CHENGDU, China (AP) — For a few days in October 2023, the capital of science fiction was Chengdu, China. Worldcon, science fiction’s biggest annual event, was held in the country for the first time, attracting fans from all over the world.
A rare moment when Chinese and international fans were able to come together to celebrate the arts without worrying about the increasingly fractious politics of China’s relations with the West or China’s tightening grip on expression. was.
For Chinese fans like Tao Bolin, an influencer who flew in from the southern province of Guangdong for the event, it felt like the world finally wanted to read Chinese literature. Fans and authors flocked to his brand new science fiction museum. The museum was designed by renowned architect Zaha Hadid and is shaped like a giant steel star floating above the lake.
But three months later, a scandal erupted over allegations that organizers of the Hugo Awards, science fiction’s biggest award given out at Worldcon, had disqualified nominees to appease Chinese censors. Many of them got worse.
This event crystallized the contradictions that Chinese science fiction has faced for decades. In four decades, the novel has transformed from a politically dubious niche market to one of China’s most successful cultural exports, with author Liu Cixin’s fan base including Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg. gained international support. But for just as long, the obstacles created by geopolitics have had to be overcome.
His “Three-Body Problem,” produced by the same showrunner as “Game of Thrones” and set to air on Netflix in March at a huge budget, is China’s science fiction biggest hit yet. It has the potential to gain viewers.
Getting there took decades of hard work by dedicated writers, editors, and cultural bureaucrats who believed science fiction could bring people together.
“Science fiction has always been a bridge between different cultures and countries,” says Yao Haijun, editor-in-chief of Science Fiction World, China’s oldest science fiction magazine. “Every writer can have their own vision of the future, and even if they conflict, they can coexist and be respected.”
A small step for local bureaucrats
Chinese science fiction’s overseas journey began 30 years ago with another convention in Chengdu, but politics nearly derailed it before it could get off the ground.
Science Fiction World had planned to hold a writers’ conference in 1991 in a city known for its panda sanctuary and strong counterculture tendencies. But as news of the brutal crackdown on student protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square spread around the world in 1989, the number of foreign speakers dwindled. Outside.
The magazine sent a small delegation to Worldcon 1990 in The Hague to save the conference.
Its leader is Shen Zaiwang, an English translator at the Sichuan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who became obsessed with science fiction as a child after reading Jules Verne’s books such as “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” He packed instant noodles for a weeks-long train journey across China and the divided Soviet Union.
In The Hague, Shen and former magazine editor Yang Xiao used panda toys and Chengdu postcards to make the case that Chengdu, more than 1,800 kilometers from Beijing, is friendly and safe to visit.
“We tried to introduce Sichuan as a safe place. The people of Sichuan really hope that foreign science fiction writers will come and see them and encourage Chinese youth to read more science fiction novels. ” said Shen.
In the end, more than a dozen foreign authors attended the conference. It was a small beginning, but it was something no one could have imagined a few years ago.
A big leap in genre
Chinese science fiction has been under suspicion domestically for decades.
The genre flourished in China in the first half of the 20th century, driven by new technology and an interest in foreign translated stories. However, it disappeared during the Cultural Revolution. This turbulent decade beginning in 1966 was one in which Maoist radicals targeted “bourgeois” elements, including both scientists and various types of literature.
As China began to open up to the world after the Mao era in the late 1970s and early 1980s, science fiction made a comeback. While China’s early space program launched its first artificial satellites into orbit, writers such as Zheng Wenguang and Ye Yonglie wrote stories about space travel. Regional magazines such as Chengdu’s Science Fiction World proliferated.
But in the early 1980s, the Chinese government launched a nationwide “mental cleansing” campaign to counteract decadent Western influence, and science fiction was accused of being unscientific and deviating from official ideology. . Most of the young publications have gone out of print.
In Chengdu, the editors of Science Fiction World continued their work.
“They believed that if China wanted to develop, it had to be an innovative country, which meant it needed science fiction,” editor Yao said in a recorded speech in 2017.
The magazine aimed to change the public’s negative perception of science fiction. In 1997, six years after the Chengdu conference, another international event was held in Beijing featuring American and Russian astronauts. The conference attracted the attention of the Chinese press and gave science fiction a cool new aura of innovation, exploration and imagination, Yao said. It also paved the way for an international launch.
Liu Cixin’s Big Bang
While China’s growing number of science fiction fans were devouring foreign translations, few people abroad were reading Chinese novels. Liu Cixin was trying to change that.
As an engineer at a power plant in coal-dominated Shanxi province, his soft-spoken story combines massive engineering projects that could power an entire planet with moments of quiet human emotion. , became a hit among fans of the genre.
But “The Three-Body Problem,” first serialized in Science Fiction World in 2006, reached a level of popularity not seen in other Chinese works, said Yao, who edited the novel.
Fans in Chengdu flocked to local bookstores when the book was published, said Yan Feng, founder of local independent publisher Eight Right Minute Culture. They surrounded the building holding placards that read “Liu Cixin, we love you!”
The authorities took notice. The China Educational Publishing Export and Import General Corporation, an exporter of state-owned publications, picked up the novel and its two sequels.
The plot of this trilogy ironically focuses on the dire consequences of sending a message to a distant, otherworldly world. Volume 2, The Dark Forest, is named for its view of the universe as a dog-eat-dog struggle for survival, where the best way to survive is to hide.
Joel Martinsen, who translated Dark Forest, said the translation was intended from the beginning as “a major cultural export from China to the world, something that would get a lot of attention.” However, no one expected such critical and popular success. In 2015, Liu became the first Asian author to win a Hugo Award for her novel.
“His work was very fresh, raw, arresting, and sometimes even very dark and cruel,” says Song Mingwei, a professor of Chinese literature at Wellesley College. “That made the reader go, ‘Wow, this is impressive.'”
Song said Liu found a sweet spot between familiar Western genre tropes and references to China’s troubled history. The trilogy has now become a “classic,” he added.
The following year, Beijing-based author Hao Jingfan beat Stephen King to win the Hugo Award for his surreal story about social inequality in China’s capital, originally published on a university web forum. It won the short story category.
blocked by Beijing
Liu’s translation was also a political advancement for the genre. In the space of two decades, the genre has grown from barely tolerated to a mainstay export of China’s official cultural apparatus.
The government established an official research center in 2020 to encourage the growth of this industry, which spans films, video games, books, magazines and exhibits, and to track its development. The blockbuster, set in the world of Liu’s short story “The Wandering Earth,” broke domestic box office records and spawned two sequels. However, it had limited distribution overseas and met with mixed reviews.
Chengdu Worldcon was to be the culmination of these efforts.
When this location was announced, some international fans criticized the choice, citing concerns about human rights, censorship, and the voting process.
The event itself was seen as a success.
But when the Hugo Commission revealed the vote totals in January, critics’ suspicions appeared to be confirmed. Several candidates were found to have been disqualified, raising concerns about censorship. They include New York Times bestselling authors RF Quan and Sheeran Jay Zhao, both politically active writers with family ties to China.
According to the investigation, leaked internal emails (which The Associated Press could not independently verify) revealed that the awards committee spent weeks adding comments that could disparage the Chinese government to the nominees’ work and social media profiles. Two science fiction writers and a journalist seem to have indicated that they were checking for the same and sending a report on it to Chinese officials. There is no indication how the report was used or who made the disqualification decision.
Hugo Awards organizers did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.
Liu himself is no stranger to controversy. He faced backlash after defending the Chinese government’s repressive policies against the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang in a 2019 interview with The New Yorker. Netflix is facing calls to cancel the series over the controversy. Netflix representatives did not respond to emailed questions from The Associated Press.
new horizons
Despite the frictions, Chinese science fiction is poised to continue its international rise. Netflix’s adaptation of “The Three-Body Problem” could bring the film to a vast new audience, an order of magnitude larger than Shen Zaiwan’s trip to The Hague.
And insiders like Song and Yao are looking forward to a new generation of Chinese science fiction writers who are now beginning to be translated into English.
It is led by young female writers educated abroad, such as Regina Kanyu Wang and Tang Fei. Their work explores themes that resonate with young audiences, such as gender fluidity and environmental crisis, Song said.
“Imagination quickly dries up when you do something with market or government support,” Song says. “I think important things often happen at the last minute.”
Yao continues to believe in science fiction’s role as a bridge between cultures, even in turbulent times.
“As long as there is communication, we will be able to find some common ground,” he says.
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AP researcher Wanqing Chen contributed to this report.
