I. YAKOVLEV CHUVASH STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY BULLETIN

Knights of Forty Islands, Time after Nova, Ender’s Game, science fiction literature, “the game of children”, ludology, cultural semiotics, semiosphere, literary ethics, Mormonism, Orthodox Christianity, complementary thoughts on Confucianism and Daoism

The article analyzes human nature and ethical conflicts in the context of ethical categories conceptualized in science fiction literature, and dissects the unique structure and mechanism of the game of children in the context of cultural semiotics. Liu Cixin, Orson Card, and Sergei Lukyanenko, three famous science fiction writers, coincidentally focus on the same theme – “the game of children”. This paper selects three works, Time after Nova, Ender’s Game and Knights of Forty Islands, and conducts a comparative study of how the phenomenon of “the game of children” is treated in them.

The imagery of “children” in science fiction literature has a long history and often discourses on ethics and humanity. As a special cultural phenomenon, the game is closely related to human art and philosophy. Science fiction and games have a similar spiritual core, and their interaction produces a unique effect. It reflects different cultural aspects: Ender’s Game contains Mormon cultural genes, Knights of Forty Islands mirrors Eastern Orthodox teachings, and Time after Nova reflects the oriental flavour of complementary thoughts on Confucianism and Daoism.

Му Дзявэй – аспирант института русского языка Хэйлунцзянского университета, г. Харбин, Китайская Народная Республика, https://orcid.org/0009-0003-0984-0364, intelligentmu@qq.com