Ken Liu - Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

To my authors, who entrusted me with their dreams

by Ken Liu

This anthology collects a selection of short speculative fiction from China that Ive translated over the years into one volume. Some have won awards in the United States, some have been selected for inclusion in various Years Best anthologies, some have been well reviewed by critics and readers, and some are simply my personal favorites.

China has a vibrant, diverse science fiction culture, but few stories are translated into English, making it hard for non-Chinese readers to appreciate them. I hope this anthology can serve as an introduction for the Anglophone reader.

The phrase China Dreams is a play on President Xi Jingpings promotion of the Chinese Dream as a slogan for Chinas development. Science fiction is the literature of dreams, and texts concerning dreams always say something about the dreamer, the dream interpreter, and the audience.

Whenever the topic of Chinese science fiction comes up, Anglophone readers ask, How is Chinese science fiction different from science fiction written in English?

I usually disappoint them by replying that the question is ill-defined and there isnt a neat sound bite for an answer. Any broad literary classification tied to a cultureespecially a culture as in flux and contested as contemporary Chinasencompasses all the complexities and contradictions in that culture. Attempts to provide neat answers will only result in broad generalizations that are of little value, or stereotypes that reaffirm existing prejudices.

To start with, I dont believe that science fiction written in English is a useful category for comparison (the fiction written in Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States are all quite different, and there are further divisions within and across such geographical boundaries), and so I wouldnt even know what baseline Im supposed to be distinguishing Chinese science fiction from.

Moreover, imagine asking a hundred different American authors and critics to characterize American science fictionyoud hear a hundred different answers. The same is true of Chinese authors and critics and Chinese science fiction.

Even within the limited selection of this anthology, youll encounter the science fiction realism of Chen Qiufan, the porridge SF of Xia Jia, the overt, wry political metaphors of Ma Boyong, the surreal imagery and metaphor-driven logic of Tang Fei, the dense, rich language-pictures painted by Cheng Jingbo, the fabulism and sociological speculation of Hao Jingfang, and the grand, hard-science-fictional imagination of Liu Cixin. This should give a hint of the broad range of the science fiction written in China. Faced with such variety, I think it is far more useful and interesting to study the authors as individuals and to treat their works on their own terms rather than to try to impose a preconceived set of expectations on them because they happen to be Chinese.

This is all a rather long-winded way of saying that I think anyone who confidently asserts a definitive characterization of Chinese science fiction is either a) an outsider who doesnt know what theyre talking about or b) someone who does know something, but is deliberately ignoring the contested nature of the subject and presenting their opinion as fact.

So I will state right up front that I do not consider myself an expert on Chinese science fiction. I know enough to know that I dont know much. I know enough to know that I need to study morea lot more. And I know enough to know that there are no simple answers.

China is going through a massive social, cultural, and technological transformation involving more than a billion people of different ethnicities, cultures, classes, and ideological sympathies, and it is impossible for anyoneeven people who are living through these upheavalsto claim to know the entire picture. If ones knowledge of China is limited to Western media reports or the experience of being a tourist or expat, claiming to understand China is akin to a man who has caught a glimpse of a fuzzy spot through a drinking straw claiming to know what a leopard is. The fiction produced in China reflects the complexity of the environment.

Given the realities of Chinas politics and its uneasy relationship with the West, it is natural for Western readers encountering Chinese science fiction to see it through the lens of Western dreams and hopes and fairy tales about Chinese politics. Subversion in the pro-West sense may become an interpretive crutch. It is tempting, for example, to view Ma Boyongs The City of Silence as a straightforward attack on Chinas censorship apparatus, or to read Chen Qiufans The Year of the Rat only as criticism of Chinas education system and labor market, or even to reduce Xia Jias A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight to a veiled metaphor for Chinas eminent domain policies in the service of state-driven development.

I would urge the reader to resist such temptation. Imagining that the political concerns of Chinese writers are the same as what the Western reader would like them to be is at best arrogant and at worst dangerous. Chinese writers are saying something about the globe, about all of humanity, not just China, and trying to understand their works through this perspective is, I think, the far more rewarding approach.

It is true that there is a long tradition in China of voicing dissent and criticism through the use of literary metaphor; however, this is but one of the purposes for which writers write and for which readers read. Like writers everywhere, todays Chinese writers are concerned with humanism; with globalization; with technological advancement; with tradition and modernity; with disparities in wealth and privilege; with development and environmental preservation; with history, rights, freedom, and justice; with family and love; with the beauty of expressing sentiment through words; with language play; with the grandeur of science; with the thrill of discovery; with the ultimate meaning of life. We do the works a disservice when we neglect these things and focus on geopolitics alone.

Despite the diversity of approaches and subjects and styles, the authors and stories collected in this anthology represent but a thin slice of the contemporary Chinese science fiction landscape. Though Ive tried to balance the selection to reflect a range of viewpoints, Im aware of the narrowness of my scope. Most of the authors collected here (with the exception of Liu Cixin) belong to the younger generation of rising stars rather than the generation of established, prominent figures such as Liu Cixin, Han Song, or Wang Jinkang. Most of them are graduates of Chinas most elite colleges and work in highly regarded professions. Moreover, Ive focused on award-winning authors and stories rather than popular fiction published on the web, and Ive prioritized works which I think are more accessible in translation than works requiring a deeper understanding of Chinese culture and history. These biases and omissions are necessary, but not ideal; the reader should thus be cautious about any conclusions they may draw from the stories here being representative. My fondest hope is that each story here at least adds a layer to the readers understanding and awareness of a literary tradition different from the one they might be used to.