Chinese science fiction is experiencing its heyday these days. As Netflix prepares to broadcast on its platform the spectacular three body problem which made Liu Cixin an author of planetary renown, two publishers are these days offering a more in-depth French foray into what makes this pioneer of this genre dream while emerging in the Middle Kingdom.
Delcourt editions will deposit somewhere by mid-May on the shelves of Quebec bookstores the first illustrated album of what promises to be an essential series of comic books for particularly dense and cerebral science fiction lovers. Futures of Liu Cixin. The wandering earth is the first volume. It takes up a short story known under the title of wandering landone of the most eloquent of what is these days the best-known Chinese science fiction author on both sides of the Great Wall of China.
“I have always thought that science fiction is expressed better through images than through text, and these comics only confirm my opinion”, writes Liu Cixin in the preamble of this particularly strong illustrated album, at 132 well packed pages. Cixin adds that “these are works of excellent craftsmanship; each image has an incredible charm and plunges us into the heart of fantastic representations of the future and the universe”.
Christophe Bec is a French author of romantic comic strips to whom we owe a large part of the return of the Franco-Belgian spy Bob Morane. He reconnects with the Italian artist Stefano Raffaele, who illustrates this first volume of a series that we hope will be long and lasting. Raffaele is also one of the prominent illustrators of the wonderful world of Marvel (Moon Knight, Electra, Hawkeyeetc.).
No international spy or superheroes however in Earth wanderer, if not Humanity itself, which, in an astonishing burst of collaboration, agrees on the ambitious project of moving the entire planet to Alpha Centauri, a galaxy located 4.4 years – sunlight. The cause ? Imagine a renoviction, interstellar format: the Sun has decided to change into a gigantic supernova and will absorb its nearest planets.
In four times, The wandering land illustrates the repercussions on human life of this move: the end of Earth’s orbit, the exit from the solar system, the unmistakable doubt and popular uprising in front of the world government which is piloting this project, and the interminable patience of the Earthed Humans in their caves which will have to reach 2500 years, or 100 generations, before arriving at their destination.
The story is dark, cold and intellectual. The illustrations are loaded, detailed and powerful. The result is a comic that is more read than seen, much to the chagrin of those who prefer to let the images do the talking. The subjective art of drawing probably leaves a little too much room for very explanatory dialogues, essential if you want to follow the thread of the story.
Between stars separated by thousands of light years, it is very easy to get lost. If Liu Cixin is convinced that comics offer the best way to express science fiction, let’s hope that his Futures illustrated will add a little emotion and find a better balance between science and imagination.
“Einstein’s Equator”
In the context of the war in Ukraine, it is more difficult than ever these days to fully understand the difficult geopolitical relationship between the United States, Russia and China, these “enemies” (friends-enemies) obliged to the post-Cold War. Liu Cixin, who says he has a great admiration “for the Russian people and their literature”, offers a perspective rarely seen by the West of this threesome in Einstein’s equatorthe first of two volumes published in French by Actes Sud which bring together a series of short stories written in recent decades by the Chinese author.
In Jamming of the entire frequency band, it serves as a little lesson in military strategy in the age of electronic communications that would have been comical if the reality weren’t even more absurd. The Russian army’s use of unencrypted wireless frequencies on the Ukrainian front during the first weeks of its difficult advance westward is a misstep that illustrates the lack of preparation for the whole affair.
Liu Cixin bases his short story on a real American military manual dating from 1993 which should have at least served as a lesson, at best outright discouraged the Russian invasion. Served upside down, this news illustrates just as well how Russia can boast of mastering propaganda in this era of decentralized social networks: by jamming all the frequencies.
This is just one of the many pearls of Chinese wisdom found among the 17 stories contained in Einstein’s equator, which questions the existence of God in the same way that it questions the difficult relationship that all societies on the planet have with their education system. If that doesn’t ring a (school?) bell in the minds of Quebec readers…
“Of all forms of artistic and literary expression, science fiction is arguably the most likely to resonate with audiences from different countries and cultures,” writes Liu Cixin. “The reason for this is that works of science fiction often present humanity as a single entity: the crises and challenges they portray must be faced collectively. »
Like Gene Roddenberry before him, Liu Cixin should be read by everyone. And probably by Liu Cixin himself. This promoter of the universality of the human condition has been criticized since the summer of 2020 for what would have been a public statement supporting the detention and internment by the Chinese government of the Muslim Uighur minority…