You rule the world; I wield my pen as a blade,
A sequel to The Three-Body Problem and The Firestarter,
A science-fantasy epic,
An ode to the lowly and powerless,
A sweeping tale.
The sublime grandeur of terror,
A memorial to the silent meta-image,
The weight of history and compassion,
The passage of time and eternity.
More stories unearthed through an in-depth archaeological dig into the three fairy tales in Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem and The Firestarter. I’ve stayed as close to the original settings as possible while adding ideas of my own.
The story follows Isa, the child of Sasha, and Canghuang, Isa’s child. It also follows Canghuang after he becomes a pinhole painter, and his complicated, plastic romance with Prince Bingsha.
That’s all a lie. The angst is the real deal.
Bringing The Firestarter and Yun Tianming’s Three Stories together, adding my own ideas, and digging out the stories behind them is a huge undertaking.
I also deliberately wrote the pinhole painter and Prince Bingsha as gay to appeal to some readers. And because of this, I’ve gotten so sick of reading BL that I could throw up.
In the original work, the pinhole painter and Prince Bingsha are both supporting characters and major villains. There are hardly any related works online to use as references, and I also have to imitate Liu Cixin’s voice and style. You can imagine how difficult this sequel is to write.
Still, making my dream come true is worth it.
Because I feel that I myself am the pinhole painter, transformed into an immortal undead lich. And the things the pinhole painter supposedly did wrong were really just actions he was forced to take amid power struggles.
“Never urge others to be kind when you haven’t endured their suffering.” The pinhole painter is really the author himself.
