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Cixin Liu - Blog Posts
The Three-body Problem——Sword Holder
“There’s a strange contradiction revealed by the naïveté and kindness demonstrated by humanity when faced with the universe: On Earth, humankind can step onto another continent, and without a thought, destroy the kindred civilizations found there through warfare and disease. But when they gaze up at the stars, they turn sentimental and believe that if extraterrestrial intelligences exist, they must be civilizations bound by universal, noble, moral constraints, as if cherishing and loving different forms of life are parts of a self-evident universal code of conduct.
I think it should be precisely the opposite: Let’s turn the kindness we show toward the stars to members of the human race on Earth and build up the trust and understanding between the different peoples and civilizations that make up humanity. But for the universe outside the solar system, we should be ever vigilant, and be ready to attribute the worst of intentions to any Others that might exist in space. For a fragile civilization like ours, this is without a doubt the most responsible path.”
Cixin Liu, Author’s Postscript to the American Edition of ‘The Three Body Problem’.
. . . 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
“Oh, heavens! Starry Sky!” AA cried out.
Cheng Xin knew that she was referring to Van Gogh’s painting. True, the universe really did look like the painting. The painting in her memory was almost a perfect copy of the two-dimensional Solar System before her eyes. Giant planets filled space, the areas of the planets seeming to exceed even the gaps between them. But the immensity of the planets did not give them any sense of substantiality. Rather, they looked like whirlpools in space-time. In the universe, every part of space flowed, churned, trembled between madness and horror like fiery flames that emitted only frost. The Sun and the planets and all substance and existence seemed to be only hallucinations produced by the turbulence of space-time.
Cheng Xin now recalled the strange feeling she had experienced each time she had looked at Van Gogh’s painting. Everything else in the painting - the trees that seemed to be on fire, and the village and mountains at night - showed perspective and depth, but the starry sky above had no three-dimensionality at all, like a painting hanging in space.
Because the starry night was two-dimensional.
How could Van Gogh have painted such a thing in 1889? Did he, having suffered a second breakdown, truly leap across five centuries and see the sight before them using only his spirit and delirious consciousness? Or, maybe it was the opposite: He had seen the future, and the sight of this Last Judgment had caused his breakdown and eventual suicide.
Death’s End (p. 529), Cixin Liu
我点燃了火，却控制不了它。
I started the fire, but I couldn’t control how it burnt.
[“My sunset,” Ye whispered.] And sunset for humanity.
Cixin Liu, from The Three-Body Problem (via the-final-sentence)
我点燃了火，却控制不了它。
I started the fire, but I couldn’t control how it burnt.
Are you under the impression that the object of everyone else’s love actually exists?
The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (via theliterarybug)
Well I've finally finished Death's End. That was the best book I've ever read in my entire life.
She felt a pang of sorrow as she realized that Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman had both been dead for probably over two centuries.
Cixin Liu, Death’s End
Read Selections from Cixin Liu’s Death’s End on Tor.com.
http://ebooksession.com/book/MThmM2M1eA~~/The-Wandering-Earth#.VBxzvDwtD4g
Didn’t guess this one, either. And I don’t remember any orbital tethers in that story, or antennae. Plumes of plasma fire, maybe, but not tethers.
The Three-Body Problem is apparently being made into a movie for 2016…
Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest is a mind-bending blend of splashy SF and serious science. A review on The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.
Here’s a chance to win Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest.