Chinese Science Fiction: Concepts, Forms, and Histories is a milestone for Chinese sf studies, synthesizing research of the past decade and opening new avenues of scholarship. In 2013, SFS published a special issue (40.1) introducing Chinese sf to English-reading scholars, leading the vanguard of a burgeoning field. In the eleven years since, Chinese sf has exploded in popularity, largely driven by the success of Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem (2006; Eng. trans. 2014), propelled to international fame after Ken Liu’s English translation won the 2015 Hugo Award for best novel. The field of Chinese sf studies has likewise flourished, yielding a dizzying panoply of scholarship, which has collectively, as Song, Isaacson, and Li note, “reoriented” Chinese literary studies and sf studies “through new paradigms and research methods” (30). In light of these scholarly conversations, Chinese Science Fiction “intertwine[s] diverse perspectives on the histories, forms, and conceptual experimentation of the genre” (2), thereby “reevaluating the canon of Chinese sf print and cinematic production, and expand[ing] the range of critical approaches to the subject” (27). The collection offers a much needed moment of reflection as the field of Chinese sf studies matures into its second decade and beyond.
The editors’ introductory chapter outlines the collection’s main claim, that “sf represents a significant contribution to modern Chinese cultural production, both in terms of its value, speaking powerfully to our modern condition, and its sheer volume in terms of production and consumption” (30). This introductory chapter is also an effective primer on Chinese sf’s history and development, reiterating the genre’s “multiple points of origin” (3) in its three chronological sections (from the Late Qing to 1949; from 1950 to the early 1980s; and the New Wave from the late 1980s to the 2010s). This historical overview integrates descriptions of landmark authors and texts with major threads of secondary scholarship and historical context, offering an accessible introduction for students of Chinese literary or sf studies and scholars in related disciplines and a valuable reference for specialists. In a welcome intervention, the Introduction (and by extension, the collection) simultaneously complicates this periodization, acknowledging Chinese sf’s nuanced negotiations with Japanese, Russian, and Anglo-American influences and local literary genres over the years and reflecting recent scholarship uncovering or recontextualizing forgotten texts that expand our definition of Chinese sf. The Introduction also presents a concise theoretical framework (drawing from Veronica Hollinger’s “sf as mode” and Andrew Milner’s “selective tradition”), similarly grounding subsequent chapters in an expansive view of Chinese sf.
The histories, forms, and concepts of the subtitle are loosely reflected in the volume’s three parts, each consisting of four chapters. Part I: “Contesting Science and Fiction” addresses “the meanings of science, the limits of fiction, the implications of empire, and the limitations of translation” (28) in the late Qing (1644-1911). This section includes Lorenzo Andolfatto’s science-fictional reading of Kang Youwei’s philosophical tract on China’s place in the cosmos; Liyuan Jia’s analysis of late-Qing sf alongside pseudoscientific discourses circulated in contemporaneous popular science writing and consumer culture; Guangyi Li’s study of late-Qing sf authors’ revanchist attempts to wrestle with the colonial world order; and Virgina L. Conn’s epistemological genealogy of the historical, geographic, and linguistic contingencies of “Chinese sf” as a category. Part II: “Negotiating Media and Genre” further interrogates the formal boundaries of Chinese sf by making connections across media and temporalities, including Qiong Yang’s study of late-Qing and Republican (1912-1948) literary editors turned sf writers; Melissa A. Hosek’s ecocritical reading of late-1970s and early 1980’s Chinese sf film; Hua Li’s transhumanist analysis of a popular “authenticity cultivation” web novel; and Heather Inwood’s exploration of spatial imaginaries in online sf. Part III: “Beyond Anthropocene and Utopia” focuses on contemporary sf, organized around generational and geographic cohorts of authors. This section features Jannis Jizhou Chen’s analysis of illness and illusion in Han Song’s Hospital trilogy (2016-2018); Gwennaël Gaffric’s discussion of Liu Cixin’s “cosmic pastoral”; Frederike Schneider-Vielsäcker’s study of the body in short fiction by Chinese sf authors born in the 1980s; and Mingwei Song’s overview of the Neo-Baroque in Taiwanese sf from the 1960s to the 2020s. Taken together, these chapters successfully demonstrate “the historical significance and thematic breadth of a genre that was once marginal, if not invisible to literary history” (3). Common themes emerge across the collection, including the relationship between literature and the nation, varying definitions of science and science fiction, questions of “Chineseness,” and the roles of body and landscape. The result is a well-crafted reflection on the state of Chinese sf studies, a volume that is “relatively coherent, continuous, [and] detailed” (1), yet “does not aim to be exclusive, but rather border-crossing, with our visions of sf to be transgressive and non-binary” (2).
This expansive approach is one of the collection’s greatest strengths, manifested in the range of voices represented among the contributors. Chinese Science Fiction brings together work by scholars of diverse identities working throughout the US, Europe, Hong Kong, and mainland China (the latter facilitated, in part, by editor Nathaniel Isaacson’s highly readable translations of Guangyi Li’s and Liyuan Jia’s chapters). The authors’ and editors’ collective scholarly expertise is complemented by related professional experiences in creative writing, translation, and publishing, further enriching the collection. The jointly written Introduction interweaves the most significant contributions of the three editors’ respective monographs on Chinese sf, including Nathaniel Isaacson’s exploration of the genre’s tense association with empire and colonial modernity (Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction, 2017); Hua Li’s transmedia cultural studies approach to the genre’s production and consumption (Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw, 2021), and Mingwei Song’s meditations on the genre’s complicated relationship with mimetic realism (Fear of Seeing: A Poetics of Chinese Science Fiction, 2023). Thus Chinese Science Fiction not only enriches discussions of Chinese sf studies but also presents a model for collaborative scholarship in the humanities.
Chinese Science Fiction’s greatest intervention lies in its plurality of nuanced approaches to the tension between specificity and universality at the heart of Chinese sf studies. As the editors cogently write, “Identifying what differentiates Chinese sf from the global selective tradition risks setting works by Chinese authors aside as an exception to the Western ‘rule’” (4). At the same time, “Consider[ing] the unique features and forms of Chinese sf might help understand what has previously remained unseen in the global selective tradition” (4). In response to this conundrum, Chinese Science Fiction posits that “science fiction speaks to China’s rapidly shifting reality, its political multiplicity, and its formless future, voicing the anticipations and anxieties of a new epoch filled with accelerating alterations and increasing uncertainty” (30). Although the collection focuses predominantly on works produced in mainland China, its efforts at “beginning a new conversation regarding the relationship between scientific discourse and cultural production in the Sinosphere” (27) are welcome and invite future research on sf in intersecting Sinophone and Sino-diaspora cultural spheres. Ultimately, Chinese Science Fiction achieves its goal of “challeng[ing] readers to reconsider the contours of sf as a global genre” (4).
University of California Press