After Liu Card, a mixed-race Chinese boy, recognized Chen Feng, his originally pale face behind his glasses suddenly became red.

"Are you... are you Teacher Chen Feng?"

Chen Feng nodded expressionlessly, "Yes. What's wrong? Do you know me?"

"Oh my God! How could I not know you!"

Liu Card suddenly covered his mouth and cried with excitement, choking and trembling, saying: "I... I... I'm sorry I'm too excited. Last month, my teacher and I participated in part of the verification of your conjecture set. I really... I really admire you! Sorry, I'm really sorry, I can't control my emotions. I didn't expect to meet you here. I... I..."

Master Chen looked up at the sky.

He was thinking this sentence silently in his heart.

What a simple and lovely young man.

How could I be...

guilty!

Being treated with such a worshipful attitude by the contestant who is believed to be the most outstanding science fiction writer in at least a hundred years and the object of his plagiarism, Master Chen's heart was really full of mixed feelings.

Wait?

It seems that this is not the first time.

Why am I red again?

Alas, this person, if he wants to have dignity, he can't do things without taboos.

Chen Feng, who is soft-mouthed and short-handed, took a few more seconds to adjust his mood.

He patted the shoulder of the peer opposite him with a magnanimous and generous attitude, "Don't be excited, calm down, I'm not much older than you."

James Diaz cleared his throat twice, signaling Liucard to pay attention to the impact.

Huh... Huh...

Liucard took about ten seconds to take a deep breath and slowly calm down. He smiled awkwardly and said, "I'm sorry."

Compared with the confident and arrogant Ryan, Liucard is also a top student at Berkeley University, but his personality is much more humble and introverted. He even seems a little inferior and likes to apologize.

Chen Feng knows the reason.

Liucard is very smart, but his Chinese-Russian mixed-race identity makes him very embarrassed, and his personal characteristics are very obvious, and others can easily recognize him at a glance.

Some experiences of being excluded in childhood have always been hidden in his heart, creating an indelible shadow, making him not good at speaking, but only likes to record his thoughts in words.

"It's okay." Chen Feng waved his hands, "You don't need to be so excited, and don't belittle yourself. You can become a great person in the future. I'm not that great either, I just have a nose and two eyes."

Chen Feng's encouragement was very polite.

He was considering whether he could do something to persuade Liu Card as compensation.

He couldn't just give him money for no reason, otherwise Chen Feng would be suspected of his sexual orientation.

But inspiration is really hard to explain, and Chen Feng didn't know how to give the other party a complete inspiration for a while.

Literary works are not like music.

Musical inspiration often comes from short-term ideas that inspire long-term life experiences, which then burst out like a volcanic eruption, so Zhong Lei can become stronger and stronger as she is copied.

Of course, it may also be that Zhong Lei is too talented.

What Liu Kade was snatched away by Chen Feng was a complete "huge world" that he had slowly built over nearly 20 years.

Therefore, it is very difficult for Chen Feng to give him another huge world.

Master Chen himself is not a contestant who is good at creating stories, so it is a bit too much to ask.

"Teacher Chen, you are so humble."

"You should be."

James had already seen that Chen Feng attached great importance to this young man, so he simply asked Liu Card, who was also familiar with the environment of the set, to be Chen Feng's guide.

He himself just got away and turned to think about the set that was being built.

James' arrangement was exactly what Chen Feng wanted.

"Card, let's leave a contact method."

Before the two of them had gone to two places, Chen Feng took the initiative to exchange numbers.

Liu Card was flattered.

This guy is worthy of being an excellent student at Berkeley. He has a wide range of knowledge and works very seriously and meticulously. Basically, when facing important sets, he can tell the original intention of James' arrangement.

Chen Feng listened with relish at first.

After all, he was about to invest in a movie, and knowing more about the thinking of big-name directors would help him become a good consultant.

But soon, Chen Feng gradually lost interest because Liucard's explanation was too detailed, and he knew the box office and word-of-mouth of James's film, which could only be said to be relatively good, but far from a classic.

About an hour later, on the beach outside the studio, under an umbrella, Chen Feng sat on a chair with his legs crossed, while Liucard stood aside very cautiously.

"Cade, do you like science fiction?"

"Of course I do."

"What's your favorite?"

Liu Card pondered for a moment, "Lord of Light, Toroidal World, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and the Foundation series."

Chen Feng gave a thumbs up, "Good vision. But did you find a problem?"

"What?"

"Many of the recognized classic science fiction novels were produced decades or even nearly a hundred years ago. Although there are some good science fiction in recent years, the number of classic novels is completely incomparable to the past. Why do you think this is the case? Is it because today's readers value the past more than the present?"

Liu Card was a little embarrassed, "Sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean by valuing the past more than the present. My Chinese level is average."

"Contemporary people always tend to highly praise stories from the past, and look down on works of their own generation, even if the quality of these works is actually the same."

When talking about this, Chen Feng recalled the "Star Trek" series written by Liucard in the early timeline.

This book became a classic and was adapted into a famous movie decades after Liucard's death.

When Liucard was still alive, "Star Trek" was often criticized.

Liucard chewed on Chen Feng's meaning, "I understand. But I think it may be that these great authors used the vision of several decades in advance, approached from the perspective of pure fantasy, and found a reasonable enough scientific basis. The future theories described in the masterpieces have gradually been recognized in recent years. Technological progress has proved that some of the originally purely imaginary theories actually have a certain factual basis, allowing their fantasies decades ago to gradually become today's science, so they are regarded as classics."

Chen Feng smiled and nodded, "Yes, even if a book is wrong in a large part, as long as it is correct , it can still be regarded as a classic. There are several points that are correct, and the story itself is logical, so this book is a good science fiction. But this does not explain why there are fewer and fewer classic science fictions in contemporary times. You have to know that the books you just mentioned have achieved a huge influence shortly after they were born. "

Liu Kede thought for a long time and shook his head helplessly, "This is too profound, Teacher Chen, do you know the reason?"

Chen Feng nodded, "I do know."

Master Chen has a conclusion in his mind, but this is not his own original creation, but a summary of many historians and literary and artistic workers in multiple timelines.

When human civilization entered the 21st century AD, as time went on, humans seemed to have really lost their imagination, and the science fiction works created since then have been inferior to each other.

Science fiction is becoming more and more fantastic and less and less scientific.

For example, in the eighth timeline, there were works such as "The Three-Body Problem", "The Galaxy Is Endless", "The Clockwork Girl", and "Mr. Shadow" in the 21st century, but they have been irreversibly declining since then.

In the 25th century, there were only one or two left, one of which was Chen Feng's own biography "Feng Lei".

Master Chen said it was an eyesore.

After the 30th century, it was even worse.

Not to mention the great works, even the movies were gone, which made Chen Feng very painful.

First, he could only watch "antique old movies" in his spare time in the 31st century, and second, this made him anxious whether humans had really lost the ability to imagine the future.

So he once spent a lot of energy studying historical materials, and then he tried to figure out the generally accepted views of scholars.

Now he was ready to tease Liucard a little, so he started with the science fiction of the 21st century.

"First, we can analyze a phenomenon. Do you think that the fantasy elements in science fiction, movies and TV series in recent years are getting heavier and heavier, while the scientific elements are getting lower and lower?"

Liucard: "Yes. But why is this?"

"Because the more humans know, the more they understand the nature of the universe, the balance between our pursuit of truth and fantasy will inevitably gradually lean towards the truth. Our imagination will gradually decline with the advancement of science and technology. In addition, do you know what the definition of a good science fiction novel is?"

Liucard: "Based on the present, with an eye on the future, the future scientific background outlined must be in line with theoretical expectations, and the exploration and portrayal of human nature must have a real texture in sociology."

Chen Feng nodded, "Well said. Then let me ask you another question. For an ordinary person to join Newton's laboratory as an experimental assistant, how many years of study time does it take at least, and to what level of knowledge does he have? Switching to the present, taking yourself as an example, a How many years of study does it take for an ordinary person to become a research assistant in a key laboratory at Berkeley University? How much knowledge does he need to master? "

Liu Kede gradually understood, "I understand. First of all, a classic science fiction novel cannot revolve around only a few characters and a single future technology. It must have a complete and sufficiently grand worldview. Then it must involve all aspects of technology in the future world. A few decades or even a hundred years ago, an excellent science fiction writer also needed a lot of books and kept up with the technological hotspots of the times. They were both proficient and knowledgeable. But in our time, with the rapid innovation of science and technology, the amount of knowledge enriched by mankind is getting bigger and bigger, and the amount of basic knowledge included in each discipline is too large."

"There are more and more technological hot spots every day and every moment, and some classic theories of the past have been overturned. To become a perfect science fiction writer, the knowledge that needs to be mastered is too astonishing. It is difficult to learn it all with human energy, so fallacies will inevitably appear in the creation and cause controversy. Therefore, it is becoming more and more difficult for people nowadays to write classic science fiction novels, and this difficulty will continue to increase with the further sublimation of the refined division of labor in society."

Chen Feng nodded, "Yes, your view is basically correct. Maybe in a few hundred years, mankind will have no science fiction and movies to watch. After a thousand years, there will be only one theme left in science fiction works."

"What theme?"

"Time travel."

"Uh... I understand."

The topic came to this point, and Chen Feng chose to stop there.

These were the only hints he could give to Liucard.

As for how far Liucard could go, everyone had their own destiny.

Next, Liucard asked with a little curiosity about the questionnaire survey that Chen Feng had conducted in China with an Oxford professor some time ago.

He wanted to know whether the results of the survey were true.

Chen Feng told him that of course they were true.

"So people who can speak Chinese really perform much better than those who only know English when facing doomsday?"

Chen Feng smiled, "Maybe, who knows. Before it happens, everything is speculation."

"Teacher Chen, I have an idea for a science fiction story."

Liucard said suddenly.

"What?"

"I was thinking, if there is a Chinese man who can travel through a time tunnel to a thousand years into the future and actually see the end of the world. And this tunnel is very strange, every time he is about to die in the end of the world, it will pull him back to the present. And then he can go through it again after a while. Do you think he will really try to do something to change the future and save the end of the world? What will he do?"

"Oh my..."

Chen Feng almost jumped up from his chair.

I'm just giving you some hints, do you have to be so imaginative!

You are a monster!

Something went wrong.

It seems that you are going to hatch "Feng Lei" in advance.

Chinese? Do you think I don't understand the hint?

I am still alive, and you want to erect a monument for me?

What are you trying to do?