Volume 2: The crown and the hat are all over the capital, and the spirit is full of energy and enter the foggy city Chapter 77: One Day in Prison (Part 2)
Subtitle of this chapter: Who are the people of the future?
"Mr. Yuan, do you have anything else to say to the American people?"
The person who asked this question was Miss Emma Pulitzer. It seems that this “priestess” understands the “Fool” and simply threw a straight ball to our Master Yuan.
Unfortunately, it was not convenient for Yuan Yanshu to hit a home run this time. It was not a big problem to offend the future president of the United States, but it was a big problem to offend the current secretary of state of the United States.
"Oh, of course I do." Master Yuan smiled and said, "I wrote a novel in my cell last night. I hope you will like it..."
"One Day Prisoner" is a short science fiction novel published by Yuan Yanshu in the Welt on March 7, 1921. According to the author, it took him only one night from conception to completion, and he spent that night in the cell of the Fort Myer Police Station. In this novel, the protagonist Mr. Y was sentenced to time for a certain crime. The form of punishment is to stay forever on March 6, 1921. This day was the day when Mr. Yuan was arrested for violating the prohibition law."
"The Garden of Forking Paths is a science fiction novel written by Jorge Luis Borges in the 1940s. The protagonist is a Chinese. It tells the story of Yu Zhun, a spy for Germany in Britain during World War I. When his companions were arrested and he was being hunted, he did not hesitate to kill the sinologist Albert in order to inform his German superior of important intelligence. The story is told in the form of Yu Zhun's confession in prison after his arrest, and the starting point is the postponement of a major event in the history of European wars, which is ingenious."
"The common point of these two novels is that they both use time as the theme, and their central ideas are also similar, that is: time and space are inexhaustible, time and space are infinite, like the ever-proliferating golden ring of the king in the hand of Zeus. The world is a mess, time is cyclical and intersecting, space coexists at the same time, and is full of endless contingencies and possibilities. People living in the world are like walking into a prison or a maze, losing their purpose and unable to find a way out."
“Time may be an insurmountable prison, or it may be a garden of intersecting paths.”
"Yuan Yanshu and Borges have been pen pals since 1921. According to Borges, Mr. Yuan was his guide in literature and art, and also his 'mentor' of literary creation. Although the two were only five years apart in age, Borges always regarded Mr. Yuan Yanshu as his teacher. He also dedicated The Garden of Forking Paths to Mr. Yuan."
"Borges once said that in the world, time is the ultimate god that governs everything. The passage of time has become synonymous with death. In fact, it is not time that is passing, but time is just an illusion caused by our own disappearance. Time flows from the single dimension of past, present and future, making time a river that cannot be stepped on twice. We are constantly changing, and we are constantly throwing ourselves forward, like throwing a stone and then walking to where the stone falls. Then, resisting the tyranny of time may be the inner intention and desire of all great souls."
"The first person to take up the banner of resistance against the tyranny of time was Mr. Yuan Yanshu, who first described a world of nonlinear time in his novel One Day Prisoner. Of course, he himself admitted that the novel had some logical flaws, but Mr. Yuan proposed a 'parallel universe theory' based on this. This theory successfully solved the 'grandfather paradox', at least making time travel less obviously illogical."
"In April 1921, Mr. Einstein arrived in Washington. He was also very interested in Mr. Yuan's parallel world theory. Because general relativity allows people to go back to the past, its theoretical basis is the wormhole theory. Simply put, we can travel through time and space through a tunnel similar to a wormhole. So Einstein once said that the parallel world theory explains why we have not seen future people returning from the future to the present. Perhaps our world is a world where future people have never appeared."
"However, Mr. Yuan Yanshu disagreed with this. He told Einstein that even if we saw a person from the future, there is a great possibility that we would not realize that we saw a person from the future. For example, Mr. Einstein, you are very likely a person from the future. Otherwise, how could you come up with such a groundbreaking discovery as the theory of relativity?"
"Although the famous British science fiction writer Herbert George Wells published The Time Machine in 1895, which was the first to propose the concept of time travel, and the first time-travel novel A Connecticut in King Arthur's Court was written by Mark Twain, the first writer to take the literary theme of time travel seriously was Mr. Yuan Yanshu."
"In 1923, he published his first Chinese novel, or rather a long novel, The Prime Minister, right after he returned to his hometown after an absence of five years. It was called The Prime Minister of the World. It tells the story of a young Chinese intellectual in the 1920s who traveled through time to the reign of Emperor Shenzong of the Northern Song Dynasty due to a car accident. He went from being a countryman to a treacherous minister... well, a famous prime minister."
"There are many new historical viewpoints in this novel. Many people did not accept them at the time, but they had to admit that these viewpoints had credible historical basis. Therefore, Mr. Yuan Yanshu became a recognized historian with this novel. Moreover, the observation angle in "Zai Zhi Tian Xia" is very consistent with the viewpoint of historical materialism. Therefore, Tianmo Churen couldn't put this book down . He once said that all Communists must read "Zai Zhi Tian Xia" and "Dream of Red Mansions"."
"In addition to its academic success, this novel caused a huge sensation in China at the time, and was known as 'where there is water, there are ministers talking'. Both intellectuals and ordinary people were attracted by the wonderful and tortuous plot, and were inspired by the protagonist's spirit of striving for progress. Of course, what they longed for most was the rich, powerful and democratic Northern Song Dynasty.. "
"'Zai Zhi Tian Xia' was so successful that it naturally had a large number of followers. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Chinese literary world was almost entirely dominated by time-travel novels, but none of their achievements were as high as Mr. Yuan Yanshu's..."
——Excerpt from "Travel Through Time, Begins with Him"
