Introduction to Orphan of Mars; Reflections on Orphan of Mars

Orphan of Mars should be one of the hottest science fiction novels in the past six months, and the author's brain hole is admirable. When the alien civilization landed on the earth, the whole world was in danger. At this moment, it is a group of high school students in China who can save mankind by passing the college entrance examination. Seeing this introduction, I'm afraid everyone is curious about what kind of story Orphan of Mars tells. My favorite friend is still worth reading. This time, I have prepared other readers' comments on this book for your reference.

Comment on Orphan of Mars;

The first time I read Liu Yang's science fiction, it was the short story Pythagoras. This short story is a rare mathematical science fiction reasoning: what would happen if there was another world with different Pythagorean constants? From this novel, we can also see the characteristics of Liu Yang's works: a short story is formed by an idea. Then I read his collection of short stories "Perfect Doomsday", and the short stories in it basically follow this path. In recent years, the original sci-fi has developed very well, but Liu Yang's sci-fi did not follow the grand narrative style, nor did he hang up a sci-fi idea and fill it with a bunch of descriptive language, but it was still puzzling in the end. Reading Liu Yang's novels, we can really feel that this writer is really thinking seriously. Therefore, in the wave of original science fiction in recent years, Liu Yang's novels have always been able to maintain their own characteristics of hard science fiction, focusing on the basic science fiction settings of physics and mathematics, and paying more attention to the direct impact of settings on people's lives, rather than what will happen to people under the science fiction settings.

It is very appropriate to prop up an exquisite short story with a setting, but there will be many challenges in maintaining the original writing mode in a long story. Orphan of Mars happens to be Liu Yang's first novel, and it is quite good to use this book as an analysis sample. After reading this book, the postscript of the book is worth reading. It is obvious from the postscript that the novel originated from an idea: what would the world be like if all the knowledge in the textbook was deliberately fabricated? This idea is very consistent with the author's previous conception of short science fiction and is very suitable for writing short stories. However, after the author published some short science fiction novels, he had the idea of creating long science fiction novels, so this idea was expanded.

Let's take a look first. If Orphan of Mars is written as a short story, how should it be written? It will probably be written in two lines. The first line is that electromagnetic viruses appear everywhere, the power in major cities disappears, and a large number of stone tablets appear over the cities, engraved with topics that human beings cannot understand. The second line should be a closed high school in synchronous orbit-Jinteng High School. The students began to learn completely different textbooks, but no one explained why. The two lines meet when the students take the college entrance examination in advance, and then the final answer is deduced. In this way, it's about 10 thousand to 20 thousand words. It is a good practice to use descriptive language to promote the plot. If we compare it with the novel Orphan of Mars, we can see that the novel has a third line, that is, American life in the post-civilization era.

In order to develop these three lines completely, the power loss in major cities is described in detail. From the clue of magnetic change to the loss of electricity in the back, the author spent a lot of ink here, introducing Sun as one of the researchers and letting him work in the later period of the novel. In order to connect the second line and the third line, the author obviously modeled the role of Solo based on Soros, which not only made him a financial giant in the civilized era, but also tried to bring down his competitor Jinteng High School. This also made him a religious leader in the post-civilization era-because he successfully cheated A Mu, a high school student who could solve the problem of stone tablets, from Jinteng High School and restored electricity in some cities.

Through the "cross-talk" of several main characters, the novel's long structure is established. The task of the characters in the novel is also very clear, which is to solve the problems left by aliens and find out the root causes behind them. Here you will find that the problem of "dry writing and boring plot" written by the author in the postscript is basically inevitable. The novel has only one main task, but also lacks enough sub-tasks, and the length of the novel is also there. In order to solve this problem, the author can only describe the specific life of the closed high school in relatively detail, and also use the third line appropriately, but in general, the connection between this part of the content and the final answer may not be as close as the author imagined. The author first conceived that "the knowledge in textbooks is deliberately fabricated, what will the world look like?" The idea of "b)" can naturally be deduced from this idea. The prefix is "What caused the textbook to be changed (abbreviated as A)" followed by "What action will the students take after the textbook is changed (abbreviated as C)". Of course, ABC will be written in detail in the novel, but subtly, the author's initial idea is B, but the final novel is to find the answer to A through C. Frankly speaking, the process from C to A is not so fierce, because there must be more people with the same wisdom on earth who can complete this task. The description of the third line is in a slightly embarrassing position in this book, because this line is not closely related to the answer of the novel, but only expresses the influence of the disappearance of electricity on human life from the side. Maybe the author wanted to write, but in the end, because of the words, he just described this line properly.

As a critic, of course, it is not difficult to judge people, the bitterness faced by the author in the creative process, and the problems that the author can't handle well in the creative process. If it were a critic, it would only be worse. For the author, it is the first time to challenge the novel; For the editor, it is probably the first time to take an examination of domestic original science fiction. If there are any flaws in the novel, it doesn't hurt. The greatest value of this book lies in the mystery presented in the last ten pages, which is a complete display of Liu Yang's sci-fi skills. I believe that the author can play better in his later novels, and the sci-fi settings will be fully developed into novels, which will certainly provide more types for original sci-fi novels.

Author: Ouyang Jue (from Douban)

Reflections on Orphan of Mars 2;

After the thrilling college entrance examination as a teenager, Liu Yang took us back to the classroom of senior high school when we opened the first page. The author's interpretation of the future college entrance examination education has expanded our most fearful memories of the college entrance examination in our personal experience to the extreme, such as closed teaching, grade grading, blue potion and surveillance collar ... With the resistance of extreme education methods to students, the story has entered a slightly strange situation. When you think this reality drama will lead to an explosion under pressure, the silent story will be staged in the future. As soon as the wind turns, the textbooks that are completely opposite to the real textbooks enter the classroom. The students' riots and absurd resistance tore open the huge conspiracy hidden under the short story. Just like The Truman Show, the stage of the story jumped from school to geosynchronous orbit space station, and the gorgeous imagination of science fiction soared.

Rewriting the laws of physics turned the world upside down. On the interrelated ground, the crisis of global power failure and fire is imminent, mysterious stone tablets are dug up, alien puzzles confuse the world, and the mysterious "263" project, the fate of primary and secondary school students is closely linked to the fate of the earth.

As the puzzles become clear like the college entrance examination questions, we are also brought into a new world defined by physical laws. The space station in the sky fell into a dark panic, and the mysterious religion in the underground suddenly rose. This is an atom that changed the world. This is Liu Yang's science fiction universe, and the horror brought by the fear of technological retrogression is bound to hit all of us.

In the cruel college entrance examination factory, A Mu, a teenager who solved problems mechanically, surpassed all his classmates and solved the mystery of aliens, bringing the hope of dawn with a number "32.7". With the help of A Mu's "divine power", the speculator Thoreau founded the power religion, and ironically, Thoreau also perished in A Mu's mechanical study, as if it were a cycle of justice and retribution. We don't know how A Mu built a bridge between the two worlds. Unfortunately, the novel setting broke out in the eyes of the ancient river, which was a bit lazy. But when two cosmic civilizations close at hand and far away touch each other, the ripple of civilization caused by electronic shock is still touching. From unreasonable to amazing, it is just a few pages of interpretation of physical formulas.

Just as Liu Yang said, "Even the intelligent race at low latitudes can still hold the life at high latitudes by the throat", even simple college entrance examination questions can give birth to Conan's sci-fi whimsy. In Douglas Adams's science fiction A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 42 is the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything, while in Liu Yang's science fiction Orphan of Mars, 32.7 is the inscription to save modern human civilization.

Author: Richardo (from Douban)