(Yangtze Evening News/Yang Eye reporter Cai Zhen) After 20 years of diving, the author of "The Legend of Wukong" is now working on science fiction and has a strong endurance for Chinese science fiction stories. Recently, his new work "The Future: The Journey of Mankind" was published and distributed by Motie Books and listed nationwide.
According to reports, "The Future: The Journey of Mankind" has a huge time span, covering nearly 150 years of time. With his unique writing style and narrative system, the author meticulously depicts three generations of exploration of the future of mankind.
After the prosperity, it is a new starting point
"I want this day, I can no longer cover my eyes, I want this land, I can't bury my heart anymore, I want all sentient beings to understand my intentions, and I want all the Buddhas to disappear!" The provenance of this sentence is presumably no stranger to everyone.
In 2001, "The Legend of Wukong" came out of nowhere, and has been reprinted several times so far, becoming a classic in the hearts of countless readers. This makes the author a leader among the first batch of online writers. Later, together with several like-minded friends, He Zai founded the fantasy magazine Kyushu Fantasy. "Kyushu" has also become a super IP in China, and in 2018, as the first film and television work of the "Kyushu" series, "The Tale of the Sea Muyun" also received countless praises.
In the science fiction novel "The Future: The Journey of Mankind", Jin He wrote, "What I want to do is actually to create a new world." "When all the hustle and bustle is over, this science fiction novel, which has taken nearly 20 years to create, is about to bring a whole new world. This may become the starting point of the next super IP, what kind of wonderful story will happen in "Future"?
Three generations of exploration of the future of humanity
The Future: The Journey of Mankind takes a multi-perspective narrative approach. The story unfolds from the perspective of the three protagonists. These three protagonists, living in different eras, are also the epitome of three generations.
The protagonist of the first generation, He Hesheng, is a mathematical genius. He firmly believes that everything in the world can be calculated by scientific theories, including the future. By chance, he was born in the process of ahead-looking human experiments, saw the future, and saw the scene of "the future is no longer human".
The protagonist of the second generation, Xia Yuanxing, is an e-sports genius who was selected for the Special Forces because of his extremely high computer talent. Later, human society was occupied by alien creatures, and Xia Yuanxing joined the army and became the leader of the federation army, saving the earth. However, after a brief peace of victory in the war, it was once again plunged into a human civil war.
The protagonist of the third generation, Xia Yongnuo, is the son of Xia Yuanxing. Since childhood, Xia Yongnuo has been living in the "human civilization" of the underground city, and they have been fighting underground creatures and monsters on the ground under the conditions of darkness and lack of materials all day long, and the battle seems to be an eternity that everyone and every day has to face. One day, he came into contact with the "human civilization" on earth—collecting all the weapons of mankind, implanting chips in the brain, completely banning violence, abolishing the state, establishing a unified world, and placing human beings under the protection of eternal laws, but they had bright rooms, rich food and clothing, and "free" lives.
Abundance and poverty, survival and death, dignity and freedom... One by one, these sharp questions crossed his face. Where should the future of humanity go, and how should we choose?
There is no end to the future, only a journey
In the past, Most of Jin's works started with ordinary characters, depicting stories of their difficult growth in a turbulent and complicated world, in order to show the powerlessness and misery of individual life in destiny, and to reflect the individual's struggle against fate.
But this new work is not limited to this. In The Future: The Journey of Mankind, Present and Present merges the past, uncertain future world with the choice of the protagonist. Every different choice will arrive at a different future. There is more than one "future" in the parallel world, and every choice made now is closely related to the "future". This time, the characters in the story are helpless passives in the torrent of fate and unknown choices. With their ordinary flesh and blood, they built their own heroic legends.
In addition, in the transformation of the two wars in which the Federation and the liberals united with the outside world and then quickly turned into a civil war, the author uses the dialogue between the second-generation protagonist Xia Yuanxing and his wife to illustrate the contradictions between the two different positions. One wonders: Who are we fighting for?
In war, people's desires and ambitions are infinitely magnified, and one person's choice is the fulcrum that may affect the entire world. The world may be destroyed by war and sunk in the end, but do we still have a choice in the future? What the world will be in the future is everyone's journey; our choices will eventually reach some unknown future.
The rise of Chinese science fiction is unstoppable
The 2010s is destined to be an era of Chinese science fiction.
Liu Cixin's "Three-Body Problem" and Hao Jingfang's "Beijing Folding" won the Hugo Award in 2015 and 2016 respectively, known as the "Nobel Prize in Science Fiction". In 2019, the film of the same name adapted from Liu Cixin's science fiction novel "The Wandering Earth" was released, and once it was launched, it triggered a nationwide discussion frenzy and won nearly 5 billion yuan at the box office.
Chinese science fiction is entering the field of science fiction with an unstoppable posture. It is believed that China's science fiction stories will fly higher around the world. The emergence of "The Future: The Journey of Mankind" will inject new enduring energy into Chinese science fiction. If the golden age of science fiction comes again, there will be a Chinese figure in it.