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| Liu Cixin |
With a state-owned power plant in nearby Shanxi
Province temporarily shut down to reduce air pollution, one of its
engineers, Liu Cixin(刘慈欣), is using the free time to work on his hobby:
reigning as China’s best-selling science-fiction author.
Along with working on a new
novel and advising on screenplay adaptations of his earlier fiction, Mr.
Liu, 51, has been promoting the English translation of “The Three-Body Problem,(《三体》)”
the first book in his best-selling apocalyptic space opera trilogy.
Translated by Ken Liu, an award-winning science-fiction writer in his
own right who is based in the United States (the men are not related),
it is one of the few Chinese science-fiction novels to be translated
into English. It will be released in the United States on Tuesday by Tor
Books.
The success of the “Three-Body”
series, as it is called in China, has gained a following beyond the
small but flourishing science-fiction world here. Since the third book
was published in 2010, each entry in the series has sold about 500,000
copies in the original Chinese, making Mr. Liu the best-selling Chinese
science-fiction author in decades.
In addition to the usual high
school and college-age fans of science fiction, China’s aerospace and
Internet industries have embraced the books. Many interpret the battle
of civilizations depicted in the series as an allegory for the ruthless
competition in the nation’s Internet industry.
The series has also breathed new life into a genre that, here as elsewhere, the literary establishment often marginalizes.
For decades, science fiction
was subject to the whims of Communist Party rule. The genre went from
being a vehicle for popularizing science for socialist purposes to
drawing criticism in 1983 from party newspapers for “spreading
pseudoscience and promoting decadent capitalist elements.” When the
prestigious People’s Literature literary magazine published four of Mr.
Liu’s short stories in 2012, it was a sign that the genre was back in
official good graces.
At its core, science fiction
capitalizes on uncertainty about the future to push the boundaries of
the reader’s imagination. In fast-changing China, stories that lay out
what coming years may hold in store have therefore found deeper
resonance among readers.
“China is on the path of rapid
modernization and progress, kind of like the U.S. during the golden age
of science fiction in the ’30s to the ’60s,” Mr. Liu said. “The future
in the people’s eyes is full of attractions, temptations and hope. But
at the same time, it is also full of threats and challenges. That makes
for very fertile soil.”
Chinese science fiction serves
another purpose in the eyes of Xia Jia, a science-fiction writer and
professor at Xian Jiaotong University. “Chinese science fiction, in a
way, has borne the weight of the ‘Chinese dream’ since the genre first
appeared in China in the late Qing dynasty,” she said, referring to the
turn of the 20th century.
“The dream is about wanting to
overtake the Western countries and become a very powerful modern China
while still preserving these old elements,” she added. “This is what we
who write science fiction in China have to grapple with.”
The “Three-Body” tomes
chronicle a march of the human race into the universe set against the
recent past, the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution. It is a
classic science-fiction story in the style of the British master Arthur
C. Clarke, whose work Mr. Liu says he grew up reading. “Everything that I
write is a clumsy imitation of Arthur C. Clarke,” he said.
The first book in the series
explores the world of the Trisolarans, an alien civilization on the
brink of destruction. When a secret military project in China attempts
to make contact with aliens, the Trisolarans capture the signals and
decide to invade Earth. Back in China, people split into two camps:
those who welcome the aliens and those who want to fight them.
The series is likely to be a
change of pace for science-fiction fans in the United States, where many
leading contemporary writers in the genre are rejecting classic
alien-invasion plots in favor of those that take on real-world issues
like climate change or shifting gender roles.
Please read more at NYT.
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