I wouldn’t call Liu Cixin (LCX) a Lovecraftian. Take the New Yorker interview.
″ I believe science and technology can bring us a bright future, but the journey to achieve it will be filled with difficulties and exact a price from us. Some of these obstacles and costs will be quite terrible, but in the end we will land on the sunlit further shore. Let me quote the Chinese poet Xu Zhimo from the beginning of the last century, who, after a trip to the Soviet Union, said, ‘Over there, they believe in the existence of Heaven, but there is a sea of blood that lies between Heaven and Hell, and they’ve decided to cross the sea.’ ”
Liu Cixin’s worldview is closer to Camus, i.e, the world is the Absurd, something intrinsically inimical to us; the laws of thermodynamics apply and evolution has created sentient organisms that are capable of suffering. And like Camus, while he’s pessimistic on the state of the world and our odds of changing it, he sees something noble in our struggle against it. It’s not going to be Disney or Hollywood, insofar as the hero or heroine achieves their goals and gains without much losses; in “The Village Schoolteacher”, for instance, the defense technology of the invaders is overwhelmed by large-scale suicide attacks.
I wouldn’t call Liu Cixin (LCX) a Lovecraftian. Take the New Yorker interview.
″ I believe science and technology can bring us a bright future, but the journey to achieve it will be filled with difficulties and exact a price from us. Some of these obstacles and costs will be quite terrible, but in the end we will land on the sunlit further shore. Let me quote the Chinese poet Xu Zhimo from the beginning of the last century, who, after a trip to the Soviet Union, said, ‘Over there, they believe in the existence of Heaven, but there is a sea of blood that lies between Heaven and Hell, and they’ve decided to cross the sea.’ ”
Liu Cixin’s worldview is closer to Camus, i.e, the world is the Absurd, something intrinsically inimical to us; the laws of thermodynamics apply and evolution has created sentient organisms that are capable of suffering. And like Camus, while he’s pessimistic on the state of the world and our odds of changing it, he sees something noble in our struggle against it. It’s not going to be Disney or Hollywood, insofar as the hero or heroine achieves their goals and gains without much losses; in “The Village Schoolteacher”, for instance, the defense technology of the invaders is overwhelmed by large-scale suicide attacks.