Statement
What We Fear Project Statement
I chose a Chinese science fiction novel The Wondering Earth by Cixin Liu as my source of adaptation. In this novel, Liu thoroughly discussed his fear about human ignorance and his prediction of devastating disasters that may happen in the future if human does not make any change on the way they behave and conduct things. Liu is a brilliant author who are good at combining strict science knowledge with vivid stories, this character is distinctly represented by this novel. This novel is more like a time line that is connected by several protagonists, which together represented different classes of people on earth and show their choices when a devastating disaster. Liu especially emphasized how human’s ignorance can lead to a much larger scale disaster than they thought – in this novel, a self-destruction of the human civilization and the elimination of every living being on the earth. Liu steadily build up his deep fear against the dark side of humanity in every human being by carefully making every protagonist vivid and independent, and letting them make choices that could eventually the fate of the whole human race.
It all began when the human started to notice that the sun was rapidly dying, and it was going to expand and eventually swallow the earth. The united nations have decided to build ten thousand planetary engines and push the earth out of the solar system to another star and orbit around the new sun. The united government set four stages of the plan – braking era, fleeing era, decelerating era, and new era. The planetary engines will stop the rotation of the earth in the braking era and push the earth out of the solar system in the fleeing era. After that, the earth will travel across the space four 4000 years and then get decelerated by the engines and finally park into the orbit of the new star. The plan was great. However, civilians who distrusted the government kept observing the sun since the beginning of the braking era to the very beginning of the fleeing era. Just when the earth started to accelerate to flee from the solar system, the conspiracy theorists found that there seemed to have no change on the surface of the sun and a thought emerged in their heads – the government was lying to them, the sun was not having any trouble. So, the people formed a rebellion army and spread the facts they have found to other civilians. As more and more people joined the rebellion army, the army finally occupied the united government’s headquarter and killed every single governor who was in charge of the plan. Right after they pushed the button to stop the acceleration of the earth, a helium flash happened in the center of the solar system – the sun died.
For my adaptation, I would continue the author’s concern about human’s ignorance. I will use one of the eras in the story to extract out a new short story to have a deeper discussion about the impact of human’s ignorance. However, instead of coming into an end of a tragedy in the original novel, I will let my protagonist to wake up the humanity and lead to a happy ending with hope and a new start. By having him undergoing different stages of life, I will show the growth of a character and how he gains hope while gaining knowledge and eventually apply his knowledge and hope to wake up human on the earth.
Although I will follow his discussion about the ignorance in humanity, I will not put an alien character in my short story. And I want to give another possible ending to the story by waking up human.
I chose a Chinese science fiction novel The Wondering Earth by Cixin Liu as my source of adaptation. In this novel, Liu thoroughly discussed his fear about human ignorance and his prediction of devastating disasters that may happen in the future if human does not make any change on the way they behave and conduct things. Liu is a brilliant author who are good at combining strict science knowledge with vivid stories, this character is distinctly represented by this novel. This novel is more like a time line that is connected by several protagonists, which together represented different classes of people on earth and show their choices when a devastating disaster. Liu especially emphasized how human’s ignorance can lead to a much larger scale disaster than they thought – in this novel, a self-destruction of the human civilization and the elimination of every living being on the earth. Liu steadily build up his deep fear against the dark side of humanity in every human being by carefully making every protagonist vivid and independent, and letting them make choices that could eventually the fate of the whole human race.
It all began when the human started to notice that the sun was rapidly dying, and it was going to expand and eventually swallow the earth. The united nations have decided to build ten thousand planetary engines and push the earth out of the solar system to another star and orbit around the new sun. The united government set four stages of the plan – braking era, fleeing era, decelerating era, and new era. The planetary engines will stop the rotation of the earth in the braking era and push the earth out of the solar system in the fleeing era. After that, the earth will travel across the space four 4000 years and then get decelerated by the engines and finally park into the orbit of the new star. The plan was great. However, civilians who distrusted the government kept observing the sun since the beginning of the braking era to the very beginning of the fleeing era. Just when the earth started to accelerate to flee from the solar system, the conspiracy theorists found that there seemed to have no change on the surface of the sun and a thought emerged in their heads – the government was lying to them, the sun was not having any trouble. So, the people formed a rebellion army and spread the facts they have found to other civilians. As more and more people joined the rebellion army, the army finally occupied the united government’s headquarter and killed every single governor who was in charge of the plan. Right after they pushed the button to stop the acceleration of the earth, a helium flash happened in the center of the solar system – the sun died.
For my adaptation, I would continue the author’s concern about human’s ignorance. I will use one of the eras in the story to extract out a new short story to have a deeper discussion about the impact of human’s ignorance. However, instead of coming into an end of a tragedy in the original novel, I will let my protagonist to wake up the humanity and lead to a happy ending with hope and a new start. By having him undergoing different stages of life, I will show the growth of a character and how he gains hope while gaining knowledge and eventually apply his knowledge and hope to wake up human on the earth.
Although I will follow his discussion about the ignorance in humanity, I will not put an alien character in my short story. And I want to give another possible ending to the story by waking up human.