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A review by firstwords
Supernova Era by Cixin Liu
2.0
[b:The Three-Body Problem|20518872|The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past #1)|Liu Cixin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1415428227l/20518872._SY75_.jpg|25696480] trilogy is one of the finest Sci-fi/dystopian series I have ever read. I will probably re-read it again soon, as it can be enjoyed more than once.
This was (if the annotations are correct) first published in Chinese in 2004. You can tell that, while the State didn't write it, there were definitely still censors. The Americans are gun-toting hyper-violent wackos (I'm not saying we're not at times, but the book makes us out to be the only ones) who crave world domination and the takeover of Antarctica. Japan is not as evil, but is almost as bad (this is a post-apocalyptic book about a world run by kids where the Japanese kids still insist on "illegal" whaling). Russia is played as a powerful entity that just wants to war with America, but not really as an "enemy" of China. America is definitely played as the Great Satan (to borrow from another totalitarian regime). Americans aren't twiddling evil moustaches and torturing people, but they are the "worst" thing on the globe. The Chinese, of course, mostly crave order, and are the smartest and most technologically advanced, with kids that at first rebel, but mostly fall into line For The Greater Good, as it were.
The book is whatever the hell the equivalent of "jingoistic" is for China. It's not state propaganda, but the author definitely knew what he had to do to get it published in a country where the presses are state-run or state-overseen.
The author does write children more realistically in some regards than other authors. One would hope that world, devoid of adults, run by children, would be a kindler, gentler, more innocent place. Liu notes that kids can be more recklessly violent, and arbitrarily violent (think playground), and a bit narcissistic with a less-developed sense of right and wrong than most adults (our power hungry leadership notwithstanding). They engage in war games with "rules," but where the combat and death are real. What I think Liu misses is that very few in the armed forces want to kill - it's the greatest impediment to an effective fighting force, and one that militaries have worked to overcome since WWII (see [b:On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society|78127|On Killing The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society|Dave Grossman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1373461495l/78127._SY75_.jpg|804474], which explains our more recent successes). And kids, while they may be more willing to casually engage in violence than adults who have more fully grasped the social constructs, are no more immune to death and physical, visual suffering around them than adults are - unless they're conditioned (see: child soldiers). The idea that the general population of children would engage in repeated war games, with death everywhere, day after day, is ludicrous, and took me out of the book entirely. This book also asks us to accept the larger premise that all of a sudden kids - even with a year of education by adults - would be able to effectively manage society.
So it is written by a member of a State where everyone "has their place and their duty," and the author does not, in this book, question that ideal for the most part.
It's still well-written and paced. It just doesn't portray anything I think of as a realistic response to a global catastrophe like this, and has too much GroupThink and GreaterGood to be accepted by this western reader.
This was (if the annotations are correct) first published in Chinese in 2004. You can tell that, while the State didn't write it, there were definitely still censors. The Americans are gun-toting hyper-violent wackos (I'm not saying we're not at times, but the book makes us out to be the only ones) who crave world domination and the takeover of Antarctica. Japan is not as evil, but is almost as bad (this is a post-apocalyptic book about a world run by kids where the Japanese kids still insist on "illegal" whaling). Russia is played as a powerful entity that just wants to war with America, but not really as an "enemy" of China. America is definitely played as the Great Satan (to borrow from another totalitarian regime). Americans aren't twiddling evil moustaches and torturing people, but they are the "worst" thing on the globe. The Chinese, of course, mostly crave order, and are the smartest and most technologically advanced, with kids that at first rebel, but mostly fall into line For The Greater Good, as it were.
The book is whatever the hell the equivalent of "jingoistic" is for China. It's not state propaganda, but the author definitely knew what he had to do to get it published in a country where the presses are state-run or state-overseen.
The author does write children more realistically in some regards than other authors. One would hope that world, devoid of adults, run by children, would be a kindler, gentler, more innocent place. Liu notes that kids can be more recklessly violent, and arbitrarily violent (think playground), and a bit narcissistic with a less-developed sense of right and wrong than most adults (our power hungry leadership notwithstanding). They engage in war games with "rules," but where the combat and death are real. What I think Liu misses is that very few in the armed forces want to kill - it's the greatest impediment to an effective fighting force, and one that militaries have worked to overcome since WWII (see [b:On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society|78127|On Killing The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society|Dave Grossman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1373461495l/78127._SY75_.jpg|804474], which explains our more recent successes). And kids, while they may be more willing to casually engage in violence than adults who have more fully grasped the social constructs, are no more immune to death and physical, visual suffering around them than adults are - unless they're conditioned (see: child soldiers). The idea that the general population of children would engage in repeated war games, with death everywhere, day after day, is ludicrous, and took me out of the book entirely. This book also asks us to accept the larger premise that all of a sudden kids - even with a year of education by adults - would be able to effectively manage society.
So it is written by a member of a State where everyone "has their place and their duty," and the author does not, in this book, question that ideal for the most part.
It's still well-written and paced. It just doesn't portray anything I think of as a realistic response to a global catastrophe like this, and has too much GroupThink and GreaterGood to be accepted by this western reader.