The Star Spy Clan

The Star Spy Clan is a science fiction espionage novel by the web author Bing Lin Shen Xia, first serialized on Qidian and complete at approximately 2.07 million Chinese characters. The story is set in an era when humanity has left Earth and multiplied across the eight planets: though humanity has technically entered the interstellar age, it has not truly embarked on exploration, quickly losing the drive to press outward and instead replaying the old drama of internal strife, carrying the ancient trade of espionage into the space between the stars. In this highly proceduralized interstellar society, the protagonist is born into a family that has produced spies for generations; the men and women of the household are all spies, feeding daily on power and money, drinking loyalty and betrayal, playing with glances and words, and delighting in riddles and decryption. Their enemies are never alien races but another band of equally calculating spies; even with stars and void between them, overt and covert strife never ceases. The novel unfolds around the core creed that "a spy does not believe in coincidence," advancing the plot through a great deal of dialogue, probing, missions, and maneuvering. With tightly interlocking episodes and densely laid foreshadowing, it is regarded by readers as a mind-bending work of science fiction intellectual combat, and as Bing Lin Shen Xia's first foray into interstellar themes after The Deadly Script and The Child Emperor.