In 2015, the English translation of The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Already a sensation in China, where it was published in 2006, the prize put Chinese science fiction firmly on the radar of readers in the West, and it has since continued to gain recognition in the States. Earlier this year, Hao Jinfang won the Hugo for Best Novelette for her work Folding Beijing, which can be found in the recently released Invisible Planets (edited and translated by American writer Ken Liu), the first anthology of contemporary Chinese science fiction to be published by a major imprint in the United States.
With this rise in popularity, it might be tempting to compare the works of Chinese science fiction writers alongside those by Asian-American authors, particularly those who belong to the ethnic Chinese diaspora (it’s important to note that not all Asian-Americans with ethnic Chinese heritage identify as Chinese-American). But does that make sense? Asian-American writers, by and large, are educated in the traditional British-American literary canon, after all. Even while some might have been influenced by the histories and mythologies of their ethnic background, these are American writers who grew up reading the likes of Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and Ursula K. LeGuin, and so in their own writing, they are often in conversation with those traditions, emulating and renegotiating the tropes, styles, and conventions of Western science fiction.
Meanwhile, Chinese sci-fi writers operate within a very different landscape. While science fiction continues to grow in popularity in China, the genre has had a dramatic history, from the initial use of sci-fi as a propaganda tool after the Republic of China’s founding in 1912, to Communist encouragement of these stories as a way to champion a hopeful, scientifically driven future, to an outright ban of the genre in the ’80s. Although the genre has also been subject to some Western influence, this unique evolutionary roadmap has undoubtedly had an influence on contemporary Chinese science fiction.
This means that, aside from a perceived shared ethnicity, Chinese science fiction writers and Asian-American science fiction writers don’t implicitly have any overarching commonality. In fact, any attempt to draw these lines can only be hopelessly reductive, as it draws attention away from what makes this group of writers so rich and diverse — the unique talents of voice and style, the dazzling inventiveness of their speculative worlds — and instead flattens their work into the ethnic markers of their makers. That danger is present in any attempt to categorize writers, particularly by ethnicity.
So how do we call attention to the fallacy of lumping these writers together without, well, lumping them together?
My hope, in calling out some of these distinctions, is that you’ll keep them in mind as you explore the writers I’ve featured below. While I encourage any attempt to seek out diverse writers from both inside and outside America, I hope you’ll focus first and foremost on the individual talents of each particular author. If there’s any urge to ponder them together under their respective groups, I hope it’s to appreciate the wide array of writing styles and imaginative forces among them.
American Science Fiction Writers of the Ethnic Chinese Diaspora
Science fiction by Asian-Americans today is a showcase of talent, style, and imagination. From hard sci-fi to anthropomorphism, “silkpunk” to near-future dystopias, these American writers don’t necessarily feel limited to only writing from their ethnic histories (although some of them do, and with great success). No matter what these writers choose to focus on, whether it’s grand questions of history or intimate explorations of loss, they do so with breathtaking inventiveness.
Mention American science fiction today, and undoubtedly Ken Liu’s name will come up. The winner of awards including the Hugo and Nebula for his short stories, Liu is an incredibly versatile writer. In his short story collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, he moves effortlessly between hard science fiction, steampunk, fantasy, and dystopia. His most recent novel, The Wall of Storms, is the second in a popular silkpunk trilogy based loosely on the period between China’s Qin and Han dynasties.
A more-established writer, Ted Chiang has been publishing science fiction since 1990, winning a Nebula for his first short story, “Tower of Babylon.” Since then, his stories have consistently won awards, and several of his short stories were published as a collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, in 2002. The title piece in this collection, “Story of Your Life,” is an incredible piece of writing that fuses linguistics, physics, and first contact, but ultimately becomes an intimate portrait of love and loss. That story has since been adapted into the acclaimed Oscar-nominated film Arrival, starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.
SL Huang graduated from MIT with a degree in mathematics, but instead of staying in the numerical realm, she authored the “Russell’s Attic” series about a mercenary heroine with extraordinary mathematical powers. With four books in the series out already and a fifth, Golden Mean, on the way, these novels are great for those looking for fast-paced science fiction.
While Cindy Pon’s career started in fantasy with the publication of her “Silver Phoenix” and “Xia” duologies, she has also penned several science fiction stories. Her forthcoming book, Want, is a young-adult science fiction thriller set in a Taipei of the near future, where the rich buy longer lives while the poor die from pollution and disease.
Other writers to check out: John Chu, Wesley Chu, Peter Tieryas, Alyssa Wong, Charles Yu
Chinese Science Fiction Writers
While Western audiences might be tempted to look for a common vein that binds all Chinese science fiction together, the truth is that Chinese writers of the genre are writing across a broad range of styles, proving that the breadths of their imaginations can’t be put into a neat box. Chinese science fiction tackles questions both reflective of their own changing society and more “universal” ones on humanity in ways that are fresh and exciting, from fabulist tales to hard sci-fi to surrealist metaphors. One science fiction standout is award-winning author and journalist Han Song, although most of his work has yet to be translated into English. Here are several other writers who are making undeniably exciting contributions to the genre.
Liu Cixin is arguably the most prominent science fiction writer in China right now. His Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy has garnered multiple awards, both in China and the West. The hard sci-fi trilogy describes humanity’s journey to the stars on a sweeping scale, both in time and space. All three novels in the trilogy have been translated into multiple languages, including English, starting with The Three-Body Problem, which takes place in part during the Cultural Revolution, to The New York Times best seller Death’s End, which fast-forwards to a far future to explore the fate of humanity.
A science fiction scholar with a Ph.D. in comparative and world literature, Xia Jia has won numerous Chinese awards for her fiction, including the Chinese Nebula Prize and the Galaxy Prize. Her work has also been published in English and translated into several languages, to high praise. Her story, “A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight,” reprinted in Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy in 2013, about a human child living among ghosts, is a delightful mix of fantasy, science fiction, and literary myth.
