Liu Cixin is the most influential contemporary science fiction writer in China. He is best known for his trilogy that starts with The Three-Body Problem, for which he won a Hugo Award for best novel in 2015. The trilogy earned international acclaim and has been adapted for television in both Chinese and English.
Born in 1963 and raised in Shanxi, Liu started his working life as a computer engineer at a power plant in the central province. Inspired by British sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke, Liu began writing in the late 1980s, eventually giving up his day job in the late 2000s to write full time.
Liu took part in the following Q&A with media and students from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in October, when he was awarded an honorary doctorate in humanities. It first appeared in SCMP Plus. For other interviews in the Open Questions series, click here.
The Three-Body trilogy centred around one theme: the “dark forest” theory – a cosmos where civilisations hide or strike pre-emptively, fearing others will destroy them first, and in a dark forest, every creature must stay silent to survive. Do you think humanity should remain silent in the universe?
Science fiction, as I have often said, is not prophecy. It does not predict technology or the future. It is more like a catalogue of possibilities, and by laying out every possible scenario, it creates the illusion of foresight. Why does it sometimes appear prophetic? Because if you imagine enough possibilities, a few of them will inevitably turn out right – like a stopped clock that is correct twice a day.
The dark forest is one of those possibilities. If there truly exists a galactic civilisation made up of different intelligent species, there could be all kinds of outcomes, with some good, some neutral, some bad. The dark forest is simply the darkest one I could imagine.
But there are other possibilities too. Some scholars believe that as a civilisation’s technology advances, its moral standards also rise and such civilisations would respect all forms of life – even help others grow and evolve. That is also a possibility, though we have no proof.
