Liu’s sci-fi trilogy a modern-day classic

Gilbert Plains Country Club closes for remainder of season due to flood damage

Scott McCallum has made the trek to the Gilbert Plains Country Club clubhouse countless times.

But this was the first time the golf professional and general manager of the course required hip waders to get to his office.

Walking hand in hand with his wife Lindsay, McCallum didn’t need much time to see the devastation caused by the flash flooding in the Parkland region in late June.

“We’re on a river and it’s a beautiful golf course, but anytime you’re on a body of water you know that you’re taking a chance of events like this happening,” McCallum said in a telephone interview. “To this magnitude, we’ve never seen anything like it before. So, this is new to us.

Liu’s sci-fi trilogy a modern-day classic

Chinese literary star Cixin Liu has, in the scant two years since his first in-translation release, won or been nominated for most of the major English science-fiction awards, opened the gates for additional English-language releases of China’s authors, and provided a springboard for an ongoing discussion of non-Western perspectives in the literature of ideas. With this final volume of his trilogy, he’s also stuck the landing and validated the loyalty of his new Western readers.

The trilogy (featuring The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest and Death’s End) was first published in China a decade ago. As a series it is largely considered his greatest work. Thoroughly modern in some ways (some have even described aspects of Liu’s writing as Murakami-like, referring to the international sensation out of Kyoto, Japan), there’s a definite classicism to this story, similar in flavour to old-school, hard science-fiction masterpieces such as Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (most famous for its highly acclaimed Kubrick-directed film version), or Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series (never yet filmed, though perpetually in development).

It’s not just a matter of the epic scope or existential queries being posed that invite such comparisons. The view of the universe Liu poses is, arguably, quite dark. In a post-contact universe humankind, no longer alone, is fighting for its very survival against an almost overwhelmingly superior alien race: one threat, it turns out, of many. Many of the human characters tasked with preserving the species are at best morally ambiguous, and at worst pragmatic monsters.

Liu still seems to believe goodness can and does exist. A happy ending may not be a foregone conclusion — on the scale of individual lives, species, or the universe as a whole — but hope springs eternal. That hard-nosed realist bent, girded with an undercurrent of restrained optimism, is a hallmark of those old universe- and eternity-spanning tales written by the old masters.

$60M, six-storey Harbourview Terrace due to open in June 2028

They donned high-vis vests and brandished shovels with gold-coloured blades Friday morning at the ceremonial groundbreaking for a multi-family residential development in northeast Winnipeg.

Concord Projects has started construction of Harbourview Terrace, the inaugural development by two-year-old real estate company Foxhill Properties. Located in North Kildonan at 1820 De Vries Ave., the $60-million, six-storey apartment building will contain 179 units.

Founder and president Frank Koch-Schulte, who runs the company with his wife Alisha, said Foxhill wants to develop and manage properties with integrity.

“This is kind of like my opportunity to try to do things our way, which I feel is a way that keeps tenants in mind,” Koch-Schulte said. “We live in this neighbourhood. We’re very much invested in seeing quality housing go here.”

Israel: the new political divide?

Abdul won and Avi is thrilled.

Federal NDP Leader Avi Lewis emerged from electoral hiding to tell us how it is “exhilarating to witness” a “wave of progressive populism” in the United States. He was referring to the upset winner of Tuesday’s heavily-watched Michigan Senate primary race, Abdul El-Sayed, who barely prevailed over his establishment opponent for the Democratic nomination.

Premier Wab Kinew’s favourite New Democrat (after himself) steadfastly hesitates to take a risk and run for a House of Commons seat in a byelection to kickstart Canada’s version of progressive populism. No hesitation, though, in Lewis immediately basking in the reflected glory of those international comrades and fellow travellers who do.

Writing about the state of Canada’s New Democrats feels like a hate crime — you hate wasting your time — and this is no exception. A better story is what’s driving this modest but undeniable political movement in U.S. politics and whether it might gain traction here in Canada.

Livestreamed mental-health meltdown underscores medium’s disturbing decline

On Tuesday evening, a well-known celebrity blogger, best known by the nom de plume Perez Hilton, opened up his TikTok account and began a livestream from his Miami home. What unfolded over the next 30 minutes horrified all who witnessed it — and should force the rest of us to take a very sober look at the ways social media can harm.