Liu Cixin

The disasters facing humanity are diverse, and in 2012, the famous European science communication magazine "New Discovery" once launched a special feature: twenty editions of the end of the world. If we classify disasters according to their scale, they can be roughly divided into three categories: local disasters, civilizational disasters, and apocalyptic disasters. Local disasters refer to disasters faced by local areas and some members of human society; A civilizational catastrophe refers to a catastrophe involving the human world as a whole, which may cause human civilization to regress or even disappear in a comprehensive way, but human beings, as a species, can always have enough to survive and start to restore or rebuild civilization; The apocalyptic catastrophe is the culmination of a catastrophe in which no one will survive and humanity as a species will disappear completely.

So far, the vast majority of disasters encountered by human society have been localized, including natural disasters, such as earthquakes and large-scale infectious diseases; Man-made disasters such as wars and terrorist attacks. Although these disasters are tragic, their impact is very limited, and the geographical scope generally does not exceed one-tenth of the total land area of the earth, and the number of people affected by the disaster generally does not exceed 300 million.

Looking back on history, since the birth of human civilization, there have been almost no civilizational disasters, the great flood recorded in the Bible, according to today's perspective, is only a local disaster, there are two disasters in history that are relatively close to civilizational disasters: the Black Death in Europe in 1438 and the Second World War in the last century. But neither of these is a real civilizational catastrophe. The Black Death killed a third of Europe's population at the time, but it did not affect the rest of the world. As a science fiction novel, A Tale of Rice and Salt, describes, civilization would develop in other parts of the world even if the entire population of Europe died of the Black Death at that time. World War II spread almost all over the world, the breadth of the battlefield and the large number of casualties, unprecedented, but because World War II took place before the nuclear age, the level of technology limited its destructive ability, the sum of the yield of the second world war was five million tons, only one-tenth of the largest nuclear bomb that appeared shortly after the war. No matter which side wins this war, human civilization will continue. The only real civilizational catastrophe that has almost happened so far was the nuclear confrontation between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in the last century, and the terrible specter of a full-scale nuclear war, once destructive, capable of destroying the civilized world, has now faded and restored some of our confidence in the near-loss of human sanity.

As for the apocalypse, it has never happened, and there are no obvious signs or possibilities at present. It is now almost certain that none of the catastrophes that may occur on Earth are of a post-apocalyptic nature. All the catastrophes that we can think of on a planetary scale, such as environmental degradation, new ice ages, large-scale natural or man-made infectious diseases, can only lead to a massive reduction in population or a regression of civilization, and it is unlikely that humanity will be completely wiped out at the species level. The surviving human beings will gradually adapt to the post-disaster world with the help of the knowledge and technology left over from before the disaster, so that the civilization can continue.

Doomsday disasters can only come from space.

The universe is filled with unimaginably vast forces, some of which we see but are incomprehensible, some of which we are not even aware of, that can make stars come into being and can destroy any world in an instant. Our planet is just a tiny speck of dust in the universe, negligible on a cosmic scale. If the Earth disappears in one second, the impact on the solar system, that is, the orbits of the remaining seven planets due to the disappearance of the Earth's gravity, will be adjusted somewhat, mainly on the low-mass terrestrial planets Mercury, Venus, and Mars, while the orbits of the massive Jupiter-like planets will change negligibly. When this catastrophe that seems to us to be earth-shattering and weeping ghosts and gods happens, from the perspective of Proxima Centauri, a neighbor in the solar system, it is equivalent to a mosquito on the edge of a candle tens of thousands of kilometers away that falls into the candle seedling, and nothing can be detected at all; Even on Jupiter, it is difficult to see with the naked eye any noticeable changes in the solar system, except for the faint bright spot in space in the direction of the sun that disappears.

Disasters from space are more difficult to predict than disasters on Earth. With the current level of human technology, it is difficult to predict space disasters such as sudden solar cataclysms and close-range supernova explosions. The other type of space catastrophe is impossible to predict by the nature of physical laws. If there is some kind of catastrophe in space moving towards the earth at the speed of light, since there is no signal in the universe that can exceed the speed of light, it is impossible for the information of the catastrophe to reach the earth before the catastrophe, in other words, we can never predict it outside the light cone of the catastrophe.

Apocalyptic catastrophe is fully represented in science fiction literature, and just as love is the eternal theme of mainstream literature, disaster is also the eternal theme of science fiction. "Escape from the Mother Universe" is a work that expresses the apocalyptic disaster from space.

The idea of "Escape from the Mother Universe" is very grand, and the source of the apocalyptic disaster is the entire universe, which is a real catastrophe. Compared with other works with similar themes, the sci-fi setting of this book has its own unique features. In most apocalyptic science fiction novels, the apocalypse towers in front of humanity like a wall, and everything is clear; However, the description in "Escape from the Mother Universe" is more in line with the laws of human cognition, and the novel shows the gradual cognitive process of human beings for disasters from multiple levels and angles, the truth is revealed step by step, with twists and turns, revealing the dawn of hope in the great despair, and then ushering in greater despair, and finally reaching a tragic ending. The novel takes the reader from the pinnacle of hope to the bottom of darkness, experiencing the apocalyptic experience that only science fiction literature can bring. At the same time, unlike the space catastrophe often shown in traditional science fiction novels, the cosmic catastrophe in "Escape from the Mother Universe" is a new type of catastrophe, involving the most cutting-edge knowledge of physics and cosmology, showing the overall picture of the evolution of the universe and the deepest mysteries of time and space, this imagination is ultimate, with an incomparably broad vision and philosophical height.

Wang Jinkang once said: Young science fiction authors have never looked at the future, and middle-aged science fiction authors like the author look at the future from reality, while he himself looks at the future from history. These words accurately describe the characteristics of Wang Jinkang's science fiction novels, including "Escape from the Mother Universe". It is precisely because of the far-reaching perspective of looking at the future from history that "Escape from the Mother Universe" has a dignified and profound connotation. The author uses deep reason to look at the imaginary end of mankind from afar, and describes a picture of human society in the apocalyptic disaster. As the general title of this series of works "Alive" shows, in the author's world setting, the survival and continuation of human beings is the overriding goal, and in order to achieve this goal, the apocalyptic society has produced a value and moral system that is compatible with the super disaster, such as human oviparity, polygamy, and extreme autocracy, which are very rebellious behaviors and systems in traditional society, have become reasonable in the world setting of "Escape from the Mother Universe".

Not long ago, Canadian science fiction writer Robert Sawyer visited China, and when talking about the darkness and harshness of China's science fiction novels in depicting apocalyptic themes, he believed that this was related to the historical experience of our nation and country, and as a Canadian, he had an optimistic attitude towards the future of mankind in the universe. I completely agree with him that the imprint of history inevitably appears in the imagination of the future. But on the other hand, looking at the position of earth civilization in the universe, human beings as a whole are not like modern Canada in the universe, but more like the indigenous people of Canada before the arrival of European immigrants five hundred years ago. At that time, more than 100 tribes, made up of different ethnic groups and representing at least ten language families, lived together in Canada, from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island. Imagine that an indigenous science fiction writer had envisioned their future with the same optimism, and looking back on it is obviously a bit too optimistic. The recently published book "A History of Canada: An Aboriginal Perspective" by Indigenous Canadian writers Georges Erasmus and Joe Sanders has attracted a lot of attention and contains an unforgettable narrative about it.

It is precisely because of the perspective of history that Wang Jinkang's works have a distinct Chinese cultural color, even in the imaginary future and the imaginary apocalypse, this color is so vivid and thick. Although "Escape from the Mother Universe" is a bold subversion of the traditional value system, its deep thinking is Chinese, and the way the main characters think and act also has a distinct Chinese cultural imprint, and the repeated images of the wistful people in the book are vivid symbols of this. A profound proposition left by this work is: Does the ancient oriental culture and value system, including the Chinese civilization, have a greater advantage in the future apocalyptic catastrophe?

Of course, "Escape from the Mother Universe" is only a possibility, and the charm of science fiction lies in showing people different futures and different choices, and we certainly expect another kind of more optimistic science fiction to describe the end of the world, showing a completely different picture of the end of the world, such as the preservation of the core values of human tradition.

Back to the topic of space catastrophe. For these unpredictable catastrophes from space, human society has not made corresponding preparations either in theory or in reality. The study of the end times has mostly stayed in religion and has not risen to the level of science. Most of the thinkers' thinking about human society focuses on the practical level, and even if they think about the future, they are limited to the straight line extension of reality, and rarely consider the sudden changes such as the apocalypse. Therefore, from the classic works of the thinkers of the Enlightenment era to the theories of today's schools, the study of the politics, economy, law, ethics and culture of human society under the apocalyptic catastrophe is rare.

On a practical level, the constitutions and laws of almost no country deal with apocalyptic catastrophes, which is clearly a major deficiency in the human constitutional system. I once discussed this issue with a scholar who argued that the existing legal system has a relatively well-developed structure for disasters. In fact, this scholar did not notice the difference between local disasters and civilizational disasters and apocalyptic disasters, the biggest difference is that when local disasters occur, there are external rescue forces, and this rescue force is generally very powerful, and it is often the whole society that concentrates its efforts to rescue disaster areas and groups of people who occupy only a small part of the country. But for the civilization disaster and the apocalyptic disaster, the human world as a whole is in a disaster at the same time, and there is no external rescue force at all. At this point, the existing legal and ethical systems will not be applicable. The central legal and moral question for apocalyptic catastrophes is: What if all social resources are concentrated so that only a few or a portion of the population can survive? Until now, modern legal and ethical systems have been obscure about this issue. It is undeniable that in the existing social values, it is very difficult to discuss this issue, and there will be heated debates and many options: you can choose to let some or a few people survive, or you can choose to stick to the traditional values of humanity and let everyone face death in peace. The merits of these choices can be discussed in a matter of opinion, but whichever choice must be made clear in the end, both legally and ethically: this is the responsibility of a civilized world to itself. Otherwise, when the end comes, the world will be plunged into fear and confusion, and in the end, in the great chaos, humanity will lose both its dignity and its future.

In this case, the shocking apocalyptic experience brought by "Escape from the Mother Universe" highlights the unique value of science fiction literature.

2013.11.20. Yu Yangquan

Man lives to enjoy the pleasure of living, not to escape death. Because the death of the individual, the death of the human species and even the universe is ultimately inescapable.

- Ma Shiqi's conversation with the terminally ill eight-year-old Yoshiko

Quoted from "A Hundred Years of Collecting Shellfish", written by Yu Leshui

The dazzling scientific and technological achievements of that era were based on a new scientific system based on two fundamental discoveries: that the vacuum (space) had a deep structure; Vacuum can be annihilated by high-energy excitation into a "vacuum void" or second-order vacuum, which releases low-intensity light energy.

——Excerpt from "A Hundred Years of Collecting Shellfish", written by Yu Leshui