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.
26
The first and third books in the series were translated by Ken Liu, and the second book was translated by Joel Martinsen.