Contraction

I've been reading a series of short stories written by Cixin Liu, and one in particular was an absolute gift. Perhaps I should say two gifts. The first was the story itself, provocative and deeply satisfying as his works always prove to be. The second was a fresh insight into physics and the nature of the universe, a lesson if you will. If you are not familiar with Cixin Liu, he is a Chinese author who gained a following in the past few years largely as a result of the US publication and televising of his epic series beginning with The Three Body Problem. Science Fiction is not everyone's cup of tea, much less expansive translations of an author who was little known in the US. But before you dismiss this work you may want to read on a bit.

As much as I enjoy this literary genre, I cannot easily fit any of Cixin Liu's stories neatly into that conventional framework. Perhaps it would be best to call it speculative fiction, or scientific fiction, but I am not comfortable that either fully describes the breadth of Liu's work. The only other book I could compare it too is a slim volume written by Professor Alan Lightman, a physicist, poet, and author who teaches at MIT.

Early in his teaching career, Lightman was challenged to find a way to help those students who were not physics majors gain a deeper understanding of the principles of relativity. Rather than writing yet another textbook, Lightman created a series of short stories set in Berne, Switzerland in 1905 involving a young patent clerk's musings on the nature of time. Einstein's Dreams plays with our assumptions about the Universe, imagining worlds where we have no past, where time moves in an endless circle, where time stands still and where it moves backwards.

As you might have guessed, each 'dream' vividly illustrates another aspect of Einstein's theories about relativity and the effect they have on human feelings and actions. In this intersection of art and science, complex principles become accessible to the lay reader. We are moved beyond formulae, into a realm of contemplation and understanding that in my own experience made it possible to grasp Einstein's insights.

Cixin Liu's story, The Contraction, places readers in an observatory where an audience of dignitaries and physicists are assembled awaiting a countdown to a momentous event that he reveals is entirely beyond the reckoning of the audience, and I would add, this reader. I don't want to spoil it for those who may decide to read the story, but I will say that the contraction described is the moment when the universe ceases to expand and reverses course. It was in fact Einstein's observation of the doppler effect, the redshift of light from the stars which demonstrated that they were moving away from us, signifying the expansion of the universe following the so-called big bang.

Imagine what it would mean if suddenly that redshift turned blue and all at once the universe ceased to expand and began to contract. Consider how time would be affected, how life as we know it would change. In Liu's tale, a venerable professor instructs the gathered crowd as they struggle to imagine an event they believe will unfold over billions of years, long past their lifetimes or the span of their children's children. It is at that precise moment when Liu reveals the lesson, and we encounter the Eureka moment.

I hope you are sufficiently intrigued to seek out Liu's story and find out for yourself how it unfolds. One of my favorite non-fiction authors, John McPhee, writing on the subject of geology, commented that the human mind struggles to grasp time frames measured in millions of years, much less the billions our universe has existed. Our measure is the span of human lifetimes, decades, or perhaps for some, centuries of history. Once you have read The Contraction, I wager you will never again think of the passage of time in the same way. And that is the beauty of this story, a blend of science and art, a work in which we are the actors transformed in an instant by an epiphany we could not have imagined.