Cixin Liu's The Village Teacher: A Graphic Novel

About

In the mountains of rural China, a dying schoolteacher gathers his students for one last lesson in science and mathematics. Fifty thousand light-years away, the victor of an interstellar war is about to exterminate all low-intelligence lifeforms in the solar system — and the test it devises happens to fall on a group of children in those same mountains. Cixin Liu's short story — adapted here into a graphic novel — is a quietly devastating fable about the value of education and the cosmic lottery of survival. The two storylines converge with the precision of a mathematical proof. The Village Teacher asks whether a dying man's last act of teaching can save a world — and answers with the characteristic Liu blend of hard science and humane wonder.