I absolutely loved The Three-Body-Problem by Cixin Liu and there goes my fascination for the authors’ work. Beyond excited, when I learned that he just released a new novel : Supernova Era. The approach is a little bit different this time, I would say it’s even more of a Young Adult kind of vibe contrary to his Three-Body-Problem which was a hard-facts science fiction book.

A random supernova has exploded at the other end of the universe. However, the consequences will be severe for humanity. The radiation from that event, has reached and penetrated Earth in an unique way. They impair the usual function of the chromosomes and the protein foldings and this eventually lead to death. Fortunately, all the children under the age of thirteen will survive thanks to their specific genomics that can heal this impairment.

Yes, that means children will inherit the Earth.

The first parts of the book cover how the adults prepare children to confront the real world. I love the idea that they all organize games all over the world to simulate real world leadership and how countries are supposed to govern. The author definitely has great ideas around this event. The main message of this book is to predict how the world will be with only children to govern it. Some very realistic moments in the book where the professionals trying to teach the children about turning on and off an electric engineering machine and the kid has absolutely no idea what a current is. And so they have to start from fresh. A lot of frustrations, confusion and on top of that, dealing with children who sometimes don’t have the maturity or even the capacity to apprehend what’s going to happen. But some do, some extraordinary children manage to be extremely resourceful, smart and beyond the maturity of even an adult.

Once the all the adults have all rested in peace, and the children start to slowly realize that they are really the only ones in the world, that’s where it gets interesting. The chaos, the denial and the hope that in some part of this planet, there are still some adults left who survived the radiation. In this distant future, set place in China, they also have the Big Quantum which is the most refined AI and the final gifts that the Chinese scientists have left to the children of China. This AI can assert any situation, provide an answer when they need one.

What I liked less, is when they start to involve other countries and the politics. Depicting the typical US as the villain. I mean the silent conflict between China vs USA is pretty obvious. What’s gone wrong is in the execution. I understand that somehow, these kids would want to start wars with each other and it’s all about a game of chess. But it’s hard to imagine kids talk and behave this way. I lacked interest in the end because of the resolution. It didn’t make sense to me. And there were no character development. I would expect the characters to grow and evolve but they are pretty much the same. 

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK OR ANY OTHER BOOK FROM CIXIN LIU?