Producing a future on a wandering Earth

In the guarded backroom of a Chinese mahjong parlour, the leader of a gang that specializes in forging identity plates and illegally trading protective thermal suits is playing Contra, a classic run-and-gun videogame, first released in 1987 as an arcade game before moving to home gaming systems in the following year.The gang leader plays with a controller produced by Subor, a Chinese company known for counterfeiting videogame consoles from the late 1980s to the 1990s, in particular the famous Nintendo Famicom, which his device resembles.Everything seems to make sense here -a forger uses an unauthorized replica, a gangster plays a shooting game -apart from the fact that this is a scene in Frant Gwo's Liulang diqiu/The Wandering Earth (2019).Set in 2075, when the sun is about to explode and consume the solar system, this Chinese sci-fi blockbuster recounts the tale of a global initiative, led by the United Earth Government (successor to the United Nations), to build 12,000 colossal thrusters across the Earth's surface in order to propel the planet out of its orbit and into a 2500-year migration to somewhere else in the galaxy.During this planetary exodus, the protagonist Liu Qi and his younger sister Han Duoduo join forces with a group of Chinese soldiers and technicians to prevent the Earth from colliding with Jupiter.The surprise element within this gaming scene is thus established through a perceived contrast of distinct temporalities.As we follow Liu and Han into the backroom to barter their inflatable buoys, invented by Liu for the gang's thermal suits, we enter a site that hosts century-old apparatuses in an apocalyptic world that otherwise sustains itself through decidedly futuristic, speculative technologies.Indeed

Art · Astrobiology · Astronomy · Earth (classical element · Physics · Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution · Geology · Global Energy and Sustainability Research · Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life

• Governing Survival, Managing Excess

  Open Access•Zhuoyi Wang•Humanities•2026

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