Hold Up the Sky

by Liu Cixin

If you were to make a meatball out of humankind, its diameter would be less than a kilometer.

If you shrank the solar system to the size of a dinner plate, the diameter of a correspondingly shrunken Milky Way would still be one hundred thousand kilometers.

Imagine a windowless, iron room. Many people lie asleep inside. They will soon suffocate and die in their sleep. You shout, and a few hopeless sleepers awaken to a wretched fate that you are powerless to prevent. Have you done them a favor? Unless you wake them up, what hope do they have of escape?