4.20pm, 16/10/1999. Yanquan City, Shanxi Province, Peoples Republic of China

Location: Liu Cixin’s Apartment.

A plain brown couch sits opposite a bookcase full of engineering and SF books. In front of the couch is a glass coffee table with a bulbous, hollow glass object that resembles a rocketship sitting on it.

Liu Cixin and his Friend sit on the couch. They both have sleepy, glazed expressions.

Liu: "Have you… have you ever thought that the Earth is really just a giant spaceship? A great big spaceship, with life support, power, shields… carrying us all through space?"

Friend: "Wow. Profound, man. That’s some profound shit."

LC: "The biggest spaceship of all, with a crew of billions." Liu reaches for the glass object on the table, fastens his mouth on its top and raises a lighter to a protrusion on its side. The water bubbles a long while until Liu stops inhaling, pauses, and slowly blows out a long column of smoke, slowly lifting the rocket bong above it as though it were taking off on a plume of exhaust "S.S Earth, going boldly to infinity and beyond!"

F: "One problem though."

LC: "Yeah?"

F: "No engines. Pretty shitty spaceship if it can only go in circles. No one can yell 'she cannae take any more captain!' without engines."

LC: "Gotta have some engines then. Big uns."

F: "How big?"

LC: "Real big. Big enough to push us out of orbit. Sail the galactic seas. It’ll take decades, maybe, I dunno, 400 years to build them."

F: "Wow. That’s pretty big. Asimov big. Niven big. How you gonna turn though?"

Liu sucks back another massive hit, before letting the smoke furl from his nostrils in dragon-like tendrils

LC: "One set in each hemisphere. Directional. Turn them a bit and you can stop the earth rotating and maneuver it."

F: "Crazy man, crazy cool. Why do it though? Seems like a shit-tonne of work."

LC: "I dunno. Alien invasion? Galactic war? Maybe the sun blowing up or some shit. Yeah… that’s it. Explodey sun problem. Gives us a few centuries warning to prep, build the engines. Gotta move the Earth to a new solar system, a nicer climate, could take a couple thousand years to get there."

F: "Damn, Son. Give me that.’ F takes the bong and lights up, then speaks croakily while exhaling. ‘What about energy tho? Won’t it be freezing cold without the sun?"

LC: "Nah, the engines’ll make the surface so hot we won’t be able to live there. We’ll all be in caves underground."

F: "Damn! Cavemen explore the galaxy! Yabba-dabba-deep space!!"

Liu Cixin sits in silence, staring into the middle distance as his mind works. F slowly realizes that cavemen in space is a bad idea and with a visible effort refocuses on the prior conversation

F: "Seriously Liu, that’s a great idea for a story. The human race escapes the exploding sun by launching Earth into the galaxy! The greatest engineering project of all time! There could be factions, politics, wars over staying or going, denialists who don’t believe the sun will go explodey. You should write it up."

LC: "Nah, I dunno. It’s just a weed dream. A bong fantasy. It’ll never work as a story."

But it did, gentle reader, and it worked very, very well

Four explodey stars out of five.

PS: Apologies to Liu Cixin, who I’m sure doesn’t need the demon weed to spark his creativity, and has likely never owned a spaceship shaped bong.