Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO CHINESE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANDOM[24] by Regina Kanyu Wang

Chinese science fiction has remained largely mysterious to the outside world until recently. In 2015, Liu Cixin (刘慈欣) won the first Hugo Award for Asia with his novel The Three-Body Problem («三体»), and in August 2016, Hao Jingfang (郝景芳) won the second with her novelette “Folding Beijing” («北京折叠»)—both translated by Ken Liu, who is himself a Hugo-winning American author. Now, as more and more Chinese science fiction is translated into English and other languages, it is the perfect time to explore its history.

This essay mainly focuses on science fiction, not fantasy, but a few words on fantasy may be helpful. In China, the boundary between science fiction, or kehuan (科幻), and fantasy, or qihuan (奇幻), is seen as quite rigid. However, due to our historical tradition in myths and kung fu stories, it is hard to define Chinese fantasy as a whole. You will find it hard to tell qihuan (奇幻: fantasy) from xuanhuan (玄幻: mostly referring to online fiction with Chinese-style supernatural elements) and mohuan (魔幻: mostly referring to fiction with Western-style magic elements). Narrowly speaking, though, current Chinese fantasy literature excludes themes such as grave robbery (盗墓, daomu: stories involving a group of treasure-seekers breaking into ancient graves, where they come across ghosts and all sorts of other evil creatures), time travel (穿越, chuanyue: stories featuring a contemporary person traveling back in time to ancient dynasties for some unexplained [and unimportant] reason, where they become involved in complicated courtly intrigue or some other soap-opera-like plot), and Daoism immortality-chasing (修真, xiuzhen: stories featuring a protagonist overcoming various challenges to pursue immortality by Daoism method), which stand as popular genres by themselves.

There have been fantasy magazines and fan groups throughout contemporary China, but compared to science fiction, Chinese fantasy literature is not at its peak. Having said that, TV series and movies adapted from successful early works are starting to come out in recent times. For example, in 2016 we have Novoland: The Castle in the Sky (2016), a TV series based on the Novoland fantasy universe, which is meant to be China’s Dungeons & Dragons and is the collaborative effort of many fans and writers; and Ice Fantasy (2016), a TV series adapted from the bestselling City of Fantasy (2003), written by Guo Jingming, a famous Chinese YA author. However, for this essay, I will only talk about science fiction in mainland China.

Like all cultures, Chinese legends and myths have fantasy elements in abundance. In China, however, the first text in the science fiction genre can be found as early as 450 BC to 375 BC. In one of the classics of Daoism, Liezi («列子»), we can find a story called “Yanshi” («偃师») in the chapter “The Questions of Tang” («汤问»). Yanshi, a skilled mechanic, builds a delicate automaton resembling a real human being, which can move, sing, and dance. He shows the dummy to the king to prove his skill. The dummy is so delicate and convincing that the king suspects Yanshi is cheating him by using a real human. At the end, Yanshi has to break the automaton to prove that it is only made of wood and leather. Yanshi’s automaton can be seen as a prototype for an early robot.

Science fiction as we know it today first came to China in the late Qing Dynasty. Chinese intellectuals like Lu Xun (鲁迅) and Liang Qichao (梁启超) emphasized the importance of science fiction as a tool to help the country prosper. In 1900, the Chinese translation of French author Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days was published—it was the first piece of translated foreign science fiction published in China, translated by Chen Shoupeng (陈寿彭) and Xue Shaohui (薛绍徽) from an English translation (Geo M. Towle and N d’Anvers; Sampson Low, Marston & Co., London, 1873, The Tour of the World in Eighty Days, then changed to Around the World in Eighty Days). Lu Xun, arguably the most famous writer in modern Chinese literature, also translated several science fiction novels into Chinese, such as Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon and A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, published in Chinese in 1903 and 1906 respectively. Lu Xun translated the novels from the Japanese translation by Inoue Tsutomu since he didn’t know French. The earliest original Chinese science fiction novel we know of is Colony of the Moon («月球殖民地»), written by Huangjiang Diaosou (荒江钓叟, pen name of an anonymous author, which means “Old Fisherman by a Deserted River”), serialized in a journal called Illustrated Fiction («绣像小说») in 1904 and 1905.

For a long time in China, literature has been regarded as something which should carry social responsibilities. During the early years of the twentieth century, science fiction in China was supposed to play the basic role of teaching advanced science as well as democracy from the West. Most of the Western SF that was translated into Chinese was adapted to serve this role. For example, Verne’s original text for From the Earth to the Moon contains twenty-eight chapters, but Lu Xun’s translation only has fourteen; A Journey to the Centre of the Earth has forty-five chapters in its original French text, but Lu Xun rewrote it into twelve chapters. Much of this effort was, ironically, devoted to cutting out some of the highly technical messages to make the story more exciting to readers.

Wars and political turmoil lasted from the late Qing Dynasty (1833 to 1911) to the Republic Era (1911 to 1949). Lao She (老舍)’s Cat Country («猫城记») came out in 1932. It may be the best-known Chinese SF around the world before the founding of the People’s Republic. In this novel, the first-person narrator flies to Mars, but the aircraft is crushed as soon as it arrives. As the only survivor, the narrator is taken to the City of Cats by feline-faced aliens, where he then lives. With his ironic description of the alien community, the author criticizes his own society.

After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the first wave of new Chinese SF came in the 1950s. A Dream Tour of the Solar System («梦游太阳系»), by Zhang Ran (张然), was regarded to be the first story with SF elements in the PRC.[25] Published in 1950, it introduces astronomical bodies in the solar system in the format of a dream narrative, more like science fairy tale than hard sci-fi. Some of the big names at that time were Zheng Wenguang (郑文光) and Tong Enzheng (童恩正). Zheng Wenguang’s From Earth to Mars («从地球到火星», 1954) was regarded as the first SF short story in the PRC. It’s about three Chinese teenagers stealing a spaceship and flying to Mars for adventure. SF writers of the period were largely influenced by SF from the former Soviet Union. The complete collection of Jules Verne was translated from Russian into Chinese from 1957 to 1962 because it was highly praised in the former Soviet Union. Works by former Soviet Union writers like Alexander Belyayev were also translated. Most science fiction of the period was written for kids or as popular science texts, optimistic and limited in scope.

Then came the Cultural Revolution, leaving little space for literature, and even less for science fiction. Anything that bore any relation to “Western capitalism” was regarded as harmful. Many writers were forced to stop writing. After the reform and opening-up policy, the golden age of Chinese SF finally arrived in the late 1970s. A large body of work emerged, along with a growing number of fan groups and magazines specializing in SF. During this time, Ye Yonglie (叶永烈) was one of the most prestigious writers. His Little Know-It-All Travels around the Future World («小灵通漫游未来», 1978), has sold more than 1.5 million copies, and its comic book adaptation sold another 1.5 million copies. Zheng Wenguang and Tong Enzheng started to write SF again. Zheng’s Flying to Sagittarius («飞向人马座», 1979) became a milestone of Chinese SF. It tells the story of three teenagers trying their best to return to the Earth after roaming outside the solar system for years. And Tong’s most famous work, Death-Ray on Coral Island («珊瑚岛上的死光», 1978), is about scientists fighting against evil corporations to protect the peace of humanity. Coral Island was adapted into the first SF movie in China in 1980 with the same title.

In 1983, the anti-spiritual-pollution campaigns wiped SF from the map again. Since 1979, there had been arguments on whether science fiction should be literature or popular science. The charge of pseudoscience was leveled against science fiction. In 1983, Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese paramount leader at the time, spoke against capitalism and exploitation in literary works. Science fiction was regarded as spiritual pollution because of the elements of capitalism and commercialism in it. Stories that talked about more than science were regarded as being harmful politically. Very few—or more accurately, none—dared to write or publish SF during the period. It wasn’t until late 1980s and early 1990s that Chinese SF recovered from the attack and flourished again.

The definition of prozines in China is a bit different from the definition used in America. In China, you have to get a special number called a “CN,” similar to an “ISBN,” certificated by the government, to be allowed to publish prozines.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, lots of SF magazines popped up in China. In 1979, Scientific and Literary («科学文艺») began to publish in Sichuan Province. Age of Science （«科学时代»), Science Literature Translation Series («科学文艺译丛»), SF Ocean （«科幻海洋»), Wisdom Tree （«智慧树»), and SF World–Selected SF Works («科幻世界——科学幻想作品选刊») appeared within the following three years. However, all these magazines except Scientific and Literary stopped publishing during the anti-spiritual-pollution campaigns.

In 1980, Scientific and Literary sold about 200,000 copies of each issue, but after the anti-spiritual-pollution campaigns, the number dropped as low as 700 copies. After 1984, Yang Xiao (杨潇), editor of the magazine, was selected as the president of Scientific and Literary. Together with her team, she made great efforts to hold the fort for Chinese SF. In 1991, the name of the magazine was changed to Science Fiction World («科幻世界»), and that year in Chengdu, they held the annual conference of World SF. We can look back to 1991 as the year Chinese SF started to flourish again. By 1999, an essay question in China’s National Higher Education Entrance Exam, “What if memory could be transplanted?,” was the same as the title of an article published in Science Fiction World that year. This partly pushed sales of Science Fiction World to its peak: 361,000 copies of each issue in 2000.

As the twenty-first century drew closer, another important Chinese SF magazine came to life in the Shanxi Province. Science Fiction King («科幻大王») started to publish in 1994, changing its name to New Science Fiction («新科幻») in 2011. The peak sales were around 12,000 copies per issue in 2008. Unfortunately, at the end of 2014, New Science Fiction stopped publishing due to its relatively low sales. Science Fiction Cube («科幻Cube») is the youngest member of the current existing SF prozine market in China. Its first three issues only came out in 2016, and each issue sold about 50,000 copies. Some other SF magazines appeared and disappeared in this period, including World Science Fiction («世界科幻博览») and Science Fiction Story («科幻-文学秀»). Other publications, like Mengya («萌芽»), ZUI Found («文艺风赏»), and Super Nice («超好看»), publish science fiction as well as other genres.

The first Chinese SF fan group appeared in Shanghai in 1980. Philip Smith from the University of Pittsburgh visited Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) and delivered a course on science fiction literature. A scholar who worked at SISU at the time, Wu Dingbo (吴定柏) regards the science fiction club formed there as the first Chinese SF fan group. In 1981, Science Fiction Research Associations were founded in several cities like Shanghai, Guangdong, Heilongjiang, Ha’erbin, Liaoning, and Chengdu, and then all were swept away by the anti-spiritual-pollution campaigns. And it wasn’t until 1988 that the Science Fiction Literature Committee was founded in Sichuan Writer’s Association, chaired by Tong Enzheng. The committee aimed to unite science fiction writers in Sichuan and make Chinese SF writing prosper from its nadir.

In 1990, Yao Haijun (姚海军) established the Chinese Science Fiction Readers’ Association with the help of his fanzine Nebula.

In the 1990s, regional fan groups and university clubs boomed all around China. The Science Fiction World magazine also founded its own fan club.

In 1998, the first online SF fan groups appeared in China. Chinese Science Fiction Online Association (中华网上科幻协会) and Feiteng Science Fiction Writing Group (飞腾科幻创作小组) were established. The latter one was renamed Feiteng SF Corps (飞腾科幻军团) after it expanded. Some of the other important online fan groups were SF Utopia (科幻桃花源), River of No Return (大江东去科幻社区), and Space Lunatic Asylum (太空疯人院). Unfortunately none of them exist today. Some of the active members continued their discussion in the Science Fiction World group (with no relation to the magazine) on douban.com (a social networking website popular in China based on hobbies).

Quite a number of Chinese SF authors were active members of these fan groups.

China’s first fanzine was Nebula («星云»), edited by Yao Haijun from 1989 to 2007. During these years, forty issues were published. Yao Haijun was a worker in a logging factory in Heilongjiang when he started the fanzine. Now he is the editor in chief of Science Fiction World magazine. Nebula played an extremely important role in the development of modern Chinese fandom, and even in the history of Chinese science fiction at large. It was the bridge between editors, writers, researchers, and readers. The peak circulation was more than 1,200 copies per issue.

Some of the other fanzines prevalent in the 1990s were Galaxy («银河»), edited by Fan Lin (范霖) in Zhengzhou; Up to the Ladder toward the Sky («上天梯»), edited by Xu Jiulong (徐久隆) in Chengdu; Planet 10 («第十号行星») and TNT, edited by Wang Lunan (王鲁南) in Shandong; and Universe Wind («宇宙风»), edited by Zeng Deqiang and Zhou Yukun (曾德强、周宇坤). There were also letterzines, such as Nebula, sent to subscribers all around the country. However, most of these only survived a couple of years due to lack of money and time.

Regional SF fan groups also published their fanzines. Cubic Light Year （«立方光年»） in Beijing and Supernova («超新星») in Tianjin were two of the key representatives. Receiving the support of many SF writers, Cubic Light Year was of quite high quality. However, both zines only published a few issues because it was hard for the editors and writers to keep running the projects on a voluntary basis.

University SF clubs also publish their fanzines, but these too have a short lifespan. One exception to the rule is Critical Point («临界点») published by Sichuan University Science Fiction Association, which published its special twentieth-anniversary issue in 2013.

With the dawn of the Internet era, numerous netzines appeared. Chinese Science Fiction Online Association published Sky and Fire («苍穹火焰») in 1998 and 1999, with a total of seven issues, and River of No Return published Edge Review («边缘») in 2005 and 2006, with a total of four issues. New Realms of Fantasy and Science Fiction («新幻界») published thirty-two issues from 2009 to 2013, which seems like a miracle, since all the issues are of very high quality and could be downloaded online for free. They even published two printed anthologies. Some of the stories published on New Realms of Fantasy and Science Fiction have since been translated into English, such as “Invisible Planets” («看不见的星球», 2010), by Hao Jingfang.

Some of the other netzines that are still active today in China are Chinese New Science Fiction («中国新科幻») and Science Fiction Collects («科幻文汇»). Hopefully, they can live long and prosper.

The Galaxy Award (银河奖) is the highest honor an author can achieve in the Chinese science fiction field, and for a long time, it was the only one. The Galaxy Award was first established in 1986 by two magazines, Science Fiction World (previously Scientific and Literary) and Wisdom Tree («智慧树»). After Wisdom Tree ceased publication, Science Fiction World became the only organizer of the Galaxy. The Galaxy is only awarded to works published in or by Science Fiction World, with readers voting for their favorites. However, the Best Short Story of 2016 Galaxy Award was awarded to “Balin” by Chen Qiufan, which was published in People’s Literature, making the first exception.

An award open to all SF works published in the Chinese language thus became necessary. The Chinese Nebula Award (全球华语科幻星云奖) was established in 2010, organized by the World Chinese Science Fiction Association. All members of the association can nominate their favorites and vote for them; the vote is also extended to the public. The final winner is selected by a panel of judges from five shortlisted works or candidates.

The major annual SF events in China take place around these two awards. Usually, there are con-like carnivals for fans. They do not follow specific rules, but usually involve award ceremonies, red-carpet walks, late night roadside barbecues, and drinking. Science Fiction World also hosts a seminar on writing after the Galaxy Award Ceremony every year, while World Chinese Science Fiction Association events have started to look like international cons. Cat Rambo, president of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; Taiyo Fuji, president of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan; and Crystal Huff, cochair of Worldcon 75, were invited as guests for the 2016 Chinese Nebula Award Weekend.

Thanks to the prosperity of Chinese science fiction in recent years, new awards keep appearing. For example, The Morning Star & Jinkang Award was established in 2015 by Science & Fantasy Growth Foundation; The Coordinates Award was established in 2015 by several hard-core fans; and Union Writing Competition was established in 2012 by a group of fans in Sichuan University and renamed as Masters of the Future Award in 2016 by the same crew, who started their own company to build both an online hub and an offline space for science fiction fans.

In the history of Chinese science fiction, three international conventions were held in China: the annual conference of World SF in 1991, the 1997 Beijing International Conference on Science Fiction, and the 2007 International SF&F Convention. Yang Xiao, the president of Science Fiction World at the time, attended the annual conference of World SF in 1989 in San Marino and won the hosting right for Chengdu, China, in 1991. Yang was not fluent in English, and neither had she attended international professional conferences before. There were both domestic and foreign obstacles, but Yang and her team fought hard to conquer both. The conference was largely supported by the government and turned out to be a great success.

The ’97 Beijing International Conference on Science Fiction was also organized by Science Fiction World and supported by the China Association for Science and Technology. It played an important role in promoting science fiction culture in China. One of the results of the conference was the rocketing of sales of Science Fiction World.

The 2007 International SF&F Convention was organized by Science Fiction World in Chengdu just before Nippon 2007, designed to promote science fiction culture. That year, European and American writers visited China before heading over to Worldcon in Japan.

There is a bus theory describing Chinese SF fans. The fans’ love toward science fiction is just like taking a bus. When they are young, they get on the bus and start to read science fiction. When they grow older (and reach their destination), they stop to read it and get off the bus. It is true that the majority of the readers of Science Fiction World are middle school, high school, and university students. In comparison, adult fans read more foreign SF works, either in English or in Chinese translation.

Active SF fans do exist, but despite this, no regular national “cons” have been established. University SF clubs prosper and decline. Regional fan groups appear and disappear. Chinese fandom is quite dispersed, and it is hard to find a particular fan group in China with a “long” history.

However, two fan groups in China with a relatively long history function well to this day.

The first one is SF AppleCore. In 2009, SF clubs in four universities in Shanghai decided to collaborate and organize a big event. During the preparation of Shanghai Science Fiction and Fantasy Festival (SSFFF), AppleCore was founded as the association of university SF clubs in Shanghai. SSFFF was held in 2009 and annually from 2011 till now. It is based in universities, and most of the organizers and attendants are university students. During the weekends of a certain month, usually May, various events like debates, panels, lectures, and LARPs (live action role-playing games) are held in member universities, organized by university SF clubs. A single event can attract 30 to 200 attendants, depending on the guests and contents.

AppleCore has grown to be more than an association of university SF clubs. In October 2013, AppleCore started monthly meetings targeting alum fans. Usually, during these gatherings, there are movie screenings and themed lectures, panels or short talks in the afternoon and dinner in the evening. The topics explored range from science to fantasy, and from art to astronomy. Some examples include: a screening of the movie A Scanner Darkly would be followed by a lecture on Philip K. Dick; talks on depression and autism; a visit to the contemporary art exhibition “Heman Chong: Ifs, Ands, or Buts”; and a steampunk accessories DIY workshop. On average, 30 to 120 members show up for the afternoon activities, and 5 to 20 stay for dinner.

In November 2014, the AppleCore Reading Group was formed. Fans are encouraged to read a specific book every month and meet to discuss it. The very first discussion was on The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov. Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer was discussed in December 2015. A special discussion on Chinese Nebula nominees was organized in September 2015, with a focus on Chi Hui’s Artificial Human 2075: Awareness Restructuring («伪人2075 ：意识重组», 2014). The aim is for the reading group to start with a limited circle of members and gradually expand to a larger scale.

The AppleCore Writing Workshop was also established in 2015 as a trial and put into official operation in 2016. Small groups of writers meet monthly and discuss each other’s works.

AppleCore is not only the largest SF fan group in eastern China, but is perhaps also the one with the most international contacts. In its seventh year, it won the Gold Xingyun Award for Best Fandom in 2016.

The other organization is the World Chinese Science Fiction Association (WCSFA), our largest fan group, established in 2010 in Chengdu and registered in Hong Kong. AppleCore is more fan-driven and works as the regional fan hub in Shanghai, while WCSFA is an official organization and works as the national fan hub in China.

The World Chinese Science Fiction Association has around 300 members, and most of them are “professionals”: writers, translators, editors, researchers, etc. WCSFA has been organizing the Chinese Nebula Award every year since 2010. With the aim of nurturing Chinese SF, the organizing committee works hard to improve it year by year. The award ceremonies have been held in Chengdu, Taiyuan, and Beijing, and it is expected future ceremonies will travel to more cities.

What should also be mentioned here is that Beijing tried out the first Worldcon bid in China in 2014. Though we lost to Kansas City in the end, it was a good beginning, and we can now expect a large group of Chinese representatives at future Worldcons.

Liu Cixin (刘慈欣) is the biggest name in contemporary Chinese SF thanks to his grand universe-spanning imagination. His “Three- Body” trilogy («三体»三部曲) is extremely popular and is due to be adapted into a six-part movie series. The English translation of the first book was published in November 2014—the first contemporary Chinese SF novel translated into English—and won a Hugo. The next two books were published in English in 2015 and 2016 respectively.[26]

Wang Jinkang (王晋康), who spent his twentieth year of writing SF in 2014, is another heavyweight in Chinese SF. His stories are deeply rooted in the tradition of realism and usually with a focus on biology. Some of his representative works include the short story “Adam’s Regression” («亚当回归», 1993) and the novel A Song for Life («生命之歌», 1998).

Han Song (韩松), who works for Xinhua News Agency, is known to have said that the news pieces he writes during the daytime are more science fictional than the science fiction stories he writes at night. His stories, influenced by Kafka, are unusual and surreal, and his pioneering writing style garners him special attention. Some of his representative works are the short story “Gravestone of the Universe” («宇宙墓碑», 1991) and the novel Red Ocean («红色海洋», 2004).

He Xi (何夕)’s stories are effective at exploring emotions and feelings, which really touch the reader. “The Sad One” («伤心者», 2003) is his most famous short story, about a lonely mathematician figuring out a theory that cannot be understood by his era, and a mother always having faith in her son. He Xi published his first novel, The Doomsyear («天年»), in 2015.

Arguably, these are the “Big Four” of Chinese SF today.

Younger writers like Chen Qiufan (陈楸帆), who leads science fiction realism; Fei Dao (飞氘), who applies skills and concepts from literary fiction to his SF writing; Baoshu (宝树), who is good at telling interesting stories with a focus on philosophy; Zhang Ran (张冉), who benefits a lot from his earlier experience as a journalist; Jiang Bo (江波), who has deft control of large scenes; and A Que (阿缺), who is a master of storytelling born in the 1990s—they are all from the most well-educated group in China.

The writers described in this section so far are male, but there are also quite a few prestigious female writers in China: Zhao Haihong (赵海虹), Ling Chen (凌晨), Chi Hui (迟卉), Xia Jia (夏笳), Hao Jingfang (郝景芳), Chen Qian (陈茜), and Tang Fei (糖匪). They approach the genre with their unique perspectives. Zhao Haihong’s stories feature an emphasis on emotion and romantic atmosphere; Ling Chen takes good control of hard SF elements; Chi Hui is very prolific, making it hard to conclude her style; Xia Jia is good at creating fantastic scenes and dreamy atmospheres, and recently has started to focus on near-future scenes in China; Hao Jingfang regards her own writing as “nongenre,” as she cares about what happens in real space but sets her stories in imaginary space; Chen Qian’s stories have simple language but hard SF cores; and Tang Fei’s writing, which carries characteristics of the New Wave, is regarded as “nontypical SF” by herself. Among them, Xia Jia is probably the most well-known writer, and after her Hugo win, Hao Jingfang is also receiving a lot of attention.

In terms of academia, there are a group of Chinese SF researchers led by Professor Wu Yan (吴岩) from Beijing Normal University. There has been a master’s program focusing on science fiction in Beijing Normal University for years, and the first Ph.D. student in the same major was recruited in September 2015. Before the specialized Ph.D. program in science fiction was established, young researchers and writers like Xia Jia and Fei Dao tended to combine their interest in science fiction within the field of comparative literature. Many of them share research interests in late Qing Dynasty SF in China, while others are more interested in modern and contemporary Chinese SF. And it’s fascinating to see these researchers explore the works of their contemporaries and friends.

Science fiction IPs (intellectual properties) are extremely hot in China these days. Liu Cixin sold the film rights of the “Three-Body” trilogy long before the upsurge, making it one of the earliest Chinese science fiction “big” movies to be adapted from literature. The movie has not been released as of this writing (early 2018), but a stage adaptation has been received enthusiastically in Shanghai and Beijing. The first Nebula Award for Global Chinese Science Fiction Films, also organized and awarded by WCSFA, was just awarded in August 2016. The Best SF Movie award went to CJ 7 («长江七号», 2008), directed by Stephen Chow; and Lu Chuan won Best Director for his Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe («九层妖塔», 2015).

There are dozens of projects in development, and we can certainly expect to see more Chinese science fiction movies in the coming years.

Chinese SF is winning more attention on the international stage than ever before. The Hugo-winning magazine Clarkesworld started a Chinese SF translation project in 2015 in partnership with Storycom, a Chinese company dedicated to turning science fiction stories into movies/comic/games. Clarkesworld has been publishing one Chinese SF short story in translation each month since.

Led by Li Zhaoxin, a senior SF fan and critic, SF Comet, an international SF short story writing competition, runs monthly. Chinese and foreign writers compete by writing a short story to a certain theme within a limited time frame. The stories are published in both Chinese and English. Both Chinese and foreign fans can vote for the anonymized stories and choose their favorite. Currently, the competition is on hiatus and we hope it will continue soon.

The first anthology of contemporary Chinese SF stories, Invisible Planets, edited and translated by Ken Liu, was published in November 2016.

It is becoming easier and easier to find translated Chinese SF these days. Check them out and you won’t be disappointed!

Special thanks to Zhang Feng, Jiang Qian, Zhao Ruhan, Zheng Jun, Xia Jia, and Dong Renwei for their writings on Chinese science fiction.

A NEW CONTINENT FOR CHINA SCHOLARS: CHINESE SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES[27] by Mingwei Song

Seven years ago, I attended a conference in Shanghai, a major event celebrating contemporary Chinese literature coorganized by Harvard and Fudan (one of the top universities in China), which featured China’s A-list novelists, poets, essayists, and literary critics. The dignitaries attending it included the Nobel Laureate-to-be Mo Yan, dozens of his peers, chief editors of major literary magazines, famous professors, as well as some younger popular authors. Almost nobody had heard of Chinese science fiction before this conference concluded with a late-afternoon roundtable discussion that gave two SF authors, Han Song and Fei Dao, ten minutes to talk about their genre. Han Song, a major author of Chinese SF’s New Wave, and Fei Dao, a promising young author, I later learned, spent a huge amount of time preparing for the ten minutes’ talk. I remember I was sitting in front of Yu Hua and Su Tong, two literary giants who kept chatting in low voices. But they suddenly became silent, and they listened attentively when Han Song began to talk about the amazing new development of SF over the past decade, and when Fei Dao strategically linked the contemporary authors’ artistic pursuits and social concerns to Lu Xun, the founding father of modern Chinese literature, who was also an early advocate for “science fiction” (kexue xiaoshuo) at the turn of the twentieth century, I could say that the entire audience, during the ten minutes, kept silent and listened with great interest to Han Song and Fei Dao.

It was a moment that changed the field.

July 13, 2010, 3:30 p.m.

Two days earlier, I introduced myself to Han Song and Fei Dao. We had a pleasant conversation. Before meeting with them, I had read all their publications I could find. Three years earlier, my friend Yan Feng (a Fudan professor) sent me a manuscript called Santi (later rendered into English as The Three-Body Problem). He highly recommended that I read it. But I was busy with something else at that time; I didn’t even read through the second chapter (the chapters were in the same order as they appeared in the English translation by Ken Liu). It was not until 2008 that I picked it up again, felt awed, and was soon obsessed with this new wave of Chinese science fiction: Liu Cixin, Han Song, Wang Jinkang, He Xi, La La, Zhao Haihong, Chen Qiufan, Xia Jia, Fei Dao, Hao Jingfang, Chi Hui, etc. I read every piece I could find written by them, and I strongly suggested to the Shanghai conference organizers that we invite Liu Cixin to the conference. However, Liu Cixin couldn’t come due to a schedule conflict. But Han Song and Fei Dao did not fail their mission; in a very humble and yet powerful way, they succeeded in making science fiction the hot topic for the conference. By the time Han Song and Fei Dao finished speaking, I felt that I had come to an epiphany: Chinese science fiction had already experienced a decade of its own golden age, 1999 to 2010. Unfortunately, it was almost unknown to people outside the circle of SF fans. The mainstream literary scholars knew nothing.

During his presentation, Fei Dao compared this new wave of Chinese science fiction to a lonely hidden army. Perhaps it would have perished without anyone paying attention to it. Indeed, if no one from the literary establishment bothered to pick up a copy of Santi, or had the patience to read the labyrinthine narrative of Han Song’s bizarre story about China’s invisible reality, the new wave of Chinese SF could perhaps only serve as self-entertainment for SF authors and fans. But in July 2010, thanks to Han Song and Fei Dao, this lonely hidden army was brought to the center stage of a convention of literary elites.

Right after the roundtable, Theodore Huters (UCLA), a professor I respect tremendously, began to think about doing an anthology to introduce these new Chinese SF authors. He commissioned me to edit a special double issue for Renditions, a literary magazine that introduced some of China’s most famous authors to the world. It took me two years, with the support of dozens of writers and translators, to complete this job. In 2012, the Renditions special issue was published, featuring ten stories by contemporary Chinese SF authors. It’s about the same time that Ken Liu, the most devoted translator of Chinese science fiction, began to enter the field. Other publications, such as Pathlight, also ran special issues featuring translations of Chinese science fiction. In other countries, such as Italy and Japan, Chinese science fiction has also gained new life in new languages.

When Ken Liu’s translation of The Three-Body Problem appeared in 2014 and won the Hugo Award in 2015, this new wave of Chinese science fiction became an international sensation. What happened later is perhaps familiar to most of the readers: Obama and Mark Zuckerberg both praised the novel; its sequel, Death’s End, was on the bestseller list of the New York Times.

Scholars are usually a little late to trends. But this time, the tremendous popularity of Chinese science fiction is impossible to ignore. Within only three to four years, Chinese science fiction has quickly become one of the most prosperous subfields for China scholars. Major academic conferences such as MLA, AAS, ACLA, ACCL, and the like all feature panels, roundtables, workshops devoted to Chinese science fiction. As one of the first Chinese American scholars paying attention to this new development of the genre, I was frequently commissioned to contribute to academic journals/volumes in both the US and China (and France and Germany as well), edit special issues, and even organize conferences and workshops. I am not alone in this campaign. I have such comrades-in-arms as Hua Li, who wrote several articles on contemporary SF, and Nathaniel Isaacson, who recently published Celestial Empire: Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction, the first monograph completely devoted to the study of early Chinese science fiction. More importantly, an entire new generation of younger scholars engaged the topic seriously, producing more systematic research and presenting more provocative arguments. It was almost like a miracle: a new continent for scholarly adventure emerged in front of our eyes.

Still, I need to emphasize that the field has its own history. Its current momentum is new, but it still has a heritage that set up some framework for the contemporary research, just like this new wave that also has its precedents—at least a few short-lived booms that took place in the first decade of the twentieth century: the 1950s to 1960s as children’s literature in China, 1970s to 1980s in Taiwan, and a major revival on the mainland during the early Reform Era. However, the history of Chinese science fiction has never been a continuous one. It is full of gaps and interruptions caused by politics or the change of cultural paradigms. Each generation of new authors had to reestablish the paradigm. Only on a few occasions could they get access to earlier authors’ work, but they rarely received obvious, substantial influences from them.

But for literary scholars, the task is not just to test how earlier generations influenced later ones, or to try to create a literary history that pretends to be coherent and consistent. Literary scholars put more emphasis on texts and contexts. I need to pay homage to three scholars who made major research on the genre before its recent revival. In the early 1980s, German sinologist Rudolf Wagner published a lengthy article “Lobby Literature: Archeology and Present Functions of Science Fiction in China.” It mainly discusses science fiction of the early Reform Era. Wagner defined it as lobby literature without labeling it as propaganda, but gave a subtle and sympathetic analysis of the genre’s rich meanings at the turning point of China’s political situation. His article is an inspiring piece that connects the future-oriented SF to past history and present challenges.

By the end of the 1980s, Wu Dingbo collaborated with Patrick Murphy to publish the first translated anthology of Chinese science fiction from the 1980s, titled Science Fiction from China (New York: Praeger, 1989). Wu wrote an introduction that serves as a concise history of Chinese science fiction, presenting most of the important authors and advocates for the genre from the early twentieth century to the early 1980s. He spent more time introducing the rise and decline of Chinese SF during the early Reform Era. Wu’s introduction was the most complete discussion on the genre published in English by that time.

In 1997, David Der-wei Wang’s paradigm-making book Fin-de-siecle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1848–1911 (Stanford, 1997) was published. One of his chapters, “Confused Horizons: Science Fantasy,” is the defining study of late Qing science fiction, which was first promoted by Liang Qichao and later prospered for nearly a decade (1902 to 1911). Wang’s approach is to combine textual analysis and cultural history, looking into the imaginative and epistemological levels of the narrative. Wang’s study has had a deep impact on later scholars’ work on late Qing science fiction. It is no exaggeration to say that after Wang’s book was published there was a revival of scholarly interest in late Qing literature, including science fiction.

In China, the pioneer in Chinese science fiction studies is no doubt Wu Yan. He was almost the sole serious scholar working on the genre for decades before it received recognition from more scholars. In addition to a series of academic articles, Wu published in 2011 a monograph titled “Kehuan wenxue lungang” (Outline of Science Fiction Studies). Unlike Rudolf Wagner, Wu Dingbo, or David Der-wei Wang, Wu Yan focuses his study on contemporary Chinese science fiction writers, comparing them to Western authors and applying a number of theories (including cyborg, feminism, and globalization) to analyzing these writers. In China today, Wu Yan, as the only advisor qualified to advise Ph.D. students to do projects on SF, is definitely the leader of the community of Chinese science fiction researchers.

By the time Chinese science fiction began to gain international recognition, Wu Yan edited a special issue for Science Fiction Studies, a collection of about ten research articles covering the entire history of the genre in China, from late Qing science fantasy to Lao She’s Cat Country, from the 1980s to the very recent boom of the genre after 2000. Both Liu Cixin and Han Song also contributed to this special issue, which is a landmark in the development of the field.

My own research on Chinese science fiction is rather limited to contemporary works, particularly the New Wave, a term I borrowed from British SF history to baptize this new trend of the genre that shows both social concern and artistic innovations. It is a controversial definition, I know. I have published four articles in English (two translated into French and German), and numerous articles and essays in Chinese. In one recent article, “Representations of the Invisible: Poetics and Politics of Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction,” I argued that the trend called the New Wave grew out of the post-1989 political culture, and it has not only resurrected the genre but has also subverted its own conventions, which used to be dominated by political utopianism and technological optimism throughout nearly the entire twentieth century in mainland China. Contemporary science fiction reenergizes the genre by consolidating and reinventing a variety of generic conventions, cultural elements, and political visions—ranging from space opera to cyberpunk fiction, from utopianism to posthumanism, and from parodied visions of China’s rise to deconstructions of the myth of national development. In a peculiar way, Chinese science fiction has entered its Golden Age at the same time that it generates a new wave subversion of the genre. The new wave has a dark and subversive side that speaks either to the “invisible” dimensions of the reality, or simply the impossibility of representing a certain “reality” dictated by the discourse of mainstream realism. On its most radical side, the new wave of Chinese SF has been thriving on an avant-garde cultural spirit that encourages one to think beyond the conventional ways of perceiving reality and to challenge the commonly accepted ideas about progress, development, economic miracle, and nation and people.

I should also mention that in addition to mainland writers, a number of authors in Taiwan and Hong Kong have also made important contributions to the field, particularly those authors of experimental fiction, like Lo Yi-chin, Dung Kai-cheung, and Ng Kim-chew, who all appropriate elements of science fiction to achieve a more sophisticated level of literary experimentation with motifs of heterotopia, the posthuman, and metaphors of identity. Sinophone science fiction could be the next goldmine to be discovered, explored, and brought to attention for a world audience.

Through editing a few special journal issues and organizing conferences, I got to know a number of scholars working on interesting topics. For example, Adrian Thieret writes about Liu Cixin’s version of cosmopolitanism; Cara Healey studies genre transgression and transnationalism in science fiction; Hua Li explores a variety of topics in the political, environmental, and metaphorical in Chinese SF; Jiang Jing studies both late Qing science fiction as the origin of modern Chinese literature and the socialist science fiction from the 1950s to 1980s; Nathaniel Isaacson, after his book on late Qing SF was published, is working on variations of science fiction in other genres during the Republic Era and early PRC; I myself prepare to write about heterotopia in the variations of science fiction by Taiwanese and Hong Kong authors. Scholars like Li Guangyi, Ren Dongmei, Liang Qingsan, and Zhang Feng (Sanfeng) have unearthed important materials for further research in the genre. Some more comprehensive bibliography and collection of materials will hopefully be made accessible to researchers soon.

The field keeps growing, and the new continent is full of wonders. I hold a firm belief that Chinese science fiction is going to be, or has already become, the most rapidly growing subfield of modern Chinese literary studies. It is changing the field. It reshapes our understanding of Chinese literary modernity as well as its potentials for future development.

SCIENCE FICTION: EMBARRASSING NO MORE by Fei Dao

Some years ago, I attended a speech by an arthouse director I admired. He was known for unflinching realism in his work, and the small Chinese towns buffeted by the tsunami of modernization portrayed in his films always reminded me of my hometown.

In his speech, he opined that contemporary Chinese society was obsessed by the present, and was without a clear vision of either the past or the future. Therefore, for his next film, he wanted to return to the past, to reexamine and reevaluate Chinese history. So, during the audience Q&A, I asked him whether he would eventually make a film about the future, or, in other words, a sci-fi film.

The audience roared with laughter.

For most in attendance, the appearance of the word “sci-fi” in the cultured and sophisticated setting of this speech was utterly incongruous. My question shocked them in the same way the audience at an opera would be stunned if someone had asked whether Pavarotti was considering taking up beatboxing.

To be honest, I was terribly embarrassed. No one wanted to be that guy who asked odd questions that made everyone feel awkward. Of China’s 1.4 billion people, the number of science fiction fans was a vanishingly small minority. For most Chinese, “sci-fi” conjured up images of young, gawky teenagers obsessed with anime, wuxia novels, outrageous clothing, and ridiculous hairstyles. Like those other juvenile pursuits, sci-fi was to be abandoned when one reached maturity. Science fiction was neither practical nor useful and had nothing to do with real life. In most people’s minds, it was no more real than distant countries whose capitals they couldn’t even recall. Once in a while, they might hear the genre mentioned, but they knew nothing about it and had no desire to find out more. Indeed, if “sci-fi” happened to pop up in conversation, their faces would twist into expressions of bewilderment, and they would ask, “Are you talking about Harry Potter? That’s sci-fi, isn’t it?”

In any event, I was younger back then, and my courage had not yet been dulled by experience. Thus, when I attended an international academic conference meant to discuss Important And Intellectual Subjects, the inexplicable urge to bring up science fiction once again gripped me. Taking advantage of a coffee break, I walked up to a renowned German sinologist and asked him if he had ever read any Chinese science fiction.

This aged and respected scholar had once declared that after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Chinese authors had produced no work that would be considered great by the rest of the world. I did not agree with him.

At that time, Mo Yan hadn’t yet won the Nobel, but I wasn’t thinking of him anyway. The second book in Liu Cixin’s “Three-Body” series, The Dark Forest, had just been published, and every Chinese sci-fi fan was thrumming with excitement. I was certain that at least in the realm of science fiction, a contemporary Chinese author had indeed written something the equal of any of the great Western classics.

But the renowned sinologist interrupted my disquisition politely, “I don’t even read German sci-fi!”

There was nothing I could say in response to that. Heck, even Chinese readers for Chinese sci-fi were few and far between.

I wasn’t some rabid superfan who believed that my beloved genre was the best thing ever to happen to literature and anyone who couldn’t appreciate sci-fi was a philistine. In fact, I didn’t even like to argue with people. My questions were a kind of performance art: out of a desire for security or mental peace, everyone built around themselves a mental firewall that filtered the torrents of information in which modern life inundated all of us. “Sci-fi” was one of the keywords tagged by most people’s firewalls as useless information, and I simply wanted to toss it over the firewall so that they had to evaluate it anew instead of automatically ignoring it. I suppose many would think what I did was foolish and pointless, but at least I didn’t harm anyone with my questions.

Here, I have to explain to my readers in the West that for a long time, science fiction in China was like subatomic particles or radiation, undetectable to most. A student majoring in literature would find virtually no information concerning sci-fi in textbooks or academic histories of Chinese literature. (To be sure, in histories of Western literature one would occasionally find the names of writers like Margaret Atwood, Kurt Vonnegut, and Thomas Pynchon—but the text would go on to emphasize that these writers only used the techniques of science fiction as a form of “literary experimentation,” as though it would be a terrible thing to sully the august tomes of literary history with the presence of any pure genre writer.)

Within the elegant, highly intellectual, awe-inspiring atmosphere of “serious” academic conferences, it was almost impossible to find a science fiction author or a scholar of sci-fi. It was rare to see sci-fi covered in the mainstream media. If some newspaper or magazine happened to publish a 200-word snippet about sci-fi or if a popular magazine founded by a bestselling YA author published a story by a sci-fi writer, fans celebrated the occasion and rushed to share the news with each other. Even the publisher of Doris Lessing’s Mara and Dann: An Adventure and the writer invited to provide an introduction for the book avoided mentioning the book’s obvious genre classification, fearful of harming sales.

In the face of so much apathy and ignorance from society at large, sci-fi fans in China rallied to Science Fiction World, a magazine dedicated to serving them. Through college fan clubs, Internet forums, and other grassroots activities, fans found each other and banded together, forming a distinctive subculture. Hidden in their refuge, protected by their isolation, they entertained themselves, feeling sorry for those who didn’t understand or experience the sense of wonder in gazing up at the stars.

Once, when speaking to a group of prominent Western authors and scholars who had never heard of Chinese sci-fi, I used the metaphor of a “hidden army.” Forgotten by everyone in the cultural landscape, they lay concealed in silence, alone on the desolate heath. Perhaps someday an opportunity would arise when they would burst into action and change the world, but it was also possible that such an opportunity would never come, and they would fade into oblivion. Future explorers might find the remains of their mysterious, unfinished war engines, but those who had constructed the weapons and practiced with them would be forever forgotten.

However, soon after, the third volume of Liu Cixin’s magnum opus, Death’s End, was published. An unanticipated sea change came over China’s literary scene. The isolation that had kept sci-fi out of view had also acted as a dam storing up the potential for an explosive release. As young Chinese fans grew up and entered society, they persisted in their love of genre literature. Like faithful fans at a concert, they waved their faint glow sticks to support their beloved art. As night fell, thousands of tiny lights danced with more urgency and force, and thousands of lonely voices coalesced into a powerful rhythmic chant. Finally, Liu Cixin, the star of the show, came onto the stage to perform his masterpiece, and the crescendo of wild cheers that greeted him seemed to shake the stars suspended in the sky above.

Society at large was consumed with curiosity. Literary critics, numbed by the clichéd portraits of urban life and listless middle-class affairs that filled “literary fiction,” were surprised to find that fiction written in Chinese was capable of narrating grand space epics and painting magnificent portraits of an imagined future. A fresh literary terrain materialized out of nowhere, waiting to be cultivated by page-plowing scholars and critics.

All of a sudden, literary theory became a hot topic again, and the number of dissertations and papers focused on sci-fi exploded. Established scholars gave lectures on the “meaning of sci-fi,” and even avant-garde artists enthusiastically invited sci-fi writers to collaborate with them to explore the revolutionary ideas made possible by science and the infinite potential of humanity. Agents and producers always on the lookout for the next piece of valuable IP buttonholed every sci-fi writer, demanding to know, “Do you have any stories suitable for screen adaptation?”

Within but a few years, sci-fi authors had turned from invisible and forgotten bookworms to superstars in hot demand. They took off their simple, outdated plaid shirts and became sharp dressers—no, really, some of them could even be glimpsed in the pages of fashion magazines. Everyone acted as if each sci-fi author was a walking mine of brilliant ideas.

The symbols and memes of sci-fi also injected themselves into the popular imagination. Internet CEOs interpreted the “dark forest” of the “Three-Body” series as a metaphor for the ruthless competition in their domain, while a government spokesperson employed the “dark forest” to describe the worst-case scenario for the crisis on the Korean Peninsula. Sci-fi had never touched so many in China. The vice president of China affirmed that sci-fi was a “positive force” for the development and progress of the country, and even declared himself a fan. Everyone agreed that this was the most encouraging, most supportive environment sci-fi had ever experienced in China.

Still, mere novelty wears out quickly, and it’s impossible to predict whether the hidden army, once revealed, can really become a force to be reckoned with and sustain the wave of cultural enthusiasm for sci-fi. Readers expecting more of The Three-Body Problem, or even The Four-Body Problem and The Five-Body Problem, would no doubt be disappointed. No one could (or should) replicate Liu Cixin. Today, although he hasn’t published a new novel since Death’s End, “Da Liu” remains peerless in China (some have estimated that yearly sales of his books exceed the sum of the yearly sales of all other science fiction books combined). After Chinese authors managed to bring home Hugo rockets two years in a row, what else can they do to keep the attention of mainstream society? If the ambitious sci-fi films currently in production don’t achieve commercial success—remember, Chinese audiences have been trained to have very picky tastes by a steady diet of big-budget Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters—how much longer will the financiers remain excited?

I imagine the answers to many of these questions will reveal themselves shortly. Most of the sci-fi authors I know are not concerned about them because they have day jobs—engineer, reporter, university instructor, science researcher, judge, entrepreneur, and so on. Even if the current wave of enthusiasm burns out and sci-fi once again retreats from the view of most people—I’m reminded of little Pluto, which was unknown until 1930, and which then enjoyed a brief few decades of attention before scientists mercilessly ejected it from the ranks of the planets—sci-fi authors will simply shrug and return to their hidden base, away from the bright and fickle beam of public attention, and continue to let their imaginations roam.

As for myself, I’m glad that I got to witness this wave of interest and so many fantastic happenings. Let me tell you a bit more about that arthouse director I mentioned at the beginning. At the time of his speech, I asked him why it was that Chinese films rarely showed the future. He answered perfunctorily that “exploration of history and the present already encompasses within it anticipation for the future.” At that moment, he probably wouldn’t have believed that in a few years he would make a film about the year 2025. When that film was released, some in the media praised the director for “opening a new path for expressing realism through the experimental techniques of science fiction.” I knew then that my long-held dream had been fulfilled: when I talk about sci-fi with others, none of us need feel embarrassed anymore.