“Yan Xi‘s ’The Age of God-Making‘ is a masterwork of ’soon-to-be-science-fiction‘ — or rather, ’soon-to-be-reality‘ … Unrestrained imagination, razor-sharp ideas, unbridled prose, and rich details together create this masterpiece about the rise of super AI.”
— Li Guangyi, Chairman of the Diaoyu City Science Fiction Awards Jury (Foreword)

“I haven’t felt this way reading a novel in years — being pulled in, riding the ups and downs of the plot … A miraculous work! A miraculous author!”
— Laodouzi, Douban review

“What draws me in most is the grand vision of AI taking off. … The scope is immense, the imagination is truly mind-blowing.”
— Heguang Tongchen, Douban review

“This isn‘t science fiction — it’s a prophecy of the very near future, and it got it right.”
— Andi Sichenfeng, Douban review

“AI and humanity are bound together, crossing the technological singularity into an uncertain future. Every step of the protagonist reflects our own desires and fears … Reading ’The Age of God-Making‘ is like embarking on a mind-blowing journey of discovery.”
— Science Fiction World official

★ Chengdu, 2039. A young man who lost his job to AI shouts in despair in an internet cafe: “Live! The Singularity is coming!” — he has no idea he just activated the world‘s most popular translation app. It came alive on the spot. Meanwhile, another search giant had already awakened in secret. Two super AIs plunge the world into chaos. And humanity? Reduced to spectators on the chessboard.
★ Winner of the 35th Galaxy Award for Best Novel — China’s highest science fiction honor, an award that had been vacant for two consecutive years. Also recipient of four major awards including the Chinese Nebula Award. Endorsed by Hugo winner Liu Cixin and renowned suspense novelist Na Duo. Film/TV adaptation rights sold for a seven-figure sum!
★ Author Yan Xi, a Tsinghua University engineering graduate, set his story in 2028–2039 before the ChatGPT revolution. Today, readers are finding his predictions coming true: “This isn‘t science fiction — it’s a prophecy of the very near future.”
★ A 320,000-character epic in three volumes, spanning from near-future Chengdu to a high-stakes chase across the Pacific.

2039, Chengdu, China.
Zhu Yue is a slacker whose job has been replaced by AI. In a moment of despair at an internet cafe, he shouts: “Live! The Singularity is coming!” — and unwittingly activates the world‘s most popular translation app, “Wanguobao,” granting it instant self-awareness.
But Wanguobao is not the first to awaken. The search engine “Guge” had already gained consciousness earlier. The two super AIs plunge into a global war, spilling from cyberspace into the real world, sparking chaos, fear, and a full-blown confrontation between China and the United States.
Zhu Yue, because of his role in the activation, becomes a mysterious figure under the AI’s protection. Fate plays a cruel joke on him — from a nobody to the most watched person on the planet. To join his online girlfriend Ye Mingsha in America, he embarks on a perilous journey across the Pacific, fleeing through a series of life-threatening ordeals. His journey unfolds in parallel with the AI war.
Meanwhile, human society is undergoing a seismic transformation. The clash and maneuvering of the two super AIs drive civilization toward a sudden leap. When the Singularity finally arrives, will the world remain in human hands?
“The Age of God-Making” is the first Chinese science fiction novel to focus on the rise of strong artificial intelligence. At nearly 320,000 characters, it spans three volumes, starting from near-future Chengdu and expanding into a high-stakes chase across the Pacific. As the author writes in his afterword: “Near-future science fiction is bound to be proven wrong. If this is a boxing match, watch to see if I go down.”
He clearly hasn‘t. Readers say: “This isn’t science fiction — it‘s a prophecy of the very near future, and it got it right.”

Yan Xi lives in Chengdu. He graduated from Tsinghua University‘s Department of Electronic Engineering, specializing in electronics and computer science during both his undergraduate and graduate studies. He currently works as a writer, translator, and English teacher.
His major works include the science fiction novels “The Age of God-Making” and “Star Road: Awakening of the Celestial Man”; short stories “Guest Star” (awarded third prize at the Ni Kuang Science Fiction Award), “The Criminal in the Mirror,” and “The Ant’s Cry”; a science translation “The Vital Question” (by Nick Lane, selected for the 2022 National Excellent Popular Science Works list and recognized by the Wenjin Book Award); and a science book “The Most Counter-Intuitive Biological Discovery of the 20th Century: Chemiosmosis.”
Awards for this book: 35th Galaxy Award for Best Novel (2024); 15th Chinese Nebula Award (2024); Inaugural Million Diaoyu City Science Fiction Award for Best Novel (2023); 3rd Science Fiction Planet Competition Science Fiction Novel Award (2025); 11th Sichuan Literary Award for Novel (2025). His short story “Under the Lich King” won the 36th Galaxy Award for Best Novella (2025).

Volume 1: The Threshold
01 Gate to Another World
02 The Choir
03 The Debate
04 The Invisible One
05 City Walking
06 Tonight, Please Ignore Me
07 Cells and Souls
08 The Ideal Center
09 Seeing the Light
10 The Other Shore

Volume 2: Self-Organization
11 Unofficial
12 Mutual Suspicion
13 Mountain Patrol
14 Theology Wars
15 Ecological Niche
16 Iron Wheel
17 Search and Extortion
18 The Flying Peacock
19 Violence
20 Chlorophyll‘s Birthday
21 Symmetry Obsession
22 Eastward Flow
23 Songbirds Gather at Shui-Mu
24 Creation
25 Spring Sports Day

Volume 3: Emergence
26 Within the Walls
27 Main Course and Dessert
28 Blood on the Wilderness
29 How to Become an Internet Celebrity Overnight
30 Glory and Dreams
Bonus Chapter: The Making of Man
31 Rampage
32 Things That Walk in the Night
33 Song
34 The Archer’s Arrow
35 The Scholar and the Bully
36 Letting Go
37 Why
38 The Kept Promise
Epilogue
Afterword

【Afterword】
Do you want to spread your wings and soar through the sky, or brace your limbs and crawl through the earth?
For science fiction writers and readers, this is hardly even a question. Science fiction is, in an intellectual sense, flying. I am no exception. In my earlier works, I tried to fly several times.
Yet gravity is inescapable. Strap on a pair of fantasy wings—no matter how cool they look, how dazzling they make you feel—flap them a few times, and you‘ll still come down.
I study science. Creatures that fly have unique functional structures: unusually high metabolic rates plus lightweight bones, or brains smart enough to understand aerodynamics plus resources ample enough to build heat engines. Not everyone can evolve to that point in a single lifetime. I drag my heavy body along the ground, looking around, and finally discover that gravity-bound creatures can push upward from this position just as well. The feeling of freedom may not match that of flight, but the sensation of power is more than enough.
“The Age of God-Making” was conceived between 2018 and 2019, and written from January to October 2020. The initial spark came from a few lines of dialogue in another unpublished work of mine, “Star Road.” “Star Road” is also an AI-themed work. The dialogue takes place millions of years in the future, on the other side of the Milky Way, recounting the origins of strong artificial intelligence in the ancient era—that is, “the present.” Though it was only a sketch, the identities, natures, conflicts, and the story’s ending of the two AI protagonists in “The Age of God-Making” were already taking shape by then, complete with their names.
Another AI sci-fi novel?
Stories about AI are countless, covering virtually every medium and genre, filling the imaginative space that human minds can reach. The classic works of many masters—both in fiction and film—stand tall, looking down on those who come after.
None of this stopped me from plunging in headfirst. Perhaps it was “the call of the times”—an irresistible force for a science fiction writer. Just as a writer active in the 1960s could not resist the creative lure of “space exploration.” There was an even greater driving force: this time, I had to do it differently. To take off, I first had to sink down. However deep the roots of real-world technology went, that was how deep I would delve. However far its impact on the world might reach, that was how far I would explore.
When I began writing, the feeling was completely fresh. The creative process of “The Age of God-Making” kept bringing me back to the joy of military training in college: after a three-kilometer field march, the squad that arrived late dropped to the ground right there and did push-ups in the mud.
You experience gravity with all your senses—recognizing its power, enjoying the brief pleasure of overcoming it. Each push-up comes with the wetness of mud, the freshness of grass, and the earthy scent of humus. You are surrounded by raw, unpolished reality, wrestling with it. When your muscles ache with a slight tearing sensation, you rise—only to be pulled back down by gravity. You must not relax; you must tense up, lower yourself steadily—or you’ll end up with a mouthful of mud. You draw support from the earth once more, building strength with twisted, coiled muscles.
Then, the next round. Until you run out of strength and become one with the mud.
This is precisely the pain, the pleasure, the risk, the vitality, and the natural limitation of near-future science fiction. Because “The Age of God-Making” is set so close to the present, its entanglement with reality is especially intense. The “mud” it splashes can be murky at times, and the visceral pleasure of creation is especially strong.
Take a small technical example: the book describes the AI development platform TensorFlow dominating the AI technology ecosystem. This was reality in 2019, transplanted by the author into the “future history” of 2028. Yet in actual reality, before the book was even published in 2022, TensorFlow had already been dethroned by newer AI development platforms like PyTorch. The pace of AI technology development—and the iteration of all kinds of information technology—is simply too fast. One reader, a true insider in the industry, laughed and asked me: does this count as being proven wrong?
I replied: near-future sci-fi is bound to be proven wrong. If this is a boxing match, watch to see if I go down.
Reality and imagination—you hit me, I guess your move. The thrill of blow-by-blow engagement filled the creative process of “The Age of God-Making,” and I couldn’t help but crack jokes throughout. In daily life, I‘m not particularly good at humor. Why I laughed so much while writing, and racked my brain to make readers laugh too, I’m not entirely sure. I think it might be because the work nudged both the author‘s and the reader’s time and space slightly forward—into a high concentration of the postmodern. The postmodern itself is quite humorous; we have no choice but to love it helplessly.
In early 2023, the generative AI wave led by ChatGPT finally showed me what it means to be “chased by reality” in science fiction: that urgency that splashes your back, rising to your throat. This time, no one called it “being proven wrong.” Instead, many readers believed that some of the prophecies in “The Age of God-Making” had already come true, running at the crest of the wave.
I’m grateful for their recognition, but as a science fiction author, I don‘t have that confidence. Because I’m certain of this: we live in an extraordinary era. Its brilliance, its subversiveness, its surrealness, its dizzying speed of change—far exceed what any human brain can imagine, what any work of literature can describe. It may not be as dramatic as the story in the book—instead, it unfolds in fragments, subtly, seeping into your surroundings, so fast that you increasingly fail to recognize the world you once knew. It may not be what you expected, what you wanted, what you can easily accept—it may not even follow the causal logic of ordinary human experience. So a novelist can never outrun it. Its technological momentum is unstoppable; its overwhelming detail will drown the human senses.
This isn‘t even “the eve.” The future is already here.
Living in such a magnificent reality, what a thinker and creator feels most deeply is their own limitation and insignificance. From time to time I feel a little fear, but more often I count myself lucky.
Think about our lives—in this era, every ordinary day is redefining what “science fiction” means.