exposed itself in the universe, it would soon be destroyed,” Liu Cixin told Shanghai Daily, suggesting an answer that he has for us in his top-selling Chinese science fiction “Remembrance of Earth’s Past,” also widely known as the Three-Body Trilogy.

Putting aside the need to create a conflict to sustain the story, Liu said he has always felt extraterrestrial intelligence is the greatest source of uncertainty for humanity’s future.

“On the Earth, mankind can step onto another continent and, without a thought, destroy the kindred civilizations they found there with force,” he said. “So how can we be sure aliens will cherish and love different forms of life and be bound by noble, moral constraints?”

Born in 1963, Liu lives and works as a software engineer at a power plant in Yangquan, Shanxi Province. Starting in 1999, he began publishing science fiction stories in magazines and has become one of the leading writers in China’s small but vibrant sci-fi community.

By chance in 2006, he read a thesis on the three-body problem, in which it shows chaos in a triple star system with no way to predict the outcome. Liu was inspired by the chaos theory and created a three-sun civilization outside the solar system in his book “The Three-Body Problem” — the first novel in the Three-Body Trilogy.

Set during the “cultural revolution (1966-76),” “The Three-Body Problem” tells the story of female scientist Ye Wenjie, a victim of the violence and absurdity of that era, who has sent a good-wish signal into outer space, looking for help and understanding.

Her message is picked up by a pacifist in the world of Trisolaran, where there is a pressing need to conquer other habitable planets to ensure their own survival. Out of sympathy, he sends back a message which he thinks might be saving the other civilization from total annihilation.

“Do not answer! … If you respond, you will become the next target. Your civilization will be attacked and your land will be conquered,” he warns.

However, by the time the message reaches the Earth, it is too late. A fleet of Trisolaran warships has already departed and will arrive in four centuries. At the same time, the Siphons, who are the Trisolaran’s extra-dimensional emissaries, are already here and have infiltrated human society and de-railed scientific progress.

In “The Dark Forest,” the second book, Liu further explores the possibilities of a cosmic society and the kinds of relationships between different beings.

He came up with a set of axioms as the foundations of cosmic sociology: one, survival is the primary need of civilizations; two, civilizations continuously grow and expand, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.

Based on these axioms, the universe is like a forest, patrolled by various predators.

In this forest, stealth is survival. Any civilization that reveals its location is prey.

Two years later, “Death’s End” completed the trilogy. Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge. With human science advancing daily and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems the two civilizations will soon be able to co-exist peacefully.

However, good things don’t happen.

With a touch of romance, Liu again tells the story of female scientist Cheng Xin, whose very presence breaks the delicate balance between the two world when she wakes up to this new era from her deep hibernation since the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis.

“Of course, this is just a possibility explored in fiction,” Liu said. “Science fiction, being the literature of possibilities, presents various possibilities for the reader, and sometimes the possibilities that exert the most attraction are also the least likely.”

At the beginning, the first two books only made a stir in the relatively small circle of the sci-fi community. It wasn’t until the publication of “Death’s End” that the Three-Body Trilogy became a phenomenon among the mainstream in China, with about 500,000 copies of each book in the series having been sold so far.

Last November, Tor Books began publishing the English translation of the Three-Body Trilogy, and in March “The Three-Body Problem,” translated by Ken Liu, was shortlisted for the world’s top fantasy award — the Nebula.

“The fact that American readers can now enjoy my book makes me both pleased and excited. Science fiction is a literature that belongs to all mankind. It portrays events of interest to all of humanity, and thus science fiction should be a literary genre most accessible to readers of different nations,” Liu wrote in the postscript to his English version of “The Three-Body Problem.”

How did you start writing science fiction?

Scales and existences that far exceeded the bounds of human sensory perception — both macro and micro — and that seemed to be only abstract numbers to others, could take on concrete forms in my mind. I could touch them and feel them, much like others could touch and feel trees and rocks. Compared to most of the population who do not experience such sensations, I don’t know if I’m lucky or unlucky. But it is certain that such feelings made me first into a science fiction fan, and later a science fiction author.

Where do the ideas come from?

As a science fiction writer who began as a fan, I do not use my fiction as a disguised way to criticize the reality of the present. In this book, a man named “humanity” confronts a disaster, and everything he demonstrates in the face of existence and annihilation without a doubt has sources in the reality that I experienced. No matter how reality is twisted by imagination, it ultimately remains there.

What are you working on now? And what can readers expect from you in the future?

I’m now working on a “Three-Body” film with a team of directors, producers and screenplay writers. Since it involves confidential commercial information, I can’t reveal too many details. No matter what, my main career in the future will be writing science fiction. The main difficulty is finding an idea that really excites me.




 

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