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THE ELECTRIC ERA: SCIENCE FICTION LITERATURE IN CHINA
By Hannah C. Reynolds
In partial fulfillment of the degree
Bachelor of Arts with Honors in East Asian Studies
Wittenberg University
1 May 2019
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I. Introduction
China is no stranger to writing, consuming, and cherishing highly imaginative works of
literature, whether it be in the ancient dynastic ages or in modern Chinese libraries. The
fantastical adventures of The Monkey King are loved by the entire nation, and mystical romances
of A Dream of Red Mansions are being adapted into screenplays more than 200 years after the
tale’s conception. Confucian values, while traditionally associated with their realistic and
grounded nature, may have boosted China’s cultural fascination with the intangible oddities of
life. Many of Confucius’ analects call for people to be realistic and focused on understanding
the here and the now: “When you do not yet understand life, how could you understand death?”
(Weizhi sheng, yanzhi si 未知生焉知死, ).1 But an important element of Confucian philosophy is
the emphasis put on the connection between societal structures and the cosmic order of the
universe; the connections between parent and child, husband and wife, and ruler and subject are
not upheld merely for convenience—they keep the yin and yang of the universe in balance.
Disruption of social order would be, in the eyes of Confucius, a blatant opposition of the higher cosmic order that is intrinsically connected to our mortal existence. Elements of fantasy are also more intertwined in modern, everyday Chinese life than in the lives of Westerners. Ghosts, demons, gods and dragons are staples of Chinese culture that are unironically found in homes and workplaces as auspicious or historical symbols. This love for the mysterious nature of life, the fantastical figures in Chinese culture, and the potential for human impact on a much greater universe is perhaps what laid the groundwork for a new age of literature in China: science fiction.
1 "The Analects of Confucius 論語," Resources for East Asian Language and Thought, Tokyo University, http://www.acmuller.net/con-dao/analects.html (accessed February 24, 2019).
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The apparent beginnings of the science fiction genre as we know it today—intertwining
advanced technology and human life with motifs of robots and space travel—can be found in the
late Qing dynasty (1644-1912). Hand in hand, Liang Qichao (梁超啟 , 1873-1929) and Zhou
Shuren (周人树 , 1881-1936) (better known by his nom de plume, Lu Xun 鲁迅) introduced
Western science fiction to China. Liang praised “philosophical science fiction” in a 1902 issue
of his magazine New Fiction (Xin xiaoshuo 新小说), and Lu Xun wrote a Chinese translation and
commentary on Jules Verne’s De la guerre a la lune (Yuejie lüxing 越界旅行) and Voyage au centre de la terre (Didi lüxing 地底旅行).2
Lu Xun’s contribution to and promotion of science fiction in China is especially notable
considering his influence as an author and reputation as “The Father of Modern Chinese
Fiction.” In his introduction to one of his translations of a Jules Verne novel, Lu Xun wrote:
“The fictional heritage in our country abounds in works dealing with sentimental, historical,
satirical, and bizarre subjects. But only science fiction is scarce. This is one of the reasons for
the primitiveness of our knowledge. Therefore, if we wish to fulfill the gap of today’s
translations and lead the Chinese people toward progress, we must begin with science.”3 Lu Xun also commented on the effectiveness of science fiction in bringing scientific knowledge to a large audience that may not be fascinated by science in its raw textbook form: “The typical reader is bored by the tediousness of science books and cannot finish them.
But when dressed up in the form of fiction, the science can seep into readers’ minds without
boring them. ... As the reader’s heart is touched, the reader gains insight and wisdom without
taxing the mind, knowledge that would break down legacy superstitions, improve their thoughts,
2 Wu Yan and Yao Jianbin, “A Very Brief History of Chinese Science Fiction,” trans. Andrea Lingenfelter, Chinese Literature Today 7, no. 1 (2018): 45-46, https://doi.org/10.1080/21514399.2018.1458378 (accessed January 11, 2019). 3 Leo Ou-fan Lee, Voices from the Iron House (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 13.
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and supplement our culture. What a powerful tool is such fiction!”4 Lu Xun’s status as a
revolutionary writer fighting for the enlightenment of the Chinese people through fiction brings
much significance to his commentary on the importance of science fiction. While Lu Xun may
have never written his own science fiction literature beyond his translation and commentary on
Western science fiction, his collection of stories called Old Tales Retold (Gushi xinbian 故事新编)
incorporates unique fantasy elements that allow the collection to stand apart from Lu Xun’s more popular works of realistic fiction. One of the short stories in this collection called “Forging the
Swords” tells the tale of a young man who must avenge the death of his swordsmith father by slaying the king that killed his father. The story is wildly different from Lu Xun’s famous tales of the quixotic anti-hero in “The Real Story of Ah Q” or the bleak nostalgia of “Homecoming.”
“Forging the Swords” is, however, worthy of the same praise that Lu Xun’s realistic fiction
pieces often receive. The story is rooted in dichotomies and the balance of nature—fire and ice,
male and female, soft and strong—and adheres to the East Asian fascination with yin and yang
that is found in so many compelling works of East Asian art and literature. “Forging the
Swords” is not necessarily a pure work of science fiction, but its fantasy elements attest to Lu
Xun’s work in laying the foundations for science fiction literature to be written in China.
The fact that Lu Xun—a highly respected author that motioned in a new age of modern
Chinese literature—spent his time writing works of fantasy is incredibly significant for various
reasons. First and foremost, his writing of fantasy suggests that he did not believe the new era of
art and literature in China should be purely functional and somber; there is in fact room for the
fantastic in legitimate and scholarly works of fiction. Secondly, Lu Xun effectively ties Chinese
4 Ken Liu, "The ‘Heroic Translators’ Who Reinvented Classic Science Fiction in China," Io9, December 16, 2015, https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-heroic-translators-who-reinvented-classic-science-1696944844 (accessed March 10, 2019).
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Some of Lu Xun’s other works border on being categorized as speculative fiction— science fiction’s close cousin. Lu Xun uses light criticism and expresses his frustration with outdated Chinese medical practices in his short story Medicine, which reflects the tragic story of his father passing away due to said medical practices. The death of Lu Xun’s father is often credited as the inspiration for his attending medical school in Japan and consequently putting emphasis on the progression of modern science and medicine. In turn, Lu Xun’s works of fiction sparked a wave of revolutionary readers and writers in a push for China’s introduction into an advancing a globalizing world. Who knows how many aspiring authors Lu Xun may have inspired to write science fiction with his revolutionary speculative works of fiction, his powerful words of hope for China’s scientific future, and his Chinese translations of Verne’s iconic works of science fiction?
II. A New Chinese Genre
China’s relationship with science fiction literature officially surpassed one based primarily on consumption and admiration when the Chinese satirist Lao She (老舍, 1899-1966) penned Cat Country (Maocheng ji 猫城记). Published in 1932, Cat Country was written as a whimsical tale of a Chinese space traveler crash-landing on Mars, where he finds a curious population of anthropomorphic cat-like creatures. These cats walk on two legs and do everything at a leisurely pace (in part because they do not have apposable thumbs), much like a common housecat. The lazy and nonsensical nature of these cats is meant to be a satirical
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criticism of Chinese culture, politics and life as seen from a native Chinese perspective. Lao
She’s cat creatures on Mars serve as a reflection of the Chinese people on Earth, allowing Lao
She to subversively criticize the perceived lack of ambition and gaudy lifestyle of his fellow
Chinese.5 It is worth noting that Lao She saw Cat Country as a failure and considered it to be
incoherent (which it is, at points) and more satirical than humorous; he fancied himself a
humorist rather than a satirist, as “[a] humorist is warm-hearted; the heart of a satirist is cold.”6
The humorous narrative and rebellious criticism in Cat Country set the tone for future Chinese science fiction writers who used the genre as a way to introduce new ideas to Chinese readers in a way that was widely consumable to different ages and backgrounds. Whether Lao She approved of the novel’s final form or not, Cat Country’s lasting influence on this history of
Chinese science fiction perhaps speaks for itself.
As science fiction literature gained traction in Chinese magazines and novels, it eventually transformed from the serious scholarly genre that Lu Xun promoted to the more digestible whimsy of Lao She’s Cat Country, and eventually found its place in children’s literature. The 1950s saw Zhang Ran’s (张然) publication of A Journey Through the Solar System
(Manyou taiyangxi 漫游太阳系), in which a group of students make a trip to the moon with their
teacher in a style reminiscent of the 1990s children’s TV show “The Magic School Bus.”7 The
fantastical nature of the genre quickly took on a childish tone, allowing science fiction to
dominate children’s magazines and storybooks. While this realm of literature holds its own merit, science fiction was undoubtedly losing its foothold as a genre worth being taken seriously
by scholars in the way Lu Xun—the Father of Modern Chinese Literature—would have likely
5 Wu and Yao, “A Very Brief History of Chinese Science Fiction,” 47. 6 Lao She, Cat Country: A Satirical Novel of China in the 1930s by Lao She, trans. William Lyell (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1970), xxxvii-xxxviii. 7 Wu and Yao, “A Very Brief History of Chinese Science Fiction,” 47.
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resented. However, the mischievous nature of these children’s stories maintained the humorous
and rebellious spirit of Lao She’s Cat Country, even if they were not being used for the same
satirical purpose.
III. Mid-Century Radio Silence
Multiple factors played into the lack of science fiction in China in the middle of the 20th
century. Ever-increasing influence of the Communist Party on media did not overlook science
fiction literature. In 1942, Mao gave his famous talk at the Yan’an Forum of Literature and Art
(Yan’an wen yi zuotanhui 延安文座会艺谈) in which he emphasized the necessity of media in all forms that promotes the benefits of a communist China: “The express purpose of our meeting today is to make art and literature a component part of the whole revolutionary machine, to make them a powerful weapon for uniting and educating the people and for attacking and destroying the enemy, and to help the people to fight with one heart and one mind.”8 This talk at Yan’an
gave rise to a new wave of literature and art known as “socialist realism,” which used the fictious
nature and narrative framework of art in order to romanticize, mass-produce, and distribute
communist ideology among the people of China. The “realism” aspect of the genre came from
Mao’s focus on the common people of China and the need to document the struggles they experience in the face of classism: “It is the job of our artists and writers to work in their own fields, but their first and foremost duty is to understand the people and understand them
thoroughly.”9 Such an intense focus on the bleak reality of suffering under capitalism and the
need to thrive under communist rule left very little room for any works of artistic fiction, let
alone works that were willing to pioneer the still-developing science fiction genre. Mao’s talk at
8 Mao Zedong, Talks at the Yanan Forum on Art and Literature (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1960), 1. 9 Ibid., 6.
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Yan’an was the beginning of a major shift away from what little science fiction was being
written in mid-20th century China.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) involved the intense monitoring of literature and arts and resulted in a decade of virtually purely communist media being produced. The pillars of artistic expression during the Cultural Revolution were a collection of operas and ballets known as The Eight Revolutionary Model Plays (Yangbanxi 样戏板 ). These
works were designated by Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing (江青, 1914-1991), as the official
artistic works of the Cultural Revolution. Each of these performances depicted the workers and
peasants of China revolting against their class oppressors. By taking an artform with such a long
history in China and changing it to promote a uniquely modern political ideology, Jiang Qing’s
efforts to sanitize the messages of performance art were effective in retroactively erasing the
Chinese audience’s value for the concept of “art for art’s sake.” The popularity of the Model
Plays seeped into non-performance art forms such as television and comics, spreading Mao’s
message of communism and further emphasizing the need to value revolution above all else. In
short, any films, books or plays that were not actively promoting the Chinese Communist Party
were not condoned by the State or seen as useful to Chinese society.
Some rare stories that serve the core purpose of promoting communism can be
categorized as science fiction. For example, the book “Elephants with Their Trunks Removed”
(Gediao bizi de daxiang 割掉鼻子的大象, 1956) by Chi Shuchang (迟书 昌 , 1922-1997) describes a
future in which China develops the technology to genetically engineer pigs that weigh 12 tons.10
In a similar story, “Buck’s Adventures” (Buke de qiyu 布克的奇遇, 1962) by Xiao Jianheng
10 Qiufan Chen, “The History of Chinese Sci-Fi Books,” The World of Chinese, June 10, 2011, https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2011/06/back-to-the-future-the-history-of-chinese-sci-fi/ (accessed February 25, 2019).
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(萧建亨), a small dog that is run over by a car is given a new lease on life when technological
advancements allow him to get a brand-new body.11 While these stories may seem like fun little
tales with a scientific twist, they speak to the deeper messages of communist ideology at the time
they were written; the technological advancements are written as a hope for the advancement of
China through communist revolution. Such stories are also usually written in an interview format, almost as if they were news stories rather than silly works of fiction. Despite the
differences in method, these works of science fiction serve the same purpose as the Model Plays in that they are designed specifically to promote communist ideology through artistic media.
Aside from these few instances of pro-communist whimsy, science fiction literature generally did not fall within the strict confines of the socialist realism genre and therefore virtually died out during the middle of the twentieth century.
IV. The Eastern Impact of Western Sci-Fi
While China was developing its own version of science fiction, Western literature took
the liberty of writing East Asian characters into its narratives. In 1913, Sax Rohmer’s novel The
Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu was published, kicking off a successful franchise of books and movies. The series centers around the clever Dr. Petrie who works tirelessly to track down a master poisoner and chemist known as Dr. Fu-Manchu, the story’s antagonist. Dr. Fu-Manchu is described as having “all the cruel cunning of the entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science, past and present.”12 This singular character had a
massive impact on Western readers: “[his] particular brand of Eastern mysticism wedded with
Western science both terrorized and titillated readers and audiences alike… A figure of
unnatural, unknowable peril who must be kept from acquiring knowledge lest it be used against
11 Ibid. 12 Sax Rohmer, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (London: Tom Stacey Reprints Ltd., 1972), 17.
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the Western subject.”13 At a time when Western readers could not easily check fictitious book
characters against their more realistic national counterparts, such potent imagery in connection
with an entire race of people proved to be incredibly effective in leaving a toxically negative
impression on Westerners. When associating Chinese (or, more broadly, East Asian) people
with literary characters, Dr. Fu-Manchu, “that awful being… the yellow peril incarnate in one
man,” was the most accessible image for Westerners.14 The concept of “Yellow Peril” also
persisted in Western literature and the minds of Western readers, painting a picture of East Asian
ascendance through military or cultural means as a horrible nightmare. Both Jack London’s
short story “The Unparalleled Invasion” and H.G. Wells' novel A War in the Air “imagine the
rise of a Sino-Japanese superpower (Japanese technology married to Chinese manpower) imperiling Western civilization.”15 These works of pure fiction succeed in correlating Asian
technological advancement with the downfall of the Western world.
Despite the broad stroke used to paint an image of East Asians as demonic, mysterious
and untrustworthy characters, the image of Dr. Fu-Manchu arguably correlates with modern
model minority stereotypes for East Asians. The stereotype is rooted in the concept of
“Orientalism” -- a term popularized and defined by the philosopher Edward Said: “Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.”16 In other words, Said uses the theory of Orientalism to
13 David S. Roh, Betsy Huang and Greta A. Niu eds.,“Technologizing Orientalism,” in Techno-Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2015), 1. 14 Rohmer, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu, 17. 15 Kenneth Hough, “Demon Courage and Dread Engines,” in Techno-Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media, eds. David S. Roh, Betsy Huang and Greta A. Niu, 37. 16 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 11.
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suggest that Westerners define Asians in order to keep them conceptually digestible and socially controlled. Said’s concept of Orientalism and its creation of the model (yet not fully acceptable) minority morphs to fit Asians in Western science fiction and takes on a new form called
“Techno-Orientalism”: idea that Asians are advanced yet ancient, scientific yet magical, and ultimately malicious.17 Dr. Fu-Manchu's character alone suggests that East Asians are intelligent
but inherently insidious in nature. Perhaps this stereotype comes from the unknown aspects of
East Asian cultures; the mystical past of science, art, and mythology are mysterious to
Westerners to an extent that makes them almost scary. These cultural assets are more difficult
for Westerners to understand than, say, Western European customs due to fundamental cultural and historical differences that are not easy to look past without taking a close look at the roots of
Chinese history, religion and culture. It is relatively safe to assume that the average reader of
Sax Rohmer’s novel at the time of its original publication would not have this extensive
background knowledge of the Chinese people about which they are reading. In the end, the
mystery of Chinese life proved to be interesting enough for many popular writers to use it as a
base narrative for their works of fiction, allowing Yellow Peril (a more generalized xenophobia
toward Asians) to manifest as popular literature and fuel the cycle of fear surrounding Chinese
and other East Asian peoples.
One might see the writing of science fiction by native Chinese authors as a way to
actively counteract the negative and narrow stereotypes of East Asians in Western science fiction
literature and film. The idea that the entire genre is dedicated to changing Westerners’ opinions
of the Chinese people is to assume that Westerners are the focus of East Asians and heavily
influences the art and literature that they produce. While a shift in the cultural perspectives and
17 Roh, et al., “Technologizing Orientalism.”
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understanding of Westerners may be a secondary result of Chinese science fiction’s international
consumption, it does not appear to be a fueling factor in the authors’ intentions of writing their
stories. Instead, we will see that the new age of Chinese science fiction takes root in the satirical
nature of the genre’s origins, serving primarily as criticism of China’s sociopolitical state. It is with these criticisms that modern science fiction authors employ the characteristics of the genre
in order to openly, accurately and creatively portray their experience as Chinese people.
V. The Beginning of the Golden Age
As the Cultural Revolution ended and the Chinese people attempted to recover from the
blow the era had made to their society, artists and authors began to reach beyond the limits that
socialist realism set on them. Deng Xiaoping (邓小平, 1904-1997) took over as the leader of
China in 1978, bringing with him a new era of politics and culture. Deng’s famous Open-Door
Policy allowed foreign influence in all forms flow into a China that had been previously closed
off to the rest of the world politically and culturally. This wiggle room and foreign influence
brought art, literature and other cultural elements into China for the public’s consumption. The
influx of culture included non-Chinese science fiction literature and sparked an interest in the
genre among select authors and readers. Chinese science fiction and its public perception
changed in the 1990s as the genre began to be taken seriously as an adult literary art form rather
than a genre for children. During this time, authors Liu Cixin (刘慈欣, 1963- ) and Han Song
(韩松, 1965- ) took the stage as prolific science fiction writers and expanded the breadth and
depth of the genre in China. In 2015, Liu Cixin won the Hugo Award for Best Novel for his
2004 book The Three-Body Problem (Santi 三体), the first book in his Remembrance of Earth’s
Past trilogy. This was a momentous occasion for both Chinese science fiction as a genre and
China as a nation, as Liu Cixin became the first author from Asia to be awarded the Hugo Award
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for Best Novel.18 Chinese science fiction writers made history again in 2016 when Hao Jingfang
(郝景芳, 1984- ) won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette for her 2012 story “Folding Beijing”
(Beijing zhedie 北京折叠) and thus became the first female from China to win a Hugo Award.19
These three authors, Han, Liu and Hao, are actively ushering in a new age of Chinese literature with their fascinating works of science fiction, which comment on the state of humanity and the
Chinese experience.
a. Han Song
Han Song was born in 1965 and remembers encountering science fiction as a primary school student in the 1980s. While many of his peers grew out of adolescence and gave up on the popular translations of Western science fiction novels, Han Song persisted in his fascination with the genre into adulthood. Today, Han Song is a journalist for Xinhua News Agency and therefore writes under the political supervision of the government of the People’s Republic of
China. Because of the restrictions on news publication content, the issues that Han Song observes are not always the issues on which he reports; his less tasteful views and experiences regarding Chinese life find their way into the fictional works that he writes when he comes home from his state-sanctioned journalism job.20 Han Song believes that Chinese science fiction is
unique for a few reasons: “[Chinese science fiction authors] combine the future with social
problems, such as the population problem, the environmental problem, the food problem, even
the corruption problem... some writers like to focus on our ancient culture, combining unique
18 Andrea Chen, “Out of This World: Chinese Sci-Fi Author Liu Cixin is Asia's First Writer to Win Hugo Award for Best Novel,” South China Morning Post, August 23, 2015, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/1851952/out-world-chinese-sci-fi-author-liu-cixin-asias-first- writer-win (accessed January 11, 2019). 19 Zheping Huang, “This Chinese Writer’s Sci-fi Dystopia Features Sky-high Kindergarten Fees and An Obsession with Time,” Quartz, April 21, 2017, https://qz.com/963248/meet-hao-jingfang-author-of-folding-beijing-the- dystopian-science-fiction-writer-who-advises-chinas-government/ (accessed January 11, 2019). 20 Eric Abrahamsen, "Han Song," Paper Republic: Chinese Literature in Translation, https://paper- republic.org/authors/han-song/ (accessed February 25, 2019).
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elements of our tradition with the features of this genre.”21 Han Song’s description of his writing
gives insight into the unique way he creates his own contributions to Chinese science fiction: “I
don’t spend a lot of time thinking about which word should I choose; my writing style is very
quick, the words I used just came directly from my subconscious.”22 This subconscious writing
style is apparent in works like Han Song’s short story “Security Check” (An jian 安检), which
illustrates a hypothetical future in which America is sanitized of all potential threats in response
to mass hysteria and ever-present terrorism. The story is unique in that it is written from the
perspective of an American man in New York City rather than a native Chinese character like
Han Song himself. While we do not know the race of the protagonist, we do know that he has no
ties to China aside from his interest in what he sees about China on the news. This makes the character’s ultimate decision to move to the People’s Republic of China even more interesting; his motives are purely based on his understanding that China has both security and freedom: “In
China, anyone is free to use the Internet. China is the freest country in the world.”23 This
storyline ironically tells an inverse version of our modern reality: “According to Freedom House,
China’s level of internet freedom is already the worst on the planet.”24 It is this inversion of
reality that makes Han Song’s work so potent as not only a work of science fiction, but also as a
work of speculative fiction. “Security Check” is a thinly-veiled criticism of China’s surveillance
of citizens yet is untouchable for two reasons: 1) the plot and characters take place in a purely
hypothetical and futuristic realm, and 2) the narrative technically criticizes a future America
21 Chiara Cigarini, “Science Fiction and the Avant-Garde Spirit: An Interview with Han Song.” Chinese Literature Today 7, no. 1 (2018): pp. 21., doi:10.1080/21514399.2018.1458373. 22 Ibid. 23 Han Song, “Security Check,” Clarkesworld Magazine, trans. Ken Liu, August 2015, http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/han_08_15/ (accessed February 25, 2019). 24 Larry Diamond and Anna Mitchell, “China’s Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone,” The Atlantic, February 5, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/china-surveillance/552203/ (accessed February 25, 2019).
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Earth will soon pass through a cosmic security checkpoint, and China will attempt to sanitize the entire universe of potential threats. These criticisms cannot be taken seriously by any authoritative or scholarly entity, or so we (and perhaps Han Song) can assume. The surveilling eye may write this story off as a childish imagination of an extreme future, but a careful and common reader should read “Security Check” as an earnest warning of a not-so-distant future for
China.
b. Liu Cixin
Liu Cixin was born in 1963 in northern China’s Shanxi province. His claim to fame is his Remembrance of Earth’s Past Trilogy, better known by the title of the first book in the trilogy: The Three-Body Problem. The trilogy has had immense success on bookshelves in China and abroad and has recently launched into a highly successful movie series. Liu Cixin’s works offer much more direct criticism of communist China that Han Song’s “Security Check.” From the very first page of The Three-Body Problem, Liu depicts an overly-cruel hunt for anti- revolutionaries and suggests that the Communist Party sought to destroy any scholars that considered Western theories anything other than reactionary. Unlike many science fiction novels that frame the story in a (usually quite distant) future, or fantasy novels that place a story in a distant past, Liu creates a story that runs from the recent past to the tangible present. The Three-
Body Problem’s storyline runs parallel to recent history and gives us a look into a secret pocket
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of the Cultural Revolution in which China establishes contact with extraterrestrial life through the use of a high-power, state-run radar that sends signals into outer space. This method of re- writing well-documented eras of Chinese history in order to alter a timeline that leads to the present day was famously used by Philip K. Dick in his Hugo Award-winning novel The Man in the High Castle, in which an alternative world history is established when the Axis powers win
World War II. Much like The Man in the High Castle, Liu’s The Three-Body Problem criticizes
the reality of the reader’s tangible world by giving us an idea of what would turn out better or
worse—or stay exactly the same—if historical events happened in a very different fashion.
Part I of the novel takes place from 1967 to 1969 in China during the Cultural
Revolution. We are thrown into a scene where physics professor Ye Zhetai is being constrained
and publicly humiliated by his intellectual peers and young students at Tsinghua University. He
is accused of being a counter-revolutionary who is intent on bringing down the vitality of
communist China, and the damning evidence against him is his teaching curriculum. As Ye
Zhetai stands in front of an auditorium full of his family, friends and critics, his accusers go into
detail as to how his inclusion of the Theory of Relativity in his teaching repertoire is anti-
revolutionary: “We must clearly understand the reactionary nature of Einstein’s theory of
relativity. This is the most apparent in general relativity: Its static model of the universe negates
the dynamic nature of matter. It is anti-dialectical! It treats the universe as limited, which is
absolutely a form of reactionary idealism...”25 This argument, while undeniable clever, is
included as a purely satirical attempt to criticize the limited and backwards thinking of Red
Guards during the Cultural Revolution. Despite all efforts to push forward in the advancement
of technology and culture in China, scholarly knowledge was often sacrificed in the name of the
25 Liu Cixin, The Three Body Problem, 15.
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Revolution, ultimately holding the nation back from advancing as desired. This scene
exemplifies the myopic view of reality and what is important in the world. While one must have
a decent grip on the history of communist China (especially the Cultural Revolution) in order to
understand the weight and purpose of this opening scene, the message is not solely pointed at
China and its people. The story suggests that we all have a myopic view of the world, partially
due to a natural lack of understanding and partially due to our own willful ignorance. The grand
question is then “how can we pull ourselves out of this human myopia?” Liu suggests that we
cannot: “Is it possible that the relationship between humanity and evil is similar to the
relationship between the ocean and an iceberg floating on its surface? Both the ocean and
iceberg are made of the same material. That the iceberg seems separate is only because it is in a
different form... It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it
was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve
moral awakening required a force outside the human race.”26 It is here that Liu employs the
strengths of the science fiction genre in order to offer a poignant criticism of both humanity as a
concept and China as its execution. The only way we can be enlightened beyond our own natural
villainy is through the intervention of alien life.
But while Liu lays the groundwork for this argument to carry through to the end of the
book, he tends to play the devil’s advocate against his own theories about humanity. Later in the book, humans split into factions that feel differently about the alien intervention, some welcoming the extraterrestrial assistance and others fighting it at all costs. Liu uses these
divisions in ideology as a way to criticize political extremism and party divisions—and issue that we see in most governments and societies today. The story brings in another angle of criticism
26 Ibid., 27-28.
Reynolds 18
when the alien visitors develop a mass surveillance state on Earth, which can be read as an attack
on China’s surveillance and censorship and is ultimately reminiscent of Han Song’s “Security
Check.” Peter Suderman describes Liu’s employment of the “surveillance state” concept as
“security theater, but for alien invasions rather than terror.”27 These critical looks at smaller
issues found in China and humanity as a whole eventually snowball into the general criticism of
our impending doom on a massive scale.
Perhaps The Three-Body Problem does not serve as a suggestion as to how humanity
might be pulled from its own intrinsic self-destruction. Based on the destruction caused in the process of merely trying to be saved from said destruction, this feat is nearly impossible on all fronts. However, the book does serve as a tool for the reader to question what we know and believe about ourselves as a collective race; If we are naturally inclined to destroy ourselves, can we prevent our own self-destruction by changing our nature? If we are ever to know the answer to this question, we must first admit to ourselves that we are flawed in our belief that our thriving has no end. The Three-Body Problem seeks to illustrate what could happen to humanity if we maintain this illusion of invincibility and asks us to admit our collective inclination toward self- doom.
c. Hao Jingfang
Hao Jingfang was born in 1984 in Tianjin, China. She is one of the youngest and most prolific science fiction writers in China today, having won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in
2016 for her story “Folding Beijing.” The novelette, which was translated into English and published in Uncanny Magazine in 2015, depicts a futuristic China in which time and space are luxuries. China becomes so overcrowded that it splits the city into three sectors based on the
27 Peter Suderman, "The Hidden Mind," Reason, January 2017, 53, https://reason.com/archives/2016/12/18/the- hidden-mind (accessed March 19, 2019).
Reynolds 19
lower, middle and upper classes. Each of the social classes are given a certain length of time in a
48-hour cycle to be awake and working; the lower class resides in Third Space (perhaps a
reference to the term “third world”) and is allotted 8 hours, the middle class in Second Space gets
16 hours, and the upper class in First Space gets a full 24 hours. When it is time for one social
sector to come out and play, the other sectors retreat to sleeping cocoons where they reside as the
city flips and folds in on itself. Hao’s description of the scene—called the “Change”—is enthralling: “The sound of steel and masonry folding, grating, colliding filled the air, like an assembly line grinding to a halt. The towering buildings of the city gathered and merged into
solid blocks; neon signs, shop awnings, balconies, and other protruding fixtures retracted into the
buildings or flattened themselves into a thin layer against the walls, like skin. Every inch of space was utilized as the buildings compacted themselves into the smallest space.”28 The city’s almost miraculous transformation manages to disguise itself as an incredible feat of technological and architectural innovation, especially when the process is naturally so smooth and routine. Without taking a deeper look into the situation, one might even consider the folding city to be a revolutionary idea worthy of some credence. One must not be disillusioned by the magnificently futuristic Beijing and instead focus on the toll it takes on the lives of Beijing citizens, especially those in the lower classes. The people living in Third Space are awake for 8 hours every 48-hour cycle, those hours falling between the hours of 10PM and 6AM. During these meager hours, the fifty million people in Third Space primarily work as waste workers (a relatively coveted job for the mere twenty million that manage to secure such a position) and merchants, selling clothes and insurance among other things.29 Modern Chinese citizens might
28 Hao Jingfang, “Folding Beijing,” trans. Ken Liu, Uncanny Magazine, January, 2015, https://uncannymagazine.com/article/folding-beijing-2/ (accessed January 27, 2019). 29 For reference, the reported population of Beijing in 2018 was between 21 and 22 million, according to estimates from the National Bureau of Statistics of China. This means that the population of Third Space alone would be
Reynolds 20 consider such grueling work as waste management demeaning, or at the very least pitiful and unattractive. However, in a world where citizens are born almost permanently into their social class, the idea of striving to be anything greater than a top-earner in a steady job is all a citizen of
Third Space can ask for. Third Space parents are no longer concerned about which school is the best for their child; instead, they fight tooth and nail for their child to be one of the few who take a spot in school and pay their life savings to do so. Even in the poorest sector of Beijing, subdivides among the lower class emerge as the richest of the poor buy their children’s spots in kindergartens. This cannibalistic nature of the lower class is evident from the very beginnings of the folding city:
[Construction workers] had come to Beijing from all over China in search of work...
District by district, they had transformed the old city. Like termites swarming over a
wooden house, they had chewed up the wreckage of the past, overturned the earth, and
constructed a brand new world... Finally, when the completed building stood up before
them like a living person, they had scattered in terror, as though they had given birth to a
monster. But after they calmed down, they realized what an honor it would be to live in
such a city in the future, and so they had continued to toil diligently and docilely, to
meekly seek out any opportunity to remain in the city. It was said that when the folding
city was completed, more than eighty million construction workers had wanted to stay.
Ultimately, no more than twenty million were allowed to settle.30
The cruel reality of the seemingly-innovative folding Beijing is that it was always a tool of oppression meant to use and abuse the lower class. As the upper class realized that the future
more than twice the size of Beijing’s population today, and the total population across all three sectors would be nearly four times Beijing’s population today. 30 Hao Jingfang, “Folding Beijing.”
Reynolds 21
would not have room for all citizens to thrive in the urban landscape, they used their assets (in this case, money and technological expertise) to change that landscape. The solution for Beijing may have looked very different had the upper class not been able to exploit the lower classes for labor, both in the building of the new city and in maintaining it (i.e. through waste management).
The lower-class citizens of Beijing are not confined by laws that require them to live in this hellish state. We know from one passage that Beijing is unique in its folding format. In other words, while other Chinese cities may very well have a similar mode of maximizing time and space, the story tells us that there is rural land on which truck drivers traverse barren highways and watch Beijing unfold from a distance. This goes to show that this story is not trying to illustrate a China that is insanely overpopulated, because overpopulation is not the core issue that Hao Jingfang is seeking to address with her novelette (though it may be a relevant issue in the story’s periphery). The core issue is in fact the radical division of time, space, and human rights based on Beijing citizens’ social class. Without a wall or law keeping lower-class people in the city, we can assume that their reason for putting up with such a demeaning way of life is out of pure necessity—for work, for education, and for housing. This is a reality that we see in the real world, where people are moving into urban areas at an alarming rate, leaving vital farmland unworked and overcrowding cities that were made for significantly fewer people than they are holding. It would be easy to interpret “Folding Beijing” as a criticism of overpopulation and urbanization; one might even suggest that the story acts as a hypothetical argument for maintaining China’s one-child policy. But the story should instead be taken for what it truly is— a tacit criticism of the increasing division of social classes and the disastrous effects it may have on the lives of the world’s least-advantaged people.
Reynolds 22
Hao Jingfang may have written “Folding Beijing” knowing that it would appear to be one thing on the surface and something entirely different beneath, perhaps as an attempt to evade censorship. Urbanization is an issue that is not necessarily political in nature; if anything, Hao appears to be criticizing scientists, engineers, architects and corporations. But Hao Jingfang could easily use this less-controversial corporate and scientific issue to veil her true criticism of the more political issue of classism. Especially given China’s communist government, class struggles are engrained into the fabric of Chinese society. Hao’s creation of a future where
Beijing is the perfect example of class struggles is a dangerously direct attack on the Chinese government’s inability to follow through in implementing the fundamentals of communism, including the equality of classes (therefore destroying class divisions) and the deep respect for a nation’s laborers. Because of the sensitivity of this political criticism, Hao Jingfang was wise to disguise this issue beneath the less-controversial issue of China’s urbanization.
VI. The Translation Process
Making Chinese science fiction literature accessible to readers outside of China is not a matter of merely running a book through translation software. The process of translating these works is incredibly complex and requires the careful attention of a skilled reader, writer, and perhaps even a scientist. The intricacies of this job are perhaps best illustrated in Ken Liu’s personal accounts of his experience translating Chinese science fiction novels into English. Ken
Liu is a lawyer, computer programmer, science fiction writer, and arguably the most recognized and prolific translator of Chinese science fiction into English, having translated Liu Cixin’s entire Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy and various short stories like Hao Jingfang’s
“Folding Beijing.” With such an impressive repertoire of translations under his belt, Liu is a
Reynolds 23
highly knowledgeable resource when it comes to understanding the history and complexities of
translating Chinese science fiction literature.
Liu tells us that early translators of science fiction from Western languages (such as
French, German and English) into Chinese took more liberties than are generally acceptable
today in order to make Western stories fit the cultural values of the Chinese target audience.31
One case is Lu Xun’s translation of De la terre a la lune, which includes many passages with added allusions to familiar staples from Chinese history and culture for the Chinese reader’s reference. In one passage, Lu Xun inserts a poem from the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420) poet
Tao Yuanming (陶渊明, 352?-420) and suggests that the poem explains the emotions of the
story. 32 While such an insertion may seem silly to a modern translator or practiced reader of
translated literature, this case goes to show to what lengths translators will go in order to
properly convey the true essence of the story at hand.
Despite the incredible increase in flowing accessibility between Chinese and Western science fiction, the global scale of the genre remains limited. Even popular works of science fiction like Han Song’s “Red Ocean” (Hongse haiyang 红色海洋, 2004) are virtually inaccessible
for Western readers that cannot read the original Chinese versions of the stories. Few translators
are qualified or willing to translate incredibly complex works of Chinese fiction into Western
languages. The more translators that can translate and the more works that can be translated, the
more access the Western world will have to creative and authentic stories that illustrate the
Chinese experience.
VII. Commentary on the Chinese Experience
31 Liu, “The Heroic Translators Who Reinvented Classic Science Fiction in China.” 32 Ibid.
Reynolds 24
Chinese sci-fi gives a citizen’s (rather than a corporation’s or government’s) perspective
on rapid technological and industrial growth in China. Chinese science fiction offers a critical
yet often nuanced (due to its being futuristic and hypothetical) look at Chinese society, offering a
glimpse into China’s future. With these tactics, Chinese writers can effectively give a holistic
view of the Chinese experience while criticizing its questionable aspects while showcasing its beautiful ones.
Many science fiction novels spin a tale by taking a seemingly small social or scientific
issue and blowing it up to a massive and extreme scale. Because China’s population is so large, its history so rich, and its politics so influential, Chinese authors may have an easier time translating their experiences into works of science fiction. Much of the scaling from minor social infraction to global calamity is already done for the author, leaving the story’s success in
the author’s creative court rather than tangling them up in the logistics of exaggeration. To
illustrate this concept, let us look at Han Song’s “Security Check.” In the short story, the
American protagonist goes through the shock of having to pass security checkpoints (both
obvious and discrete) in order to comply with the mass de-escalation of public terror in the
United States. The character finds himself seeking freedom and spontaneity in any form, desperate to feel as if he is out from under the watchful eye of the national security system.
While Americans may relate to this sense of paranoia and invasion of privacy from the National
Security Association (NSA) or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), this sense of government-sanctioned public security is even stronger in the People’s Republic of China, which has been deemed a “surveillance state.”33 An author that is seeking to convey their American
experience through science fiction may need to work hard to create a hypothetical future world
33 Diamond and Mitchell, “China’s Surveillance State.”
Reynolds 25
where issues are inflated to a massive degree, imagining what (for example) high-tech security
checkpoints would look like in the United States and how people would interact with them. A
Chinese author, on the other hand, may have a different (i.e. less extensive) process of developing this fictional narrative due to the fact that public security and surveillance is much more popular and intensive in China than in the United States. Chinese authors have more of a
cultural, social and political framework to translate the Chinese experience into science fiction
works that exaggerate issues to form a creative narrative.
Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem is perhaps the most difficult of the popular modern
works of science fiction to apply to Chinese life today. What little direct reference is made to the
Chinese government concerns the radical culture of the Cultural Revolution (which many
Chinese people could likely admit were a bit extreme) rather than the modern actions and
policies of the government of the People’s Republic of China. That does not mean, however,
that Liu’s novel does not contain poignant commentary on the modern Chinese experience. The
first step in analyzing this commentary is to understand that the critique of the government’s
actions during the Cultural Revolution is not necessarily meant to be confined to that specific
era. Instead, Liu is using retroactive criticism to point out how little things have changed since
the Cultural Revolution; people are still willfully ignorant of blaring warning signs in the world,
and humanity is still unable to wake itself up enough to actively prevent its own self-destruction.
Liu veils his criticism of the Chinese government by projecting it onto past and future versions of
China, never quite addressing the present state of the nation. He also scales Chinese issues up to
be worldwide issues that all humans face; political factionalism and mass surveillance go from
being specifically Chinese issues (either between China and the rest of the world, or Chinese
citizens and the Chinese government) to being human versus human or human versus alien
Reynolds 26
issues. In other words, Liu skirts the sensitivity of criticizing the socio-political state of China by
setting those issues and criticisms in an entirely different time and place than present-day China.
To read The Three-Body Problem as a work that focuses purely on the political ills of
China and the greater human population would be to ignore the beautiful commentary Liu makes on the power of the individual—a concept that tends to oppose the highly collectivist norms for a
Confucian Chinese society. Liu employs this collectivist concept in fact that the story pits an alien population against the entire human race, immediately making the story’s conflict a
massive and collective one; the issues that one character imminently faces is likely the same
issue every single human on Earth is facing at that same moment. The individual characters tend
to be caught up in this collectivist state, but Liu does not neglect their individuality. In the final
book of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, the power of the individual is realized by all of
humanity: “[I]t is revealed that there is a single gap in [the aliens’] monitoring: They cannot read
the thoughts of an individual human mind. In fact, the aliens have difficulty even conceptualizing
the idea of a private thought, because their own thoughts are projected publicly, making it
impossible to have an inner life.”34 Under the oppressive power of the aliens’ worldwide
surveillance, the only way humans can make a plan to defeat their extraterrestrial oppressors is
for individuals to form plans in their minds without the assistance of others. The key to
regaining the power over the collective human race is for the individual to discover their own power. In assessing the grand metaphors that The Three-Body Problem presents as cosmic concerns, one must pay close attention to Liu’s emphasis on the beauty of the individual mind.
Hao Jingfang’s “Folding Beijing” criticizes classism engrained in China’s social fabric and takes it to an extreme.35 Critics of class disparity primarily focus on the dangers of the loss
34 Suderman, “The Hidden Mind,” 54. 35Huang, "This Chinese Writer’s Sci-fi Dystopia Features Sky-high Kindergarten Fees.”
Reynolds 27
of a middle class as the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. “Folding Beijing”
offers a different approach to the class disparity issue: the threat of the economic injustice is not
in the amount of distance between the rich and the poor, but rather how mobile or immobile a
person is in their ability to move between social classes. Those who are born into Third Space as
a lower-class citizen are incredibly unlikely to be able to move up to Second Space in their
lifetime, especially as the sole result of their own hard work. Despite the seemingly obvious
commentary on social class in “Folding Beijing,” Hao Jingfang describes her writing as
occupying a space without concern for reality as we know it:
[I]f we divide a novel’s space into real and virtual spaces, belletristic or mainstream
literature is concerned about and expresses the real space, while science fictions or
fantasy literature are concerned about and express the virtual space . . . Between these
two pure forms is a somewhat blurred style: It cares about the real space but expresses the
virtual space . . . It is not concerned about the strong or the weak, win or loss, of the
virtual world, but rather, it intends to explore some possibility of the reality outside of
reality... Virtual reality can project reality in a purer form.36
Hao’s comment is not meant to be construed as saying that her stories do not concern our real
world. Instead, she uses her works to create a model of reality on which tests of humanity can be
conducted. Such a concept is not foreign to scholars; economists use the same method of creating a simplified model of different aspects of the economy (such as supply and demand) in
order to test the model’s reaction to different stimuli. Hao uses her writing skills to build a
model Beijing in which we can test the limits of urbanization, overpopulation and class division.
Based on “Folding Beijing,” the extremes of these common sociopolitical concepts have
36 Hao Jingfang, “Qianyan” 前言 (“Preface”), in Qu yuanfan 去方远 [Going to the Distance] (Nanjing: Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House, 2016), 2.
Reynolds 28
disastrous results. It is with this insight into Hao Jingfang’s method of creating framed fictional models to understand the complexity of human societies that we might better understand the messages underlying “Folding Beijing.”
VIII. Future Implications
Chinese science fiction is likely gaining traction so rapidly and severely for a few
reasons: 1) the international sense of novelty in the connection between China and science
fiction, 2) the quality of the existing Chinese science fiction literature, and 3) the multi-level
significance of the works currently being produced. The first reason is primarily contingent on
the global reception of science fiction literature coming from China; Western audiences are
fascinated by the concept of Chinese science fiction because of the general understanding that
Communist China is very no-nonsense (therefore stifling the production of fantastical fiction
literature) and limited in its ability to effectively innovate (both industrially and literarily). In the
end, Chinese science fiction literature will prove Western perceptions of Chinese fiction wrong
and allow the genre to grow on a global scale—a win all around for Chinese authors and citizens
alike.
The quality of these Chinese science fiction novels is also a contributing factor for the
rapid success of the genre. The works of Han Song, Liu Cixin, Hao Jingfang and other major
authors are translated into various languages and published in magazines around the world for a
reason—they fascinate and appeal to wide audiences that are hungry for unique works of fiction,
no matter where it comes from.
It is important to note that the acceptance of Chinese science fiction by readers is not
solely significant when those readers are Western. As we have observed, Chinese science fiction
contains multiple layers of intricate plot, developed characters, scientific finesse and (perhaps
Reynolds 29
most notably) Chinese culture. This genre allows Chinese readers to look inward on themselves
as individuals, as a society, and as a political nation to observe what it means to be Chinese.
Science fiction allows us as readers to critically assess our lives by applying what we know and
accept to a hypothetical model that is vaguely recognizable as our own world. Through a narrative framework, we can explore our worlds in a way that is limited by reality and can therefore only be explored through works of fiction. This unique experience that science fiction
literature offers to readers is being introduced to China as the genre grows in the quantity, quality
and popularity of Chinese science fiction novels.
China’s entrance (or rather re-entrance) into the science fiction arena in the 1990s was fierce and shockingly successful for a nation of authors that had virtually no direct memory of
China’s early-twentieth century science fiction origins. The mid-century disappearance of science fiction (with the rare exception of children’s literature) created a gap between the first wave of science fiction writers and influencers (like Lu Xun and Lao She) and the late-twentieth century authors (like Han Song and Liu Cixin) that gave Chinese science fiction’s second wave its momentum. This loss of literary muscle memory in the Chinese science fiction genre makes the success of its late-century revival even more impressive considering the genre had to revamp nearly from scratch. While Lao She and his fellow pioneers of Chinese science fiction may deserve some credit for inspiring today’s Chinese authors to write valuable works of science fiction, the drastic difference in concept and execution of science-based fiction narratives suggests the two waves are notably independent of each other.
It would be naïve to discuss the success and possible future of Chinese science fiction without acknowledging its presence in the film industry. Perhaps the most notable example of
Chinese science fiction’s current and potential success on screen is The Wandering Earth
Reynolds 30
(Liulang diqiu 流浪地球)—a film adaptation of Liu Cixin’s 2000 novella by the same name. The
film was a smash hit immediately upon release, grossing $603 million in the first fourteen days it
was shown in theaters and being bought by Netflix for online streaming shortly thereafter.37
China’s debut into science fiction cinema is not as rocky as one might expect from a genre with incredibly high standards for gripping narratives and visual effects. Netflix boasts about The
Wandering Earth’s production quality as a reason for purchasing the film for the streaming
platform: “The movie is a majestic feast for the eyes with massive production scale rarely seen in
Mandarin films… Its post-production and special effects work spanned two years, undergoing more than 3,000 conceptual designs, and featuring over 10,000 specifically built props, while employing an impressive 2,000 special effects shots and a substantial amount of computer graphics shots.”38 The ferocity with which China entered the science fiction cinema realm is
equally (if not more) shocking than the case with science fiction literature, as the film industry
requires much more of a team effort and political support in order to be successful than a
singular author seeking to publish a science fiction novel. This outside support, however, brings
in some concerns surrounding the transition from science fiction stories from book to film.
Because of the political support needed to create and publicize films in China, the authors run the
risk of having their stories altered to fit the government’s demands for mainstream media. For
example, Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem contains clear criticism of a historical China that
translates to criticism of China today, suggesting Liu is no stranger to opposing the political state
of China. However, the film version of Liu’s The Wandering Earth reads as a pro-China story in
which Chinese scientists and engineers manage to save the entire planet with their innovative
37 Patrick Frater, "Netflix Buys Chinese Sci-Fi Hit 'The Wandering Earth'," Variety, February 21, 2019, https://variety.com/2019/film/news/netflix-buys-chinese-sci-fi-hit-wandering-earth-1203144647/ (accessed March 10, 2019). 38 Ibid.
Reynolds 31 thinking. Liu’s The Three-Body Problem is set to be made into a 3-D film and will undoubtedly undergo some changes to minimize the amount and severity of criticism toward China.
Certainly, the global success of China’s first mainstream science fiction film would not be possible without the incredible imagination and skill of science fiction authors such as Han Song,
Liu Cixin and Hao Jingfang, who spin the intricate and fascinating tales that will undoubtedly continue to debut on screens all around the world in the coming years.
IX. Conclusion
Perhaps one of the greatest effects of Chinese science fiction literature gaining traction is the opportunity it gives to untraditional authors in the literary community. Han Song is only a part-time science fiction author, but still manages to gain global critical acclaim with the writing that he does as a hobby. With any other genre, such a feat might not be possible. Even Liu
Cixin, a seasoned and highly successful science fiction author, worked full-time as a software engineer up until recently and made waves in China and abroad when The Three-Body Problem was the first translated book to win a Hugo Award.39 The genre also holds opportunities for female writers that may struggle to gain the attention that their male counterparts receive. This is evident in Hao Jingfang’s winning a Hugo Award for “Folding Beijing” in 2016, one year after
Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem received its Hugo Award for Best Novel. With such a new genre developing, the determinants of whether a work of Chinese science fails or succeeds is virtually blind to factors like marketing tactics, networking skills and readers’ expectations, all of which mainstream authors often take into great consideration when writing and publishing their works. The ability for nontraditional authors to make waves in writing science fiction may be
39 Suderman, “The Hidden Mind,” 52.
Reynolds 32
due to the fact that science fiction is not yet a popularized genre in China means. The barriers to
entry are low—the only major requirement is talent and creativity.
One might wonder whether this wave of Chinese science fiction’s popularity is temporary
and will soon subside. Based on the exponential growth of the genre’s popularity despite the
small group of authors that contribute to the genre, I would argue that the genre is merely in its
infancy and will continue to grow to reach global influence. While the first decades of the
twenty first century have come to be known as the “Golden Age” for Chinese and East Asian
science fiction literature, it is undoubtedly an era in its infant stages. What artistic, political or
literary golden age is marked by only a handful of contributors? The Italian Renaissance, for
example, was the established with the work of hundreds of talented artists and scholars.
Additionally, a literary revolution of sorts often comes with consistent and lengthy buildup over
time; while Chinese science fiction has been growing and changing for nearly a century, it has
experienced long periods of interruption and obstacles that limited the genre’s constant growth.
The last few decades that one might call the genre’s “Golden Age” are really its mere infancy as
it finds a way to stand on two feet. With growing interest and financial support of Chinese
science fiction books and films, the genre is sure to grow in its number of producers and consumers. Instead of the “Golden Age,” we might call this stage of Chinese science fiction the
“Electric Era.” The origins of the genre contain a small but powerful spark that will soon light
up as a global sensation, bringing critical discussions of the Chinese experience to both domestic and international readers.
Reynolds 33
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