Abstract
Science fiction is a description to the possible world of the future, and the future is a special time dimension which cannot be reached but can only be treated as a vision upon reality. Liu's The Three-Body Problem provides us with the possibility of the evil in the future. The description of the future reveals in words a future not yet experienced, and it does so in a way that treats the unexperienced as a world already in existence, and therefore it is more an interpretation than factual description. The interpretation of the future in such description operates on the following levels. Firstly, in the liner time, the future is the yet-to-come dimension of the time passed, which points to the flowing of time and the time to be flown away. Secondly, the future is the desire in which the imagination of utopia is housed. Thirdly, the future allows for a narrative structure through which the text brings the future to the present. Finally, the future realizes the hermeneutics (archaeologies) of the future by way of functional explanation of the future through the opposition between narrative and desire, and this is the essential significance of science fictions with Utopian edge.
First Page
76
Last Page
83
Recommended Citation
Wang, Feng. 2016. "Liu Cixin'sThe Three-Body Problem and the Desire to the Future." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 36, (1): pp.76-83. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol36/iss1/8
