Supernova Era

by Cixin Liu, Joel Martinsen (Translator)

Overview

From science fiction legend Cixin Liu, the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Three-Body Problem, comes Supernova Era, a vision of the future that reads “like Ursula K. Le Guin rewriting The Lord of the Flies for the quantum age.” (NPR).

In those days, Earth was a planet in space.
In those days, Beijing was a city on Earth.
On this night, history as known to humanity came to an end.

Eight light years away, a star has died, creating a supernova event that showers Earth in deadly levels of radiation. Within a year, everyone over the age of thirteen will die.

And so the countdown begins. Parents apprentice their children and try to pass on the knowledge needed to keep the world running.

But when the world is theirs, the last generation may not want to continue the legacy left to them. And in shaping the future however they want, will the children usher in an era of bright beginnings or final mistakes?

"This audacious and ultimately optimistic early work will give Liu's English-reading fans a glimpse at his evolution as a writer and give any speculative fiction reader food for deep thought." — Shelf Awareness

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250306050
Publisher:	Tom Doherty Associates
Publication date:	09/08/2020
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	89,449
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

CIXIN LIU is a prolific and popular science fiction writer in the People's Republic of China. Liu is a winner of the Hugo Award and a multiple winner of the Galaxy Award (the Chinese Hugo) and the Xing Yun Award (the Chinese Nebula). His novels include The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death's End. He lives with his family in Yangquan, Shanxi.

JOEL MARTINSEN is the translator of The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu and (with Alice Xin Liu) of The Problem With Me, a collection of essays by Han Han. His translations of short fiction have appeared in Pathlight, Chutzpah, and Words Without Borders. He lives in Beijing.

Table of Contents

Prologue 13

1 The Dead Star 17

The End 17

The Midnight Sun 23

2 The Selection 30

A World in a Valley 30

The State 51

3 The Great Learning 56

The World Classroom 56

The Chief of General Staff 73

MSG and Salt 81

4 Handing Over the World 88

Big Quantum 88

Dry Run of the New World 91

The Epoch Clock 96

The Supernova Era 104

5 The Era Begins 109

Hour One 109

Suspension 125

6 Inertia 138

Inspection 138

The National Assembly 143

A Country of Fun 152

Debate 164

7 Candytown 169

Dreamtime 169

Slumbertime 177

8 Candytown in America 188

The Ice Cream Banquet 188

Candytown in America 210

World Games 221

9 The Supernova War 225

Antarctica 225

Games of Blood and Iron 248

A Thousand Suns 274

The CE Mine 284

Counterattack 287

Blizzard 292

10 Genesis 303

A New President 303

A Visit 310

New World Games 313

The Exchange 317

The Decision 320

The Great Migration 324

Genesis 334

Epilogue: Blue Planet 336

Afterword 345

Editorial Reviews

07/08/2019

Liu, author of the intellectually challenging Three-Body Problem trilogy, provides a more accessible look at humanity’s future in this political thriller founded on a thought experiment reminiscent of classic SF. A supernova near Earth bathes the planet in radiation that has minimal effect on people 13 or younger, but will kill anyone older within a year. That provides time for the governments of the world to prepare the oldest children to assume the leadership of their respective countries. Liu focuses on a group of students in China who are assigned some territory to govern; they must plan to have adequate resources while dealing with their neighbors’ territorial ambitions. The complicated role-playing game is used to identify potential leaders. After the inevitable deaths of all the adults, which is chillingly described, the adolescent leaders are left to grapple with an overwhelming set of responsibilities—and a population of even younger children who have their own ideas of how a post-adult world should look. There’s more talk than action, and the global scale of the disaster leaves little room for individual character development. Plausible but surprising twists make this a memorable what-if tale. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Stunning concepts and a contemplative tone that provides vital insight into the formative years of one of the genre's masters. In Liu's hands, ‘the children are our future’ becomes far more than a cozy cliché; it's a springboard for the kind of agile and relevant thought experiment that science fiction, at its best, manifests.”—NPR

“This audacious and ultimately optimistic early work will give Liu's English-reading fans a glimpse at his evolution as a writer and give any speculative fiction reader food for deep thought.”—Shelf Awareness

Praise for the Three-Body trilogy

“Wildly imaginative.”—President Barack Obama

“The War of the Worlds for the twenty-first century . . . Packed with a sense of wonder.”—The Wall Street Journal

“A breakthrough book . . . A unique blend of scientific and philosophical speculation, politics and history, conspiracy theory and cosmology.”—George R. R. Martin

“Tackles politics, philosophy, and virtual reality in a story that moves at a thriller's pace.”—The Washington Post

“Evokes the thrill of exploration and the beauty of scale.”—The New Yorker

“Stunning, elegant . . . A science fiction epic of the most profound kind.”—NPR

From the Publisher

2019-07-28
Apocalyptic yarn from the celebrated author of the Three-Body Problem trilogy (Death's End, 2016, etc.).

A nearby star explodes, hammering Earth with radiation that within a year will kill every person older than 13. Governments worldwide immediately grasp the facts, draw accurate conclusions, and make plans for parents and caregivers to rapidly teach their children the skills they'll need in order to keep civilization going. These developments may seem weirdly unreal when viewed from a non-Chinese perspective, as might the prospect of 13-year-old airline pilots, nuclear engineers, or doctors achieving competency after a year's training. The adults duly die off. Fortunately, China has just invented a supercomputer named China Quantum which helps out when the child executives—dreamer Huahua, intellectual Specs, and mature, practical Xiaomeng—become overwhelmed with the enormity of their task. The Chinese child nation creates a digital forum and decides that what it really wants to do is play, not slavishly attempt to keep the adult model functioning. Other nations come to similar conclusions. Tellingly, young America, which loves its guns, proposes live-ammo war games on Antarctica, which has rapidly melted. Liu wrote this tale in 1989, the year of Tiananmen Square, he says in an afterword. If it seems dark—indeed, the premise immediately demands comparison with William Golding's Lord of the Flies, right down to the singular lack of female perspective—Liu reportedly revised it several times before it was finally published in 2003, to avoid possible issues with officialdom. Imagine how much darker it must have been. The book as published stresses the competency and forethought of the older generation and downplays the inability of children to understand and anticipate consequences. Readers may draw their own conclusions about the politics behind all this.

A hardworking but uninspired early novel, wholly overshadowed by Liu's later masterpiece.

Kirkus Reviews

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