Literary Master: Starting with Refusing to Be a Child Star

Chapter 143 Hard Science Fiction

Three weeks after the publication of The Martian, an email was sent from a corner that almost no one would notice.

The sender was a retired engineer in his seventies named Chen Yuanfan, who had worked in the aerospace system for nearly forty years and participated in some of the technical demonstration work for the manned space program before retirement. He was not on any publicly available list of experts, did not speak in the media, and had no accounts on any social media platforms. He was just an ordinary reader who casually bought a newly published science fiction novel at a bookstore, finished reading it over two consecutive nights, and on the third day wrote an email to the publisher with a single word in the subject line—"Question."

The email eventually ended up in Jia Bei's hands. After reading it, Jia Bei didn't forward it directly to Luo Jinnian, but instead made a phone call: "You received an email from a retired aerospace engineer. He listed several questions, all about the technical details of 'The Martian.' Would you like to take a look?"

Luo Jinnian was in a self-study class at school when she received that email.

He put his phone in the drawer, opened the email, and quickly scanned it. The engineer had listed three questions in precise terms: First, the book did not clearly explain the source of nitrogen in Martian soil cultivation; second, the book's figures for the actual efficiency of hydrazine-to-water reaction under low pressure seemed to be too high; third, regarding the calculation of the orbital rescue window, he recalculated it according to his own orbital mechanics model, and the result differed from the book's timeline by about six hours.

Luo Jinnian did not reply immediately after reading the questions.

He locked his phone, put it back in the drawer, and continued working on the math problem he hadn't finished.

When the bell rang, he walked to a quiet corner at the end of the corridor, took out his phone, and replied to the engineer's email: "I have seen all three questions you raised. Regarding the source of nitrogen, there is an implicit hint in the book—"

Martian soil contains nitrates, which can be converted under certain conditions, but I haven't elaborated on this in the main text. Regarding the efficiency of hydrazine-based water production, the figures given in the book are estimates based on ideal conditions; there will indeed be deviations in real-world scenarios. I chose a higher value to maintain the conciseness of the narrative, but I know it's on the high side. Regarding the time difference in orbital calculations, you can double-check whether the Martian gravitational constant uses the latest measurements; data from different years will have slight differences.

The email was written in a calm tone, as if answering a question that had been solved many times in advance.

The engineer replied faster than Luo Jinnian had expected. Instead of pressing further, he wrote a longer email with a noticeably different tone. He wrote: "I have repeatedly verified the points you mentioned. The description of Martian soil characteristics in the book closely matches experimental data I saw during an internal seminar years ago. That data has not been released to the public to this day. I would like to confirm: where did you get your data for this book?"

Luo Jinnian stopped when she saw the email.

He couldn't answer that question.

His information comes from an unformed timeline, from a memory that cannot be cited.

Therefore, Luo Jinnian did not reply to that email.

But the engineer wrote down his doubts in another text, which he then posted on an internal communication platform.

The platform isn't very well-known; only people in related fields check it regularly.

More and more people who have worked in the aerospace system are beginning to notice a science fiction novel from another country that contains many details that should only exist in internal meeting minutes. These details may seem like mere "professional" embellishments to the average reader, but to those who have personally operated similar systems, they are like a direct glimpse into the inner workings of the system.

Some people started circulating the book privately. Some recommended it to colleagues who were still employed. Some even mentioned the book in internal meetings, saying, "I suggest you find out if the technical settings in this novel are based on any recent research findings." That was a light remark, but in the professional field, that level of inquiry often means it needs to be taken seriously.

By mid-month, several tech media outlets began to notice this trend. One report's title underwent several revisions before settling on a relatively objective statement: "Why a Group of Aerospace Experts Are Discussing a Science Fiction Novel." The report didn't draw conclusions, but simply stated several facts: the engineers were indeed discussing it, the discussion involved technical details, and they were generally surprised. However, the report quoted a retired engineer as saying, "Some things don't seem like something a writer could find."

This sentence later became the core of that discussion. From then on, whenever someone mentioned the book on social media, someone would always add in the comments, "Aerospace experts say the technical details in this book are so realistic they don't seem fictional." That information acted like a bridge connecting different regions, being stepped on, verified, and reinforced by more and more passersby, gradually becoming an unshakable consensus in the minds of readers. And the data repeatedly confirmed in internal discussions was rearranged on the pages into a shape highly consistent with reality, providing the textual world it inhabited with a supporting structure that even the creators themselves hadn't anticipated.

After the report was published, things began to unfold in a direction that Luo Jinnian had not anticipated.

First, a technician who had worked in the aerospace system for many years shared a related article on his social media account, with a short caption: "I read this book, and the technical settings in it are truly surprising. Not the kind of surprise that 'looks very professional,' but the kind that really makes you stop and think." The share did not have any hashtags, but because it came from a verified professional account, it was quickly pushed into the information feed of practitioners in the relevant field.

A few days later, a science podcast dedicated an entire episode to discussing the technical details of "The Martian." The host invited a retired researcher in the aerospace field as a guest, and the two broke down the book's content on Martian agriculture, hydrazine-based water production, and orbital calculations, making the complex parts easy for readers to understand.

"What surprised me most about this book wasn't its technological content, but the engineer's mindset it displayed—not treating science as a decorative embellishment, but truly making it the cornerstone of the entire narrative. In science fiction writing, choosing hard science fiction is not just choosing a genre, but an attitude."

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After that episode was released, the number of plays on several platforms increased significantly within a few days, and more listeners with technical backgrounds left comments in the comment section.

Someone added data on the density of the Martian atmosphere, mentioning that they had checked the orbital calculations in the book and found them to be basically accurate.

These reader sharing sessions from professional fields quickly formed a high-density knowledge verification network, like a repeatedly reinforced net, which gradually made potential readers who might have had doubts lower their guard and instead form a judgment that "this book is unbelievably hardcore".

The discussion entered a new phase when a researcher still working in the aerospace system wrote a long article on his professional blog. The article did not involve classified information but only discussed the scientific principles mentioned in the book that had already been published in public papers.

"This book integrates knowledge that would otherwise require consulting numerous papers into a coherent and workable system. What surprised me was that it doesn't simply pile up jargon; it uses that jargon to build a functional and logically consistent framework." He wrote at the end of the article, "If the author of this book didn't have a background in the relevant field, the amount of research he did would exceed what most writers can handle."

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Within days, the blog post was shared on multiple platforms and in various groups, gradually spreading from the corners of professional technical discussions and attracting increasing attention. When Luo Jinnian saw the blog post, he was sitting in his rented room, the screen light reflecting on his face, the cursor slowly blinking at the bottom of the page. He didn't scroll down to the comments section; he just read the last paragraph of the article and then closed the page.

He could neither directly respond to nor completely ignore the discussions about whether the author had the relevant background; he could only choose to set them aside and wait for them to find their own way out.

Meanwhile, the book *The Martian* began appearing on the recommended reading lists of some aerospace science popularization organizations in China, labeled as "suitable for readers interested in Mars exploration," accompanied by a brief explanation: "The technical settings in this book have a good scientific basis and are suitable as a supplementary reading for introductory science popularization." That explanation was carefully worded, avoiding subjective evaluation terms like "recommended" or "worth reading," instead stating its reference value in a more neutral way. The boundaries of that line were clear and unambiguous, neither crossing the line between fiction and reality nor concealing its own existence.

Meanwhile, Luo Jinnian received an email from the original retired engineer. The email was short: "I recalculated the orbital data in the book using an updated mathematical model. The result narrowed the error with the timeline in the book to within approximately fifteen minutes. I withdraw my previous questions about the time calculation. Your book is more rigorous than I imagined."

Finally, The Martian has come to this point.