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Review: Liu Cixin (劉慈欣) - The Wandering Earth (流浪地球) (2000, Translated in 2016 by Holger Nahm)
This was only a short story by Liu Cixin but I wanted to read it because I knew that there was a movie based on this short story.. Like his Three Body Problem series, the Wandering Earth was very creative but also very considerate of how people en masse would have reacted to certain events in humanity.
Spoilers.
Story
In this short story, the sun is predicted to die, and so humanity decides to leave for the nearest star system, proxima centauri. The book follows the life of our nameless narrator as he experiences the years of earth as it was spiralled out of the sun's orbit.
He describe the physical changes to the earth, including the installation of the earth engines, what they were like, etc. He then also described how people changed as a whole. For example, they no longer saw love as this all-encompassing thing, because humanity itself was facing much bigger demises.
Towards the end of the short story, when the narrator was an adult, there was a rebellion as some people believed that the death of a sun was a hoax. However, after the rebellion surrendered, humanity observed the sun exploding and reaching as far as Jupiter, indicating that the scientists were right.
Of course, the narrator would not live to see proxima centauri, but he ended the story on a hopeful note that the planet would see a stable solar system again.
Writing
The translation was done by Holger Nahm. In general, I thought it was well done. Most of Liu Cixin's stories that I've read have had solid translations that, like Ken Liu said, preserve that "otherness" in which the reader can sense that it is a translated work from another language.
Characters
Our narrator in this novel was nameless. I'll just call him the narrator. He didn't exactly have much of a personality in this book. There wasn't enough time for that. Instead, he was meant to be an example of what a typical person born during this tumultuous time would have been like, in thought and in persnoality.
The book started mostly with his life at school. Children were raised with much more focus on scientific education. As well, children had inherited genetic memories from their parents. That was the only way that humanity would have become intelligent enough to build such things as the Earth Engines. The kids also got into fights and arguments about their interpretations of the world.
Afterwards, we got a look into the narrator's home life. His family seemed to be a little cold and emotionless with one another, but not in a hateful way. The father told the mother that he'd fallen in love with Ms. Xing (the narrator's teacher in the first part of the story), and that he would live with her, but that he knew he'd probably feel bored after a bit and at that point he would come back. The mother was very okay with that. Of course, it was extremely strange to us how okay she was. As mentioned above, the narrator told us how the old movies where people died for love seemed really unrealistic and unimaginable when there were far more important things in life.
But what really intrigued me was how despite the supposed lack of emotion and passion, there still was love between the narrator and his family. After his father presumably grew bored with Ms. Xing, he did return back to the family. Why did he do that? If he didn't love them, there was no reason for him to be attached to them. In addition, when there was that great disaster in which the city was being evacuated, our narrator did show great concern for his mother whom he knew was among the last to be allowed to evacuate based on age. Love existed, just in a way that wouldn't be recognizable to us.
The narrator later joined the Olympics as an electric sled racer. He helped another athlete who'd gotten into an accident, Koriyama Kayoko, and they seemed to fall in love right then and there. I'm not even sure if they finished the race, but they got married pretty soon and even got a permit to have a child.
On their way to their designated residence, the narrator wanted to visit his father, only to find out that he had died in that asteroid blast. Not much emotion was expressed, but there was grief there, in a way that I can't quite explain.
In the next part of the story, Kayoko started to believe that the sun's death was a hoax. The narrator really didn't believe this, for a reason that we don't know. The fact that he never hesitated was interesting. I presume that his relationship with Kayoko wasn't really too passionate. Per government laws, their child had to go in foster care, and the narrator said that after that happened, there was nothing connecting them anymore. Kayoko went to fight for the rebels while the narrator fought for the Unity Government.
The narrator said that he didn't really have any reason to fight for the Unity Government except loyalty. Both of his parents were loyal to the Unity Government. I think it would have been worth exploring his own beliefs with regards to the possible "hoax," but perhaps this book would have been too long. The impression I got was that he placed a lot of hope in the scientists. Perhaps it was because of his upbringing, with his father being an astronaut and all.
At the end of the story, the narrator outlined what lay ahead for humanity. I think he believed that it was going to work, which again highlighted his trusts in the scientist.
Themes
I don't think this story shone light on any themes that Liu Cixin wouldn't normally explore in his longer novels (of which I've only read the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy). He talked about both the very technical aspects of how humanity was going to pull of what it was going to do. But he also explored how humanity would react en masse. I really liked the inclusion of the rebels because in today's political climate we can see that humanity can be very divided, and such would be the case in as huge of a decision as taking a millennia long trip to another solar system.
Overall
Really terrific read. Liu Cixin included a lot to think about in just under 50 pages.
Spoilers.
Story
In this short story, the sun is predicted to die, and so humanity decides to leave for the nearest star system, proxima centauri. The book follows the life of our nameless narrator as he experiences the years of earth as it was spiralled out of the sun's orbit.
He describe the physical changes to the earth, including the installation of the earth engines, what they were like, etc. He then also described how people changed as a whole. For example, they no longer saw love as this all-encompassing thing, because humanity itself was facing much bigger demises.
Towards the end of the short story, when the narrator was an adult, there was a rebellion as some people believed that the death of a sun was a hoax. However, after the rebellion surrendered, humanity observed the sun exploding and reaching as far as Jupiter, indicating that the scientists were right.
Of course, the narrator would not live to see proxima centauri, but he ended the story on a hopeful note that the planet would see a stable solar system again.
Writing
The translation was done by Holger Nahm. In general, I thought it was well done. Most of Liu Cixin's stories that I've read have had solid translations that, like Ken Liu said, preserve that "otherness" in which the reader can sense that it is a translated work from another language.
Characters
Our narrator in this novel was nameless. I'll just call him the narrator. He didn't exactly have much of a personality in this book. There wasn't enough time for that. Instead, he was meant to be an example of what a typical person born during this tumultuous time would have been like, in thought and in persnoality.
The book started mostly with his life at school. Children were raised with much more focus on scientific education. As well, children had inherited genetic memories from their parents. That was the only way that humanity would have become intelligent enough to build such things as the Earth Engines. The kids also got into fights and arguments about their interpretations of the world.
Afterwards, we got a look into the narrator's home life. His family seemed to be a little cold and emotionless with one another, but not in a hateful way. The father told the mother that he'd fallen in love with Ms. Xing (the narrator's teacher in the first part of the story), and that he would live with her, but that he knew he'd probably feel bored after a bit and at that point he would come back. The mother was very okay with that. Of course, it was extremely strange to us how okay she was. As mentioned above, the narrator told us how the old movies where people died for love seemed really unrealistic and unimaginable when there were far more important things in life.
But what really intrigued me was how despite the supposed lack of emotion and passion, there still was love between the narrator and his family. After his father presumably grew bored with Ms. Xing, he did return back to the family. Why did he do that? If he didn't love them, there was no reason for him to be attached to them. In addition, when there was that great disaster in which the city was being evacuated, our narrator did show great concern for his mother whom he knew was among the last to be allowed to evacuate based on age. Love existed, just in a way that wouldn't be recognizable to us.
The narrator later joined the Olympics as an electric sled racer. He helped another athlete who'd gotten into an accident, Koriyama Kayoko, and they seemed to fall in love right then and there. I'm not even sure if they finished the race, but they got married pretty soon and even got a permit to have a child.
On their way to their designated residence, the narrator wanted to visit his father, only to find out that he had died in that asteroid blast. Not much emotion was expressed, but there was grief there, in a way that I can't quite explain.
In the next part of the story, Kayoko started to believe that the sun's death was a hoax. The narrator really didn't believe this, for a reason that we don't know. The fact that he never hesitated was interesting. I presume that his relationship with Kayoko wasn't really too passionate. Per government laws, their child had to go in foster care, and the narrator said that after that happened, there was nothing connecting them anymore. Kayoko went to fight for the rebels while the narrator fought for the Unity Government.
The narrator said that he didn't really have any reason to fight for the Unity Government except loyalty. Both of his parents were loyal to the Unity Government. I think it would have been worth exploring his own beliefs with regards to the possible "hoax," but perhaps this book would have been too long. The impression I got was that he placed a lot of hope in the scientists. Perhaps it was because of his upbringing, with his father being an astronaut and all.
At the end of the story, the narrator outlined what lay ahead for humanity. I think he believed that it was going to work, which again highlighted his trusts in the scientist.
Themes
I don't think this story shone light on any themes that Liu Cixin wouldn't normally explore in his longer novels (of which I've only read the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy). He talked about both the very technical aspects of how humanity was going to pull of what it was going to do. But he also explored how humanity would react en masse. I really liked the inclusion of the rebels because in today's political climate we can see that humanity can be very divided, and such would be the case in as huge of a decision as taking a millennia long trip to another solar system.
Overall
Really terrific read. Liu Cixin included a lot to think about in just under 50 pages.