The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  It was heartening that not only did the Devourer Empire agree to Li Bai’s proposition immediately, letting all humans leave the great Ring-world, they also returned the seawater and air they had raided from Earth. With these materials, the godly race then restored all the continents, oceans, and atmosphere inside the hollow Earth.

  After that, the brutal Great Ring War of Defense took place. The Devourer Empire launched nuclear missiles and gamma-ray laser beams at godly-race targets in space, but these were useless against the enemy. Spurred on by a strong invisible force field launched by the godly race, the Devourer’s outer ring revolved faster and faster, finally disintegrating from the centrifugal force caused by the high-speed rotation. By this time, Yiyi was on his way to the hollow Earth and witnessed the total destruction of the Devourer Empire from twelve million kilometres away.

  The disintegration of the Ring-world took place very slowly, as if it were a mirage against the backdrop of pitch-dark space. The giant world dispersed like milk foam floating on a cup of coffee, with the debris on the margins gradually disappearing into the dark as if it were dissolved by space. Only the sparks of explosions every now and then made them visible again.

  This great virility-exuding civilization from the ancient Earth was thus annihilated. Yiyi was grief-stricken. Only a small proportion of the dinosaurs survived and returned to the Earth with the humans. Among them was Ambassador Big-tooth.

  On the way back to Earth, most of the humans were quite depressed, though for an entirely different reason from Yiyi’s. Once back on Earth, they would have to open up the land and cultivate their own food. For people who had been farm-raised and were thus weak-limbed, who could not tell one grain from another, this was indeed a nightmare.

  Yiyi, however, was full of confidence for the future of the world on Earth. No matter how much hardship lay ahead, human beings would be their own masters again.

  THE POETRY CLOUD

  The yacht on the poetry voyage has reached the coast of Antarctica.

  The gravity here is small and the motion of the waves sluggish. It is like a dance describing a fantasy. Under the low gravity, the water splashes more than ten metres high when waves hit the coast, with surface tension creating countless balls of water in midair, whose sizes range from as large as a football to as small as raindrops. These balls of water drop slowly, so slowly that you could draw a circle around them with your fingertips. The balls refract the glare of the small sun, bathing Yiyi, Li Bai, and Big-tooth in a glittering light as they go ashore. The Earth’s revolution has slightly distorted and lengthened its axis along the North and South Poles, so the polar regions of the hollow Earth have retained their freezing climate. The snow in the low-gravity environment is most unusual, puffed up and foamlike. Its depth varies from waist-deep to places where Big-tooth would be completely submerged. However, they can breathe normally even when immersed! The whole of Antarctica is covered in such snow-foam, giving off an uneven whiteness.

  Yiyi and the others take a snow sledge to the South Pole. The sledge is like a jetboat speeding across the snow-foam, parting waves of snow as it goes.

  The next day, they arrive at the South Pole, which is marked by a tall crystal pyramid, a monument to remember the Earth Defence War of two centuries before. No words or images are inscribed on the solitary gleaming pyramid, which silently refracts the sunlight on the snow-foam at the top of the Earth.

  The entire Earth-world can be viewed from this vantage point. Surrounding the small dazzling sun are the continents and oceans, as if the sun has drifted there from the Arctic Ocean.

  “Can this small sun really shine forever?” Yiyi asks Li Bai.

  “At least till the Earth civilization evolves enough to be able to build new suns. It’s a mini–white hole.”

  “White hole? The reverse of a black hole?” Big-tooth asks.

  “Yes, it’s connected to a black hole two million light-years away through a space wormhole. The black hole revolves around a star, absorbing the star’s light and releasing it here. You can see the white hole as the output end of an optical fibre that transcends space-time.”

  The tip of the pyramid is the southernmost point of the Lagrangian axis, which links the North and South Poles of the hollow Earth. It is named after the zero-gravity Lagrangian Points, which constituted the two ends of a thirteen-thousand-kilometre axis between the Earth and the moon before the war. In the future, humans will surely launch their various satellites along the Lagrangian axis, and, compared with what had to be done on the prewar Earth, these will be very easy launches: you only have to transport the satellites to the North or South Pole, by a mule cart if you prefer, and then kick them skyward with your foot.

  Yiyi and the others are looking at the pyramid when a larger sledge comes up carrying a group of young travellers. As soon as they get off the sledge, these people leap up high along the Lagrangian axis, turning themselves into satellites. A great many small black dots, tourists and assorted vehicles, can be seen drifting along the axis at zero gravity, marking its length. In fact, it is possible to fly from here directly to the North Pole. However, since the small sun is located midway along the axis, some of the tourists who flew along the axis in the past and who could not decelerate due to faulty jet propulsion packs headed straight towards the sun and were evaporated long before they actually reached it.

  On the hollow Earth, it is easy to reach space by jumping into one of the five deep wells at the equator (known as “land doors”), falling 100 kilometres down (or up?) through the crust, and being flung into space by the centrifugal force of the Earth’s revolution.

  Now, in order to see the Poetry Cloud, Yiyi and the others have to go through the crust too. But since they are taking the land door at the South Pole where the centrifugal force from the Earth’s revolution is zero, they will only be able to reach the outer surface of the hollow Earth and will not be flung into space. When they finish putting on their light space suits at the control station of the Antarctic land door, they enter the one-hundred-kilometre-deep well. At zero gravity, it might be more apt to call it a “tunnel,” since they, in their weightless state, have to rely on the jet propulsion packs in their space suits to move themselves forward. It takes them half an hour to reach the outer surface, way slower than dropping from the land doors on the equator.

  The desolate outer surface of the hollow Earth only contains intersecting neutron matter reinforcement rings which, like latitude and longitude lines, divide up the surface of the Earth into numerous rectangles. The South Pole is the juncture for all the longitudinal rings. When Yiyi walks out of the land door, he finds himself on a not very large plateau. The reinforcement rings are like mountain ridges that originate from the plateau and radiate in every direction.

  Looking up, they see the Poetry Cloud.

  The Poetry Cloud, located where the solar system used to be, is a spiral nebula one hundred astronomic units in diameter, its shape resembling the Milky Way. The hollow Earth is at the edge of the Cloud, as was the sun in the original Milky Way. What is different is that the orbit of the Earth is not on the same plane as the Poetry Cloud, so it is possible to see from the Earth an entire side of the Cloud, unlike the Milky Way, which only offered a view of its cross-section. However, the distance between the Earth and the Poetry Cloud plane is insufficient to allow the people here to observe the Cloud’s full shape. In fact, the entire sky of the Southern Hemisphere is covered by the Cloud.

  The Poetry Cloud emits a silvery radiance which casts shadows upon the Earth. It is said that the cloud emits no light of its own and the silvery radiance is caused by cosmic rays. Owing to the uneven distribution of cosmic rays in space, large halos of light often surge through the Poetry Cloud. These multi-hued halos course through the sky, like giant glowing whales swimming in the Cloud. On the rare occasions when the intensity of the cosmic rays dramatically increases, glimmering sheens of light will appear and the Poetry Cloud will no longer be cloudlike: the whole sky will lo
ok like the surface of a moonlit ocean seen from underwater. The asynchronous rotations of the Earth and the Poetry Cloud allow for an occasional glimpse into the night sky and the stars through the gap when the Earth is in between the spiral arms. The most sensational view is the cross-section of the Poetry Cloud, seen when the Earth is at the edge of a spiral arm. It looks like cumulonimbus clouds in the Earth’s atmosphere which transform into majestic shapes that capture one’s imagination. These gigantic shapes emerge high above the rotation plane of the Poetry Cloud, giving off a sublime silvery glow, like a never-ending hyperconscious dream.

  Yiyi draws his gaze back from the Poetry Cloud. He picks a chip up off the ground. This kind of chip is scattered all around them, glistening on the ground like ice shards in the dead of the winter. Yiyi holds the chip up towards a sky densely covered by the Poetry Cloud. The small chip is half the size of his palm, completely transparent if seen from the front, but by tilting it to one side, one will catch on its surface the iridescent reflection of the Poetry Cloud. This is a quantum storage device. All the texts produced in human history would only take up one-billionth of a chip’s storage capacity. The Poetry Cloud is made of 1,040 such chips which store all the output from the ultimate poetry composition, produced from the matter that used to form the original sun and all the nine planets, and of course the Devourer Empire as well.

  “What a great piece of art!” hails Big-tooth sincerely.

  “Indeed, its beauty lies in its content: a nebula ten billion kilometres in diameter that comprises all possible poems; it’s really amazing!” Yiyi looks up into the nebula and says with passion, “Even I have begun to admire technology.”

  Li Bai, who has been in low spirits, sighs, “It seems we are moving towards each other. I see the limits of technology when applied to art. I…” He sobs, “I am a loser, oh….”

  “How can you say this?” Yiyi points up to the Poetry Cloud. “That encompasses all possible poems, which of course includes those that surpass Li Bai’s.”

  “Yet I cannot get hold of them.” Li Bai stamps his foot, leaps a few metres high, and curls himself into a ball in midair. He buries his face between his knees in foetal position and descends slowly in the tiny gravity of the Earth’s crust. “Since the ultimate poetry composition began, I have been working on poetry recognition software. However, technology met again with that unsurpassable obstacle in art, and a program which can appreciate ancient poetry is yet to be written.” He points to the Poetry Cloud while still in midair. “I have indeed composed the most supreme pieces of poetry by means of our great technology, but I have been unable to locate them in the Poetry Cloud. Alas…”

  “Is the essence and nature of intelligent life really unreachable by technology?” Big-tooth looks up and questions the Poetry Cloud. Having been through all these experiences he has become more philosophical.

  “Since the Poetry Cloud encompasses all possible poems, some of them naturally write about the entirety of our past and about all possible or impossible futures. Bug Yiyi must be able to find one that describes his thoughts when he clipped his nails on an evening thirty years ago, or the menu of a lunch twelve years from now. Ambassador Big-tooth should also be able to find a poem that depicts the colour of a scale on his leg in five years’ time….” Li Bai has already landed on the surface as he speaks and hands out two chips which glitter under the glow of the Poetry Cloud. “This is a gift for you two before I go. These are the trillions of poems culled from the quantum computer with your names as the keyword. They portray all your possible future lives, which, of course, only account for a tiny portion of all the poems that are about you. I have only read a few dozens of them. My favourite is a heptasyllabic poem about Bug Yiyi which tells his love story with a pretty village girl by the riverside….After I leave, I hope humans and the remaining dinosaurs can coexist with each other; humans should also have good relations among themselves. It will be trouble should the hollow Earth’s crust be blown open by a nuclear bomb….The good works in the Poetry Cloud do not yet belong to anyone and I hope humans can write some of them in the future.”

  “How did it go with me and the village girl?” Yiyi is curious.

  “You live happily together ever after,” Li Bai chuckles under the silvery glow of the Poetry Cloud.

  Story of Your Life

  TED CHIANG

  Ted Chiang (1967– ) is an influential US science fiction writer born in Port Jefferson, New York, whose short stories and novellas have won multiple awards. He must be considered one of the—if not the—preeminent SF short fiction writers of his generation. Chiang has also won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and attended the Clarion writers’ workshop in 1989. He graduated from Brown University with a degree in computer science and currently lives near Seattle, working as a technical writer.

  Chiang has an astonishing record of winning or being a finalist for awards for almost every of his published works of fiction (fewer than twenty stories). These include: the Nebula Award for “Tower of Babylon” (1990); the Theodore Sturgeon and Nebula Awards for “Story of Your Life” (1998); the Sidewise Award for “Seventy-Two Letters” (2000); the Locus, Nebula, and Hugo Awards for his novelette “Hell Is the Absence of God” (2002); the Nebula and Hugo Awards for “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” (2007); the Locus Award and Hugo Award for “Exhalation” (2008); and the Locus and Hugo Awards for “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” (2010).

  “Story of Your Life,” reprinted here, is a unique alien first-contact story centered around linguistics (including heptapod languages!) and an examination of free will. Chiang does a masterful job of conveying a view of an alien culture totally different from our own—and the dangers and pitfalls related to that potential gulf in understanding.

  Although Chiang is not a linguist, his portrayal of linguistics in the story—including language universals and writing systems—rings true for those who are professionals in the field. The issue of linguistic relativity plays a role in the story, including the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which holds that the structure of a language affects a speaker’s conceptualization of their world—in other words, that language creates everyday reality. In exploring the topic, Chiang also pushes back against the common science fiction idea that aliens could learn our languages just from watching our broadcasts. The story has been made into a movie starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.

  STORY OF YOUR LIFE

  Ted Chiang

  Your father is about to ask me the question. This is the most important moment in our lives, and I want to pay attention, note every detail. Your dad and I have just come back from an evening out, dinner and a show; it’s after midnight. We came out onto the patio to look at the full moon; then I told your dad I wanted to dance, so he humors me and now we’re slow-dancing, a pair of thirtysomethings swaying back and forth in the moonlight like kids. I don’t feel the night chill at all. And then your dad says, “Do you want to make a baby?”

  Right now your dad and I have been married for about two years, living on Ellis Avenue; when we move out you’ll still be too young to remember the house, but we’ll show you pictures of it, tell you stories about it. I’d love to tell you the story of this evening, the night you’re conceived, but the right time to do that would be when you’re ready to have children of your own, and we’ll never get that chance.

  Telling it to you any earlier wouldn’t do any good; for most of your life you won’t sit still to hear such a romantic—you’d say sappy—story. I remember the scenario of your origin you’ll suggest when you’re twelve.

  “The only reason you had me was so you could get a maid you wouldn’t have to pay,” you’ll say bitterly, dragging the vacuum cleaner out of the closet.

  “That’s right,” I’ll say. “Thirteen years ago I knew the carpets would need vacuuming around now, and having a baby seemed to be the cheapest and easiest way to get the job done. Now kindly get on with it.”

  “If you weren’t my mother, t
his would be illegal,” you’ll say, seething as you unwind the power cord and plug it into the wall outlet.

  That will be in the house on Belmont Street. I’ll live to see strangers occupy both houses: the one you’re conceived in and the one you grow up in. Your dad and I will sell the first a couple years after your arrival. I’ll sell the second shortly after your departure. By then Nelson and I will have moved into our farmhouse, and your dad will be living with what’s-her-name.

  I know how this story ends; I think about it a lot. I also think a lot about how it began, just a few years ago, when ships appeared in orbit and artifacts appeared in meadows. The government said next to nothing about them, while the tabloids said every possible thing.

  And then I got a phone call, a request for a meeting.

  —

  I spotted them waiting in the hallway, outside my office. They made an odd couple; one wore a military uniform and a crew cut, and carried an aluminum briefcase. He seemed to be assessing his surroundings with a critical eye. The other one was easily identifiable as an academic: full beard and mustache, wearing corduroy. He was browsing through the overlapping sheets stapled to a bulletin board nearby.

  “Colonel Weber, I presume?” I shook hands with the soldier. “Louise Banks.”

  “Dr. Banks. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us,” he said.