Supernova Era

July 8, 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.

August 15, 2019
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.

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September 1, 2019
This novel from the widely acclaimed author of The Three-Body Problem (2014) imagines a world in which radiation from a supernova results in the eventual death of all humans over the age of 12, leading to a mad dash for the swiftly dying adults to prepare their children for the future. Primarily focusing on the children selected to be the new Central Committee in Beijing, Liu presents a world where the values of adult society are swiftly replaced by the new priorities of young children who long for a world based around play rather than work. With the wildly different concepts of play imagined by Chinese children and their more trigger-happy American counterparts, the safety and stability of the new "Supernova Era" is quickly thrown into question. Unlike Liu's more space-based fictions, Supernova Era's world of children begins to wear a little thin, particularly when the various other nations and their broadly drawn preteen leaders are introduced. Nevertheless, this latest translation is sure to interest readers who want to explore more of the Chinese-language sf canon.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)