Ever since I could form memories, one question has never left me: why is human life so saturated with conflict? From petty quarrels over nothing to street fights, from venomous debates to wars that devour millions, the pattern repeats without end.
Now, past forty, I finally begin to see the machinery behind it all.
As we grow, each of us builds a private lens through which we interpret the world. In the individual, that lens hardens into bias; in religion, it becomes faith; in nations, it crystallises as ideology. Every conflict on Earth—and beyond—begins as a disagreement about what reality actually is.
Yet almost no one truly desires bloodshed. Reality simply keeps disappointing us.
So how do we break the loop?
That question drove me to write this science-fiction trilogy, Voyaging.
I do not pretend to offer final answers, only to hold up a wider, colder, more honest mirror.
If, when you close the final volume, the lens you carry has shifted even one millimetre, then this work has served its purpose.
And perhaps, together, we will have moved the species one millimetre closer to a future where understanding arrives before the missiles.
— YUQI
Musk City, Mars, Anno Viae 1 (2053 AD)
------
自序
从记事起,我就一直在想:人世间为什么总有那么多冲突?小到鸡毛蒜皮的争吵,街头斗殴,大到唇枪舌剑的交锋,死伤无数的战争.不知不觉已过不惑之年,才终于看清了一些端倪.
我们每个人在成长中,都会形成一副私人的认知透镜.于个体,它硬化成偏见;于宗教,它演变为信仰;于国家,它结晶为意识形态.世间一切冲突——乃至更远——都始于对"现实究竟是什么"的认知分歧.
然而,几乎没有人打心底里渴望冲突与战争,可现实偏偏让我们一次次失望.
那么,我们该如何打破这个循环?
正是这个问题,驱使笔者写下了这部科幻三部曲"远航".
笔者不敢妄言提供了终极答案,只想举起一面更宽广,更冰冷,更诚实的镜子.
若当您合上最终卷时,您所持的那副透镜哪怕只挪动了一毫米,那么这部作品便达成了它的使命.
也许,人类文明也因此向那个"理解先于导弹"的未来,又靠近了一毫米.
—— YUQI
火星马斯克城,远航元年（公元2053年）