童年的一个夜晚在我的记忆中深刻而清晰：我站在一个池塘边，那池溏位于河南省罗山县的一个村庄前，那是我祖辈生活的村庄。旁边还站着许多人，有大人也有小孩，我和他们一起仰望着晴朗的夜空，漆黑的天幕上有一个小星星缓缓飞过。那是中国刚刚发射的第一颗人造卫星“东方红一号”，那是1970年4月25日，那年我7岁。
这时距人类第一颗人造卫星进入太空已经13年了，距第一名宇航员飞出地球也有9年，而就在一个星期前，阿波罗13号飞船刚刚从险象环生的登月飞行中返回地球。
但这些我都不知道，我看着那颗飞行的小星星，心中充满了不可名状的好奇和向往，而与这些感受同样记忆深刻的，是我肚子中的饥饿。当时这个地区很贫穷，饥饿伴随着每一个孩子，而我还算是比较幸运的，因为我脚上穿着鞋，站在旁边的小伙伴们大部分光着脚，有的小脚上冬天留下的冻疮还没好。在我的身后，村中的破旧的茅草房中透出煤油灯昏暗的光，这个村子直到上世纪八十年代还没有通电，
旁边的大人们说，人造卫星和飞机可不一样，它是在地球之外飞。那时大气还没有被工业粉尘所污染，星空清彻明亮，银河清晰可见，在我的感觉中，那满天的群星距离我们并不比那颗移动的小星星远多少，所以我觉得它是在星星间飞行，甚至担心它穿越那密密麻麻的星群时会撞上一颗。
那时我不在父母身边，他们在上千公里外的山西省的煤矿工作，几年前，在我更小的时候，那里是文革中各派别武斗的重灾区，我记得夜里的枪声，记得街上驶过的大卡车，车上挤满了带枪的人，他们的胳膊上都有红袖章。。。。。。但那时我太小了，不知道这些画面是真实的记忆还是后来的幻觉。不过有一点是真实的：当时矿上的环境不安全，加上父母受到文革的冲击，只好把我送回河南的农村老家，看到人造卫星的时候，我在这里已经呆了3年多。
直到几年后，我才知道了那颗人造卫星与其它星星的距离。那时我看了一本叫《十万个为什么》的书，那是当时中国流行的一套科普丛书，我看的是天文卷。从书中我第一次知道了光年的概念。在这之前已经知道光一秒钟能够绕地球跑7圈半，而以这骇人的速度飞驰一年将跨越什么样的距离？我想象着光线以每秒30万公里的速度穿越那寒冷寂静的太空，用想象努力把握着那令人战栗的广漠和深远，被一种巨大的恐惧和敬畏所压倒，同时有一种吸毒般的快乐感。从那时起，我发现自己拥有一种特殊的能力：那些远超出人类感官范围的极大和极小的尺度和存在，在别人看来就是大数字而已，而在我的大脑中却是形象化的，我能够触摸和感受到它们，就像触摸树木和岩石一样。直到今天，当150亿光年的宇宙半径和比夸克都小许多数量级的弦已经使人们麻木时，1光年和1纳米的概念仍能在我的心中产生栩栩如生的宏大图像，激起一种难以言表的宗教般的震撼和敬畏，与没有这种感受的大多数人相比，我不知道这是幸运还是不幸，但有一点可以肯定：正是这种感受，使我先是成为一个科幻迷，进而成为科幻作家。
就在我被光年所震撖的那一年，我的家乡附近发生了惨烈的“75.8”大洪水，在超过当时世界纪录的一天1005毫米的大暴雨中，河南驻马店地区的58座中小型水坝先后溃塌，在铺天盖地的洪水中，24万人死亡。洪水过后不久我又回了一趟老家，看到漫山遍野的灾民，当时有世界末日的感觉。
就这样，人造卫星、饥饿、群星、煤油灯、银河、文革武斗、光年、洪灾。。。。。。这些相距甚远的东西混杂纠结在一起，成为我早年的人生，也塑造了我今天的科幻小说。
做为一个科幻迷出身的科幻作家，我写科幻小说的目的不是用它来隐喻和批判现实，我感觉科幻小说的最大魅力，就是创造出众多的现实之外的想象世界。我一直认为，人类历史上最伟大最美妙的故事，不是游吟诵诗人唱出来的，也不是剧作家和作家写出来的，这样的故事是科学讲出来的，科学所讲的故事，其宏伟壮丽、曲折幽深、惊悚诡异、恐怖神秘，甚至多愁善感，都远超出文学的故事，只是这些伟大的故事禁锢在冷酷的方程式中，一般人难以读懂。各民族和宗教的创世神话，与壮丽的宇宙大爆炸相比都黯然失色；生命从可复制的分子直到智慧文明的三十多亿年漫长的进化史，其曲折与浪漫，也是任何神话和史诗所无法比拟的；还有相对论诗一样的时空图景，量子力学诡异的微观世界，这些科学讲述的神奇故事都具有不可抗拒的吸引力。我只是想通过科幻小说，用想象力创造出自己的世界，在那些世界中展现科学所揭示的大自然的诗意，讲述人与宇宙之间浪漫的传奇。
但我不可能摆脱和逃离现实，就像无法摆脱自己的影子。现实在每个人身上都打上了不可磨灭的烙印，每个时代都给经历过它的人带上无形的精神枷锁，我也只能带着镣铐跳舞。在科幻小说中，人类往往被当做一个整体来描述，在这本书中，这个叫“人类”的人面临灭顶之灾，他面对生存和死亡时所表现出来的一切，无疑都是以我所经历过的现实为基础的。科幻的奇妙之处在于，它能够提出某种世界设定，让现实中邪恶和黑暗的东西变成正义和光明的，反之宜然，这本书（以及它的后两部）就是在试图做这种事情，但不管现实被想象力如何扭曲，它总是还在那里。
我一直认为，外星文明将是人类未来最大的不确定因素。其它的大变故，如气候变化和生态灾难，都有一定的过程和缓冲期，但人类与外星人的相遇随时可能发生。也许在一万年后，人类面对的星空仍然是空旷和寂静的；但也可能明天一觉醒来，如月球大小的外星飞船已经停泊在地球轨道上。外星文明的出现将使人类第一次面对一个“他者”，在此之前，人类做为一个整体，是从来没有外部的对应物的，这个“他者”的出现，或仅仅知道其存在，将对我们的文明产生难以预测的影响。
人们面对宇宙所表现出来的天真和善良显示出一种奇怪的矛盾：在地球上，他们可以毫无顾忌地登上另一个大陆，用战争和瘟疫毁灭那里的同类的文明，却把温情脉脉的目光投向星空，认为如果有外星智慧生命存在，它们也将是被统一的、崇高的道德所约束的文明，而对不同生命形式的珍视和爱是宇宙中理所当然的行为准则。
我觉得事情应该反过来，让我们把对星空的善意转移到地球上的人类同类身上，建立起人类各种族和文明之间的信任和理解，但对于太阳系之外的星空，要永远睁大警惕的眼睛，也不惜以最大的恶意来猜测太空中可能存在的“他者”，对于我们这样一个在宇宙中弱不禁风的文明，这无疑是最负责任的做法。
做为一个科幻迷，科幻小说塑造了我的生活和人生，而我读过的科幻小说相当一部分都来自美国，今天能够让美国的读者读到我自己的科幻小说，也是一件很让人高兴和激动的事。科幻是全人类的文学，它描述的是地球人共同关心的事情，因而科幻小说应该是最容易被不同国度的读者所共同理解的文学类型。总有一天，人类会像科幻小说中那样成为一个和诣的整体，而我相信，这一天的到来不用等到外星人出现。
对本书第一部和第三部的译者Ken Liu，以及第二部的译者Joel Martinsen表示诚挚的谢意，是他们辛勤而认真的工作，使这部小说的英文版得以面世。感谢中国教育图书进出口公司和《科幻世界》杂志社，他们以极大的信任和真诚推动了本书的出版。
2012.12.28 于阳泉
A night from my childhood remains crisply etched in my memory: I was standing by a pond before a village somewhere in Luoshan County, Henan Province, where generations of my ancestors had lived. Next to me stood many other people, both adults and children. Together, we gazed up at the clear night sky, where a tiny star slowly glided across the dark firmament.
It was the first artificial satellite China had ever launched: Dongfanghong I (“The East is Red I”). The date was April 25, 1970, and I was seven.
It had been thirteen years since Sputnik had been launched into space, and nine years since the first cosmonaut had left the Earth. Just a week earlier, Apollo 13 had safely returned from a perilous journey to the Moon.
But I didn’t know any of that. As I gazed at that tiny, gliding star, my heart was filled with indescribable curiosity and yearning. And etched just as deeply in my memory as these feelings was the sensation of hunger. At that time, the region containing my village was extremely poor. Hunger was the constant companion of every child. I was relatively fortunate because I had shoes on my feet. Most of the friends standing by my side were barefoot, and some of the tiny feet still had unhealed frostbite from the previous winter. Behind me, faint light from kerosene lamps shone out of cracks in the walls of dilapidated thatched huts—the village wasn’t wired for electricity until the eighties.
The adults standing nearby said that the satellite wasn’t like an airplane because it flew outside of the Earth. Back then the dust and smoke of industry hadn’t yet polluted the air, and the starry sky was especially clear, with the Milky Way clearly visible. In my mind, the stars that filled the heavens weren’t much further away than the tiny, gliding satellite, and so I thought it was flying among them. I even worried that it might collide with one as it passed through the dense stellar clusters.
My parents weren’t with me because they were working at a coal mine more than a thousand kilometers away, in Shanxi Province. A few years earlier, when I had been even younger, the mine had been a combat zone for the factional civil wars of the Cultural Revolution. I remembered gunshots in the middle of the night, trucks passing in the street, filled with men clutching guns and wearing red armbands … But I had been too young back then, and I can’t be sure whether these images are real memories or mirages constructed later. However, one thing I know for certain: Because the mine was too unsafe and my parents had been impacted by the Cultural Revolution, they had no choice but to send me to my ancestral home village in Henan. By the time I saw Dongfanghong I I had already lived there for more than three years.
A few more years passed before I understood the distance between that satellite and the stars. Back then I was reading a popular set of basic science books called A Hundred Thousand Whys. From the astronomy volume, I learned the concept of a light-year. Before then, I had already known that light could traverse a distance equal to seven and a half trips around the Earth in a single second, but what kind of terrifying distance could be crossed by flying at such a speed for a whole year! I imagined a ray of light passing through the cold silence of space at the speed of 300,000 kilometers per second, struggled to grasp the bone-chilling vastness and profundity with my imagination, felt the weight of an immense terror and awe, and simultaneously enjoyed a drug-like euphoria.
From that moment, I realized that I had a special talent: Scales and existences that far exceeded the bounds of human sensory perception—both macro and micro—and that seemed to be only abstract numbers to others, could take on concrete forms in my mind. I could touch them and feel them, much like others could touch and feel trees and rocks. Even today, when references to the15-billion-light-year radius of the universe and “strings” many orders of magnitude smaller than quarks have numbed most people, the concepts of a light-year or a nanometer can still produce lively, grand pictures in my mind and arouse in me an ineffable, religious feeling of awe and shock. Compared to most of the population who do not experience such sensations, I don’t know if I’m lucky or unlucky. But it is certain that such feelings made me first into a science fiction fan, and later a science fiction author.
In that same year when I was first awed by the concept of a light-year, the Great Flood of August ‘75 occurred near my home village. In a single day, a record-breaking 1,005 millimeters of rain fell in the Zhumadian region of Henan. Fifty-eight dams of various sizes collapsed, one after another, and 240,000 people died in the resulting deluge. Shortly after the floodwaters had receded, I returned to the village and saw a landscape filled with refugees. I thought I was looking at the end of the world.
And so, satellite, hunger, stars, kerosene lamps, the Milky Way, the Cultural Revolution’s factional civil wars, a light-year, the flood…these seemingly unconnected things melded together and formed the early part of my life, and also molded the science fiction I write today.
As a science fiction writer who began as a fan, I do not use my fiction as a disguised way to criticize the reality of the present. I feel that the greatest appeal of science fiction is the creation of numerous imaginary worlds outside of reality. I’ve always felt that the greatest and most beautiful stories in the history of humanity were not sung by wandering bards or written by playwrights and novelists, but told by science. The stories told by science are far more magnificent, grand, involved, profound, thrilling, strange, terrifying, mysterious, even emotional, compared to the stories told by literature. Only these wonderful stories are locked in cold equations that most do not know how to read.
The creation myths of the various peoples and religions of the world pale when compared to the glory of the Big Bang; the three-billion-year history of life’s evolution from self-reproducing molecules to civilization contains twists and romances that cannot be matched by any myth or epic; and there are also the poetic vision of space and time in relativity, the weird subatomic world of quantum mechanics … these wondrous stories of science all possess an irresistible attraction. Through the medium of science fiction, I seek only to create my own worlds using the power of imagination, and to make known the poetry of Nature in those worlds, to tell the romantic legends between Man and Universe.
But I cannot escape and leave behind reality, just like I cannot leave behind my shadow. Reality brands each of us with its indelible mark. Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains. In science fiction, humanity is often described as a collective. In this book, a man named “humanity” confronts a disaster, and everything he demonstrates in the face of existence and annihilation without a doubt has sources in the reality that I experienced. The wonder of science fiction is that it can, when given certain hypothetical world settings, turn what in our reality is evil and dark into what is righteous and bright, and vice versa. This book (and its two sequels) tries to do just that, but no matter how reality is twisted by imagination, it ultimately remains there.
I’ve always felt that extraterrestrial intelligence will be the greatest source of uncertainty for humanity’s future. Other great shifts, such as climate change and ecological disasters, have a certain progression and built-in adjustment periods, but contact between mankind and aliens can occur at any time. Perhaps in ten thousand years, the starry sky that mankind gazes upon will remain empty and silent, but perhaps tomorrow we’ll wake up and find an alien spaceship the size of the Moon parked in orbit. The appearance of extraterrestrial intelligence will force humanity to confront an Other. Before then, as a whole, humanity will never have had an external counterpart. The appearance of this Other, or mere knowledge of its existence, will impact our civilization in unpredictable ways.
There’s a strange contradiction revealed by the naïveté and kindness demonstrated by humanity when faced with the universe: on Earth, mankind can step onto another continent, and without a thought, destroy the kindred civilizations found there through warfare and disease. But when they gaze up at the stars, they turn sentimental and believe that if extraterrestrial intelligences exist, they must be civilizations bound by universal, noble moral constraints, and that cherishing and loving different forms of life are parts of a self-evident universal code of conduct.
I think it should be precisely the opposite: Let’s turn the kindness we show towards the stars to members of the human race on Earth and build up the trust and understanding between the different peoples and civilizations that make up humanity. But as for the universe outside the Solar System, we should be ever vigilant, and be ready to attribute the worst of intentions to any Others that might exist in space. For a fragile civilization like ours, this is without a doubt the most responsible path.
As a fan, science fiction has molded my life, and a considerable part of the science fiction I’ve read comes from America. The fact that American readers can now enjoy my book makes me both pleased and excited. Science fiction is a literature that belongs to all mankind. It portrays events of interest to all of humanity, and thus science fiction should be a literary genre most accessible to readers of different nations. There will ultimately be a day when humanity will form a harmonious whole (often described in science fiction), and I believe that the arrival of such a day needs not wait for the appearance of extraterrestrials.
I express my heartfelt thanks to the translator of this volume, Ken Liu, and to Joel Martinsen and Eric Abrahamson, the translators of the next two volumes. Their diligence and care created the English edition. I am grateful to China Educational Publications Import & Export Corporation Ltd. (CEPIEC) and Science Fiction World Publishing, whose trust and faith have made this publication possible.
-- December 28, 2012