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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 this country for the first time, attracting fans from all over the world.
It was a rare moment when fans from China and abroad were able to gather together without worrying about the increasingly difficult politics of China’s relations with the West or the Chinese government’s tightening grip on expression.
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 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.
A copy of “The Three-Body Problem” on display at a bookstore in Beijing on Monday, February 19, 2024. The series, written by former engineer Liu Cixin, helped Chinese science fiction break out internationally, winning awards and making it into world rankings. Reading lists of former US presidents Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Andy Wong
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.
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 was planning to hold a writers’ conference in the city in 1991. However, as news of the brutal crackdown on student demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 spread around the world, foreign speakers declined to participate.
The magazine sent a small delegation to Worldcon 1990 in The Hague to save the conference.
Its leader was Shen Zaiwang, an English interpreter at the Sichuan Ministry of Foreign Affairs who became obsessed with science fiction as a child. He packed instant noodles for a weeks-long train journey across China and the divided Soviet Union.
In The Hague, Mr. Shen used toy pandas and postcards of Chengdu to argue that the city, 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
China’s science fiction world was also facing suspicion at home.
Science fiction magazines such as Chengdu’s SF WORLD began to be published in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when China began to open up to the outside world after the Mao Zedong era.
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.
The editors of Science Fiction World continued.
“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.
In 1997, the magazine organized another international event 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.
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.
His soft-spoken story of an engineer at a power plant in the coal-dominated province of Shanxi has become a hit with fans of the genre.
But “The Three-Body Problem,” first serialized in Science Fiction World in 2006, reached a new level of popularity, Yao said.
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.
Joel Martinsen, who translated the second volume of the trilogy, “The Dark Forest,” said that the translation was intended from the beginning as “a major cultural export from China to the world, something that received a lot of attention.” talk.
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.
The following year, Beijing-based author Hao Jingfan beat Stephen King to win the Hugo Short Story Award for a story about social inequality in a surreal version of China’s capital.
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 has encouraged the growth of the “industry”, which spans films, video games, books, magazines and exhibits, and established an official research center in 2020 to track its development.
Chengdu Worldcon was to be the culmination of these efforts.
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.
New hope?
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 climate change, 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.
Copyright 2024 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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