The Supernova Era

by Liu Cixin

For an entire week high-energy rays had traversed every part of the solar system, and high-energy particles battered the Earth like a rainstorm pouring down on land and sea, tearing through human bodies at unimaginably high velocity, penetrating every cell. And the tiny chromosomes in each of those cells were buffeted like fragile crystalline threads by those high-energy particles, which unraveled the DNA double helix and sent nucleotides spinning away. Damaged genes continued to operate, but the precise chain that had evolved through hundreds of millions of years of copying life had been snapped, and the mutated genes now spread death. Earth revolved humanity through a deadly shower, winding up the death clock in billions of bodies that now ticked slowly away. . . . Everyone above the age of thirteen would die, and Earth would become a children’s world.