I'm not an avid sci-fi fan, but Cixin Liu's work is outstanding: his The Three-Body Problem (2007), the first in his Remembrance of Things Past trilogy, was my entree to his universe-building imagination, and I've read most of his books since then.



Assessment



I eagerly opened Supernova Era (2004) and found that Cixin Liu has delivered again; well, it’s actually an early book so it's really a pre-delivery again. This is a compelling tale of humanity's End Time—Mankind survives a cosmic catastrophe

I'm not an avid sci-fi fan, but Cixin Liu's work is outstanding: his The Three-Body Problem (2007), the first in his Remembrance of Things Past trilogy, was my entree to his universe-building imagination, and I've read most of his books since then.



Assessment



I eagerly opened Supernova Era (2004) and found that Cixin Liu has delivered again; well, it’s actually an early book so it's really a pre-delivery again. This is a compelling tale of humanity's End Time—Mankind survives a cosmic catastrophe only to be existentially threatened by its own inner nature. The book is a natural extension of William Goldings' Lord of the Flies, in which innocent children left unattended by adults descend into violence and brutality. But now the damage is not limited to an isolated island, it's global.



The book is a cleverly crafted tale with a prescient prediction of the American president who would be elected twelve years after the book's publication and face impeachment proceedings for his unstable and dictatorial behavior. Liu must have access to a crystal ball.



Cixin Liu's talent is not just story-telling. His stories are set in the context of deeply interesting questions that affect strategic decision-making and make the reader think more deeply about human decisions.



The Story



Most tragedies have the meat at the end of the story, but this book front loads it. A supernova has exploded, not an uncommon event but this one is only eight light-years from Earth. After eight years Earth's sky lights up like an atomic explosion for about 1½ hours, too short to expose the entire world to the most intense radiation field. But it's the subsequent secondary radiation that's cataclysmic; it leaves a Red Nebula of lower-frequency radiation hanging in the sky for weeks and scrambling the genetic structure of adults while leaving children under age thirteen little affected.



The result is that all adults will die within a year or so, leaving Earth entirely in the hands of children, predominantly those ten and younger. The existential problem is how to transfer the knowledge of adults to children before adults wink out. Liu makes it clear that this is no easy task—with neither mature minds nor the education required for understanding complex technology or adult leadership, the cram sessions for knowledge transfer can only have limited value.



The Chinese central government plays a simulation game to pick out children with talent for leadership in the post-adult world. A selected group of children are taken to an area that has been divided into twenty-four sub-areas. Each of those sub-areas is a "nation" and each nation has different resources—some have more land, some with less land have more arable land, others have more water, others have easier terrain to navigate, and so on. All have light military weapons.



The goal is to let the children run their nations to learn how best to interact with neighbors, and to select those who demonstrate high leadership potential for further training. The result is a "Lord of the Flies" mini-world with nations quickly sliding to the lowest level of interaction—war. But the simulation reveals some kids with potential to become national leaders.



The result is that the national government will be led by a triumvirate of three children: one, a female named Xiomeng, will be the government's soul; a second, called "Specs," will be its brain; the third, a male named Huahua, will be the decision-maker and communicator. It will be their responsibility to run the country's many ministries and to make foreign and domestic policies.



Lower level leadership positions are also filled and a nationwide crash education program begins. For example, Lü Gang, a young boy with military potential, is selected to be China's armed forces commander, and we look over his shoulder as the current commander tries to instill in the child a sense of what war is about and about battlefield management, particularly how to absorb the overload of conflicting reports from a battlefield and shape the information into a coherent and correct mental view of a battlefield.



Other children are taught by their parents to take over their jobs. A power plant engineer teaches his son to manage and operate the local power plant, a surgeon teaches her daughterthe procedues and practices in an operating room, a bus driver teaches his son to drive a bus, and so on. It's understood that the children aren't really prepared to take over, but it's the best that can be done in limited time.



Meanwhile the preparations are made for the deaths of billions of adults. Sites are selected and prepared for burial, and on one day all adults are taken to their sites and euthanized. There are suddenly 200 million "tweens" bereft at the loss of parents and responsible for keeping all services going: water must flow, food must grow, transportation of materials and people must continue, electricity, sewerage, communications, public safety, and other essential services must function. 200 million children are immediately overwhelmed and begin calling Beijing for assistance. But Beijing is as bereft of adult wisdom as the callers: "Beijing" is now a triumvirate of three children placed in the highest leadership position and overseeing child-run ministries directly responsible for providing government services.



The flood of incoming requests rapidly overwhelms the triumvirate—there's no way they can organize the information flowing in from millions of helpless and clueless children ("Where's my dinner?" "How do I feed the dog?" "Do I still have to go to school?") and develop a plan that works for all the callers. Technology comes to the rescue: the adults have left behind a Quantum computer called "Big Quantum" ("BQ") capable of managing the communications and organizing the flood of information. BQ summarizes the incoming requests into a list of national needs and responds to each request to establish confidence that "Beijing" is still in charge. The computer stems the collapse of the country and after a period of upheaval, stability prevails.



The computer also organizes a national forum where each of the citizens can indicate their concerns and needs to the triumvirate. The views of the 200 million child-citizens are summarized as the views of "virtual citizens." For example, if 40 million of the children express a need for an improved bus system, BQ might report "Citizen 10, 20%, Improved Bus System," meaning that the tenth most frequent request (Citizen 10), representing 20 percent of the population, is for an improved bus system.



Citizen 1 represents the most frequent "need." It turns out that "Citizen 1, 98%, wants a Five Year Plan to build a massive nationwide amusement park." In short, as the computer summarizes all of the forum information it reports that "Kids just want to have fun." They don't want to become adults, they don't want responsibility, they want someone else to provide for their needs and wishes, they want the old life! The triumvirate must deal with this impossible request in a way that recognizes the wish but somehow imposes reality without creating a revolution or a national sit-in. But any attempt to introduce reason leads to a shout-down by "Citizen 1."



And so, in China and around the world, the action word became "Play!" But that word was not limited to pre-Supernova games like soccer. The adults of each nation had left behind massive armaments begging to be used. AsGolding observed, war is mankind's play, so In each nation the play du hour becomes violent conflict. The ultimate game is designed: called the Supernova War, it is a world war shaped around the Olympics. Events will be organized in which each of the opposing nations is allocated the same military resources and joyous warfare will be executed with "hot" weapon. Some events will be tank-on-tank, others will be tank-on-aircraft, others ship-on-aircraft, and so on. The only venue without hot weapons will be the ICBM-on-ICBM event. The stakes in the New Olympics are not just bragging rights: the now-temperate Antarctic—where the Games will be held—will be divided up between the nations according to the scores.



William Golding had it right—just under the skin of children is a thirst for excitement and an associated inclination to brutality and violence. His book Lord of the Flies (1954) should have been read by everyone before the Games inevitably descended into nuclear exchanges when one country (America), angered at cheating by another country, ups the stakes in the ICBM-on-ICBM event by using a nuclear warhead rather than the dummy warhead required by the rules. The irony is that while all nations were required to dispose of nuclear weapons before the turnover, the U.S. didn't comply and made a nuclear attack on China's Antarctic base. This seemed to settle the Supernova War in favor of the U.S. After all, what would be an effective retaliation?



Well, a military adage is that if you have thought of it, so has your opposition. As the American President is celebrating victory, the Chinese government learns that the adults left one nuclear-tipped ICBM intact just in case the opposition went nuclear. That weapon is triggered and the American base is destroyed. The Games abruptly end with nothing resolved and a total of over 500,000 deaths. Now, wasn't that fun?



When the American President returns to Washington he finds that he has been impeached, convicted, and thrown out of office for his misuse of nuclear weapons. His former chief of staff is now the elected president. She's not the sharpest tool in the shed, but she seeks the advice of sharp tools and plans the Greatest Game of All to restore global balance. In a protocol named "The Supernova Agreement" China accepts the U. S. challenge. Enjoy the game!