The Presence Of Eternity 永遠の存在

as above so below  [submission ]

The Three-body Problem——Sword Holder

Chinese sci-fi writer beats Stephen King for top fiction prize

Hao Jingfang wins Hugo award with dark story of social inequality and injustice in Beijing

“A futuristic tale of urban life in Beijing has won a Chinese novelist a top international prize for science fiction, beating out heavyweight Stephen King for the honour.

Hao Jingfang, 32, won the Hugo Award for best novelette with Folding Beijing, a year after another Chinese writer, Liu Cixin, won the best novel prize for The Three-Body Problem, Xinhua reported on the weekend.

Receiving her award in Kansas City, Missouri, Hao said she was not surprised she had won but had also been prepared to lose.

“In Folding Beijing, I have raised a possibility for the future and how we face the challenges of automated production, technological advances, unemployment and economic stagnation,” she said.

Hao said her book offered a solution to those challenges, but she hoped the situations she described would not become reality.

Hao is from Tianjin, and graduated with a physics degree from Tsinghua University in 2006.

The Hugo Awards, established in 1953, are regarded as the highest honour in science fiction and fantasy. They are named after Hugo Gernsback who was the founder of the American science fiction magazineAmazing Stories.”

Read the full piece here

Congratulations Hao Jingfang!

These two I imagine as Zhang Behiai and Wang Miao. 

Infernal Affairs (2002) - dir. Andrew Lau and Alan Mak. 無間道/无间道

From: Beaumont, Cyril W. (Cyril William), 1891-1976. The mysterious bookshop. London : C.W. Beaumont, 1924; illustration by Wyndham Payne

Z239.2.B4 B3

Here’s a chance to win Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest.

Lou Ji was a self-absorbed asshole. But I grew to like him. He was a likable pile of trash. But I have no idea how much of that was on purpose.

. . . Lou Ji came over and put his hand on a small painting.

“Would you leave this one for me?”

Cheng Xin and AA moved the painting aside and set it on top of a box next to the wall. They were surprised to see that it was the Mona Lisa.

Cheng Xin and AA continued to work at disassembling frames. AA whispered, “Clever old man. He kept the most expensive piece for himself.”

“I don’t think that’s the reason.”

“Maybe he once loved a girl named Mona Lisa?”

Lou Ji sat next to the Mona Lisa and caressed the ancient frame with one hand. He muttered, “I didn’t know you were here. Otherwise I could have come to see you often.”

Cheng Xin saw that he wasn’t looking at the painting. His eyes stared ahead as if looking into the depths of time. Cheng Xin saw that his ancient eyes were filled with tears, and she wasn’t sure if he was mistaken.

Inside the grand tomb under the surface of Pluto, lit by the dim lamps that could shine for a hundred thousand years, Mona Lisa’s smile seemed to appear and disappear. The smile had puzzled humankind for nearly nine centuries, and it looked even more mysterious and eerie now, as though it meant everything and nothing, like the approaching Death.

Death’s End (p. 512), Cixin Liu

A list of books I read this year that were absolutely amazing (´∀｀=)