Liu Cixin's acceptance speech for the 2018 Clark Prize (excerpt from some content).

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Good evening, gentlemen and ladies,

I am honored to receive the Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society.

This award is a reward for imagination, which is a human ability that seems to belong only to God, and its significance far exceeds our imagination. Historians have said that the reason why humans were able to establish civilization beyond other species on Earth is mainly because they were able to create things in their own brains that do not exist in reality. In the future, when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, imagination may be our only advantage over them.

Science fiction is a literature based on imagination, and the first one that left a deep impression on me was Arthur Clarke's works. Except for Jules Verne and George Wells, Clarke's works are the earliest Western modern science fiction novels to enter China. In the early 1980s, China published his works "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Rendezvous With Rama". At that time, the Cultural Revolution had just ended, and the old life and beliefs had collapsed, while the new had not yet been established. Like other young people, I felt lost in my heart. These two books activated my imagination for the first time, and my thoughts suddenly became much broader, with the feeling of a small stream flowing into the sea. On the night I finished reading '2001: A Space Odyssey', I walked out of my house and looked up at the starry sky. At that time, the sky in China was not too polluted, and I could see the Milky Way. In my eyes, the starry sky was completely different from the past. For the first time, I had a sense of awe towards the vastness and mystery of the universe, which was a religious feeling. And later I read 'Rendezvous With Rama', which also amazed me at how imagination can be used to construct a vivid imaginary world. It was these feelings brought to me by Clarke that later made me a science fiction writer.

Now, more than thirty years have passed, and I gradually realize that our generation born in China in the 1960s may be the luckiest people in human history, because there has never been a generation before that has witnessed such a huge change in the world around us. The world we live in now is completely different from the world we grew up in, and this change is accelerating. China is a country full of a sense of the future. China's future may be full of challenges and crises, but it has never been as attractive as it is now. This provides fertile soil for science fiction novels, which have received unprecedented attention in China. As a science fiction writer born in China in the 1960s, it is a stroke of luck.

I look forward to one day, like those science fiction novels that once described the information age, science fiction novels that describe space travel will become mundane. At that time, Mars and the asteroid belt were boring places where countless people made a living; Jupiter and its numerous satellites have become tourist destinations, and the only obstacle preventing people from going there is the expensive price.

But even at this time, the universe remains a vast and unimaginable existence, with the nearest stars still out of reach. The vast starry sky can always carry our infinite imagination.

Thank you all.

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