This is probably the most fascinating sci-fi book that I've read in a long, long time! This is Chinese Sci-Fi - and it is both similar and different than American/European sci-fi (which has become a kind of an unspoken standard, but we often forget it is just one way of doing things). There is no sex in this book. Not even flirting. No hot female characters (the main female character is in her late senior years). The male characters are late-middle aged; not sexy, not even particularly heroic. Did that turn you off? Wait, it is worth it!
This is my first Chinese science fiction, so I have to extrapolate (a code word for "stereotype") the entire local genre from it. There's a lot of science. And I mean - A LOT! This is one of the hardest science fiction novels I've read. And some of the science is not simple (although very well explained in popular terms). It takes some mental effort to follow. And some knowledge of physics, and quantum theory, and 11-dimensional space concepts. But wait, it's worth it!
The book starts with the horrors of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. After she sees her father humiliated and publicly murdered on a stage by being brutally whipped with the clasps of the belts of four red guard high school girls (while her mother goes mad and her sister joins the red guard), Ye Wenjie signs a lifetime contract to join the "Red Coast" secret government base, with a huge satellite dish on top of "Radar Peak" which eventually she finds out is the Chinese SETI program, looking for intelligent aliens.
Since Wenjie is a brilliant physicist, just like her red-guard-murdered father, she finds a way to use a layer within the Sun as a giant amplifier antenna and manages to attract the attention of the planet "Trisolaris" - the only planet in a system with three suns. Although a "pacifist" trisolarian warns Wenjie not to reply to the message, as otherwise the Trisolarian government will not be able to locate the signal, she replies immediately and thus gives the trisolarians the final parameter to precisely pinpoint Earth - distance. She hopes that the trisolarians will 'cleanse' the Earth and fix human society, but although trisolarians try to play into that initially, eventually they make clear that they intend to destroy the human race and claim all of Earth for themselves. They send a message to all humans: "you are bugs."
Trisolarians, who are much ahead of humans in fundamental science and have found a way to unwrap internal matter structure up to the 11th dimensions, send two super-computers as large as the surface of a planet but dimensionally wrapped into single protons - called "Sophons." These Sophons stop all research in fundamental science on Earth by sabotaging experiments and driving top scientists to suicide and thus basically locking the scientific progress of the human race, making it easy pray for the much more developed trisolarians. Human traitors organize themselves in Earth-Trisolaris Organization (ETO) and actively help trisolarians sabotage Earth science, rejoicing in the future destruction of humanity as a punishment for destroying Earth's environment. The ETO also constructs a VR game which simulates some of the environment on Trisolaris and asks the players to solve various historical trisolarian problems in order to advance in the game. ETO is divided into several factions, and one of them even created a religion from the Trisolarian lore, elevating the leader of the invading fleet (to reach earth in 450 years) as their "Lord."
The book has many more complicated aspects, Dr. Wang, a nano-materials scientist, being the main male character, and "Big" Shi Qiang, a hard-boiled policeman, maybe being the most sympathetic one, but it ends in a cliffhanger: Wang accepts that we are bugs and will be met with the fate of bugs, but Big Shi takes Wang and his colleague to a field overrun with locusts and tells them that maybe humans are bugs, but bugs have always fought back and refused to go extinct.
Friday, December 30, 2016
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
"Altered Carbon" by Robert Morgan
Robert Morgan might be an ESL teacher, but he's an amazing cyberpunk writer! And his lack of technical background (hard science background too) make his books even more readable and romantic. Takeshi Kovacs must be one of the best ambivalent heroes created in the last half century. He's not a bad guy, it's the circumstances. He has a good heart, and it is obvious in the end, when he could have made much more damage and not repair anything.
The universe of Altered Carbon is fascinating. No faster than light travel. Colony ships that take centuries to reach their destination. But there's 'needlecasting' - similar to the 'ansible' device in other universes, notably Hyperion. However needlecasting apparently can transfer enormous amounts of data, unlike the ansibles that are limited to typed text. Humans get 'downloaded' from their brains and 'needlecast' to anywhere in the Universe, where they are 'uploaded' in a 'sleeve' - a human body without a 'tenant.' Pretty naive, but effective. From scientific point of view there are so many problems with this kind of concept, it doesn't even start to approach reality (i.e. if humans can be downloaded on a 'spinning disk' [oh, Morgan, you should have read some basic Computer Science book, at the least] then the data is 'quantified' and as such it can be 'list'-ed and different lines of code erased or added. Where does the 'human' end then?).
Takeshi is an "Envoy" - special corps of psychologically conditioned murderers that do the dirty jobs for the UN Protectorate which rules Earth, and largely the Universe. Envoys can enter multiple bodies ("sleeving") and still keep their sanity and adapt rapidly. Takeshi is hired by a 'meth' (Methusalah) on Earth who has lived more than 3 centuries in various sleeves. Then there's the sexy future-cop Ortega, with her long limbs and psychological stuck ups. But the book is too complex to be summarized in a few paragraphs.
Suffice to say it is one hell of a rollercoaster ride.
The universe of Altered Carbon is fascinating. No faster than light travel. Colony ships that take centuries to reach their destination. But there's 'needlecasting' - similar to the 'ansible' device in other universes, notably Hyperion. However needlecasting apparently can transfer enormous amounts of data, unlike the ansibles that are limited to typed text. Humans get 'downloaded' from their brains and 'needlecast' to anywhere in the Universe, where they are 'uploaded' in a 'sleeve' - a human body without a 'tenant.' Pretty naive, but effective. From scientific point of view there are so many problems with this kind of concept, it doesn't even start to approach reality (i.e. if humans can be downloaded on a 'spinning disk' [oh, Morgan, you should have read some basic Computer Science book, at the least] then the data is 'quantified' and as such it can be 'list'-ed and different lines of code erased or added. Where does the 'human' end then?).
Takeshi is an "Envoy" - special corps of psychologically conditioned murderers that do the dirty jobs for the UN Protectorate which rules Earth, and largely the Universe. Envoys can enter multiple bodies ("sleeving") and still keep their sanity and adapt rapidly. Takeshi is hired by a 'meth' (Methusalah) on Earth who has lived more than 3 centuries in various sleeves. Then there's the sexy future-cop Ortega, with her long limbs and psychological stuck ups. But the book is too complex to be summarized in a few paragraphs.
Suffice to say it is one hell of a rollercoaster ride.
Thursday, December 15, 2016
"The Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham
This is an all-time classic Sci-Fi or Speculative Fiction, to be more exact. Written in the 50s, it describes taking over the world by a species of intelligent, mobile, carnivorous plants, called "Triffids" and probably developed through genetic experiments by the Soviets, in order to grow them for their precious oil they produce. However, after one night of apparent meteor showers, the entire population of Earth, humans and animals, become blind and also infected by a sort of plague. This causes much of the planet's population, over 99%, to die in the first couple of weeks after the meteor shower, which might have been caused by the intelligent Triffid overmind in order to eliminate the main evolutionary advantage humans have over intelligent plants.
The Triffids hunt the remaining humans, killing them with their sting and poison, and then feeding off their decomposing bodies, using the nutrients to grow and propagate. However, many of the surviving human groups are busy fighting each other, and being animals to each other, rather than deal with the common threat in the beginning.
Bill Mason, the protagonist of the novel, a biologist specializing in Triffids, survives with his sight intact because he is in a hospital, after a Triffid atack, with his eyes bound, when the 'meteor' shower occurs. He walks around post-apocaliptic London, trying to figure out what to do, while alternately attracted, rejected or imprisoned by various roaming groups, each of which thinks they have the solution to survival.
Eventually the survivors retreat to the Isle of Wigh, where Triffids are kept at bay by constant culling and destruction of seeds. A gem, and originator, of the post-end-of-the-world genre which has become extremely popular lately. Many movies, comics, graphic novels etc. were made after this book, but reading it is still a singular experience, especially since it was written before the travesties of reality television and social media and is thus slow and even paced.
The Triffids hunt the remaining humans, killing them with their sting and poison, and then feeding off their decomposing bodies, using the nutrients to grow and propagate. However, many of the surviving human groups are busy fighting each other, and being animals to each other, rather than deal with the common threat in the beginning.
Bill Mason, the protagonist of the novel, a biologist specializing in Triffids, survives with his sight intact because he is in a hospital, after a Triffid atack, with his eyes bound, when the 'meteor' shower occurs. He walks around post-apocaliptic London, trying to figure out what to do, while alternately attracted, rejected or imprisoned by various roaming groups, each of which thinks they have the solution to survival.
Eventually the survivors retreat to the Isle of Wigh, where Triffids are kept at bay by constant culling and destruction of seeds. A gem, and originator, of the post-end-of-the-world genre which has become extremely popular lately. Many movies, comics, graphic novels etc. were made after this book, but reading it is still a singular experience, especially since it was written before the travesties of reality television and social media and is thus slow and even paced.
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