By King Ban Hui 龔萬輝
When you first read this novel, forget for a moment that Chiew Ruoh Tau is a poet.
Chiew Ruoh Tau writing science fiction might surprise you—but perhaps it shouldn’t. He once entered the Ni Kuang Science Fiction Award and even won. (This isn’t a spoiler; it’s in his bio.) In Chronicles of the Masked Wars, Chiew fully demonstrates his skill as a novelist, showing that his talent extends beyond poetry.
Let’s start simply: his novels are captivating. Writing good sci-fi isn’t easy. Focus too much on scientific details, and it turns rigid; let the story run wild, and it risks becoming frivolous. Chiew strikes the perfect balance. His words draw you seamlessly into imagined worlds, and the futures he builds are infused with his hopes and love for reality.
The first section, including Chronicles of the Masked Wars, No One Can Decide How a Flower Blooms, and Verdict, explores resistance and repression under authoritarian rule. Chronicles of the Masked Wars, in particular, is tightly paced, with street chase scenes vividly written like an action film. The rapid scene shifts immerse the reader, making the story a visual experience—this is what I call “captivating.” But great novels aren’t just “captivating.” Readers with a sense of current events will notice the stories’ inspirations—masks and umbrellas, eggs and high walls. Fiction may be make-believe, but the resonance is undeniably poignant.
Reality often reveals cruelty and absurdity first, followed by anger and helplessness. When high-spirited protests are reduced to whispers under heavy-handed policies, sci-fi can offer what reality denies: possibilities and imagination.
In the novel, the comrades still resist; they haven’t given up hope. As technology advances, so too do authoritarian methods. Yet the relentless surveillance and suppression of dissent seem timeless. Ironically, the one thing people can change freely is their faces. If faces can be replaced at will, then anyone can be themselves, and anyone can be everyone else. Perhaps this is the novel’s way of interpreting the idea of “Be water.”
If the first section reflects reality or offers a political forecast, then the second—Starlight Lingers and The Prophet—ventures into grander themes of cosmic war, human migration, and the paradoxes of time, like a sci-fi Remembrance of Things Past. Chiew’s integration of I Ching hexagrams with quantum mechanics is a testament to his creativity. In the unpredictable photons, we find randomness and causality, just as love transcends space and time. Love, after all, is a kind of quantum entanglement.
The third section’s In Search of the First Vegetarian echoes the bold satire of Black Mirror. Chiew is playing with his readers. He knows how to play—his Facebook posts are proof of that. But as for the explosive points of human civilization in this story, I’ll let readers explore the implications for themselves.
When you reread this novel, remember that Chiew Ruoh Tau is a poet.
After crossing the outrageous gates of time in In Search of the First Vegetarian, Angel of Death also wrestles with time’s paradoxes, but with the added weight of mortality. Death, like a broken clock, can no longer tell the correct time: “It has utterly collapsed inside, yet you only care about its exterior.” At this point, we realize the novelist is like a clockmaker, dismantling time piece by piece, trying to restore what’s broken.
Here, sci-fi is steeped in poetry.
Love and politics, the fall of civilizations, and the ebb and flow of time—these are recurring themes in Chiew’s poetry. In his poetry collection Songs of Mystery (and its accompanying musical album), the poem If I’m Not by Your Side at the End of the World is particularly striking. In just a few lines, it encapsulates Earth’s destruction and the rebirth of life—a miniature evolution. Though it speaks of love, it could easily be a poem of science fiction.
Thus, many stories in this collection, especially Starlight Lingers, The Prophet, and Angel of Death, carry a distant, sci-fi lyricism: “Ours was an era where history had ended, civilization had peaked, everything was known, and desires fulfilled. Humanity lived eternally until the universe collapsed again.” “Sounds like paradise.”
It reminds me of Blade Runner (1982) and the replicant Roy Batty’s poetic monologue in the rain: “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”
If poetry exists in every blade of grass, I believe it also exists in relativity and quantum mechanics. I regret not studying science better in high school. Years later, I realize those physics and math equations, so elegantly self-contained, are another form of metaphorical poetry.
Sci-fi, as a genre, uniquely melds scientific theory with human emotion. Chronicles of the Masked Wars exemplifies this beautifully—science fiction authors gazing at the universe, hoping to decode the meaning of life, much like finding love in the tiniest photon.
A novel is a gateway through time, a roll of the dice with fate. In some ways, it is broader than scientific theory because it allows for unfettered imagination without needing proof. Thus, sci-fi offers a vast canvas for creativity.
While humanity has yet to reach Mars, Chiew’s novels have already traveled to the edges of the cosmos and back through time.
Perhaps that’s why these stories captivate so profoundly.
Sometimes I think all sci-fi is a mirror of reality. From Wesley’s novels hidden in my schoolbooks to ’80s Japanese anime, Hollywood films, and Isaac Asimov’s hard sci-fi, they all depict possible reflections of the world.
Chiew Ruoh Tau and I are contemporaries, and it’s no exaggeration to say our generation grew up nourished by sci-fi dreams. So, Chiew writing sci-fi isn’t surprising after all. Sci-fi is imagination rooted in reality. All wild imaginings are built on possible presents and futures.
Because reality can be too heavy.
When wuxia and detective fiction fail to hold all our dreams, sci-fi fills the gaps, mending the regrets of reality and painting a future worth longing for. This is why I found solace while reading Chronicles of the Masked Wars. In another universe, perhaps young people still fight against towering walls, and love still blooms in apocalyptic times.
Many literary authors eventually drift toward sci-fi. Writing is like Nüwa mending the sky; sci-fi novels can patch what reality leaves broken and unsaid.
Only sci-fi can return to the past, cross into the future, and ignite a spark of hope in the darkness—a glow of fireflies in the night.
These stories must be, and can only be, sci-fi.
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