Japanese science fiction giant interprets the future cosmic war epidemic

　　The Japan Science Fiction Writers Club announced on February 23 that Ogawa Kazumizu's novel "The Standard of Heaven and Hell" and Yukishima's "Overnight Star" won the 40th Japan Science Fiction Awards after the review committee. The award ceremony, which was scheduled for April 17, was cancelled when Tokyo declared a state of emergency. However, Ogawa Kazumizu's "The Standard of Heaven and Hell", which had just launched the final volume a year ago, was urgently reprinted because it rehearsed the global pandemic of the epidemic, and the science fiction classic "Resurrection Day" completed by Sakyo Komatsu in the last Tokyo Olympic Games was placed in a prominent position in the bookstore, becoming a science fiction novel that Japanese readers were keen to read during the spread of the epidemic.

　　It took 10 years to create a super-long "space opera"

　　Born in 1975 in Gifu Prefecture, Japan, the author of "The Standard of Heaven and Hell", Ogawa Kazumizu won the Jump Fiction Documentary Works Award sponsored by Shueisha at the age of 21, and later created science fiction works under his current pen name, and won the Nebula Award four times for the long story "The Sixth Continent", "From Chloe's Peak to Jupiter Troy" and the short stories "Drifting Man" and "Arisma King's Cherished Monster". He is particularly good at writing novels of cosmic exploration, and his representative works such as "The Sixth Continent" and "King of The Sands of Time" have been published in Chinese translations. In November 2017, he participated in the 2017 China Science Fiction Convention and the 4th China International Science Fiction Convention held in Chengdu.

　　He conceived and created "The Standard of Heaven and Hell" at the request of hayakawa Shobo, and from the launch of the first volume of the first two volumes of many sheep in 2009, until february 2019, the tenth volume of "Aoba Will Be Rich" was released in three volumes. This science fiction masterpiece lasted 10 years, the whole book is divided into 10 volumes and 17 volumes, with a word count of more than 3 million words, which is another magnificent science fiction epic that interprets the future thousand years of human history in the vast cosmic space after Yoshiki Tanaka's "Legend of the Galactic Heroes", and is known as the iconic work of Japanese science fiction since the new century.

　　A key scenario of this super-long science fiction novel is that the outbreak of an unknown virus has changed the fate of mankind, the isolation and discrimination under the epidemic prevention system have caused the division of human society, and the centuries-long feud has led to the outbreak of the ultimate war that uses the virus as a weapon to destroy the civilization of the earth. The science fiction theme of the plague of the last days reproduced in the work is the inheritance and continuation of the classic work of Japanese science fiction literature, "Resurrection Day".

　　In the afterword to the ninth volume of The Standard of Heaven and Hell, Ogawa says that the novel was conceived by the 2004 bird flu epidemic. He also cited the Ebola virus, the Zika virus epidemic, and the resurgence of measles in Japan in the years after the work began to be written, presciently warning: "The threat of infectious diseases has not diminished, and the struggle between invisible and small forces and huge human forces will continue in the future." Based on such thorough foresight, he combined the narrative of apocalyptic disasters in science fiction literature with the plague pandemic to write this ultra-long "space opera" of the new century, which deduces how the plague epidemic will change the course of human civilization in the thousand years and the vast interstellar space.

　　The Manchus of Japanese science fiction are all seated

　　The first volume of "The Standard of Heaven and Hell" is many sheep, which begins with the colonization of the planet by humans in 2803 AD. On the third planet of the star Har-β (HB-C), the colony named Many Many Sheep (MMS) is about to celebrate the 300th anniversary of human migration. In 2503, humans arrived in the large colonial spaceship "Shepherd", the spacecraft was buried deep in the ground in the landing accident on arrival, and its power furnace became the only power source in the colony, where people built cities and villages, and the original 20,000 immigrants have multiplied to 2 million people after 300 years. Among the inhabitants are human beings like earthlings, as well as the "sea unity" with the "oxygen breakers" who can adapt to the vacuum environment after the human body is modified, as well as the bionic people who specialize in providing sexual pleasure, as well as the indigenous intelligent life of the planet "masonry" and "physician group" and other groups. For 300 years, the hereditary deck commander of the Shepherd spacecraft served as the "Provisional Governor of the Colony". After the 21st generation of provisional governors took office, his totalitarian dictatorship finally triggered a riot among the colonists. At this moment, a strange infectious disease began to spread in the city, and the source of infection came from a monster of unknown origin with scales all over its body. Known as "chewers," they carry in their blood a virus that can cause fatal infections, and this virus has been linked to a plague outbreak on Earth in the 21st century.

　　The second volume of the novel, The Salvation Group, returns to Earth in 2015, and in terms of narrative time, this is the volume that is closest to modern times. Kodama Keigo, a physician at Japan's National Institute of Infectious Diseases, was urgently dispatched to an isolated island in Palau in the western Pacific, where unexplained infectious diseases were spreading, and the source of the infection came from hexapod creatures outside the solar system. The incubation period of this unknown virus is about one week, and most of the patients die within a few days, and the fatality rate is as high as 95%. The infectious disease was named Pluto spot, and the patient remained positive for nucleic acid after curing, becoming a lifelong carrier of the virus, and the virus was transmitted to offspring through procreation. In the wake of the outbreak, healers around the world were concentrated in an isolated island in Costa Rica for long periods of quarantine.

　　Pluto virus has brought great changes to human society. After 2020, with the death rate from mass famine rising and wars raging around the world, the development of the universe for the purpose of preserving human populations has become the mission of all mankind. In 2080, 13 large nuclear reactors at seven nuclear power plants around the world had major accidents, and the first commercial nuclear reactor was put into operation on the moon, and the number of lunar immigrants exceeded 10,000 after 10 years. A "salvation group" formed by healers raises funds through the sale of commercialized Pluto spot serum to implement the lunar migration program. But moving to the moon still can't get rid of their antagonism and hatred with the uninfected population. In the process of migrating to space, the "Salvation Group" received technical support from the alien "Steady", and all 200,000 members achieved the transformation of the body carapace, at the cost of losing their fertility, gained the ability to survive in a vacuum environment, but they would beast into "chewers" after the fury. The "Salvation Group", led by Isari, moved its stronghold to Ceres, the smallest dwarf planet in the solar system, and finally declared a full-scale war on mankind in 2502 with the Pluto Spot Virus as a weapon. The Shepherd spacecraft, which only took more than 20,000 people on Earth, escaped to the third planet of the star har-β, which is the origin of the human colony mms described in the first volume.

　　In the tenth volume of the novel, the "Salvation Group" uses the mysterious power source left by aliens to transform Ceres into a spaceship away from the solar system in order to restore the body's fertility, and to the planet Kamm, the parent star of the "Prudent", gemini μ 200 light-years away from the solar system. The expedition actually came from the behind-the-scenes manipulation of the "bane" of the information life form lurking in Ceres. It was this form of non-interlocutory information lifeform, formed tens of millions of years ago, that brought the Pluto-spot virus to Earth's solar system. The "Salvation Group" led by Isari tries to reverse the ecology of the "bane" by providing human germ cells to create an immune "charm seed", and the queen of the planet Kam, a smart aggregate in the physical form of a miniature black hole, is determined to eliminate the "bane" through a supernova explosion. Gemini μ eventually ushered in a supernova explosion, the Pluto spot virus completely disappeared from the universe, replaced by a "savior group" and mms people driving Ceres back to the solar system. Near the end of the novel, a chapter depicts the "Orthodox Earthlings", "Saviors", "Oxygen Breakers" and other human descendants flying into the Milky Way in a huge tree-like starship in 3135 AD.

　　"The Standard of Heaven and Hell" includes almost all types of modern science fiction elements such as doomsday disasters, robots and bionic humans, alien intelligence, human body modification, space migration, and space war, and each volume pursues changes and independence in stylistic style and content themes. A book review published by the Asahi Shimbun praised "The Standard of Heaven and Hell" as a "full seat of science fiction."

　　The imagination in the science fiction world collides with the sudden reality

　　Half a century ago, the novel "Resurrection Day" by The Master of Japanese Science Fiction Literature Sasuke Komatsu conceived of the catastrophe of an unknown virus for mankind. The influence of this work on Ogawa Kazumizu is obvious. "Resurrection Day" tells that in 196×, the British Army Research Institute artificial satellites collected viruses from the universe for the original virus, was privately brought out and caused leakage, the outbreak of virus infection brought a devastating blow to human society, half a year later about 3.5 billion people nearly extinction, only about 10,000 people in Antarctica from various countries survived. Four years after the disaster year, Japanese geologists in Antarctica observed that a strong earthquake was about to occur in North America and ventured to the White House in Washington to dismantle the automatic retaliation system for nuclear missiles set up by the United States, but due to the early arrival of the earthquake, the plan failed, and the earth ushered in the second death in the launch of all nuclear missiles in the United States and the Soviet Union. The novel was completed in 1964, when Tokyo first hosted the Olympic Games. Since then, It took Komatsu Sakyo nine years to conceive and create "The Sinking of Japan", which was revived and re-read by the 2011 East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and when the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were postponed, the bunko version of "Resurrection Day" was also sold again.

　　As a representative work of two generations of science fiction writers, "Resurrection Day" and "The Standard of Heaven and Hell" are exactly half a century apart. Both works break through the confines of national differences in the narrative of disasters, and choose a macro perspective of watching over the common destiny of mankind. On the basis of the description of the scourge of the plague, the elements of disaster based on the context of post-war Japan are superimposed on earthquakes, nuclear war crises, nuclear leaks, and other disaster elements. After the successful landing of the Apollo 11 spacecraft on the moon, the "space opera" genre narrative in the Japanese science fiction industry entered its heyday, and in such works of Japanese subject matter, the motivation for space exploration is often directly related to the earth disaster, as exemplified by the 1970s TV series "Space Battleship Yamato". Ogawa Kazumizu's "The Standard of Heaven and Hell" places the theme of the plague of the last days in the cosmic space to reinterpret, and focuses on the group that turns into a virus carrier after the virus infection, highlighting the harm of crowd discrimination caused by the virus, as a science fiction work created in the new century, this is a theme of practical significance. The "salvation group" endorsed by Hizawa Chimao and his descendant Isari in "The Standard of Heaven and Hell" is the protagonist in the true sense of the novel. The isolation of people who block the source of transmission creates social divisions, the healers suffer social exclusion and expulsion, and their long journey from earth to space, revenge, bestiality, and physical return constitutes a narrative thread. Centuries-old grudges erupt into a final war, leaving the uninfected nearly extinct in the solar system. "Epidemic prevention discrimination" eventually caused a protracted disaster for mankind.

　　How do you resolve and reconcile with the incompatible other? The story of The Standard of Heaven and Hell emphasizes the importance of communication and dialogue. The "heaven" in the title of the novel refers to natural life, including non-infected people, and "hades" refers to the Pluto spot virus and its carriers. The work suggests that the unremitting dialogue and tolerance between different groups divided by the virus are the "navigation" for each other to walk together in the universe.

　　Science fiction in postmodern society is actually a "myth" told in a discursive way that predicts the future. Therefore, in the crisis moment of postmodern society, it is likely that the imagination of the science fiction world will collide head-on with the sudden reality, and the two constitute a rehearsal or prophetic mirror image relationship. In "Resurrection Day" and "The Standard of Heaven and Hell", the reader seems to see the reality of the present and the visible future, but on the other hand, the disasters that occur in the real world are always complex and cruel that science fiction cannot imagine. The global outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 is bound to bring about dramatic changes in science fiction literature in the new century. How will the sci-fi imagination of the "post-pandemic era" change? The trends in Japanese science fiction literature are still worth continuing to pay attention to and observe.

Original title: Watching the macro perspective of the common destiny of mankind The Japanese science fiction giant interprets the future cosmic war epidemic

Source: China Social Science Network - China Social Science Daily Author: Qin Gang

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