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China's Arthur C. Clarke
HughPickens.com writes Joshua Rothman has a very interesting article in The New Yorker about Liu Cixin, China's most popular science-fiction writer. The author of thirteen books has retained his day job as a computer engineer with a State-run power plant in a remote part of Shanxi province, because it helps him to stay grounded, enabling him to "gaze at the unblemished sky" as many of his co-workers do. In China, Cixin is about as famous as William Gibson in the United States and Cixin is often compared to Arthur C. Clarke, whom he cites as an influence. Rothman writes that American science fiction draws heavily on American culture, of course—the war for independence, the Wild West, film noir, sixties psychedelia—and so humanity's imagined future often looks a lot like America's past. For an American reader, one of the pleasures of reading Liu is that his stories draw on entirely different resources.
For example, in The Wages of Humanity, visitors from space demand the redistribution of Earth's wealth, and explain that runaway capitalism almost destroyed their civilization. In Taking Care of Gods, the hyper-advanced aliens who, billions of years ago, engineered life on Earth descend from their spaceships; they turn out to be little old men with canes and long, white beards. "We hope that you will feel a sense of filial duty towards your creators and take us in," they say. "I doubt that any Western sci-fi writer has so thoroughly explored the theme of filial piety," writes Rothman. In another story, The Devourer, a character asks, "What is civilization? Civilization is devouring, ceaselessly eating, endlessly expanding." But you can't expand forever; perhaps it would be better, another character suggests, to establish a "self-sufficient, introspective civilization." "At the core of Liu's sensibility," concludes Rothamn, "is a philosophical interest in the problem of limits. How should we react to the inherent limitations of life? Should we push against them or acquiesce?"
For example, in The Wages of Humanity, visitors from space demand the redistribution of Earth's wealth, and explain that runaway capitalism almost destroyed their civilization. In Taking Care of Gods, the hyper-advanced aliens who, billions of years ago, engineered life on Earth descend from their spaceships; they turn out to be little old men with canes and long, white beards. "We hope that you will feel a sense of filial duty towards your creators and take us in," they say. "I doubt that any Western sci-fi writer has so thoroughly explored the theme of filial piety," writes Rothman. In another story, The Devourer, a character asks, "What is civilization? Civilization is devouring, ceaselessly eating, endlessly expanding." But you can't expand forever; perhaps it would be better, another character suggests, to establish a "self-sufficient, introspective civilization." "At the core of Liu's sensibility," concludes Rothamn, "is a philosophical interest in the problem of limits. How should we react to the inherent limitations of life? Should we push against them or acquiesce?"
" humanity's imagined future often looks a lot like America's past"
Space Nutters would do well to meditate on that truth for a while.
Clarke gave us the three laws.
Gibson gave us cyberpunk.
From TFA, it seems that Liu has more of a leaning to the utopian Star Trek. Has he pushed that anywhere new? Or even how humanity will be different in the billion years of his story?
The Clarke comparison certainly grabbed my attention. My next question was "where can I find these works in English?" I see that one of the links above leads to English translations of a couple of stories.
Thanks for the tip!
In the same way American writers draw on American history, these Eastern writers still seem to draw on anti-American or anti-capitalist whatever. It's still based on and focused on American history... fucking hell
Arthur C. Clarke was British, for fuck's sakes.
This will probably come across as a kneejerk response, but the submission makes it sound like Liu's themes are almost entirely derived from PRC propaganda. You hear this sort of stuff all the time if you pay any attention to Chinese state media ... planned economies are best, the individual's primary responsibility is to the family unit, Western ideas have failed, and so on. If anything, these books demonstrate the poverty of a literary scene where everybody has to constantly watch what they say.
Breakfast served all day!
I'm sorry, but no. Until there is a Liu Cixin version of the Clarke Orbit, you need to pick another scifi writer as a comparision.
I read some ancient American sci-fi from the 30s and 40s, and you'd be amazed at what ideas they cover.
I apologize for not being able to remember the names of any of them right now, but one story springs to mind rather easily.
A guy ends up going to the future (don't worry about how) from the when the author wrote the story. It's about the characters experiences in the imagined future.
In it, everyone was rather well off as your income was essentially a production dividend from the government. As one character put it, the populace is so productive the government is always looking for new and expensive projects to spend money on, they have too much and have to use it.
I know some people will freak out over that for various reason, but the idea is sound, even if it would never work with humans the way they are, just like any utopian ideal. However, one of the points on it is based on economics. Saving or hoarding money, especially by the government, just locks up potential resources for no good reason. If it is spent, it is in circulation and helps the entire economy. Anyone who has taken sufficient economics knows that the value of stashed cash is virtually zero to an economy, and can easily become a negative, while money in circulation is powerful.
Honestly, other than Liu Cixin being heavily influenced by his countrys political propaganda (all countries have that to varying degrees) I don't really seen any new ideas in his works, just variations. Still, I wish him success in his writing career.
If you want to read some other stuff that is eerily similar to his on occasion, hit up some of the old Soviet sci-fi.
He is one of the best hard sci-fi writers of all times. Sadly, the genre of hard sci-fi is the tiny minority of all sci-fi works produced nowadays, so the few authors who did work in it, stand out for the fans.
"The Three Body Problem" is a truly HARD sci-fi work by Liu Cixin, and if I'm to judge by this book only, then yes, this man indeed is China's A. C. Clarke.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
From the description of "The Devourer," it sounds like Cixin could relate to "The Pagan Bible" by Melvin Gorham and "The Social Conquest of Earth" by E. O. Wilson.
Both describe civilization as a eusocial superorganism -- with Gorham being more pessimistic than Wilson as to the potential for containing its ecological conquest of sexual species.
Seastead this.
Never heard of him, but the BAnQ in Montreal is ordering Carbide Tipped Pens, and I reserved it! Heheh, I'm #1 on the list.
Mostly random stuff.
...Rothman writes that American science fiction draws heavily on American culture, of course—the war for independence, the Wild West, film noir, sixties psychedelia—and so humanity's imagined future often looks a lot like America's past.... ...writing and TV draws strongly on America's past. The problem is, we don't really have one. Pretty much all we have is the 'Opening of the West' (code for genocidal land grab) which happened between about 1780 - 1860. Only 80 years, yet everyone on the Earth gets 'Cowboys and Indians' drummed into them.
I heard once that there were more cowboys portrayed on the Silver Screen than ever existed in history...
"The Wages of Humanity" and "taking care of gods" sound more like something Kilgore Trout would come up with.
We have plenty of writers, including scifi writers, that think that way too. Fortunately, it doesn't dominate our culture like it has dominated Chinese culture; misguided views like these are responsible for the long periods of stagnation and weakness that China has experienced.
@NostalgiaForInfinity: "misguided views like these are responsible for the long periods of stagnation and weakness that China has experienced."
The Economic Importance of Indian Opium and Trade with China on Britain's Economy
The First Opium War
Sugar, opium and cotton
Clarke was a British Subject. He was not an American Science Fiction author anymore than the Beatles were an American band.
Mebbe the author is confusing Dr. Clarke with Mr Heinlein or Dr. Asimov?
Or...if you have talked to any native Chinese in some depth you might realize that a lot of them actually have different values than Westerners about social responsibility and such. Far beyond what we are accustomed to with our emphasis on individuality, etc. Their system of government didn't develop in a vacuum and was certainly informed by their culture. So, I think you're right that your comment is a bit of a kneejerk response that assumes their authoritarian government has a hand in EVERYTHING.
That said, I would also assume that if his books were promoting pro-capitalist or anti-government ideas they would have been censored immediately, so maybe we're missing all the "Westernized" Chinese sci-fi books because of this...
This--very much this. Values, and as crucially *narratives*, are very much formed by the culture in which you grew up. If you've ever had a serious discussion with an intelligent politician, you'll learn that they understand the narratives they need to draw on to sell policy positions. Lawyers do a microcosm of that in jury arguments, where they try to put together a story that fits a comfortable narrative that the jury will believe, based on who the jury is and what they've experienced.
The great thing about science fiction using another culture's narratives is that it does what science fiction does best--explores the human condition in a new way.
Like reading Childhood's End after the Asimov robot novels (which are mostly more hopeful), seeing science fiction explored from a different cultural context can give us profoundly different insights.
ok. i made that up. fiction.
Offensive to write about emulating or learning from Red Chinese communism. If you like it so much them make like Edward Snowdon and just defect.
Ouch!
Table-ized A.I.
At least western sci-fi writers make a little effort to conceal their socialistic beliefs.
It's unfortunate that a good sci-fi book and a good hard sci-fi writer appears on Slashdot, and the discussion turns around PRC propaganda, anti-Chinese sentiment, bad communism, eviltotalitarian government, etc, etc, just because the author is from China? You might want to read the book first before commenting, you might be surprised. It might even open your eyes to a whole new world from your stereotypical veil.
A couple of people here had already read the book, and given a pretty insightful comment, kudo to them. I read the whole series, in Chinese, last year, in one week, and I couldn't give a better comment.
The Three Body Problem is a serie of 3 books, involving science, philosophy, religion, world conflict, environment, culture, love, etc. If you like the Clarke's Space Odessey and the Rama series, and the Asimov's Foundation series, and the Herbert's Dune series, you would like these books as well. The books leave you with a lot of issues to ponder upon, from a humanity, as a whole, perspective. Theses issues are not specific to one people or one culture.
Please put down your stereotypical glasses and forget for a moment that the author is Chinese, and read the book just like you would do any other book. You might enjoy it a lot more.
One concern, do you think the significant differences in the language will cause the translation to miss the mark? I see other people enjoyed it, but I think you're in the perfect position to evaluate how the translation effects the book's delivery, given you initially read it in Chinese. Of course, this would require you to read it in English, so no worries if you don't have an English copy available.
"runaway capitalism almost destroyed civilization" So, not much different from the Keanu Reeves remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still?
or is there a tlansration available?
It is possible the following equation is true:
Marxism.upperBound() <= tehcyder.desireToEarn() < Capitalism.upperBound()
Or maybe this equation is true if one is super-minimalist and has no material desires beyond air, food & water...
tehcyder.desireToEarn() <= Marxism.upperBound() < Capitalism.upperBound()
In other words, under Marxism no matter how much you might want to work to get a "better something", it doesn't matter because you can't earn beyond the Marxist upper bound of 'everybody is equal' or however resources are doled out.
Identifying other limits on an individual's "ability to earn" are left as an exercise to the reader.
Just as an aside, it isn't clear to me if there is a lower bound for desireToEarn() in Marxism.
(p.s Intrepid Imaginaut, well phrased!)
Marxism and all of its derivations are inherently horrible at effectively allocating resources....
No, you're wrong, because most people don't really care about economic competition or maximising their goods past a certain level.
For instance, if I was really desperate for a more expensive car or house than I have now, by your reasoning I would be working at another job in addition to my main one, as I could be buying twice the stuff.
Whereas, in reality, I would rather spend those eight hours a day enjoying myself by reading a book or having a drink, as my current job provides more than enough to live on. Now, I could decide that I want to drink only vintage wines at GBP 1,000 a bottle, or only read first editions at GBP 10,000. But in reality, I am happy drinking something for a fiver from Lidls and reading a couple of paperbacks or Kindle downloads a week.