Preparing for a visit

Several years ago, when a Xinhua News Agency reporter asked him about his ideas for the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15), he said China should prepare for the unexpected arrival of aliens, which became somewhat of a standing joke.

When, in a telephone interview, China Daily reminds him of that comment, he replies: "It's not a joke. Aliens may arrive at any time. When it happens, everything, social and economic reform, educational problems, international conflicts or poverty, will become much less important, compared with the alien crisis."

Big countries such as China and international organizations such as the United Nations need to be ready for such an eventuality, he says.

"It does not necessarily involve a lot of money and human resources. But we should prepare, in the fields of politics, military, society and so on. The government should organize some people to do related research and preparations for the long term."

Unfortunately, he says, "no country seems to have done this kind of thing".

In the postscript for the English version of The Three-Body Problem, translated by Ken Liu, Liu Cixin says: "I've always felt that extraterrestrial intelligence will be the greatest source of uncertainty for humanity's future. Other great shifts, such as climate change and ecological disasters, have a certain progression and built-in adjustment periods, but contact between mankind and aliens can occur at any time. Perhaps in 10,000 years the starry sky that mankind gazes upon will remain empty and silent, but perhaps tomorrow we'll wake up and find an alien spaceship the size of the Moon parked in orbit. ... The appearance of this Other, or mere knowledge of its existence, will impact our civilization in unpredictable ways."

In the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, he imagines how humans react to the invasion of advanced aliens called Trisolarans from a far-off planet.

Liu graphically describes how the three-dimensional solar system is turned into a two-dimensional entity. "Two dimensions and three dimensions are very basic concepts in maths and physics," he says, talking of the genesis of his plot.

For him, science provides a much bigger space for the imagination than imagination itself.

He quotes the Bible saying God created the world in seven days, whereas physics argues that it took 10 to the power of 43 years for the universe to expand from a point to 15 billion light years across.

Science mixed with fiction

"Can you imagine the time and space span?" he says. "The concept of one light year and one nanometer creates immense brings vivid images to my mind, inspiring an inexplicable religious-like shock and awe."

The depiction of the universe in his favorite movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, has a similar effect on him, he says.

Speaking to Wu Yan, sci-fi writer and professor at Beijing Normal University, Liu said: "Leading-edge modern science presents a world divorced from common sense. Science fiction needs to be created on the basis of good science. Of course, writers will have more freedom if they can combine a world based on common sense and one separate to that."