杏吧原创

Your Three-Body Problem trilogy, first published between 2006 and 2010, describes the 20-million-year-long fallout from humanity鈥檚 attempt to make contact with extraterrestrials. How well prepared are we for the arrival of an alien race like your Trisolarans?

We are totally not ready yet. The technology we have is still primitive. If other civilisations visit 鈥� aliens who are able to travel distances of hundreds or even millions of light years to get here 鈥� the gap between our respective technologies would be about the same as that between humans and ants. How will a group of such highly civilised aliens even know that we are intelligent?

Actually, that problem works both ways. How does that ant wandering across your desk know you are the planet鈥檚 dominant species? You don鈥檛 know how to dig a hole, you don鈥檛 fondle delicious dead bugs and you don鈥檛 protect your queen. All you do is hit those square-shaped things in front of you 鈥� an activity that generates absolutely no food whatsoever. Ants don鈥檛 think humans are intelligent at all.

In Dark Forest, the middle volume of your trilogy, you wrote 鈥淓ach civilization鈥檚 goal is survival鈥�. This sounds like a Darwinian process, applied at a civilisation level. Is it possible to have a galactic ecosystem that is ethical?

First, we haven鈥檛 discovered any extraterrestrial life form, not to mention any other civilisation! And if we are to picture what the universe would be like if there were an enormous number of civilisations out there, we can only derive assumptions from our own experience. A glance over human history tells us that the rise and fall of a great many civilisations is the result of war.

鈥淏ecause of our selfishness, we can overcome any amount of environmental destruction鈥�

It is even more depressing when we think about inter-species interactions. What happens when a species meets a stronger, more intellectually developed competitor? That thought gives me shudders. The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction was a horrible event. Dinosaurs and many other animals and plants were killed. But consider what we are witnessing now. Every year, thousands of species disappear, because they ran up against humans. So, the survival theory in Dark Forest is reasonable. There could be a highly civilised cosmic ecosystem with high moral standards, but I think the possibility is low, given what we know about Earth鈥檚 history.

If we receive a message from the stars, should we respond?

How to respond will be a decision for the entire world. We would need a consensus, as this would affect every one of us. I think we should be cautious, rather than recklessly respond to the message and expose our location. We simply don鈥檛 know whether we are talking to friends or enemies.

Some people think if a species enjoys a high level of civilisation, it is bound to maintain high moral standards. That鈥檚 very naive; we have no way of knowing whether that鈥檚 true.

Most of your stories have sad endings. Are you pessimistic about the development of civilisation?

I鈥檓 absolutely positive about human survival. We will continue to develop our civilisation and expand not just on Earth, but also across the solar system, the galaxy, even the entire universe. But I鈥檓 absolutely pessimistic about the survival of the other species who currently share Earth with us. The development of human civilisation will eventually force other living things to go extinct or become our food.

Are you not concerned that the destruction of Earth鈥檚 ecosystems will threaten human survival?

We are almost wholly reliant on science and technology for our survival already. We can create an environment to sustain ourselves with technology, even if the ecosystem collapses. The new system could be on Earth or in space; we might develop one system or hundreds of them. Frankly, these environments could probably only support humans, although we probably wouldn鈥檛 care about other species anyway. Humans are selfish, and because of our innate selfishness, I鈥檓 very confident that we can overcome any amount of environmental destruction.

Can we work together as civilisation develops further in the future?

I believe we can work together. Even though we still have defined nations, and each nation pursues its own self-interest, the borderlines between nations, ethnicities and religions are disappearing. Technology is improving communication and accelerating cultural exchange. So, I think the concept of nationhood will eventually vanish. The world will share the same set of values and become a more united group.

The science in your stories is very detailed. Do you consult experts over its plausibility when you write?

I have never checked with any experts for my novels. Not long ago, science fiction was a very marginal activity and science-fiction writers didn鈥檛 have access to expert opinions. Those ideas and concepts of mine are all distilled from my own self-taught understanding of the science.

When you write stories, do you let your imagination fly free or is there a limit to how far you can travel?

The imagination in science fiction has boundaries. Unlike fantasy, science fiction must follow natural laws and scientific rules. For example, if you want to fly, you need a massive amount of energy to work against gravity. Riding a magical broom doesn鈥檛 work in science fiction.

But there鈥檚 something paradoxical about the science in science fiction. Although it sets boundaries, science doesn鈥檛 restrain our imagination; it only spurs it. What modern physics has revealed goes far beyond common sense. We zoom out, and the universe in science fiction is 40 billion light years across, consisting of millions of solar systems with countless planets. We zoom in, and quantum mechanics inspires us to create a world that we can hardly visualise. Science immensely expands the canvas for science fiction. Fantasy, on the other hand, operates almost entirely at one, human scale.

Does it bother you that your wife and daughter don鈥檛 like science fiction?

Not at all. It is understandable that they don鈥檛 like it. Science fiction, wherever it comes from, has always been a niche genre, only enjoyed by a unique group of people. I write science fiction, not because I鈥檓 fond of literature, but because I鈥檓 fascinated by science.

Which area of science excites you the most?

I鈥檓 interested in studies that probe the mysteries of nature and the universe, such as physics and cosmology. I spend a lot of time every day reading about them and following the latest news.

Do you think science fiction can predict the future?

I don鈥檛 think science fiction predicts the future at all. It simply lays out some possibilities. The 2018 we are living in now is so very different from the 2018 I wrote about in my short story of that name. Back when I wrote 2018, that year seemed really, really far away 鈥� but here we are!

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淎mong the cruel stars鈥�