Is this love?
The lines were displayed on a lower-dimensional unfolding of a sophon that appeared abruptly beside them. The mirrored sphere seemed like a droplet that had fallen off of some melted area on the cylinder above them. Luo Ji knew few Trisolarans and didn’t know who it was who was speaking to them, or whether this one was on Trisolaris or on the fleet that was growing increasingly distant from the Solar System.
“Probably.” Luo Ji nodded with a smile.
Dr. Luo, I have come in protest.
“Why?”
Because in last night’s speech, you said that humanity had been so late to realize the dark forest nature of the universe not because your immature state of cultural evolution caused a lack of awareness of the universe, but because humanity has love.
“Isn’t that correct?”
It’s correct, though the word “love” is a little vague in the context of scientific discourse. But what you said next was incorrect. You said that humanity is probably the only species in the universe to have love, and it’s this notion that supported you through the most difficult period of your Wallfacer mission.
“That’s only an expression, of course. Just a nonrigorous… analogy.”
I know that at least Trisolaris has love. But because it was not conducive to the civilization’s overall survival, it was suppressed when it had only just germinated. Yet the seed possesses a stubborn vitality, and will still grow in certain individuals.
“May I ask who you are?”
We’ve never met. I was the operator who transmitted the warning to Earth two and a half centuries ago.
“My god, and you’re still alive?” Zhuang Yan exclaimed.
I won’t be for much longer. I’ve been in a dehydrated state, but over the long years, even a dehydrated body will age. However, I have seen the future I hoped to see, and for this I am happy.
“Please accept our respects,” Luo Ji said.
I only wish to discuss with you one possibility: Perhaps seeds of love are present in other places in the universe. We ought to encourage them to sprout and grow.
“That’s a goal worth taking risks for.”
Yes, we can take risks.
“I have a dream that one day brilliant sunlight will illuminate the dark forest.”
The sun was setting. Now only its tip was exposed beyond the distant mountains, as if the mountaintop was inset with a dazzling gemstone. Like the grass, the child running in the distance was bathed in the golden sunset.
The sun will set soon. Isn’t your child afraid?
“Of course she’s not afraid. She knows that the sun will rise again tomorrow.”
Reviews
“A milestone in Chinese science fiction.”
“The best kind of science fiction.”
“Vivid, imaginative and rooted in cutting-edge science… Cixin stands at the top tier of speculative fiction in any language”
“Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.”
“This is a must-read in any language.”
“Liu Cixin’s writing evokes the thrill of exploration and the beauty of scale…. Extraordinary.”
About Cixin Liu
CIXIN LIU is the most prolific and popular science-fiction writer in the People’s Republic of China. Liu is an eight-time winner of the Galaxy Award (the Chinese Hugo) and a winner of the Nebula Award. Prior to becoming a writer, he worked as an engineer in a power plant in Yangquan, Shanxi.
About the Translator
JOEL MARTINSEN is the managing editor of Danwei.org, a website that publishes translations from the Chinese print media and online forums and blogs. He has been a fan of Chinese science fiction since 2003, when he attended a science fiction studies course at Beijing Normal University. His translation of an excerpt of Liu Cixin’s Ball Lightning appeared in the December 2009 issue of Words Without Borders.
About The Three-Body Problem Series
1967: University student Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during the Cultural Revolution. His crime? Failure to recant his belief in science. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.
Four decades later, after a spate of apparent suicides among elite scientists, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of international scientists.
During the course of his investigation, Wang is inducted into a mysterious online game that immerses him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns.
This is the Three-Body Problem and it is the key to everything. The key to the scientist’s deaths, the key to humanity’s place in the cosmos and the key to the extinction-level threat it now faces.
The universe is a forest, patrolled by numberless and nameless predators. In this forest, others are hell, a dire existential threat. Stealth is survival. Any civilisation that reveals its location is prey.
Earth has. And the others are on the way.
The Trisolarian fleet has left their homeworld and will arrive… in four centuries’ time. But the sophons, their extra-dimensional emissaries, are already here and have infiltrated human society and and de-railed scientific progress. Only the individual human mind remains immune to the sophons. This is the motivation for the Wallfacer Project, a last-ditch defence that grants four individuals almost absolute power to design secret strategies, hidden through deceit and misdirection from Earth and Trisolaris alike. Three of the Wallfacers are influential statesmen and scientists, but the fourth is a total unknown. Luo Ji, an unambitious Chinese astronomer, is baffled by his new status. All he knows is that he’s the one Wallfacer that Trisolaris wants dead.
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 that the two civilizations will soon be able to co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But the peace has also made humanity complacent.