Liu Cixin‘s Wandering Path to Apocalyptic Transcendence: Chinese SF and the Three Poles of Modern Chinese Cultural Production An honors thesis for the Department of German, Russian, and Asian Languages & Literatures Philip A. Ballentine Tufts University, 2014 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................ 1 WHAT IS SCIENCE FICTION (SF)? .............................................................................................................. 4 SF AND CHINA‘S REVOLUTIONARY MODERNIZATION MOVEMENTS ..................................................... 11 THE THREE POLES OF MODERN CHINESE CULTURAL PRODUCTION ...................................................... 15 THE DIDACTIC POLE .............................................................................................................................. 18 DIDACTIC CHINESE SF IN THE LATE QING AND MAY FOURTH ERAS ..................................................... 20 DIDACTIC SF IN THE SOCIALIST PERIOD ................................................................................................. 24 DIDACTIC ―REFORM LITERATURE‖ ......................................................................................................... 27 CHINESE SF‘S MOVE TOWARDS THE ANTI-DIDACTIC POLE ....................................................... 30 ―DEATH RAY ON A CORAL ISLAND:‖ A STUDY IN DIDACTIC ‗REFORM‘ SF .......................................... 33 CHINESE SF‘S ‗SCAR LITERATURE‘: ―MIRROR IMAGE‖ OF THE REVOLUTION ....................................... 35 CONSTRUCTING THE INDIVIDUAL IN CHINESE SF: ―CONJUGAL HAPPINESS‖ ......................................... 41 ―BOUNDLESS LOVE:‖ SF‘S LEAP INTO THE AVANT-GARDE ................................................................... 50 THE POSTSOCIALIST POLE ................................................................................................................... 58 THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL POSTSOCIALIST WAVE .................................................................................. 61 ATTRIBUTES OF THE POSTSOCIALIST POLE‘S WORKS ............................................................................ 66 SF AFTER 1992: SCIENCE FICTION WORLD ............................................................................................. 70 LIU CIXIN AND POSTOCIALIST CHINESE SF .................................................................................... 73 LIU CIXIN‘S QUEST TO ‗TRANSCEND‘ NARCISSISM THROUGH APOCALYPTIC DISCOURSE .................... 75 APOCALYPTIC TRANSCENDENCE IN ―THE WANDERING EARTH‖ AND ―THE LONGEST FALL‖ .............. 78 EXAMPLES OF APOCALYPTIC TRANSCENDENCE IN LIU CIXIN‘S OTHER SHORT STORIES ...................... 85 SEXUALITY AND ROMANCE IN LIU CIXIN‘S SHORT FICTION .................................................................. 89 LIU CIXIN AND THE THREE POLES OF MODERN CHINESE CULTURAL PRODUCTION ......... 91 LIU CIXIN‘S ANTI-DIDACTIC FOUNDATION ............................................................................................ 97 THE POSTSOCIALIST POLE‘S MAGNETISM .............................................................................................. 99 APOCALYPTIC TRANSCENDENCE AS POSTSOCIALIST REVOLUTIONARY MODERNIZATION ................. 104 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................................... 105 INTRODUCTION The first and most basic component of why I chose to write about this topic is that I am personally interested in the subject of science fiction (hereafter generally abbreviated SF). American and Western SF were among the cornerstones of my childhood. My father is an American science fiction poet, Lee Ballentine (b. 1954), and my mother and father each fostered my interest in literature, and especially SF.1 As a child, I read dozens of Victor Appleton‘s (a pseudonym used by a series of pulp SF writers in the 1940s through the 1970s) second series of Tom Swift books. The series depicts the life of a young American inventor, his family, and their exciting adventures that revolve around new scientific discoveries and inventions.2 As a teenager and young adult, I read and enjoyed works of SF written by Isaac Asimov, Harry Turtledove, Margaret Atwood, Dan Simmons, Joe Haldeman, Vernor Vinge, Ray Bradbury, Neal Stephenson, and many others. Popular SF television shows and films like Firefly and Battlestar Galactica also raised my interest in the genre. My personal interest in SF has always been based on SF‘s relationship with politics. SF is a uniquely political genre—it relates to the current state of world affairs, particularly issues of rapidly-advancing technology and social change. Specifically, SF pertains directly to modernization and its attendant social, economic, and political changes in a unique way. This brings SF one step closer to discussions of history and political change, and I believe that this relationship with the process of modernization nominates SF for scholarly examination. Contemporary Chinese SF author Fei Dao (b. 1983) said in a 2013 interview, ―I think that the key theme of Chinese science fiction, no matter how it develops, is how this ancient country and 1 ―Lee Ballentine - Summary Bibliography,‖ Internet Speculative Fiction Database, accessed April 29, 2014, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?10656. 2 Gary Westfahl, Science Fiction, Children’s Literature, and Popular Culture: Coming of Age in Fantasyland (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000), 38. 1 its people are moving in the direction of the future.‖3 I agree with this appraisal, and I believe that examining SF can yield insight into how a culture conceives of its present and its future at a particular moment in time. I chose to write a thesis centered on Chinese SF because, in this era of China‘s widely- recognized rising economic and political importance in the world, I believe that examining Chinese SF can provide valuable insight into China‘s modernization process, how China views itself in a changing world context, and how Chinese culture has changed over time in the face of massive changes in its economic and social structures. This thesis will explore the connections between Chinese SF and modernization, history, and politics and the works of individual Chinese SF writers. In China, SF has gained unprecedented popularity in the last ten years, and, in the last two years, this trend has attracted media attention inside and outside of China. A 2013 newspaper article in Global Times describes the rise of China‘s most famous three contemporary SF writers, sometimes called the ―Three Generals‖ of SF.4 Sales of Santi or Three Body, a trilogy of SF novels by Liu Cixin (b. 1963), the best known of the ‗Generals,‘ have reached ―at least 400,000 copies,‖ and this number probably vastly understates Liu‘s readership, many of whom read online.5 In 2010, the Chinese government established national awards for SF writing under the name Xingyun or ―Nebula,‖ evoking the award with the same name for American SF.6 In the last four years, American science fiction website io9.com, has published a number of articles related to Chinese SF, with particular emphasis on Liu Cixin‘s novels and stories. The first 3 Alec Ash, ―Science Fiction in China: A Conversation with Fei Dao,‖ Los Angeles Review of Books, May 1, 2013, http://tumblr.lareviewofbooks.org/post/49379142505/science-fiction-in-china-a-conversation-with-fei. 4 ―The 3 Generals of Chinese Sci-Fi,‖ The World of Chinese, December 30, 2012, http://www.theworldofchinese.com/2012/12/the-3-generals-of-chinese-sci-fi/. 5 Jingjing Xuyang, ―Sci-Fi Made in China,‖ Global Times, January 7, 2013, http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/754261.shtml. 6 Yang Fang, ―Awards for Chinese-Language Science Fictions Announced,‖ Gov.cn, August 9, 2010, http://www.gov.cn/english/2010-08/09/content_1674007.htm. 2 English translation of the first book of the Three Body trilogy will be published by Tor, America‘s best known SF publisher, in November 2014 and represents the first translation of a Chinese SF novel into English.7 Some of Liu‘s SF short stories and novellas have already been translated into English and released online by Beijing Guomi Digital Technology Ltd., a small, international internet publishing company that has released a number of translations of Chinese SF and adventure and suspense stories.8 In recent years, coinciding with its rise in popular consciousness in China and the English-speaking world, Chinese SF has attracted increased attention from scholars writing in English.9 In 2013, Science Fiction Studies, the main scholarly journal for examinations of SF, published an issue devoted to Chinese SF, edited by Prof. Wu Yan (b. 1962), a Professor at Beijing Normal University who teaches and writes about Chinese SF and SF in general (and a SF author). This issue examined the history, development, and significance of Chinese SF. Prof. Song Mingwei of Wellesley College has also written extensively on the subject in recent years and is featured in the special edition of Science Fiction Studies. Finally, I pursued this thesis because I enjoyed reading Liu Cixin‘s short stories for their imaginative portrayals of modern life, visions of the future, and evocations of feeling simultaneously exalted and helpless in the face of monumental challenges. This led me to explore other works of Chinese SF, and to examine the relationship between