
Liu Cixin’s War of the Worlds - Dowwie
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/24/liu-cixins-war-of-the-worlds
======
gumby
> The trilogy’s success has been credited with establishing sci-fi, once
> marginalized in China, as a mainstream taste.

I wish it were mainstream in the US. Back when people here believed in
technical progress, science fiction was popular, if not always main stream.

Nowadays there is a category “science fiction” in every video app but the
movies are always war movies or westerns, just set in space.

~~~
krapp
If you're implying that most science fiction hasn't almost _always_ been "war
movies or westerns just set in space," I have bad news for you. Science
fiction is about the science in the same way westerns are about the horses,
which is to say, it isn't.

Also, I don't see signs that people in the US no longer believe in technical
progress. There may be forms of technical progress which are not given the
priority in American culture that you might prefer, but it seems obvious that
progress is advancing in a vast number of fields, and both science fiction
_and science_ are more mainstream (albeit, perhaps, in a watered down pop-
culture sense) than they ever have been.

------
pelario
"When a reporter recently challenged Liu to answer the middle-school questions
about the “meaning” and the “central themes” of his story, he didn’t get a
single one right. “I’m a writer,” he told me, with a shrug. “I don’t begin
with some conceit in mind. I’m just trying to tell a good story.”"

Does anybody have a link or know more about this ?

~~~
King-Aaron
My mother is a semi-professional artist, and I've overheard a similar thing at
one of her exhibitions once. Some journalists (or some such) were standing in
front of one of her pieces, discussing the deeper meaning behind the work and
what the artist must have been trying to express at the time. My Mum just
laughed and said "the only thing behind this piece was three bottles of wine"

~~~
ngcc_hk
The author is dead. But what is written may reflect something the original
author may not consciously aware or want to.

The red chamber is a good chinese example.

------
UglycupRawky
It's a truly fascinating piece, but wow, I didn't expect going in that I'd
come out not liking him. On the other hand, I didn't really know anything
about Liu Cixin or his work before now, so maybe this is all well-trodden
ground for everyone else.

~~~
ephemeralism
I think you have to look very hard to find anything positive written about
China or Chinese people in western establishment media.

Especially anything that gets posted on HN.

~~~
EastToWest
The reverse, to a lesser extent (only about Western politics), is also true in
Chinese media.

------
hurrdurr2
What a timely article on HN for me as I am reading through the Remembrance of
Earth's Past Trilogy right now... certainly not the best sci-fi works I've
ever read but some of the ideas are intriguing.

~~~
mido22
Imo, the second book was exceptional and as a standalone, one of the best sci-
fi books of the past decade.

~~~
anon46121
Not bad. The series reminded me of 1940's-50's sci-fi from the US, for a
couple of reasons: A large confidence in the industrial and scientific
capacity of their country. Relatively uncritical acceptance that their country
is the good guys. No consequential female characters.

~~~
jcelerier
> No consequential female characters.

ehhh, Ye Wenjie is fairly central in the first book (I'm halfway past the
second one)

~~~
sfifs
And the two lead characters in the third one are also women

------
gdy
To me this journalist is disgusting and plainly unprofessional. Yes, Jiayang
Fan, I am looking at you.

It's ok to argue with an interviewee, but, gosh, who does it like that?

While "brainwashed" Liu Cixin is "deaf to the argument", the journalist
ignores opponent's arguments because of her (commendable, of course)
"inflexible sense of morality" and "principles to be upheld regardless of
outcomes".

In case the reader is not susceptible to the journalist's line of thought,
let's plug a couple of bits like "as if I were minding a small child" and "he
sounds almost like a child" in seemingly innocent contexts. Of course, it has
nothing to do with how Liu Cixin's words should be perceived in the other
contexts.

But what if the reader is still not sure who's won the argument?

The journalist tells what she had read in Liu Cixin's mind: "he sighed, as if
exhausted by a debate going on in his head." Of course, he sighs because he
doubts what he says, what else that could possibly be?

"I looked at him, studying his face. He blinked" \- oh, Jiayang Fan, you are
magnificent.

~~~
EastToWest
Hey, cool down a bit. I don't think posting here on HN has any effect on the
piece or journalist's style.

Westerners think any opinions Chinese people have, if not conforming to
Western values, are due to either "brainwashed" or "fear repercussions".

I have resigned from expressing my opinions long ago in real life because I
don't think people around me care much about what I think other than claiming
superior or vindicating their own position. So my normal response has been
"fly there and ask people what they want, see for yourself".

It has been fascinating to see so many Chinese people who go oversea but end
up supporting the current government even more (mind you, not everything the
government does, before someone brings this up).

~~~
gdy
But I feel so much better now :) Yes, what irked me is not so much her
arguments as her smug attitude and the underhanded way of retelling the
conversation with a person who trusted her enough to talk with her at length.

If you ask me, lifting almost a billion of people out of poverty is amazing.
Still, some developments in China make me feel unease.

What do people in China think about the social credit system?

Also while rounding up a million of Muslims in a reeducation camps is better
than fucking up two countries in the wake of 9/11, it still doesn't sit well
with me.

~~~
EastToWest
My impression for the social credit system is that people seem to like it
(mind you, I'm not in China), because it is a powerful tool against bad
behaviors and law breakers. I'm not sure if people are aware of or care the
invasion of privacy in the implementation of the system. I'm not a big fan of
this system in its current form, but someone will need to propose better
alternative.

As for the reeducation camps, I haven't been following that closely, haven't
had first hand account or direct experience. To form my opinion I will need to
travel to Xinjiang to see for myself -- yep, I live up to my own suggestion.

------
mark_l_watson
Along with Barack Obama and probably another half billion people, I am a huge
fan of sci-fi author Liu Cixin. As a fan of Liu's, it is interesting to get to
know him a bit better.

A fun read!

His old sci-fi story The Wondering Earth is available on Netflix, which is
pretty good but I prefer reading his books.

------
misrab
"When I brought up the mass internment of Muslim Uighurs—around a million are
now in reëducation camps in the northwestern province of Xinjiang—he trotted
out the familiar arguments of government-controlled media: “Would you rather
that they be hacking away at bodies at train stations and schools in terrorist
attacks? If anything, the government is helping their economy and trying to
lift them out of poverty.” The answer duplicated government propaganda so
exactly that I couldn’t help asking Liu if he ever thought he might have been
brainwashed. “I know what you are thinking,” he told me with weary clarity.
“What about individual liberty and freedom of governance?” He sighed, as if
exhausted by a debate going on in his head. “But that’s not what Chinese
people care about. For ordinary folks, it’s the cost of health care, real-
estate prices, their children’s education. Not democracy.”"

~~~
ur-whale
Devil's advocate here, but to be fair, there's a pretty decent likelihood that
we in the west have indeed been "brainwashed" into believing that freedom is
actually more important than these other things he's listing (health care,
housing, education, etc...).

If you set aside freedom as a goal in itself for a second, then it's actually
worth asking: is freedom actually the most important factor leading to those
other creature comforts everyone wants?

I traveled once to Singapore, where a number of people I met made the exact
same argument Liu makes. They phrased it this way: sure, we don't have a free
press, and we have a benevolent tyrant running the place, but:

    
    
       - I drive a nice car
    
       - I can travel anywhere in the world
    
       - I live in a spacious appartment
    
       - My kids go to great schools
    
       - My country is a very safe place
    
       - Healthcare in S'pore is great
    
       - I have a million bucks in the bank
    

I know how repulsive such a line of reasoning might sound to a western-
educated mind, but try to step out of the cocoon of your culture for a second
(the actual "brainwashing" that every culture basically make us undergo) and
see if you can actually counter the argument with logical arguments.

~~~
mamoswine
The problem with this sort of reasoning is that it relies on the benevolence
of a dictatorship (and I don't use the term dictatorship pejoratively). It's
all fine and good to have a system where people's needs are provided for and
in general the populace is taken care of (for example, the housing situation
in Singapore is very good and much better than places where people have to pay
through the nose for shacks, like for example Hong Kong and SF).

But the real problem is that this system is by its nature fragile. On the one
hand, this means that you never know when leadership will no longer be so
enlightened and shit will hit the fan with nothing you can do about it.

From another perspective, because of this fragility, it's not capable letting
its crazy people reach their potential. Can you imagine what the system would
have done to creative hippies or even Steve Jobs if he didn't toe the line? If
you don't give free enough reign to these people, your society will hit a
ceiling where you don't produce the most innovative culture or people.

~~~
hungryhobo
An important factor that often gets left out when discussing different types
of government is the level of development of a country. A centrally powerful
government has some perks that makes rapid industrialization possible. Where
as a democracy might be good if a country is wealthy and its citizens
educated. South Korea and Singapore are the only countries that went from
impoverished to developed, and both were under authoritarian government when
the rapid industrialization happened. You can also look at China and India,
both started at comparable levels of development in the 70s but now one
economy is 5 times the other

~~~
pizza
Germany? Japan? Taiwan?

~~~
hungryhobo
Germany was already developed. And Japan and Taiwan also fit my example

------
fsloth
Science.

The only culture that ever begot science was the tradition of greek philosophy
and democracy that you could discuss everything, and that everyone was on the
same playing ground.

Materially, China could have come up with scientific progress for a thousand
years, but they didn't, because they lacked the culture for open debate and
expression of ideas.

No freedom of press, no cars.

That's the historical perspective.

Now, let's look into the future.

Do we want to stop the progress of science? If then, sure, there is no strong
technocratic argument for freedom.

~~~
unmole
> The only culture that ever begot science was the tradition of greek
> philosophy and democracy that you could discuss everything, and that
> everyone was on the same playing ground.

I'm sorry but this statement is extremely Eurocentric. Are you seriously
suggesting that ancient India and China didn't have a tradition of science?

~~~
fsloth
I'm saying that China did not have a culture that promoted science.

Not all of europe did either. Science rose mostly in the protestant north that
had learned that differing arguments are not a threat to the status quo.

I'm not saying Chinese were more stupid, or that North-Europeans are smarter
than South-Europeans.

I'm saying the culture of open discussion, critical thinking and being
challenged for ones claims (i.e. testability) are the cornerstones that are
necessary to be in place, and that curtailing freedom of speech curtails the
progress of science, as much as focusing on eminence instead of evidence does.

Technological progress and scientific progress are two different things!

China was technologically the most advanced country hands down for a very long
time before natural sciences rose. Yet they did not produce a Newton or a
Galileo, or, at least the cultural environment was such that their work was
forgotten.

------
celticninja
Phew, I didnt have much money when I was reading the three body problem. The
first I picked up second hand, the second and third I pirated, with the hope
of buying the set one day, looks like I wont be buying it now

