Chinese science fiction


Chinese science fiction is genre of literature that concerns itself with hypothetical future social and technological developments in the Sinosphere.

History by country or region

Mainland China

Late-Qing Dynasty

Science fiction in China was initially popularized through translations of Western authors during the late-Qing dynasty by proponents of Western-style modernization such as Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei as a tool to spur technological innovation and scientific progress.
With his translation of Jules Verne's 1888 novel Two Years' Vacation into Classical Chinese, Liang Qichao became one of the first and most influential advocates of science fiction in Chinese.
In 1903, Lu Xun, who later became famous for his darkly satirical essays and short stories, translated Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon and Journey to the Centre of the Earth from Japanese into Classical Chinese while studying medicine at the Kobun Institute in Japan. He would continue to translate many of Verne's and H. G. Wells's classic stories, nationally popularizing these through periodical publication.
Late Qing-era reformist intellectuals used the foreign genre of science fiction to project their teleological view of national rejuvenation and technological development.
The earliest work of original science fiction in Chinese is believed to be the unfinished novel Lunar Colony, published in 1904 by an unknown author under the pen name Old Fisherman of the Secluded River. The story concerns Long Menghua, who flees China with his wife after killing a government official who was harassing his wife's family. The ship they escape on is accidentally sunk and Long's wife disappears. However, Long is rescued by Otoro Tama, the Japanese inventor of a dirigible who helps him travel to Southeast Asia searching for his wife. They join with a group of anti-Qing martial artists to rescue her from bandits. Deciding that the nations of the world are too corrupt, they all travel to the Moon and establish a new colony.
Following the collapse of the Qing-dynasty in 1911, China went through a series of dramatic social and political changes which affected the genre of science fiction tremendously. Following the May Fourth Movement in 1919 written vernacular Chinese began to replace Classical Chinese as the written language of the Chinese mainland in addition to Chinese-speaking communities around the world. China's earliest purely literary periodical, Forest of Fiction, founded by Xu Nianci, not only published translated science fiction, but also original science fiction such as A Tale of New Mr. Braggadocio. Meanwhile, Lao She employed science fiction for the purpose of social criticism in his science fiction novel Cat Country which was also published during this time period.

People's Republic of China

1949–1966

Following the Chinese Civil War and the establishment of the People's Republic of China on the Chinese mainland, works with an ethos of socialist realism inspired by Soviet science fiction became more common while others works were suppressed. Still, many original works were created during this time, particularly ones with "popular science" approach aim to popularize science among younger readers and promote the country's "wonderful socialist future." A surge of science fantasy writing, which emphasized technological marvels and novelties, occurred from the mid-1950s to the 1960s.' Academic Rudolf Wagner writes that this trend was influenced by the Marching Toward Science campaign.'
Zheng Wenguang in particular is known as the 'father of Chinese science fiction' for his writings during this period up until the beginning of Cultural Revolution when the printing of non-revolutionary literature was suspended.

1978–1983

During the Cultural Revolution, very little literature was printed and science fiction essentially disappeared in mainland China. However, following the March 1978 National Science Congress convened by the Central Committee and the State Council and its proclamation that "science's spring has come," a greater enthusiasm for popular science followed, with the publication of the children's novel Ye Yonglie's Xiao Lingtong's Travels in the Future in the same year as the 1978 National Science Congress marked a revival of science fiction literature in China.
In 1979, the newly founded magazine Scientific Literature began publishing translations and original science fiction and Zheng Wenguang again devoted himself to writing science fiction during this period. Tong Enzheng wrote Death Ray on a Coral Island, which was later adapted into China's first science fiction movie. Other important writers from this time period include Liu Xingshi, Wang Xiaoda, and Hong Kong author Ni Kuang. In his monograph, Rudolf G. Wagner argues during this brief rebirth of science fiction in China scientists used the genre to symbolically describe the political and social standing to which the scientific community desired following its own rehabilitation.
This rehabilitation suffered a setback during the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign, when Biao Qian labelled science fiction as "spiritual pollution." This led to authors such as Ye Yonglie, Tong Enzheng, Liu Xingshi, and Xiao Jianheng being condemned for slander and the publication of science-fiction in mainland China once again being prohibited indefinitely.

1989–present

's 1989 novel China 2185 formed an important part of the "new wave" in Chinese science fiction. It portrays how the digital reanimation of Mao Zedong triggers a cybernetic uprising in a future China. Mao digital establish a cyber government named The Republic of Huaxia. The novel critiques both liberal democracy and the cultural conservatism shown by the Republic of Huaxia.
In 1991, Yang Xiao, then the director of the magazine Scientific Art and Literature which had survived the ban on science fiction during the 1980s by changing their name to Strange Tales and publishing non-fiction works, decided to run a science fiction convention in Chengdu, Sichuan. Not only was this the first-ever international science fiction convention to be held in mainland China, it was also the first international event to be hosted in China since the student protests of 1989. Scientific Literature changed its name to Science Fiction World, and by the mid-1990s, had reached a peak circulation of about 400,000. Authors who came to prominence during the 1990s include Liu Cixin, Han Song, Wang Jinkang, Xing He, Qian Lifang, and He Xi. In particular, Liu, Han and Wang became popularly known as the 'Three Generals of Chinese Sci-fi'. As a genre, science fiction came to the fore when the 1999 national college entrance exam included the science fiction question, "What if memories could be transplanted?"
Wang Jinkang is the most prolific of the three, having published over 50 short stories and 10 novels. While working as a chassis engineer for oil rigs, he began writing short stories as a way to entertain his son and teach him scientific concepts, a focus he has maintained throughout his writing career. In an article published in the Commercial Press's bi-monthly magazine on Chinese culture, The World of Chinese, Echo Zhao describes his writing as being pervaded with "a sense of heroic morality" that avoids the "grim finality" of an apocalyptic future, citing examples of clones with bumps on their fingers to distinguish them from non-clones and robots whose hearts explode when they desire life.
Liu Cixin's work has been especially well-received, with his Three Bodies trilogy selling over 500,000 copies in China. The books, which describe an alien civilization that invades earth over a vast span of time, have drawn comparisons to the works of Arthur C. Clarke by fellow science fiction author Fei Dao, while Echo Zhao describes Liu Cixin's writing as "lush and imaginative" with a particular interest in military technology.
Han Song, a journalist, writes darkly satirical novels and short stories which lampoon modern social problems. His novel 2066: Red Star Over America deals with a United States declined into civil war and a China which has obtained superpower status through reliance on an intelligence called "Amando"; among its themes are nationalism and globalism. His short story collection Subway which features alien abductions and cannibalism on a never-ending train ride, have been lauded for their sense of social justice. He has been quoted as saying, ""It’s not easy for foreigners to understand China and the Chinese. They need to develop a dialectical understanding, see all sides, just as we appreciate the 'yin' and the 'yang.' I hope to prevent tragedy in China, and in the world, with my writing. I don't think humans have rid themselves of their innate evil. It's just suppressed by technology. If there is a spark of chaos, the worst will happen. That goes for all people, whether Chinese or Western. We should keep thinking back to why terrible things have happened in history and not allow those things to happen again".
Hao Jingfang won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette for Folding Beijing in 2016.
Meanwhile, in the area of film and television, works such as the science fiction comedy Magic Cellphone explored themes of time travel and advanced technology. On March 31, 2011, however the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television issued guidelines that supposedly strongly discouraged television storylines including "fantasy, time-travel, random compilations of mythical stories, bizarre plots, absurd techniques, even propagating feudal superstitions, fatalism and reincarnation, ambiguous moral lessons, and a lack of positive thinking". However, even with that numerous science fiction literature with those themes and elements have been published since, some of which have been compiled into an English-language anthology by Ken Liu called Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation. Liu's translations have been credited with significantly improving the English-language readers familiarity with Chinese sf.
Science fiction authors from mainland China, whose work has also been published in English or German, furthermore include A Que, Cheng Jingbo, Fei Dao, Gu Shi, Ling Chen, Liu Yang, Luo Longxiang, Shuang Chimu, Sun Wanglu and Zhang Ran.