Good science fiction is utopia. Good futurism is horror. Good science fiction plots often have to do with threats to utopia. Good futurism will leave you questioning if reality itself is a threat. Futurism, then, is inherently reactionary, while science fiction will always been a tool of progress. This important critical toolset can help you avoid polluting your mind with delusions and stay wise with the lessons of other works.
I recently sat down to read Liu Cixin’s famed text, Sān Tǐ - in English, “Three Body”. The opening scenes are of China’s famed struggle sessions, or public ceremonies to shame - and occasionally lynch - elements of the populace viewed as against the Cultural Revolution. In this opening scene, students hurl insults for teaching Einstein’s “reactionary” relativity theory. Concepts and scientific facts are rejected for being too capitalist, or being made by imperialists. To the historically ignorant, these pages may remind one’s self of the recent canceling of professors and intellectuals not progressive enough. In fact, it rather is the same thing. Liu Cixin presents the scene through the daughter of the current victim, as she witnesses her father beaten to death by students who wanted to show they love the revolution more than science itself. The text invites you to be sympathetic to the “reactionary” intellectuals being beaten and occasionally killed for being unwilling to go along with public whiplash. A curiously reactionary invitation for a Chinese author who, in real life, advocates for more camps and surveillance of Xi’s state. The entire text exists in the curious contradictions of post-Mao China where Mao is both revered and criticized. There is a little-known to the west text by Mao, who actually used the principles of the Free Market to evaluate his Communes - that being, some communes should fail if they are poorly run and cannot make profit. This curious view of the communes as seemingly pseudo-private businesses in a state of competition was the start of capitalism returning to Maoist China in ever-increasing increments, and is to this day the means by which China runs its state-owned assets. Such that, today, China is a form of state capitalism far more than socialism. The text Mao wrote goes:
We are sandwiched between attacks from Rightists within our Party and from outside… Whenever they speak, they say we are in a mess. The more they say we in a mess the better, and the more we should listen… China will not sink down, the sky will not fall. We have done some good things and our backbones are strong…
Could the People’s Communes collapse? Up to now, not one has collapsed. We were prepared for the collapse of half of them, and if 70 percent collapsed, there would still be 30 percent left. If they must collapse, let them. If they are not well run, they are sure to collapse. The Communist Party aims to run things well, to run the communes well, to run all enterprises well, to run agriculture, industry, commerce, communications, transport, and culture and education well…
Sān Tǐ’s focus on Ye Wenjie, the daughter of a reactionary beat in this time, makes the text deeply sympathetic to a reactionary perspective to the progressive world. The life of Ye shows the increasingly wild extremes of progress that turns begins to corrupt her soul. In time, she grows to hold deep animosity to humanity at large. In many ways, she becomes something of a femcel for a number of years. Ultimately, her “punishment” is to be locked into an astrophysics lab to research shooting microwaves at US satellites. As it were, at least some scientists are needed to progress weapons technology. For Ye, this is a form of riding the tiger. Locked away to her studies and expertise, she need not worry about the rest of the mad world.
It’s there the reader finds her, steaming in hatred for her commanders, her leaders, her species, and her planet in general. She is tasked with designing a signal in a SETI-like style to announce the Maoists on Earth are willing to talk, along with the Americans and Russians sending their signals. And it’s there, some time later, she receives a curious reply from space: DO NOT REPLY.
The being who sent the message explains they are a pacifist from a dying world. Its civilization will go to earth to make a new home if they get a reply and can coordinate where Earth is. The Pacifist saw the beauty of Earth in the transmission and did not want their own civilization to destroy it. A strange kind of sympathy…
…Sympathy Ye does not share. Like the slaves who opened the gates of Rome to German invaders, Ye decides whatever these beings are, they are better than the horror of Earth’s leaders. Ye is done riding the tiger. Ye is done waiting for the forces of progress to die out. She does not want to wait for a future she may not see. Ye replies to the message, giving the pacifist’s overlords a light-speed range of where Earth is, and a general direction.
The text will likely reflect most closely with those with a desire to get off the tiger they are riding, to use a reactionary phrase. It is like the diary of the slave who opened the gates to the barbarians - fed up with a stagnant and dying system where he cannot find a future.
There’s much existential fear in these texts, but what I found most humbling are some of the ordinary human conversations: Years later, Ye meets with the students who beat her father. All have grown tired, and more or less been abandoned by the revolution as it has moved on to other interests. “The demonic spiritual energy which once propelled them was gone”, the text proclaims. When Ye asks them to repent for their actions, they simply reply “then who will repent to us” for selling them progressive lies that squandered their youths.
There is a theme in the text to the dangers of passion, sweeping you up to lead you astray - often to destroy the very things you love. As Ye witnessed the murderers of her father weep for having wasted their youth murdering political dissidents, a deep sense of meaninglessness floods her. For Ye, witnessing the endless cycles of foolish youth and wretched age seals any remorse she has for opening the gates to some unknown barbarian in the stars.
Ye learns that it will take many centuries for the barbarians to arrive. She decides to start telling other global dissidents of her secret betrayal of humanity. Slowly, she establishes regular communications with the barbarians, and works to make sure those gates cannot be shut in those centuries.
The text is remarkably reactionary against the current world order. The aliens - Trisolarians - are skeptical of Earth’s democracy, and admit to Ye that it is very likely humanity could exceed the aliens if they fall out of individualism. In an ironic twist, Ye must make sure humanity stays as it is - as she hates - to ensure the conquest. In the between she must prevent humanity from overcoming its problems. The Aliens are ambiguous as to humanity’s ultimately future with some wanting to allow a preservation of humanity under their leadership, while others not seeing anything possible with co-habitation. But by the end of the text, the world becomes aware of Ye’s betrayal. Her society of elites working towards this conquest are exposed, and Ye is able to cripple humanity for those centuries to come. Her ultimately sentiment is that humanity doesn’t deserve freedom. It’s freer being subject to something as close to God as possible in the cosmos: a powerful alien intelligence.
The text begs to ask: would you violate your hope to ensure your vengeance?
A great text, and worthy of a read - as well as the trilogy in general.
Another interesting Chinese Author is Cixin's translator Ken Liu (or Liu Ken). His Fantasy series the Dandelion Dynasty (once a trilogy but the last book had to be split into two. 3 books published thus far.)
The series has a number of interesting elements:
1. A pantheon of Gods, who elect champions. Their role is akin to the Greek pantheon, though they are very much inspired by the Chinese pantheon.
2. A bone-age technological society that tricks an advanced civilisation into thinking that they are servile, before proceeding to invade their land.
3. An ungulate or bovid with a curious utilisation of its methane chambers.
4. Scenes like that one you described in Three-Body Problem.
5. A culture with an openly nihilistic metaphysic.
6. An open defence of elitist education on the grounds of advancing social justice. (Strays into Abolition of Man territory)
7. A Maritime, as oppose to continental, setting and feel.