When sci-fi is child's play
The book starts with US writer Tom Godwin's The Cold Equations, published in the 1950s. It tells of a cruel death of an underage girl who illegally hides in a rescue spaceship to see her brother on a planet far from Earth. In order to reach the destination as quickly as possible, the spaceship has a fixed quantity of fuel that does not allow any extra weight-only the pilot. Otherwise, the spaceship will crash and the pilot and the six people including the girl's brother on the planet will all die. As a result the girl must be tossed out of the vehicle into space as soon as possible and she will die immediately.
It is a story picked by Han, who came across it when he was a middle school student.
"It impressed me deeply, for it revealed the truth of the universe to me for the first time. When it comes to physical rules, all people are equal, and they cannot be broken by anybody," he says.
"As I grew up, I gradually realized the broader meaning. Under such circumstances-nothing, power or money, can save the girl. It's what we lack now. Apart from textbooks, what is more important is that we should tell children the truth about the universe," he says.
"Children can accept death, and sometimes they understand it more profoundly than we expect." Bei Dao agrees that children should not be kept away from such notions as loneliness, death or frustration.
