The end is near, says Liu cixin Waldorf, he sees it coming. The best-selling author from China says about the imminent end of the world. He talks of the end of Science Fiction.
The speculative Genre has a couple of years, says Liu. Then it was history. Too fast the technological progress is advancing; in a few years he’ll have the writers of the last bit of imagination robbed. Then: at the end of, from, over. “This invention,” he says and shows on his Smartphone, “is more Science Fiction than most of what has spawned this Genre. The technology has outpaced our imagination.”
It’s a Wednesday in October, Liu cixin Waldorf – black horn-rimmed glasses, T-Shirt, short – hair- sits in the conference room of a hotel in Berlin-Mitte. It is a bizarre Situation: Liu, the Star of the Science-Fiction scene, holds a Eulogy to the Genre that gave him international breakthrough. In the 19th century. Century was the enthusiasm for technological progress, the engine for the emergence of Science Fiction, says Liu.
technology beyond the imagination
But today, this technological progress is assumed to have so much pace and to such an extent that the human Imagination could not keep pace. Technology as a midwife and undertaker of speculative literature. “Actually, I would have to write in the time remaining, what keeps the stuff,” says Liu. But here the Problem starts.
Liu’s ascent to the Feuilleton-darling is like a fairy tale. He was born and raised in the North of China, in the city of Yangquan, with one and a half million inhabitants, is by Chinese standards a Provinzkaff. Until a few years ago, he worked as an engineer in a hydroelectric power plant. In the evening he dipped in the Internet in the Depths of the celestial mechanics, las Arthur C. Clarke, and wrote their own Science Fiction texts. In 2006, he published the story “The three suns”, the first part of his acclaimed “Trisolaris”trilogy, as a sequel to the novel in the Chinese magazine Science Fiction World .
The Rest is history: 2008 the book’s publication in China, and in 2014 the Translation followed into English. 2015 the book was excellent – as a first work by an Asian author at all – with the Hugo Award, one of the most important awards for Science Fiction literature. In 2017, Barack Obama gushed in an Interview with the New York Times of the resonance space of the novel. 2017 appeared then, with an almost fantastic seeming shift in time of approximately ten years, the German Translation. Meanwhile, the second volume of the “Trisolaris”trilogy, “The dark forest” in German; the third part, “Beyond time”, is announced for the coming year.
in Short: Today, Liu is a Star, is courted. His German Bets10 publisher came to live with him in five-star hotels, and afterwards carries him Breakfast. On his novels he prints in the Euro centric marketing jargon – the superlative of “world bestseller”.
Only, what you can write when you have landed a “world bestseller”?
A few days earlier, Liu sitting in a circle of German and Chinese cultural officials at an Italian Restaurant in Essen. Shortly before, he has been on the literary festival lit.RUHR led a panel discussion, after which he signed books. Felt like the whole room wanted a signature from him, it’s mostly been German in the audience, but also many Chinese.
The end is near
Now he sits on Pasta and beer and tells the story of his life in China. Of his daughter, who is now on the Uni. And his wife, who works away and is only on weekends at home. He tells, what he does all day long. Eat, shop, think. Write something. The Written discard. Then again: eating, shopping, thinking. “I have published for the past eight years is nothing,” he says. The end is near.
His success abroad, he can’t explain himself, says Liu. Sure, he could surmise. The American Science-Fiction about exceeded the limits of the Zenith. Also, geopolitics plays a role. Currently, America is the descending and China, the power of ascending the end of the world. And the praise of key leaders such as Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg was not, of course, remained without effect. “But all this can not explain my success in full. The truth is: I have no idea,” says Liu.
played a part in the Hype about the Chinese is also likely to be the message to have been, according to Amazon’s plan, a billion dollars for the rights to the “Trisolaris”trilogy. But this message is probably a smokescreen. Liu has sold the rights for the trilogy years ago to a Chinese production company. Of a Amazon series professional animals he the streaming service hole financially only if him as screenwriters on Board, he says.
In the negotiations between Amazon and the production company he was not involved; the billion he could not confirm that. Others are more explicit: “The sum is nonsense. This is a Trick, with the attention that will be generated,” says Michael Kahn-Ackermann, the long-time Director of the Goethe-Institute in Beijing on the sidelines of the lit.RUHR.
Liu is a nice person, polite, modest and somewhat brittle kind of funny. But who listens to him talk about politics, wonders whether it would be better to have him indicate that his opinions in Europe, salon are just capable of.
China plans, for example, the introduction of a “social credit system”. By using the Online data should be evaluated not only the financial credit, but also on the social and political behavior of citizens. A positive Rating can lead loans and Visa will soon be granted. A negative Rating can lead to travel restrictions will be imposed or the Internet will be throttled speed. In short: China is working on a digital dystopia of Orwellian proportions.
What is the Science-Fiction writer thinks about the impending dystopia in his home?
“In Chinese society, there is no privacy. My neighbor knows, even without a monitoring technology, what I’ve eaten lunch.” But the threat scenario will lead to the fact that nobody dares to enter into the already censored media and publicity, something Critical? “The public opinion can get out of control. It is better to steer you.”
For his political positions, Liu in the West, will not receive any prices. But political correctness is not a literary seal of approval. Anyone who reads his books, one profits from them.
Back at home, says Liu, will he eat, shop and think. About new stories, swashbuckling Plots, and three-dimensional figures. He writes against their own success. And against the death of Science Fiction.
“I don’t want to be the best Science Fiction writer in China,” he says: “But the last one.”
