"There she could watch the children—their young bones laughing at winter's bite—and the sea beyond."

Who the fuck talks like that? Writes like that?

Nora Roberts does, an American author of over 225 novels, with over 500 million books sold globally.

I wonder, is it truly a bad sentence? Or am I just not fluent enough, not well-read, to see its genius? I refuse to believe I know better than such a well-established writer.

I can't imagine George R. R. Martin, for example, putting this line into the mouth of a character, let alone a narrator. (He's currently my go-to when it comes to quality noveling. I've only read his one book, the first one in the Ice and Fire series. I wasn't a fan of the genre, but it was unparalleled in terms of sentence fluidity, word choice, and the like.)

I guess that sentence could work in the right context. For example, "The grandmother was already *chilled to the bone*, but decided to climb the hill. There she could watch the children—their young bones laughing at winter's bite—and the sea beyond." But there was no such context. (Maybe it was lost during editing?)

I expect humans will provide roughly the same commentary as the AI did. Some will reinforce my concerns, saying:

"You're exactly right. The use of bones here is jarring and unconventional, and your instinct is correct—bones aren't typically associated with laughter or resistance to cold."

"This is an awkward and overextended metaphor."

Others will try to explain why this metaphor works and is perfectly natural.

Real contemporary writers, like George R. R. Martin himself, may be the only source of valuable insight, but I am not interested in that sentence analysis enough to bother such people. Instead, I want to ask my future self. My future self, I hope you are in good health. I hope you are far more literarily experienced and fluent than I am. What do you think of that sentence?

You probably already know that being an introvert has nothing to do with being shy. But you may not know that being an introvert has nothing to do with solitary book reading or movie watching either — a typical modern representation. Well, at the very least it's not true to the original meaning of the word coined by Jung. Introversion was pretty much redefined down the road to mean withdrawal and aloofness, as opposed to sociability.

Jung defined introversion as an "attitude-type characterised by orientation in life through subjective psychic contents," as opposed to extraversion, "an attitude-type characterised by concentration of interest on the external object." Simply put, introverts are focused on and influenced by the internal (the inside of their mind), while extraverts are focused on and influenced by the external (the outside of their mind, the minds of others).

These were the perfect definitions that should have stayed unmolested. It's sad that Jung himself muddied the waters with his further explanations, saying, for example, that introverts tend to be reserved and cautious, while extraverts tend to be open and daring. While this may be true (there is a correlation), ultimately, it confused people, and they started to use these coincidental traits as the new definition.

I understand this issue not because I've read an article on Wikipedia, but because I feel it. It doesn't matter to me if it's a solitary experience — when I read a book, I can feel the same kind of mental strain I feel midst any other act of focusing on others. Whether I listen to some dimwit at a loud crowded party or struggle with a mediocre novel far away from any living thing, I can feel the same kind of reluctance to engage, like I couldn't care less what their primitive minds can conjure. And even when their minds are far brighter than mine, the reluctance can still be there, with the desire to escape into my own head.

The act of reading usually implies some degree of reflection, and a great deal of imagination, but it's still not an ideal activity to represent true introversion since you still focus on and influenced by the external. Conversely, true extraverts may not enjoy some of the activities where they are assumed to thrive simply because they are the center of attention among a multitude of people. For instance, delivering lectures to large audiences. While there is some degree of engagement with the external (like when you try to read the audience and adjust your delivery accordingly), it is, in reality, mostly introspection: you gather your thoughts, recollect your memories, concentrate on your speech, generate explanations, formulate answers, figure out solutions, etc.

There exists a much better stereotypical representation of an introvert: someone who paints, writes, or composes, especially if they don't try to recreate a real world and instead only reference their inner mind. In other words, they opt for expressionism, not realism.

It's a shame the definitions were altered, because the original ones described something far more fundamental to human psychology, I believe, while the mere desire or tendency to socialize or be loud or be cautious can come and go depending on circumstances.

Hello, I am from 2272. This is the kind of music we listen to:
https://soundcloud.com/soupeduprecords/current-value-soup-mix-007
(We exterminated everyone with the bad music taste ❤)

Did it really happen? Or was it my imagination? I sometimes ask myself these questions. It can be difficult to tell apart.

I think I really had a conversation with someone who thought about committing suicide by hanging themselves. I asked them, "Don't you know a person's muscles become so relaxed they basically pee and defecate all over themselves? Wouldn't you be embarrassed?"

"Of course I wouldn't," they replied. "I'd be dead. Dead people don't care, can't care about such things."

It made perfect sense. But it also didn't. And I wasn't immediately sure why. Only now, many years after that conversation, did I give it proper thought.

If I knew they'd never try anything like that and were merely exploring the ideas, I'd inquire further: "On the premise you won't care what happens when you're dead, would you consider killing yourself by turning on a gas stove? This method would take you far less effort. There is just one downside. When people enter your apartments, they may trigger a massive explosion that will kill or maim them and your neighbors. But, like you've said, you'd be dead and thus wouldn't care, couldn't care about anything."

I'd expect a negative answer. People care about the future, regardless of whether they will be dead in it or not. Corpses can't feel anything. That's true. But that's also irrelevant. The person I was talking to while being alive considered the kind of future in which they make people stare at a mess acceptable, but the kind of future in which they make people explode not.

Is that it? Or is there anything deeper than that? It's a shame I couldn't immediately see through it. And even after some thought, it's not an entirely open book.

Aim for the brainstem.

TikTok can be your window into China's foreign politics. You just have to recognize what content bypasses its robust algorithm.

A video with nature? — Sure, I love those. Japanese women being cute? — Yes, please. A Family Guy episode? — Of course. A video in support of Ukraine? — Definitely, always promote those. A video about linguistics or outer space? — Cool, let's check it. But then you do another swipe, and there: "Hooray! Some rich guy in America gets murdered! Proletarians of the world, celebrate! Proletarians of the world, unite!" — What is this shit? I never interact with it, often press "not interested" even, but it keeps popping up.

That's how I knew China wasn't really interested in helping Moscow with its propaganda: TikTok never promoted it (russian retards spamming in every comment section notwithstanding). It was sometimes shown on YouTube, more frequently on Instagram, but never on TikTok, for some reason.

There are two major projects on TikTok that I see consistently bypassing the algorithm. One is to brew class division inside the US. Another is to promote a positive image of China. There could be more, which I don't discern, or which appear under different circumstances.

Sometimes I envy those who live near the ocean. They have warmer winters, milder summers. An abundance of fresh air, well circulated with an abundance of wind. And a majestic sight at their doorsteps.

Here inland, I stare at the skies, heavy with clouds, spellbound none the less. I whisper,

"My ocean."

In this entry, I am going to share my opinion on the science fiction novel series "Remembrance of Earth's Past" (aka Three-Body) by Chinese writer Liu Cixin. Short summary: I consider Liu Cixin a naive novelist. But, similar to naive art, his works can hold value and be praised. I recommend Three-Body to everyone who wants something unusual and fancies sci-fi.

I completed the trilogy over the span of 268 days: from February ‎2 to October 26, 2024. I started to write the review soon after that, but suspended it till recently, for several reasons. The task turned out more laborious than I initially anticipated. I realized I had a lot to share. I wouldn't be content with a short overview. The scope of the task scared me away. But it was okay, I thought, to review the novel later: I would get the bigger picture, the minutiae would be forgotten, and my brain would process the story in the background, possibly coming up with some interesting conclusions. Now I am at that point when I start to forget important details, and I am not eager to re-read the novel for the sake of a more objective review. So I better write the review now.

I am going to peek in the book to get a quote, for example. But I will mostly write from memory, so minor inaccuracies may occur. There will be spoilers, but I will try to avoid them whenever I can.

First, let's make sure we are on the same page here: when I talk about naive art, I talk about something like "Hunting Dog" by Adolf Dietrich, and not about worthless hasty doodles some people call "naive art" in an attempt to parasitize on the term or make their doodles seem more profound.

Thus, I recognize the hard work of the author, his peculiar worldview, and his genuine attempt to write well. However, this writing style is not necessarily a good thing that makes the work better. In naive art, one could say, "I love this painting *because* of its clumsiness." Here, I am hesitant. I lean toward saying, "I love this novel *despite* its clumsiness."

Let's immediately jump into some concrete examples. This first one may seem like a random, biased attack, but you'll soon realize it's a coherent part of the author's all-around shallow understanding of the world.

Three-Body describes a universe that is cold and indifferent, harsh and ruthless, where everyone tries to exterminate everyone else. Liu Cixin tries to paint a grim picture and then, in all seriousness, drops this piece:

"Historically, the discovery of the dark forest state of the universe was a giant blow to most major religions, especially Christianity. In fact, the damage to religion was evident even early on during the Crisis Era. When Trisolaran civilization was discovered, Christians had to wrestle with the fact that the aliens were not in the Garden of Eden, and God never mentioned them in Genesis. For more than a century, churches and theologians struggled to complete a new interpretation of the Bible and of accepted doctrines — and just when they had almost succeeded in patching up the faith, the monster that was the dark forest appeared. People had to accept the knowledge that many, many intelligent civilizations existed in the universe, and if each civilization had an Adam and an Eve, then the population of Eden must have been about the same as the current population of Earth."

The discovery of alien civilizations became a devastating blow to Christianity because it meant there were way too many Adams and Eves in Eden? Excuse me?

I don't think the author was trying to be funny. He tried to be respectful to most human groups he mentioned in his novel, even to Al-Qaeda. Possibly, he knew nothing about Christianity but out of respect tried to research what it was about. And maybe out of respect he implied that Christianity still had influence in the 23rd century. And so he incorporated it into his story but did it in such a nonsensical way.

You don't need to study religions deeply in order to see how weird this is. You just need a modicum of common sense. If we take Christianity in particular, figurative interpretations of the Bible existed from the very beginning, as we know from the words of early scholars and theologians. Most Western scientists were historically Christians. Their discoveries contradicted the Bible, but that rarely undermined their beliefs because they didn't take the Holy Texts literally in the first place. Even modern scientists, such as Einstein and Hawking, talked of God freely, because their vision of God wasn't constrained to a "naked man on a cloud" (a notion which some feeble-minded atheists promote as the epitome of religion, and I assume it's the view on religion they may promote inside China.)

"The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who — in their grudge against traditional religion as the 'opium of the masses' — cannot hear the music of the spheres," said Einstein.

The idea that none of the discoveries before the 23rd century undermined Christianity in a way that aliens did because they made literal interpretations more difficult since there were now too many Adams and Eves that weren't mentioned in the text is utterly absurd. If anything, the discovery of aliens would probably make literal interpretations somewhat more popular since it would mean there could have really been walking talking gods among humans in the past. Anyway, the world of Three-Body is not very consistent. Despite this "giant blow" to "especially Christianity," humans became even more Christian and were building colossal glowing crosses that floated in the sky.

Next, let's talk about the author's understanding of geography. Imagine asking a five-year-old Chinese kid, "What countries, beyond China, do you know of?" What could they answer? "There's so-called russia, there's Japan... Across the ocean, there's America (bad!) And... Maybe, er... Europe?"

That's how Liu Cixin's understanding of the world comes across honestly. The novel doesn't present itself as one focused on a specific country or region. Instead, it jumps across the globe to highlight notable events that shaped the fate of humanity. And yet, half of all the names in the novel are clearly Chinese, the lesser half are clearly English, a substantial portion are clearly russian, and there are also several Japanese ones. Beyond very few exceptions, that's everything, as if no other cultures exist on Earth. There were probably more characters from russia than there were from Europe, and there were absolutely none from India or Africa, even though a third of all human population lives there, and even more is projected for the future.

Some of this weird distribution I can understand easily. The author is from China, and his desire to elevate China in fiction is natural. Moreover, his target audience was Chinese. He had to appeal to them so that the novel sold well. In light of his passionate patriotism, I even want to commend his bravery in displaying communist idolatry, like that of Mao Zedong, as something that can be detrimental to scientific research.

The distribution of characters beyond Chinese cannot be rationalized by anything except the author's quirkiness. It's possible that Liu Cixin thought something like, "So what if a third of the population lives in India or Africa or elsewhere? How many Nobel Prizes did they win, huh? They are backward peoples today, and it's safe to assume they will be backward peoples in the future. They will have no impact on the fate of humanity."

Should we tell him India won more Nobel Prizes than China? I'm not even commenting on Europe at this point.

Actually, both Africa and India (kind of) had their one moment of glory in the novel. Quote: "Two space cities in the distant city clusters near Uranus and Neptune, Africa II and Indian Ocean I, had declared independence in the past, but nothing had ultimately come of those efforts." (No one took those cities seriously.) This, and the fact that the city of Oceania was very poor, are the two single instances that I recall where the author allowed himself to display a group of people in a negative light.

As if to prove to the readers he knows some other countries and cultures beyond the selected few, the author could throw in some wacky statistically unlikely characters or situations into the story. For example, one of the main characters got randomly acquainted with an Indigenous Australian, whose people were almost extinct in the far future, who lived a primitive life, slept outside, and demonstrated how to dance like an Indigenous Polynesian. (WTF?)

These weird things cannot be explained by the shallow understanding of the world only. I believe the author is a somewhat weird person himself, as should become more clear with my next examples.

Imagine: you're in China; the year is 2272. You jump inside a random futuristic flying car. What do you think the passengers are listening to? According to Liu Cixin, it is entirely reasonable for them to listen to some ancient russian folk music. Not only that, the protagonist knows these songs and hopes to hear more. "Okay," you may say, "that's unrealistic but still possible." Unrealistic but still theoretically possible things can feel natural if they happen rarely and the characters acknowledge their existence with disbelief, surprise, or some comment. But the characters don't react to them like that. Next in the story, humanity starts to compare one of the protagonists to some character from an obscure 19th-century russian novel. Was the Earth of the 23rd century engulfed in the russian 19th-century culture? The author provides no comment on that, except for "people dug up an ancient story."

Has the author no clue about what people read or listen to in the 21st century to make some predictions about the 23rd? What is going on? As if hearing our questions, the author then explains that the majority of the works of old were lost, and modern art is created by aliens. Additionally, he tries to introduce some variety, but it doesn't get less weird. For example, in his third book, he mentions Edgar Allan Poe. Despite Poe's popularity, I doubt that at least 1% of the human population read his story "A Descent into the Maelstrom," let alone remember its content. And yet, in Three-Body, when the characters enter a whirlpool, all 3 out of 3 of them, all coming from different backgrounds, immediately recall that story and start to discuss its content. There is no bloody chance that could ever happen in real life.

Here is one more example, to drive the point home: Cheng Xin said, "Anyone from the Earth has a kind of nostalgia for soil. Remember what Scarlett's father told her in Gone With the Wind? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin' for..." Why of course! Why do you even ask at this point? Of course I remember what Scarlett's father told her in Gone With the Wind. I am a Chinese scientist from the future. I spent most of my life doing research light-years away from the Earth. So of course I watched that movie. I watched it and every other black-and-white American movie from the early 20th century; that's what we do here. And, just like you, I memorized every name of every character. I memorized every line!

Liu Cixin's incorporation of works of art is utterly nonsensical. It feels like his thinking process was something like, "I know this poem/novel/song/movie. So it's safe to assume the rest of the human population also knows it. And thus it's only reasonable that each character of my novel also knows it." Looking back at all of it I now also consider he might have tried to low-key show off how cultured he was with all those references. So embarrassing.

I wrote so much but still haven't covered half of all the weird fuck-ups of the novel. Let's move on.

Humanity is portrayed as an incredibly, unrealistically stupid species. Even more stupid than they are in real life. And that is an embarrassingly low bar already. When humans realized everyone tried to exterminate everyone else in the universe, they tried to figure out how to survive. Praying to the giant glowing crosses was one of the solutions. Another suggestion was to brain-damage every human. I'm not kidding. Apparently, they thought aliens would see it from their distant stars and choose not to shoot Earth with their sci-fi guns (not worth it.) Liu Cixin implied that solution wasn't popular, but still popular enough to discuss it in length and mention that some radicals were poisoning drinking water in an attempt to achieve this goal.

Human stupidity gets super annoying sometimes. Here's a quote, not the real one, but it's essentially what happened in the novel at some point: "Hey fellow humans!" the Commander-in-Chief said, "Do you see that small alien spaceship? Yes, the one we know absolutely nothing about, except that it belongs to a hostile and far more technologically advanced species... What do you say we gather ALL our existing warships in one place and approach it? We will form a neat formation, look badass. We will fly very close to that bastard to take a good look. BUT! Don't worry! We will still keep some distance in case it explodes or something. Sounds good? WAIT! That's not everything! All your ships can fly very fast if you warm them up, right? Well, do NOT warm them up, please. Because, like, why? Why would you do that? You afraid? You little pussies? No? Then DON'T warm up your warships. Alright, let's go now! Nothing can go wrong!"

And NO ONE among thousands of humans inside hundreds of warships thought it was a bad idea before it was too late. No one! Except for one very old and very wise Chinese man...

Is this a grim sci-fi? It's a frigging meme.

But wait, aliens are stupid too! And no amount of fancy technology can convince you otherwise. Liu Cixin clumsily handicapped Trisolarans, saying they were incapable of understanding figurative speech. So when a human spy was transmitting intelligence to Earth in the form of allegories, they didn't understand that "boats" meant "spaceships," or that to "paint someone into a canvas" meant to "capture them into a two-dimensional space." And so they let it slide. And it would've been just half of the problem if it were consistent with the plot, but it wasn't! Earlier in the novel, we saw that Trisolarans were perfectly capable of figurative speech when they said humans were "bugs."

We also learn from the very beginning of the story that Trisolarans can easily interfere with human vision, even draw images on their retina, only to realize they will never use this strategic advantage ever again.

Here's another example, but I warn you: it's the biggest spoiler in the review, from here till the end of this paragraph. Trisolarans understood dark forest. They were part of it. They were trying to hide from alien civilizations and exterminate everyone who wasn't hidden. They were going to exterminate humans. They viewed them as a threat. And indeed humans proved to be a major threat when they destroyed Trisolarans' home world, killing, perhaps, the majority of all living Trisolarans. And yet, when they had the opportunity (and the excuse) to carry out their plans, they simply didn't. They decided to fuck off away from Earth somewhere into deep space because Liu Cixin said so (the official BS explanation: because it may get hot in this part of the galaxy in a hundred years or so).

This whole thing reminds me of a quote from someone, "A writer cannot create a character who is smarter than they are."

Let's talk about suicides. There are way too many of them in this novel. At first, I didn't pay attention to it. But after seven or so characters planned or committed suicide, this madness became impossible to ignore.

One character decides to commit suicide because he's uncurably ill. Another character threatens to commit suicide because it would also cause harm to his enemies. Another character commits suicide because his secret plan is revealed. Another character commits suicide because she fails to serve her alien masters well. Another character commits suicide because he realizes how dark and cruel deep space is. Another character plans to commit suicide because she fails to deter aliens.

Perhaps the craziest suicides happened at the very beginning of the story. Scientists discovered that elementary particles behaved unpredictably. This was such a major blow to their understanding of the world that some of them ended up killing themselves. (WTF?)

If the majority of humans on Earth were suicidal, it would've made sense. But since the world the author describes is so different from the real world, and there is no explanation why, characters, societies, and even species don't feel authentic. Instead, they feel like shallow copies of the author himself.

Yes, it's an apt description. It's one of the cornerstones of his writing style. I'd expand and say the whole world and everything that happens in it doesn't feel authentic. Instead, it feels like a backyard inside the author's mind. I'm not saying it's a terrible thing necessarily, but it is what it is.

Let's talk about one more quirk: Three-Body's judicial system, or the complete lack of it. There was a character who transmitted a message to a hostile alien race, basically saying, "Here are our coordinates, please come and exterminate us." But after people discovered what she did, they simply questioned her. And then they let her go. However, maybe I didn't understand the plot. Maybe it was a flashback? At any rate, later in the story, we see her tombstone. She didn't hide: her name was inscribed on the stone. And yet, the novel doesn't mention any desecration of the place. You'd imagine the population would be outraged at the person who brought doom to their entire civilization.

Maybe the humans of Three-Body are distinctly non-violent and never wish to punish anyone? But that couldn't be further away from reality. When it was revealed that one of the characters planned to destroy the Solar system so that the aliens couldn't take it, the enraged crowd filled the streets and murdered him. Or here's another example. A person broadcasted the coordinates of a random faraway star system into the deep space. Soon, some aliens destroyed that star system. How did the human society react? At first, they didn't care at all. That fact remained unheeded. But when it proved to be the only viable way to exert power across the universe, they put the broadcaster on trial. They didn't even know if that star system had life, and yet they brought him to court for a possible xenocide.

Justice is an extension of reason: someone brings harm — you restrain them so there is no more harm. That's reasonable. The book often lacked any reason. Here's one more example. Humans created a robot for aliens to control remotely and be a kind of liaison. When the aliens thought human extinction was imminent, that alien-robot felt unrestrained and casually and gruesomely murdered people who misbehaved. When humans survived though, there were no repercussions for the alien-robot whatsoever. It wasn't stripped of its super-strong body, weapons, luxurious house, or title. And the characters kept interacting with it as if nothing unusual happened.

Looking back at everything I wrote I realize how perfectly "naive novelist" describes Liu Cixin. There's so much clumsiness in his book it can deter from reading. Maybe some people will find it cute or interesting; maybe they will try to uncover hidden messages or deep meaning within every quirk. For me though, it often felt as if the author wrote whatever came to his mind first, disregarding context, plot holes, or realism. It took me quite a long time to finish the trilogy considering I had all three books readily available to me. Even though I may've experienced trouble focusing, even though my reading speed was low, it's still safe to say I wasn't entirely absorbed. There were times when I didn't want to get back to reading for weeks.

Another deterrent was that the events unfolded slowly in a predictable manner, except for the last 5% of the story, where the author started to introduce many new rules of physics, seemingly in an attempt to finish the novel off quickly in an interesting way. When the rest of the novel did surprise me, it was an unpleasant kind of surprise when you stand up in disbelief and exclaim, "Oh, come on, they would never act like that!"

But I can't say any part of it was necessarily boring. And the English translations were well done. This is the part of the review where I start to describe the good parts. As I mentioned in my short summary above, I can still recommend the novel for reading. If you can manage to ignore the sprinkle of oddities, there is quite a lot of value.

First, let's address the elephant in the room, which is the dark forest. Liu Cixin wasn't the first writer to describe this model of the universe. But he was the first to give it a name and make it popular, which is arguably more important, and what I cannot believe never happened before his 黑暗森林 came to life in 2008. For that alone, I greatly appreciate the author. Today, dark forest is my personal second most viable explanation for why we haven't discovered any aliens yet, with the first one being that we haven't really looked yet, of course.

There were scientists who advocated strongly against active SETI or otherwise making Earth more visible. But it's hard to convince people when they haven't even yet considered that something like the dark forest is possible. Now it's finally engraved in human culture, and such conversations should be simpler.

Apart from that, I appreciate the novel's general tendency to make you think. It made me ponder over a variety of topics. Is the mutual assured destruction an effective strategy for lasting peace? Or is it a backdoor for blackmail and ultimate doom? How can we prevent someone from abusing mutual assured destruction for their personal gain? What kind of governance is optimal for the survival of species? How to balance collectivism with individualism? The person who was working for aliens, who betrayed humanity, could that be me? Would I see aliens as superior because of their technology or would I also consider other traits? What traits should I weigh? Wouldn't really superior species view the inferior ones as part of the ecosystem?

I wasn't always a fan of the author's general tendency to dramatize, but that tendency also gifted us with a lot of impactful scenes. The Battle of Darkness... By coincidence, I was also listening to some dramatic music while I was reading it, so that scene made me cry, a lot. (It also made me very angry that humans didn't come up with a more rational solution that would've brought a much greater net positive. It sometimes felt as if the author hated humankind with all his heart, and expressed that hatred by displaying them as inept infants destined to their doom. I'm not against that attitude per se, but it can become annoying when it seeps throughout a story.) The Battle of Darkness deserves a whole separate blog post. "It doesn't matter. It's all the same," says one of the characters with a sad smile, realizing he won't be the one to survive but that the human species will survive nonetheless. The Battle of Darkness made me wonder whether collectivism is part of the common sense to which we should appeal, or whether individuals are inherently and utterly selfish (i.e. their interests never go beyond those of their immediate physical body) and we better treat them as such.

Earlier I said it felt as if the author wrote whatever came to his mind first, disregarding context. As it turns out, it's not always a bad thing. There's a common practice in novel writing of avoiding anything that's irrelevant to the progression of the story. Some may know it as the "Chekhov's gun," named after a writer who gave, frankly, a piece of terrible advice: "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." I won't elaborate much on why it's bad, but in short, it makes your writing too predictable, tunnel-vision-afflicted, unrealistic, superficial, artificial. Many Western writers consciously or unconsciously follow this rule. Liu Cixin doesn't.

Now I realize there were, in fact, times when I was surprised in a positive way. Here's one example. People were evacuating Earth in panic. The protagonist bumped into a class of elementary schoolers but was only able to save three of them. There was an elaborate introduction to those kids and their abilities, and I was already imagining their life as cosmic refugees living on the protagonist's spaceship, only to realize those kids are never to be mentioned in the story again. What was the purpose of that interaction? Perhaps the author wanted to share his opinion on how to prioritize who is to be saved and who must be left behind. Perhaps he wanted the readers to feel the pressure. Whatever it was, those kids were irrelevant to the progression of the story, and I think that's fine.

Here's another example. There was a lengthy introduction to how humans created a miniature black hole, how they tried to understand it, how a person viewed as both a madman and a genius said it was speaking to him, how he jumped inside and appered to be frozen in time, and how they tried to contact him to no avail. I was pretty sure that black hole would play its role, unexpectedly prevent an alien invasion or something. But it didn't. It was never mentioned again. The author was probably just having fun describing all that.

And one last example. A character became blind suddenly, seemingly for no reason. After a while, she regained her sight. I was confident someone was behind all this. I was expecting an explanation. But there was none. Her blindness didn't even affect the plot. She made no fatal mistakes because of it or anything like that. It was there for the sake of being there. Apparently, she lost her sight naturally because of the mental stress, and it was the author's strange way of conveying how great that stress was.

All of that felt like broken promises, but it was actually refreshing. A good novel imitates life, and life doesn't make promises. A good novelist, I believe, describes a world as it is. They mustn't hold your hand tightly, leading from point A to point B along a straight narrow path that never branches. They let you explore and experience.

500M Europeans   depend on
350M Americans   to protect them from
140M degenerates being handled by
40M  Ukrainians

We need a stronger Europe.

I am not saying the current US administration plays 4D chess, but it kind of does, possibly unintentionally. If you ever plan on withdrawing from NATO, or wish to clearly demonstrate your intention to do so, now is the best, safest time for that, when the degenerates are at their weakest.

It doesn’t take a lot of brainpower to militarize your country to the point where citizens have nothing to eat but rockets. And the degenerates, with their abundance of resources and lack of foresight, are perfectly capable of doing so in the near future. By bringing panic to Europe now and incentivizing it to become more self-reliant militarily, the US protects it from a scenario in which the degenerates throw all they have in an attempt to expand once again in 10 to 20 years.

We can assume, for the sake of a thought experiment, that Trump’s admin intentionally does everything Putin wants. Luckily for everyone, Putin’s desires usually hurt his own country the most.

It doesn’t always work though. Imposing tariffs on Canada doesn’t look like 4D chess to me.

Today, I thank God for 5℃.

Sometimes I dream of living where the average temperature hovers somewhat above freezing all year long, with occasional snow maybe. Anything between 5℃ and 12℃ feels good on the skin. It makes you wear enough clothes to get cozy, but not as much to get restrained. The air is fresh no matter the weather, and breathing clears your mind.

Maybe someday.