Chinese Science Fiction: Concepts, Forms, and Histories 3031535413, 9783031535413

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STUDIES IN GLOBAL SCIENCE FICTION

Chinese Science Fiction Concepts, Forms, and Histories Edited by Mingwei Song Nathaniel Isaacson · Hua Li

Studies in Global Science Fiction Series Editors

Anindita Banerjee Department of Comparative Literature Cornell University Ithaca, NY, USA Rachel Haywood Ferreira Department of World Languages and Cultures Iowa State University Ames, IA, USA Mark Bould Department of Film and Literature University of the West of England Bristol, UK

Studies in Global Science Fiction (edited by Anindita Banerjee, Rachel Haywood Ferreira, and Mark Bould) is a brand-new and first-of-its-kind series that opens up a space for Science Fiction scholars across the globe, inviting fresh and cutting-edge studies of both non-Anglo-American and Anglo-American SF literature. Books in this series will put SF in conversation with postcolonial studies, critical race studies, comparative literature, transnational literary and cultural studies, among others, contributing to ongoing debates about the expanding global compass of the genre and the emergence of a more diverse, multinational, and multi-ethnic sense of SF’s past, present, and future. Topics may include comparative studies of selected (trans)national traditions, SF of the African or Hispanic Diasporas, Indigenous SF, issues of translation and distribution of non-Anglophone SF, SF of the global south, SF and geographic/cultural borderlands, and how neglected traditions have developed in dialogue and disputation with the traditional SF canon. Editors: Anindita Banerjee, Cornell University Rachel Haywood Ferreira, Iowa State University Mark Bould, University of the West of England Advisory Board Members: Aimee Bahng, Dartmouth College Ian Campbell, Georgia State University Grace Dillon (Anishinaabe), Portland State University Rob Latham, Independent Scholar Andrew Milner, Monash University Pablo Mukherjee, University of Warwick Stephen Hong Sohn, University of California, Riverside Mingwei Song, Wellesley College

Mingwei Song  •  Nathaniel Isaacson Hua Li Editors

Chinese Science Fiction Concepts, Forms, and Histories

Editors Mingwei Song Wellesley College Wellesley, MA, USA

Nathaniel Isaacson North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC, USA

Hua Li Montana State University Bozeman, MT, USA

ISSN 2569-8826    ISSN 2569-8834 (electronic) Studies in Global Science Fiction ISBN 978-3-031-53540-6    ISBN 978-3-031-53541-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53541-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image credit: Chin Leong Teoh / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Nathaniel Isaacson, Hua Li, and Mingwei Song Part I Contesting Science and Fiction  33 2 K  ang Youwei’s Book of the Heavens and the Porous Epistemological Grounds of Early-modern Chinese Science Fiction 35 Lorenzo Andolfatto 3 Intelligent  Humanoid Machines: Imaginations of Physical and Mental Transformation in Late Qing Literature and Their Intellectual Origins 55 Liyuan Jia 4 The  King of Electricity from the East: Science, Technology, and the Vision of World Order in Late Qing China 83 Guangyi Li 5 Formal  Fictions: “Chinese” “Science” “Fiction” in Translation 99 Virginia L. Conn v

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Part II Negotiating Media and Genre 121 6 The  Writing Editors: Late Qing and Republican Media Professionals as Authors of Science Fiction123 Qiong Yang 7 Projecting  Eco-Futures: Cinematic Visions of Utopian Science and Ecology from the Mao Era to the Deng Era145 Melissa A. Hosek 8 Information,  the Body, and Humanism in the Chinese Cyber Novel Forty Millennia of Authenticity Cultivation167 Hua Li 9 Open  Up Your Brain Hole: Spatial Imaginaries in Chinese Online Science Fiction191 Heather Inwood Part III Beyond Anthropocene and Utopia 211 10 Of  Illness and Illusion: The Chaosmology of Han Song’s Hospital Trilogy213 Jannis Jizhou Chen 11 Liu  Cixin and the Cosmic Pastoral235 Gwennaël Gaffric 12 Bodies  in Transformation: The Politics of Post-80s Science Fiction Authors Chi Hui, Chen Qiufan, and Zhang Ran251 Frederike Schneider-Vielsäcker 13 The  Posthuman and the Neo-Baroque in Taiwan Science Fiction271 Mingwei Song Index295

Notes on Contributors

Lorenzo  Andolfatto is a senior researcher at the Department of Geosciences of the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), where he pursues research across the fields of modern Chinese and comparative literature, translation studies, human geography, and ecocriticism. He is the author of Hundred Days’ Literature. Chinese Utopian Fiction at the End of Empire, 1902–1910 (Leiden: Brill 2019), while his most recent work has appeared in journals such as positions: asia critique, C.L.E.A.R. (Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews), and Science Fiction Studies. Jannis Jizhou Chen  is both a literary critic and a fiction writer. He is an assistant professor at the Department of Chinese, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on environmental humanities, critical theory (including posthumanism, new materialisms, Object-Oriented Ontology, and Chinese intellectual discourses on things), and 20th and 21st Sinophone literature, film, and culture. His project explores the recent ecological and posthuman themes in narrative fiction produced in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. Virginia L. Conn  is a lecturer at Stevens Institute of Technology and the managing editor of the SFRA Review. Her most recent scholarship has appeared in World Futures Review, Chinese Literature and Thought Today, Vector, Verge, and other scholarly journals. She researches depictions of the “new socialist human” in socialist science fiction; her forthcoming monograph examines how those depictions guided policy decisions in Mao-era China, Soviet Russia, and East Germany. vii

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Gwennaël  Gaffric is Assistant Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 (France). His PhD thesis was about ecological issues in Taiwan literature. He is also translator of Chinese, Hongkongese and Taiwanese contemporary novels. His research interests include literary studies (especially science fiction), ecocriticism, postcolonialism, and translation studies. He has recently published a book entitled La Littérature à l’ère de l’Anthropocène: une étude écocritique autour des œuvres de l’écrivain taïwanais Wu Ming-yi (L’Asiathèque, 2019), also translated in Chinese (Xin Jingdian, 2023). Melissa A. Hosek  is a lecturer at Stanford University in the program of Civic, Liberal, and Global Education. She has a PhD in Chinese from Stanford University and specializes in modern Chinese literature with interests in science fiction studies and environmental humanities. Her ongoing research explores transforming ideas about ecology as expressed through science-oriented art and literature. Heather  Inwood  is Associate Professor of modern Chinese literature and culture at the University of Cambridge and a Staff Fellow in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Trinity Hall. Her research focuses on interactions between literature and digital media in contemporary China, especially poetry and online popular fiction. Her articles have been published in journals in Europe, China, the UK, and the US, and she has also written a Chinese-language blog and columns for Chinese newspapers. She is the author of Verse Going Viral: China’s New Media Scenes (University of Washington Press, 2014), which explores the fate of modern Chinese poetry in the age of the internet, and is currently working on a book on Chinese internet fiction. She is also co-editor of the British Journal of Chinese Studies and has edited a special issue on videogaming in the Sinophone world. Nathaniel Isaacson  is Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Literature in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at North Carolina State University. His research interests include Chinese science fiction, Chinese cinema, cultural studies, and literary translation. Nathaniel has published articles in the Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literatures and journals including Osiris and Science Fiction Studies, as well as translations of non-fiction, poetry, and fiction in the translation journals Renditions, Pathlight and Chinese Literature Today. His book, Celestial Empire: the Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction (Wesleyan UP, 2017),

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examines the emergence of science fiction in late Qing China and the relationship between science fiction and Orientalism. Liyuan Jia  is Professor of Literary Studies and author of fiction, writing under the penname “Feidao.” He is an associate professor in the Department of Chinese Literature at Tsinghua University in Beijing. His short story collections include Chinese Scifi Blockbusters, The Long Journey to Death, and others. His scholarly work has been published in Science Fiction Studies, Literary Review, and other academic journals. His book, ‘Modern’ and ‘Unknown’—a Study of Late Qing Science Fiction (2021) won the 13th World Chinese Science Fiction Association’s Nebula Award in 2022, and the 33rd Chinese sf Galaxy award in 2023. His fiction has been translated into English, Italian, Japanese, and other languages, among them “The Robot Who Liked to Tell Tall Tales” and “Legend of the Giant” appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine. Guangyi Li  is Professor of Chinese and Comparative literature, Director of the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, and Vice Dean of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Science, Chongqing University. His research interests include modern and contemporary Chinese literature, twentieth-­century Sino-foreign literary relationship, science fiction literature and culture, and Utopian literature and thought. His work has appeared in the journals such as Wenxue pinglun (Literary Criticism), Zhongguo xiandai wenxue yanjiu congkan (Modern Chinese Literature Studies), Science Fiction Studies, and Utopian Studies. He is the editor of the Late Qing volumes of The Collected Works of Chinese Science Fiction (Zhongguo kehuan wenxue daxi wan Qing juan, 2020), X Ways of Reading Three Body (Santi de X zhong dufa, 2017), Chinese Science Fiction: A New Beginning (Zhongguo kehuan wenxue zai chufa, 2016), and Chinese translator of Ruth Levitas’s The Concept of Utopia (2018). Hua Li  is Professor of Chinese in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Montana State University. Her primary research field is modern and contemporary Chinese literature. She has published two monographs: Contemporary Chinese Fiction by Su Tong and Yu Hua: Coming of Age in Troubled Times (Brill) in 2011 and Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw (University of Toronto Press) in 2021. She has also published numerous refereed journal articles and book chapters on various topics in contemporary Chinese literary fiction, cinema, animation, and science fiction in Cambridge History of Science

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Fiction, Science Fiction Studies, China Information, Communication and the Public, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Frontier of Literary Studies in China, Forum for World Literature Studies, and other peer-reviewed journals. Frederike  Schneider-Vielsäcker is an independent researcher who received her PhD in Chinese Studies from the Free University of Berlin in June 2021 and was Assistant Professor at the Institute of Chinese Studies at Heidelberg University from 2020 to 2022. Her forthcoming monograph focuses on socio-political discourses in contemporary Chinese science fiction literature written by authors of the post-80s generation. In 2019 and 2020, she co-hosted an event series with major Chinese SF writers in Berlin and organized panel discussions for the Frankfurt book fair. Recently, Frederike organized a workshop with filmmaker Fan Popo on anti-Asian racism and Chinese queer film at the Centre of Asian and Transcultural Studies of Heidelberg University. Mingwei  Song  is Professor of Modern Chinese Literature at Wellesley College. His research interests include modern Chinese literature, youth culture, and science fiction. He is the author of numerous books and research articles, including Young China: National Rejuvenation and the Bildungsroman, 1900–1959 (Harvard, 2015), New Wave in Chinese Science Fiction: History, Poetics, Texts (Shanghai, 2020; in Chinese), and Fear of Seeing: A Poetics of Chinese Science Fiction (Columbia, 2023). He is the co-editor of The Reincarnated Giant: An Anthology of Twenty-First Century Chinese Science Fiction (Columbia, 2018). Qiong  Yang  is Associate Editor of literature and translation at Social Sciences in China Press (Beijing). Her research interests include the history of Chinese science fiction, scientific writings in general, and Chinese popular culture. She is the author of The Construction of the Genre of Science Fiction in the Chinese Context (2020, in Chinese). Yang has also published a dozen research papers in journals such as Frontiers of Literary Studies in China, The New Ray Bradbury Review, and Contemporary Chinese Literary Studies (Zhongguo dangdai wenxue yanjiu).

CHAPTER 1

Introduction Nathaniel Isaacson, Hua Li, and Mingwei Song

Even though the three of us have all published monographs on Chinese science fiction (hereafter sf) during recent years, each of our books addresses a specific time period and the corresponding concepts and forms of sf. A volume like this one can only be produced through collective efforts, by the editors as well as all the twelve contributors, with an aim toward presenting a relatively coherent, continuous, detailed discussion of the genre and its place in modern Chinese culture throughout its history from the early twentieth century to the twenty-first century. Such a claim certainly does not mean that this volume can be counted as an exhaustive and definitive research on the topic; what we can do is, at best, to provide a range of samples to outline the field—case studies that open windows to

N. Isaacson (*) North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA e-mail: [email protected] H. Li Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, USA e-mail: [email protected] M. Song Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. Song et al. (eds.), Chinese Science Fiction, Studies in Global Science Fiction, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53541-3_1

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research and theoretical thinking concerning the concepts, forms, and histories of Chinese sf. As an introductory reader to those interested in the genre, this volume brings together the three keywords in the title of this book: concepts, forms, histories—in a way that they help readers find coordinates in a journey into the unknown. Needless to say, it goes beyond the scope of this book to provide encyclopedic interpretations to the concepts, forms, and histories of sf. What we have been doing in this volume is rather to intertwine inquiries to both theories and histories, questions about both concepts and forms, and reflections on genre—and, of course, gender. A synthetic method guides almost each of the case studies that make the twelve chapters of the volume. The volume does not aim to be exclusive, but rather border-crossing, with our visions of sf to be transgressive and nonbinary. As a modern genre, science fiction has a long history in China, at least as long as that of most other modern print genres that began to be introduced into Chinese literature at the end of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), such as political fiction and detective fiction. Compared with the realist fiction that has dominated the Chinese literary scene since the May Fourth era, science fiction has an even longer history. Like many other modern genres, science fiction was imported from abroad. Its world building represented an otherworldly imagination from its beginning as a translated genre, unfolding visions of modern worlds shaped by the flourishing of new technologies. A translated literary genre, early Chinese sf manifested the cultural hybridity resulting from a combination of translated modernity and self-conscious yearning for the rejuvenation of the Chinese tradition. Despite such a promising beginning, the history of Chinese sf has never been continuous. It is full of gaps and interruptions caused by politics and changes in cultural paradigms. The discontinuity of sf should not be mistaken for insignificance, and even moments of perceived or real absence speak to important shifts in the cultural sphere. Following the first “golden age” of late Qing sf and the Republican Era, only a few short booms can be identified—the reemergence of sf as children’s literature in the 1950s–1960s under the socialist regime, the flourishing of more popular versions in Hong Kong during the Cold War, the comeback in Taiwan and mainland China during the late 1970s—none of which gained enough momentum to prevail and continue. This situation persisted until the rise of the new wave at the turn of the twenty-first century. The booms alternated with dormant periods lasting long enough for later writers to be

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little influenced by their predecessors. Each time the genre was revived, the new generation of writers had to invent their own tradition, thus giving Chinese sf multiple points of origin. Each reinvention was influenced by a foreign source, such as the Japanese impact in the late Qing; Russian in the socialist period; Anglo-American in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the post-Mao mainland China; and the worldwide new wave as well as global sf during the Chinese new wave. Each generation had to find their own ways to integrate foreign influences into domestic variations of the genre’s forms and conventions to represent new modes of political ethos, intellectual visions, and epistemological paradigms. The rise of a new wave of sf has been a momentous literary phenomenon in contemporary China. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, the genre has reemerged and gradually achieved wide popularity both domestically and globally. This has happened at a time when China is aiming at a new stage of national rejuvenation and mapping out various political, economic, and scientific projects to achieve a “Chinese dream.” Yet, for the country concurrently embracing technological renovations and sparing no effort to secure its status quo, the shape of things to come remains far from certain. Simultaneous with the recognition of contemporary Chinese sf as world literature has come the rise of Chinese sf studies. In this volume, we seek to inaugurate a second generation of Chinese sf criticism. Through diverse perspectives on the histories, forms, and conceptual experimentation of the genre, the authors featured herein demonstrate the historical significance and thematic breadth of a genre that was once marginal, if not invisible to literary history. A central challenge to global sf studies is the definition of the genre itself. This is compounded by the various calques used to translate terms like “science” and “sf” over the course of China’s long twentieth century. The earliest translation we have for sf is kexue xiaoshuo (科学小说), which was replaced after the founding of the PRC by science-fantasy fiction kexue huanxiang xiaoshuo (科学幻想小说), a calque of the Russian nauchnaya fantastika. At the turn of the twentieth century, a number of other terms like gezhi (格致)—shorthand for neo-Confucian investigation of things and extension of knowledge—and xixue (西学), or “western knowledge,” were also used as loose translations for categories like science, natural philosophy, and Western thought in general. Ignoring the limitations of both “science” and “fiction” in understanding the relationship between systematic forms of knowledge and literary and visual culture diachronically and across national borders, the term “China” in this volume speaks to at least

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three state formations—the Qing dynasty, the Republic of China, and the PRC; Chinese sf is a highly complex form. That said, Chinese sf shares a number of important features, functions, and forms with the global tradition of sf. It often examines the relationship between humanity and technology and does so through speculative visions of the potential for both to evolve. One of its most readily recognized features is the presence of imagined technologies. Sf also often features the application of rational thought as a means of solving fictional challenges. In terms of function, sf offers an aesthetic, experiential examination of the implications of knowledge gained from systematic study of the world around us. Sf is intimately concerned with the implications of deep time: how the universe came to be and what it might yet become. Chinese sf, like its foreign counterparts, often manifests as a mass-produced genre, geared for mass consumption, while striving for deeper recognition by literary and scientific elites. Narrative prose and cinema are two of its most common forms, but the attitudes and considerations of sf can manifest in all manner of media from propaganda posters to video games, to advertisements for space programs. Sf is narratively diffuse, and historically mutable, with no platonically ideal locus classicus, that it might better be understood as a means of organizing and interpreting texts. For this reason, Veronica Hollinger and others have argued in favor of understanding sf as a “mode” rather than a genre (Hollinger 139–142). Another way of articulating the expansiveness of sf is as a “selective tradition,” a body of work spanning multiple forms and “high” and “low” culture that are continuously disrupted, re-established, re-negotiated, or potentially preserved (Milner 36–40). Identifying what differentiates Chinese sf from the global selective tradition risks setting works by Chinese authors aside as an exception to the Western “rule.” That said, as scholars of the history and cultural significance of Chinese literature in the global canon of world literature, it is important we appreciate what Chinese authors bring to the global selective tradition. We should also consider how the unique features and forms of Chinese sf might help us understand what has previously remained unseen in the global selective tradition. It is our hope that this volume will challenge readers to reconsider the contours of sf as a global genre. One feature of global sf particularly germane to the history of Chinese sf is the significance of colony and empire in shaping our imagination of global technoscientific development. Sf emerged in the era of European imperial expansion, and scholars like Patricia Kerslake (2007) and John Rieder

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(2008) have pointed out the profound connections between sf and the imperial imagination. Chinese sf authors were keenly aware of the relationship between sf and empire as well (Isaacson 2017).

From the Late Qing to 1949 The advent of China’s literary modernity is fairly universally recognized as taking place at the end of the nineteenth century, and 1895 is a deeply significant year. China’s defeat in the Opium wars in the mid-nineteenth century awakened intellectuals and the ruling class to the need to modernize, but China’s defeat at the hands of the expanding Japanese empire in the Sino-Japanese war dealt the finishing blow to Sinocentrism. Ti-yong (体用) discourse attempted to open the door to technological change while closing the door on social transformation by disentangling Chinese spiritual essence and western material use, while the Yangwu (洋务) or “foreign affairs” movement which insisted on the Chinese origins of western science and technological know-how both came to an end at the turn of the twentieth century. The period 1895–1915 saw an era of reform with an eye toward Weberian, rational modernity, and this movement prepared Chinese soil for the propagation of sf, both foreign transplants and native species. After 1895, Chinese intellectuals were in almost universal agreement that being modern, in all of its dimensions, would require modernizing fiction. A reconstituted nation required new fictions, and sf, oriented toward the world to come and ripe with explanations of technological achievements real and imagined, embodied the spirit of new fiction in a way few other genres could. The earliest seeds of sf were planted through translation. Among the earliest and most significant of translated works was Edward Bellamy’s utopian fiction, Looking Backward 2000–1887 (1888), translated by Baptist missionary Timothy Richard (1845–1919). Richard’s translation was published serially between 1891 and 1892, reprinted as a book in 1894 and 1898, and reprinted by the Commercial Press in 1913, among others (Wu Yan 2011, 266–274). Andrew Jones notes that Bellamy’s work helped to establish a number of significant tropes for modern Chinese literature, among them the literary thematics of Darwinian evolution and the image of the “iron house” (Jones 39–40). One of the most frequently translated authors during the period was Jules Verne, whose works were translated into Chinese dozens of times over the early decades of the twentieth century, often based on Japanese translations. Other prominent

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authors in translation included H.G.  Wells, Camille Flamarrion, and H. Rider Haggard. Works in translation were indeed so popular that some Chinese authors presented their original works as translations (Jiang 15). These translated texts were nevertheless immediately and undeniably Chinese. Early renderings of sf into Chinese relied on familiar narrative structures, language, and tropes in a translingual practice of localization, adaptation, and acculturation. If a turn of the century author may have desired the cachet of masquerading as foreign, a contemporary reader could be forgiven for mistaking late Qing translations as original Chinese works. These works were soon followed by original works, which were simultaneously derivative of their western counterparts and undeniably Chinese in their semantic and syntactic content. Following the sociopolitical shock of 1895, the next benchmark year in the history of both Chinese sf and China’s “new novel” writ-large was 1902. Liang Qichao (梁启超 1873–1929), living in exile in Japan following the failed Hundred Days Reform of 1898, went on a literary spree, establishing three journals in as many years: The China Discussion (Qingyi bao 清议报, 1898); New Citizen (Xinmin Congbao 新民丛报, 1902); and New Fiction (Xin xiaoshuo 新小说, 1902). Liang established the journal New Fiction in large part as a venue for printing his unfinished novel chronicling a Chinese utopia sixty years in the future, The Future of New China (Xin Zhongguo weilai ji 新中国未来记, 1902). Liang’s essay “On the Relationship between Fiction and Mass Governance” (Lun xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhi guanxi 论小说与群治之关系, 1902) called for a revolution in fiction and set the tone for fiction as a critical tool in China’s quest for modernity. Fiction was not an entirely new technology, but it would henceforth be the tool par-excellence for renovating social structures and norms. An advertisement for New Fiction appearing in New Citizen is equally significant to the history of Chinese sf. The ad reading, “China’s Only Literary Journal—New Fiction” (“Zhongguo weiyi zhi wenxue bao Xin xiaoshuo” 中国唯一之文学报:新 小说), promised a panoply of genres, among them science fiction, political fiction, social fiction, romance, detective fiction, and more. Other serial publications soon adopted Liang’s new literary taxonomy. The label sf, while used with an arguably greater degree of regularity in China prior to its appearance as a genre category in the west, was nevertheless used inconsistently. Works labeled sf in one given issue of a periodical might be labeled ideal fiction, political fiction, or utopian fiction by the editorial

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staff in another issue. In many respects, sf was understood as a subset of or little cousin to philosophical-political fiction (Jia 7–17). New Citizen was also an important site for the publication of information on new scientific discoveries, or pseudoscientific discoveries as the case may be. Jia Liyuan’s chapter in this volume details how Liang Qichao used New Citizen as a site for disseminating knowledge about mesmerism and hypnotism. A common feature of sf in China was the introduction of western science to audiences in news and popular science pieces, which was gradually sensationalized and eventually adapted into works of fiction, occasionally word for word. Reportage on radium, for example, journeyed from scientific fact in the popular science press to science fiction in Biheguan zhuren’s The New Era (Xin jiyuan 新纪元, 1908), through exactly this process. We might refer to this as a motion from science fact to fictional science, and finally to science fiction. Lorenzo Andolfatto’s chapter offers further consideration of the semantic breadth of “science” and “fiction” in the Late Qing. For all its newness, late Qing sf drew creatively on its pre-modern literary roots. This included liberal use of Daoist and Buddhist cosmological and spiritual terms to make sense of new ideas about the age and nature of the universe. It also included borrowing tropes of knight-errantry from wuxia (武侠) fiction for new heroes and chuanqi (传奇) “stories of the strange” to create an atmosphere of uncanny novelty familiar to Chinese readers. Early Chinese sf also borrowed structure and narrative conventions from Ming-Qing zhanghui xiaoshuo (章回小说) chapter fiction, employing rhyming verse to introduce or summarize key aspects of the narrative. Xu Nianci’s (徐念慈 1875–1908) farcical sequel to a Japanese translation of a Baron Von Munchausen story, “New Tales of Mr. Braggadocio” (“Xin faluo xiansheng tan” 新法螺先生谭, 1904), features a narrator whose soul and body are split apart allowing him to explore the solar system and the center of the earth before perfecting the art of “brain electricity,” allowing human beings to communicate telepathically and eliminating the need for most modern technology. Tales of the Moon Colony (Yueqiu zhimindi xiaoshuo 月球殖民地小说, 1904), written by the “Old Fisherman of the Yellow River” (Huangjiang diaosou 黄江钓叟), was the first attempt at a sf novel published in Chinese and featured a group of explorers in a balloon visiting various allegorical territories that again reflect upon China’s relationship to the colonial order. Wu Jianren (吴趼仁 1866–1910) re-imagined Jia Baoyu (贾宝玉) exploring semi-colonial China at the turn

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of the twentieth century before visiting a Chinese utopia that has reversed the colonial order in New Story of the Stone (Xin shitou ji 新石头记, 1905). Lü Sheng’s (旅生 b?) Dream Records of a Madman (Chiren shuomeng ji 痴 人说梦记 1904) told the tale of three exiled intellectuals traveling the world before returning to China to establish a new utopian order. Haitian duxiaozi’s (海天独啸子 b?) The Stone of Goddess Nuwa (Nuwa shi女娲 石,1903) addressed the late Qing semi-colonial crisis from the perspective of an educated woman. Cai Yuanpei’s (蔡元培 1868–1940) New Year’s Dream (Xinnian meng 新年梦, 1904) is a utopian dream of a future where China is a major player in a world order inspired in part by Tan Sitong’s (谭嗣同 1865–1898) “Great Unity” (“Datong” 大同). Novels like Biheguan zhuren’s (碧荷官主人 b?) The New Era Xin jiyuan (1908) and Lu Shi’e’s (陆士谔 1878–1944) New Ramblings of the Rustic Elder (Xin yesou puyan 新野搜曝言, 1909) both offered revanchist visions of China’s conquest of Europe, and New Ramblings went on to consider the question of colonizing outer space. A number of other works are listed in various contemporary, late Qing, and Republican-era bibliographies. Scholars continue to “unearth” them, but in many cases, these works were never completed, or we have little more than their descriptive titles to glean their contents. These include, The Future Book League of New China (Weilai zhi Zhongguo tushu tongmenghui 未来中国图书同盟会, 1906), Journey to Utopia (Wutuobang youji 乌托邦游记,1906), The Method of Restoring Life (Huisheng shu 回生 术,1906), Champion of the New Chinese Woman (Zhongguo xinnü hao 中 国新女豪, 1907), Women’s Rights (Nüzi quan女子权, 1907), Li Minzhai’s Flying Ship (Feiting 飞艇,1907), and Bao Tianxiao’s Future War in the Air (Kongzhong zhanzheng weilai ji 空中战争未来记,1908). New takes on familiar vernacular novels also flourished. Titles included New Flowers in the Mirror (Xin Jinghuayuan 新镜花缘, 1907) by Xiaoran Yusheng (萧然郁生) and New Records of the Three Kingdoms (Xin sanguo zhi 新三国志, 1909). More than any other text, Wu Cheng’en’s classic Journey to the West (Xi you ji西游记) was re-imagined in the late Qing through a flurry of adaptations. These included Another Journey to the West (Ye shi xiyou ji 也是西游记, Xi Mianzhou 奚冕周 and Lu Shi’e, 1909). In 1909, Li Xiaobai (李小白) and Chen Jinghan (陈景韩) published competing versions of New Journey to the West (Xin xiyou ji 新西游 记). These westward journeys, often science-fictional in nature, exemplify how late Qing authors ruminated upon the relationship between China and western knowledge. Could science, natural philosophy, and other

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“western learning” or xixue (西学) be compared to the Buddhist canon brought back to China by Tripitaka? Wu Cheng’en’s Ming Dynasty novel, Journey to the West, recounting of Buddhist monk Xuanzang’s pilgrimage to Central Asia and India, accompanied by an entourage of magical disciples may not have had anything to do with sf as we know it today. But the heroes fly through the air, have magical weapons that change size and form, and the Monkey King Sun Wukong is turned two-dimensional, can change sizes, and even clone himself using his own hairs. All of this easily adapts itself to contemporary sf. The weapons and bodily transformations of Sun Wukong have become so thoroughly imbricated in the East Asian mediascape, it is hard to know where to start—from the Dragon Ball manga and anime series to fan-­ created sf adaptations and sequels, to the film Super Monkey Returns (Dong-Yeop Sin 2011), or Australia and New Zealand-produced Netflix series “New Legends of Monkey” (Gerard Johnstone 2018–2020). Sun Wukong is a hybrid, a shapeshifter, a transformer; an apt metaphor for the multifaceted nature of Chinese sf. The Republican Period (1911–1949) in many ways saw a continuation of the above patterns for sf. A number of factors can be attributed to the new landscape of sf during this period. On the one hand, an increasingly commercial culture resulted in serious literary magazines turning toward the entertainment category of “mandarin ducks and butterflies” fiction. At the same time, scientific content was increasingly sublimated into other genres including popular science, and various genres aimed at juvenile audiences. Intellectuals like Chen Duxiu continued to pair rational inquiry with rational statecraft, as he advocated for China’s transformation by Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy. Headed by Chen, another literary magazine of the new, New Youth, was at the center of the May Fourth movement, which replaced late Qing reform with outright iconoclasm. The magazine sought to use literature as a tool to transform society, admonishing young readers to “be scientific and eschew irrationality” (科学的而非想象的) (Chen Duxiu 5). The Science Society of China—a group of students studying in the US with money from the Boxer Indemnity—established the journal Science the same year and for the same cause. The word science (kexue 科学) was featured in the titles of more than 80 Republican-era journals. Translation still comprised a significant portion of the sf available to audiences. Ren Dongmei argues that if the Late Qing was the era of Jules Verne, the Republican period was the era of H.G. Wells, as multiple versions of his novels were translated into Chinese. Rather than seeing this

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as a weakness, we should remain aware that Chinese audiences were reading foreign-language sf in translation long before Anglophone audiences were reading Chinese sf (Ren Dongmei 279–281). What was labeled kexue xiaoshuo often took the form of dialogues or lectures on science with a fictional setting. These works were highly specialized at best and tedious at worst. Like their late Qing predecessors, there was no clear distinction between popular science and sf. Republicanera sf often sacrificed narrative style and plot for the sake of transmitting scientific knowledge, informing readers of processes like the production of vanishing cream and synthetic rubber (Ren Dongmei 281). Ren Dongmei argues that while these works may be aesthetically lacking, they were highly experimental. They shared with their late Qing predecessors a keen interest in popularizing science for the sake of national salvation. Like their late Qing predecessors, they also featured an admixture of vernacular and classical language, borrowed from various pre-modern poetic forms, or made translingual puns about the periodic table. Other forms produced—science Q&A, science vignettes, and science novelties—should prompt us to reconsider what counts as sf in the global selective tradition. While the plots of many more “pure” sf stories are familiar, their sense of crisis often increased in the face of mounting corruption, the chaos of the Warlord Era (1916–1928), and Japanese encroachment into Manchuria. The shipwrecked narrator of Bi Yihong’s (毕倚虹 1892–1926) “Shanghai of the Future” (“Weilai zhi shanghai”未来之上海, 1917) returns to the city after a hundred years stranded on an island to find that the city is highly technologically advanced, and while people live lives of great ease, the state is corrupt and incompetent. Jing Feng’s (劲风 b?) short story “China a Decade Hence” (“Shinian hou de Zhongguo” 十年 后的中国, 1923) imagines an invasion by the fictional nation of “Anada” in which the citizenry saves China from defeat despite a corrupt and incompetent government. Gu Junzheng’s “Nation Without Air” (“Wu kongqi guo” 无空气国,1926) explains how birds would not be able to fly, fires would not burn, and people would not be able to speak in a place that lacked air; this final point brings out the allegorical meaning of the story— people who physically cannot speak are the same as those with no freedom of speech. Lao She’s City of Cats (Mao cheng ji 猫城记, 1932) is a thinly veiled, deeply satirical allegory for political incompetence, factionalism, and social stagnation in Republican China set in a feline city on Mars. Gu Junzheng’s “Dream of Peace” (“Heping de meng” 和平的梦, 1940) tells the story of an American spy’s discovery that the “Easternmost Nation” is

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on the verge of hypnotizing the American public with false promises of peace. Sf publication fell off precipitously after the Rape of Nanjing, as China was brought into the Pacific War, leaving us only approximately a dozen works of sf between 1937 and 1945; about a third of these were written by Gu Junzheng.

From 1950 to the Early 1980s With the founding of the PRC in October 1949, Chinese sf entered a new stage. In the 1950s and 1960s, Chinese sf actively responded to the central government’s various policies, especially those on science and technology. For example, in 1956, the central government raised the rhetoric of marching toward science to confirm the role of science and technology in building a new socialist China. In 1957, Mao Zedong declared that Chinese youth resembles the morning sun and that the future belongs to young people. Equipping the younger generation with a basic knowledge of modern science and technology became a major part of the country’s educational agenda. In 1963, Premier Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) formulated the concept of the Four Modernizations, proclaiming: “We will achieve the modernization of industry, agriculture, national defense, and science and technology … and build our country into a powerful socialist nation” (“Zhongguo gongchandang dashi ji 1963”). Responding to the government’s various policies and talking points, Chinese sf functioned to some extent as a propaganda tool geared toward serving the new socialist order, promoting scientific thinking, and educating the next generation of Communist functionaries. Under these new political circumstances, it was not surprising that sf had long been placed in the category of children’s literature in the PRC. In the 1950s and 1960s, sf works were mainly written for juvenile readers and were published in children’s magazines or by presses catering to juvenile readers in Shanghai and Beijing. Meanwhile, sf writers benefited from the label of children’s literature because this label has provided sf writers with a relatively relaxed space in which to explore controversial and forward-­looking ideas that would be difficult to articulate effectively in most genres of serious or realist literature. Chinese sf had also been a sub-­ branch of kexue wenyi (literature and art about science 科学文艺). Within the broad spectrum of kexue wenyi, with non-fiction narratives about science at one end and literature at the opposite end, science primers, science essays, science travelogues, and descriptions of scientific research are closer

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to the pole of science; science stories, comedic dialogues about science, and science fairy tales are in the middle of the spectrum; and sf is closest to the pole of literature (Zheng, “Kexue wenyi zatan” 81). Throughout most of the 1950s, the PRC was still at the honeymoon stage in its relations with Soviet Russia. Chinese sf came under the strong influence of Stalin Era Soviet popular fiction, particularly with respect to an optimism and interest in scientific progress, emphasis of scientific and technological minutiae, and the style of socialist realism. PRC translators and scholars introduced a substantial amount of Soviet Russian literature into China, including classics of socialist realism, treatises on literary theory, and various genres of popular literature such as science fiction and adventure novels. The term kexue wenyi was also borrowed from USSR writer Maxim Gorky’s (1868–1936) essay “On Theme” in which Gorky encouraged scientists to delve into the literature and urged fiction writers to explore the world of science. The popular science writer Mikhail Il’in (1896–1953) actually put Gorky’s advocacy into practice by writing numerous science primers and essays about science during the 1930s and 1950s. Many of Il’in’s works were translated into Chinese and exerted a profound influence upon many Chinese intellectuals and readers during the 1950s and 1960s. Konstantin E.  Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) and Alexander Belyaev (1884–1942) were the most influential Soviet Russian writers on scientific themes in Mao Era China. Tsiolkovsky’s writing about space travel and rocketry inspired many PRC writers to explore these topics in their own writings. Belyaev’s sf narratives about organ and body part transplants in Professor Dowell’s Head and The Amphibian Man (1928) likewise encouraged some PRC writers to take up this topic. In addition, Ivan Pavlov’s research on conditioned reflexes such as a dog salivating after hearing a bell ring also contributed to the emergence of Chinese sf narratives about biomedical experiments. Under the strong influence of Soviet sf and responding to the central government’s policies on science and technologies, Chinese sf writers remained active from 1950 to 1965 and covered a wide range of themes in their works. These themes include space exploration, robots, organ transplantation, marine aquaculture, high-tech pastures, plant and animal breeding, and weather modification. The two earliest Chinese sf narratives published in the PRC were Zhang Ran’s (张然) Dream Travel in the Solar System (Mengyou taiyang xi 梦游太阳系, 1950) and Xue Dianhui’s (薛殿 会 b. 1926) Space Travel (Yuzhou lüxing 宇宙旅行, 1951). Both narratives are about space exploration. In 1954, Zheng Wenguang (郑文光

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1929–2003) published his first sf story “The Second Moon” (“Dierge yueliang” 第二个月亮) about a man-made satellite. In the following six years, Zheng continued to address the theme of space exploration in most of his narratives. Another active writer was Tong Enzheng (童恩正 1937–1997) who published his first two sf works in 1960, Dense Fog over the Old Gorge (Guxia miwu 古峡迷雾) and “A Guest from Fifty Thousand Years Ago” (“Wuwannian yiqian de keren” 五万年以前的客人). Both narratives combine his archeological knowledge with scientific speculation. Over the next couple of years, he also published on the themes of robots, computers, and biological electronic currents in such novellas as Miracle of An Electric Brain (Dianzi danao de qiji 电子大脑的奇迹, 1962), A Missing Robot (Shizong de jiqiren 失踪的机器人, 1962), and The Lost Memories (shiqu de jiyi 失去的记忆, 1962). Xiao Jianheng (萧建亨 b. 1930) wrote about organ transplantation, electronic technology, and robots in such narratives as Fisherman’s Gramophone Records (Diaoyu aihaozhe de changpian 钓鱼爱好者的唱片, 1960), Buke’s Adventure (Buke de qiyu 布克的奇遇, 1962), and The Amazing Robotic Dog (Qiyi de jiqigou 奇异的机器狗, 1965). Liu Xingshi (刘兴诗 b. 1931) was another dominant sf writer during this period. He wrote about weather modification and terraforming the Earth in such narratives as “An Underground Hydropower Station” (“Dixia shuidianzhan” 地下水电站, 1961), “Northern Clouds” (“Beifang de yun” 北方的云, 1962), “The Blue Train Under the Ocean” (“Lanse lieche” 蓝色列车, 1963), and “The Nomad City” (“Youmu cheng” 游牧城, 1964). Wang Guozhong (王国忠 ?-2010) also wrote about weather modification and land reclamation in order to benefit agricultural and industrial production in such narratives as “A Marine Fishery” (“Haiyang yuchang” 海洋渔场, 1961), “Dragon in the Bohai Sea” (“Bohai jülong” 渤海巨龙, 1963), and “Reservoir in Air” (“Bankong zhong de shuiku” 半空中的水库, 1963). Chi Shuchang (迟书 昌1922–1997) wrote about genetic engineering and animal breeding in “Elephants Without Trunks” (“Gediao bizi de daxiang” 割掉鼻子的大象, 1956); marine aquaculture in “Whale Pasture” (“Dajing muchang” 大鲸 牧场, 1961); and high-tech suspended animation in “Frozen Shrimps and Cryonics” (“Dongxia he dongren” 冻虾和冻人, 1963). Several other writers during this period are also worth mentioning. Yu Zhi (于止, pen name of Ye Zhishan 叶至善, 1918–2006 ) wrote the first PRC narrative about cryonics in his famous short story “The Missing Brother” (“Shizong de gege,” 失踪的哥哥 1957). Ji Hong ­ (稽鸿, 1920–2017) was a prolific writer and published stories on bionics and

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electronic technologies used in daily life in “The Secrets of the Motorcycle” (“Motuoche de mimi” 摩托车的秘密, 1961),“Old Doctor’s Hat” (“Lao yisheng de maozi” 老医生的帽子, 1963), and “A Strange Hunter” (“Qiguai de lieren” 奇怪的猎人, 1963). In addition to sf, other subgenres in kexue wenyi, such as science essays, science travelogues, comedic dialogues about science, and science animation had all functioned to popularize science and technology among children and young adults. For example, many science crosstalk performances promoted such quotidian hygienic practices as toothbrushing and handwashing (Isaacson 139–57). Gu Junzheng published a collection of science essays entitled Not Afraid of Headwinds (Bupa nifeng 不怕逆风, 1962) to introduce basic physics to young adults. In addition, some science animation films such as The Cuckoo Is Late (Buguniao jiao chi le 布谷 鸟叫迟了, 1959), The Little Inventor (Xiao faming jia 小发明家, 1958), and Little Tadpoles Look for Mama (Xiao kedou zhao mama 小蝌蚪找妈妈, 1960) conveyed clear scientific and technological messages through a narrative strategy of focused problem solving. These scientific themes are based on known science and existing technologies, with bits and pieces of factual knowledge interspersed throughout the films. During this period, sf writers and critics also wrote essays to engage in theoretical exploration of the genre. For example, Zheng Wenguang’s 1956 essay “On Science Fiction” is probably the first essay to discuss this genre in the PRC. In the essay, Zheng pointed out that science fiction should “reveal the power of modern science and technology, depict the glorious future of humankind, showcase the conquerors of nature, and single out scientists for praise with respect to the war between humankind and nature” (“Tantan kexue huanxiang xiaoshuo” 21). Chinese sf remained dormant from 1966 to 1975. The year 1976 saw the publication of the first sf work since the Cultural Revolution—Ye Yonglie’s “Petroleum Protein” (“Shiyou danbai” 石油蛋白). The revival of sf writing was endorsed by the central government’s favorable policies on science and technology. Deng Xiaoping affirmed that science and technology were productive forces, and highly educated professionals such as intellectuals, scientists, and technicians would henceforth be considered part of the working class at the opening ceremony of the National Science Conference on March 18–21,1978. In the same year, he revived the long-­ dormant policy of the Four Modernizations and announced his strategic decision to shift the Communist Party’s main focus from the Mao Era’s

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emphasis on class struggle to the Reform and Opening Era’s pursuit of modernization and economic prosperity. With the arrival of this “springtime for science” (kexue de chuntian), many veteran sf writers such as Zheng Wenguang, Tong Enzheng, Liu Xingshi, and Xiao Jianheng returned to the field. Relatively young writers, such as Ye Yonglie (叶永烈 1940–2020) and Wei Yahua (魏雅华 b. 1949), joined them. Chinese sf experienced a flowering period from 1978 to 1983, which has commonly been characterized as the post-Mao cultural thaw. During this period, PRC sf was still a largely government-backed literature that helped to popularize and support various government policies, while meshing adroitly with governmental rhetoric about strengthening the state through science and technology. Meanwhile, it could be aptly characterized as blooming, contending, and boundary-breaking (Li 165–180). Chinese sf strove to overcome its former categorization as a mere subgenre of kexue wenyi or mere children’s literature and to instead rise to the level of popular fiction and bona fide Chinese literature. The thematic concerns of many sf narratives resonated with contemporary works of PRC fiction in the categories of “scar literature,” “contemplative literature,” and “roots-seeking literature.” Some sf narratives assimilated elements from other popular genres such as love stories and detective fiction. Many sf works continued and expanded the sf motifs popular in the 1950s and 1960s, and such new subgenres as detective sf and tech-sf were created in the late 1970s and 1980s. In this short introduction, we can only briefly mention a few representative writers from this period. Tong Enzheng’s “Song of the Stalagmites” (“Shisun xing”石笋行, 1982) and Liu Xingshi’s Columbus Who Came from the Americas (Meizhou lai de gelunbu 美洲来的哥伦布, 1980) combine scientific extrapolations with archeological findings. In addition, Liu Xingshi’s work is probably the first alternate history sf narrative in PRC. Xiao Jianheng’s “Qiao the Younger Fell Ill” (“Qiao er huan bing ji” 乔二患病记, 1982) and Wei Yahua’s “I’ve Decided to Divorce My Robot Wife” (“Wo jueding yu jiqiren qizi lihun,” also known as “Wenrou xiang zhi meng” 温柔乡之梦, 1981) envision how robots will transform our personal lives and social interactions in the near future. Zheng Wenguang’s Descendants of Mars (Zhanshen de houyi 战神的后裔, 1983) not only extolls the future terraforming of Mars but also reflects upon moral issues connected with the future colonization of space. In addition to his near-­ future sf classic Xiao Lingtong Travels to the Future (Xiaolingtong manyou weilai 小灵通漫游未来, 1978), Ye Yonglie single-handedly promoted

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detective sf through his Jin Ming series (金明系列). In addition, some writers wrote short tech-sf stories that frequently celebrate increasing productivity in agriculture, manufacturing, and military technology in such stories as Wei Yahua’s “The Tumult of the Flying Blanket” (“Feitan de fengbo” 飞毯的风波, 1979), Xu Jie’s “The Architects on a Coral Island” (“Shanhu dao shang de jianzhushi” 珊瑚岛上的建筑师, 1978), and Jia You’s “Growing a House” (“Zhong fangzi” 种房子, 1978). Echoing the prolific sf writings, a lot of science popularization and sf magazines were launched at municipal, provincial, and national levels. Even mainstream literary magazines published sf works, and some newspapers have contained supplements to publish literature and art about science. Among them, the most renowned ones have been dubbed “the four magazines and one newspaper”: Science, Literature and Art (Kexue wenyi 科学文艺, first quarterly then bimonthly, 1979–present) in Chengdu; Age of Science (Kexue shidai 科学时代, bimonthly, 1979–1984) in Harbin; Wisdom Tree (Zhihui shu 智慧树, bimonthly, 1981–1985) in Tianjin; Science Fiction Ocean (Kehuan Haiyang 科幻海洋, anthology series, 1981–2001) in Beijing; and the newspaper The Chinese Science Fiction Gazette (Zhongguo kehuan xiaoshuo bao 中国科幻小说报, biweekly, 1981) in Harbin. These magazines and newspapers published not only speculative fiction but also popular science articles, interviews, reviews, and essays about the genre. Sf writers benefited economically from their creative writing through royalties or other remuneration paid by these magazines. The various publication venues also became an important marketplace of ideas for sf writers and critics engaged in discussions and debates. For example, in 1979 the Supplement of the influential state media outlet China Youth Daily published a series of opinion pieces in the column “Modest Discussions of Popular Science Writing.” These opinion pieces broached such topics as the nature of sf—literary or scientific; the faulty understanding and over-simplified presentation of scientific ideas in some sf works; and the need to make popular science writing more interesting and entertaining. Starting in 1979, Zheng Wenguang, Tong Enzheng, Ye Yonglie, and Xiao Jianheng also published essays about their experiences and ideas about sf writing in the newspaper Guangming Daily. In addition to writing critical essays, these writers also evaluated their peer’s sf works by writing reviews and canonized some classic works by editing sf anthologies. Such writers and scholars as Ye Yonglie and Wu Dingbo started to research earlier and less well-known Chinese sf works in order to compile histories of Chinese sf.

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During this period, a significant withering of influence from old Soviet Russian sf was accompanied by a rapidly burgeoning influence from Western sf. Besides reprinting classic sf narratives by famous Western authors such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, the works of more recent Western writers were also translated and introduced to Chinese readers, such as the works of Arthur C. Clarke, George Lucas, and Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Heinlein. Many Soviet Russian sf works were also translated into Chinese, such as A.  Kazantsev’s Strong Times, and Alexander Belyaev’s novels Glittering Man and Master of the World. The works of Japanese writers such as Sakyo Komatsu and Takashi Ishikawa were also translated into Chinese (Wu, “Looking Backward” xxvi–xxviii). These foreign sf works introduced Chinese readers and writers to an unprecedentedly broad range of sf subject matter and techniques, thereby inspiring Chinese writers to experiment with a widening variety of subject matter and techniques. Chinese sf fandom also emerged in the 1980s. In 1979, the first college-­ level PRC course on science fiction was taught by Philip Smith, a visiting professor from University of Pittsburgh, at Shanghai Foreign Language Institute. Shortly afterward in July 1980, fifteen faculty members from this university’s English Department founded a local sf fandom club. In February 1981, a student fandom club was founded in the same university. During the 1980s, campus-based, region-specific, and nationwide sf fan clubs spread broadly throughout the PRC in such provinces as Sichuan, Guangdong, Heilongjiang, and Liaoning (Wu, “Fandom” 134–36). These clubs also published their own fanzines or newsletters. The first Chinese sf fanzine Xingyun (Nebula 星云) was published by an avid and dedicated reader named Yao Haijun in 1988. Several other fanzines were published in the mid-1990s, such as Beijing’s Cube Light Year (Lifang guangnian 立方光年, 1995–1996), Tianjin’s Supernova (Chao xinxing 超新星, 1996–1997), Zhengzhou’s Milky Way (Yinhe 银河, 1996), and Chengdu’s Ladder to the Sky (Shang tianti 上天梯, 1996). However, none of these fanzines lasted as long or exerted as much influence on sf circles as Xingyun (Zhang 37–40). PRC sf fanzines accelerated connections amongst sf writers, readers, researchers, editors, and publishers. The first PRC sf award, the Galaxy Award, was established by the magazines Science, Literature and Art and the short-lived Wisdom Tree in 1986. All the works participating in the competition of the Galaxy Awards have been confined to those published in Science, Literature and Art (except in 1986). This practice reveals that the award has become an important

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means for the genre magazine to build up its team of writers and establish its status and authority in the field. PRC sf has prominently engaged in transmedia (kua meiti 跨媒体) storytelling since the late 1970s when sf expanded its media venues from the print forms of fiction, comics, and illustrated books to the electronic forms of radio and TV dramas, animation, and feature films. Here we shall provide an introductory review of PRC sf’s various multimedia forms. The cartoonist Miao Yintang (缪印堂 1935–2017) published the science manhua “Keke Goes Hunting for Wolves” (“Keke dalang ji” 科科打狼记) in the popular science magazine Knowledge Is Power (Zhishi jiushi liliang 知识就是力量) in 1979. “Keke Goes Hunting for Wolves” consists of sequential panel comics and features a young protagonist named Keke who draws upon modern technological advances to more effectively hunt for wolves in mountainous regions. Sf lianhuanhua (连环画) also became an increasingly common vehicle for Chinese sf due largely to their commercial success as entertainment fiction. A lot of sf narratives were adapted into lianhuanhua form. The key transitional work—both artistically and in terms of its unprecedented commercial success as a trade item—was Ye Yonglie’s Jin Ming series. Some sf narratives were also adapted into radio plays, such as Death Ray on a Coral Island adapted from Tong Enzheng’s prize-winning short story of the same name, Xiao Lingtong Travels to the Future adapted from Ye Yonglie’s novel of the same name, and A Green Cloned Horse (lüse kelong ma 绿色克隆马, 1980) adapted from a short story by an anonymous author. Some sf narratives bypassed radio altogether and were instead adapted into TV dramas, such as Wu Boze’s (1933–2005) novella Invisible Man (Yin xing ren 隐形人, 1979), Zhang Fengjiang’s and Jia Wanchao’s “The Last Cancer Patient” (“Zuihou yige aizheng huanzhe” 最后一个癌症患者, 1980), and Ye Yonglie’s The X-3 Case (X-3 an jian X-3案件, 1980). Yet since televisions were still a rarity in most PRC homes during the early 1980s, TV dramas failed to achieve the popularity of radio dramas and sf films at that time. Starting in the late 1970s, more scientific animation films also came out. These animation films focused more on future possibilities, introducing the viewer to elements of science fiction and futurism, such as in The Hens Move to a New Home (Muji banjia 母鸡 搬家, 1979), Yuanyuan and the Robot (Yuanyuan he jiqi ren 圆圆和机器 人, 1980), and Dingding Fights the Monkey King (Dingding zhan houwang 丁丁战猴王, 1980). The 1980s also saw the release of two sf feature films. Zhang Hongmei adapted Tong Enzheng’s famous short story as the

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feature film Death Ray on a Coral Island in 1980. Another sf film Shadow of a Ghost (Qianying 潜影, 1981) came out in 1981. The film was adapted from the sf novella A Ghost in the Imperial Palace (Wangfu guaiying 王府 怪影, 1981), which was co-authored by Ji Hongxu and Ji Sanmeng. More sf films were produced in the 1990s, such as PRC’s first eco-sf film The Ozone Layer Vanishes (Daqiceng xiaoshi 大气层消失, 1990), the time-­ travel film Magic Watch (Mo biao 魔表, 1990), and two detective sf films, Invisible PhD (Yinshen boshi 隐身博士, 1991) and Revived Warrior (Zaisheng yongshi 再生勇士, 1995). These various adaptations enabled a continuous and serial consumption of sf across different forms of media. These multimedia practices increased the visibility of the genre, promoted the consumption of sf artifacts, and extended the genre to a much broader audience than it had ever previously enjoyed in China. The favorable political climate for science fiction from the late 1970s to early 1980s was interrupted by the “Campaign to Eliminate Spiritual Pollution,” which was launched by the Communist Party with Deng Xiaoping’s speech at the Second Plenum of the Twelfth Central Committee on October 11–12, 1983. This campaign of cultural suppression reached its climax in mid-November 1983, later fading into obscurity in Spring 1984. During the short-lived campaign, sf was denounced for spreading bourgeois ideology, and many sf writers temporarily stopped writing sf or left the field. PRC sf remained at a low ebb from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. The publication of sf works slowed to nearly a standstill, and the translation of foreign works of science fiction also fell sharply in comparison to some previous periods.

The New Wave: From the Late 1980s to the 2010s The game-changing new wave was conceived in the 1980s, when futurology, cybernetics and informatics, quantum physics, chaos theory, new methods in scientific and humanistic research, and various experiments in literature and arts collectively challenged the monolithic ideological discourse with an emerging, diversified space for a multiplicative structure tolerant of different kinds of knowledge and ideas. The decade also saw China’s widening reform and a young generation’s struggle for democracy, which ended abruptly when the 1989 nationwide student protest came to a tragic conclusion in Tiananmen Square. Liu Cixin (刘慈欣 b. 1963) and Han Song (韩松b. 1965) both started writing science fiction around the end of the 1980s, and their first stories and novels, such as Han

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Song’s “Tombs of the Universe” (“yuzhou mubei” 宇宙墓碑, 1988, published in 1992) and Liu Cixin’s China 2185 (Zhongguo 2185中国2185, 1989, unpublished), contained reflections on the failed idealism and China’s lost opportunity to become a democracy. Their efforts, together with the growth of the sf fandom and online communities, prepared for the genre’s revival exactly one hundred years after the late Qing “golden age.” Some contemporary factors appear similar to conditions in the late Qing, such as the rapidly changing mediasphere, technological advances, and anxious expectations concerning China’s future changes. In particular, the free platform for new authors to publish on the internet and a “perfect vacuum” for fantasy when mainstream realism lost appeal to younger readers contributed to a profound change in the field of literary production, which helped create the cultural conditions for the rise of a new wave of Chinese science fiction. However, it does not mean that the new wave sf authors enjoy full freedom to publish whatever they want. Censorship from online platforms under supervisions of the country’s central propaganda department and other related divisions has played a heavy role in determining what works can be posted and publicized on the platforms. This is evident in the fact that a few sf narratives with “sensitive topics” were only published online for a very short period of time and soon removed from internet, such as Liu Cixin’s China 2185, and Bao Shu’s “Watching the Boat at South Lake Together” (“Yiqi qu kan nanhu chuan”一起去看南湖船, 2011) and “The Great Era” (“Da shidai” 大时 代, 2012). All these three works play with various temporal orders and touch upon such “sensitive topics” as Mao Zedong, the Communist Party’s history, the Cultural Revolution, and the Tiananmen crackdown. Though considered a genre fiction, the new wave science fiction challenges the distinctions between “popular” and “serious” literatures and engages with experiments altering our perceptions on what is literature, what is contemporary, what is real, and what is human. Its proliferation destabilizes the power structure in the field of literary production, and its adventurous experiments in thought and style push toward a paradigm shift while bringing new meanings to the political, ethical, and epistemological connotations of the literary imagination. To say the least, the Chinese new wave has grown out of continuous contestations with the conventions of both genre fiction and Chinese literature in general— mimetic realism in particular; and its most valorous visions give rise to a new mode of literariness that can be defined as a poetics of the invisible.

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The unique strength of the Chinese new wave science fiction lies in its illumination of the “invisible.” The invisible can be viewed as a key element in the poetics of the genre’s Chinese new wave variation. Representing the invisible functions as the center of gravity for the new wave textuality, such as Liu Cixin’s overpoweringly blinding sublime visions of the cosmic terror—the “dark forest” in both human and cosmic senses, the hyperdimensional universe, the unknowable physical rules—in the Three-Body Trilogy (三体三部曲, 2007–2010), and Han Song’s fearless gaze into the abysmal deep in the dark, the gleams of a “dark consciousness” or “unthought” in the chthonic and posthuman lives, and the confrontation with the unembodied and unmanifest intelligent network of algorithms executing total control over the (post-)human world in the Hospital Trilogy (医院三部曲, 2016–2018). In contemporary Chinese science fiction, to see the invisible is never a simple and easy thing. It evokes fear of seeing, a formidable feeling of confronting the opaque mystique in the unknown and unpredictable, and above all, a sense of apocalyptical revelation “Fear of Seeing” constitutes the culmination of a reflection on the master-­plot of the Chinese new wave science fiction. To see the invisible registers the courage to take on an exigent mission to seek the truth. Catching a glimpse of what has been, or been made, “invisible” may lead to gusty discoveries at odds with the fabricated smooth surface of “reality” represented in common knowledge, mass media, state propaganda, and “normative” human consciousness. By transcending that reality, the new wave science fiction dismantles the commonly accepted notions about not only the political, artistic, scientifical and technological permissible and probable, but it also rewrites what is real after all. The design of the science fiction plots is therefore closely intertwined with the ethics of storytelling, and the moral question of seeing or not seeing drives the narrative toward a process of truth-seeking through penetrating the conventionally knowable reality and adventuring into an invisible world that unfolds and becomes. Science fiction with a self-conscious intellectual tendency taps into the deep discords with the old-fashioned mimetic realism regarding what is reality. For the new wave authors, fictional representation is not bound by the phenomenal world and conventional social constructs but accentuates a variety of alternative ways of disputing what is real and contravening the rationales of mimetic realism. In a nutshell, we can describe the new wave as an audacious experiment with novelty, which entangles the quantum poetics with a baroque infinity.

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The new wave rises with a curiosity about the unknown, uncertain, and unpredictable, a gesture of transgression across borders between the familiar and nonexistent, and an act of dreaming about the alternative and beyond. We contend that at its most radical, the new wave has been thriving on an avant-garde cultural spirit that calls into question a whole set of commonly accepted ideas and observed rules regarding morals, ideologies, and knowledge about the self and or in the world, the human and or in the universe. It generates new modes of literary discourse that estrange what we take for granted, open our eyes to insurgent knowledge and subversive images, and evoke an array of (un)real or virtual sensations ranging from chthonic to sublime, from uncanny to spectacular, from inebriate to exuberant, from transcendental to apocalyptical, and from human to posthuman, etc. The harbinger of the larger epistemological shift, the new wave breaks apart the binary correspondence between reality and representation. When looking both outward and inward, the new wave brings out such unorthodox nonbinary forms as cyborg, chimera, heterotopia, singularity, hyper-dimensionality, multiverse, sympoiesis, metaverse, etc., which transgress the borderline between reality and representation, dismantle exclusive identities and dichotomies across many categories such as gender, class, race, hierarchy, and certainly ideology, and recast the human self in or as the posthuman other—so that “I” can have or be an invisible “monster” residing in a nonbinary universe that shines with the Neo-­ Baroque splendor, which illuminates infinite possibilities and may never settle in a certain reality. In Han Song’s science fiction emerges a “Sinotopia” (中托邦), a virtual form of China, a fictive un-reality that speaks acutely and phenomenally to the country’s undefined, unclear transforming areas, where phantoms rewrite what is real, unfolding an invisible world that grows from within China, like a chimera, into a monstrous conglomerate of wreckage and ruins, taboo and trauma, memories and regrets, dreams and nightmares. Science fiction depicting the hideous, disastrous, apocalyptic side to the story of modernity casts shadows of uncertainty and unknowability over many domains of contemporary China’s national program for reform, enlightenment, revolution, and rejuvenation; and even mundane life scenes depicted in science fiction can become paradoxical and phantasmagorical, when reality loses its meanings and purposes in estranging new experiences that may never settle in a singular form of truth. It was through Han Song and other new wave writers’ experimentations with various imaginary world-buildings that Chinese science fiction created a literary

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space where one can overcome the fear of seeing and approach the invisible “truth” of our world, a wonder, a horror, a black hole, a singularity with irregular pulls of gravitation that blurs what is real, what is contemporary, what is literature, what is China, and what are humans. The new wave front of contemporary Chinese science fiction has been like a triumphant army and reached a breaking point to mark a larger paradigm shift for literary representation. In terms of the poetics, the new wave science fiction has rebuilt the potentials for literary representation in the twenty-first century, when the way we write about the world and the way how the world is becoming merge into a same process of storytelling. In a more provocative sense, the experiments that science fiction brings out create a subversion not only to the genre conventions but also to the authorities of a system that requires certainty and absolutism, both of which the new wave unsettles. However, the international success of the genre attracted the government’s attention as well. National leaders and cultural authorities have seen the genre’s potentials in association with the promotion of scientific advancement. Chinese authorities have since tried to domesticate the new wave and appropriate it for its own advantage, but as far as we have observed, nothing has been able to stop the flow of the free imagination that the genre has liberated. In 2010, Liu Cixin published the last volume of his “Three-Body” trilogy: Death’s End. It quickly reached the market and became a national bestseller. Han Song published Subway (Ditie 地铁, 2010), one of his most notable and darkest novels, around the same time. Extensive Chinese media coverage on science fiction began near the end of 2010. David Der-­ wei Wang (王德威 b. 1954) lifted science fiction studies to the top level of academic research through delivering a widely influential keynote speech, “From Lu Xun to Liu Cixin” (“Cong Lu Xun dao Liu Cixin” 从鲁迅到刘 慈欣), at Peking University in 2011. Academic journals solicited research articles and reviews about Liu Cixin, Han Song, and other science fiction writers. Mainstream literary journals began to print science fiction, such as People’s Literature(人民文学), which even reprinted four stories by Liu Cixin in 2012. This rapid rise posited challenges both to the genre itself and to the larger literary field. It raised questions about science fiction’s “definition” as a genre, whether its strength came from its uniqueness, its stereotypes, and its distance from the mainstream or whether it has arrived at a pivotal point in a new cultural phase when science fiction came to represent a newness far more prevailing and significant than the genre itself; when new scientific visions and technologies are changing our daily

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lives with artificial intelligence, big data, mobile internet, and metaverse, as if we were now living in a science fiction novel. Marketed as China’s national bestseller when Wall Street Journal made a sensational announcement that China has launched a sf invasion of the US (Geng 2014), The Three-Body Problem crossed national borders smoothly and achieved unrivaled international bestselling scores among all translations of Chinese literature only weeks after its release in the US. Ken Liu (b. 1976), a Chinese-American science fiction writer who established his reputation after winning the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards with one single short story “The Paper Menagerie” (2012), has fine-tuned Liu Cixin’s novels with a smooth combination of the original Chinese text’s dynamism and the stylish accuracy and neatness of American science fiction. Tor Books released The Three-Body Problem to critical acclaims in November 2014, followed by its sequel The Dark Forest (translated by Joel Martinsen) in August 2015, with the final volume of the trilogy Death’s End (translated by Ken Liu) released in August 2016. The publisher’s promotion campaign imitated what happened with The Lord of the Rings or The Hunger Games, and the strategy of releasing the trilogy at a steady pace within a less than three-year time frame was apparently intended to create a similar momentum to entice American readers. Liu’s novels received endorsements from American writers and celebrities ranging from the Utopian novelist Kim Stanley Robinson to the popular fantasy author George R.R. Martin, as well as from President Barack Obama and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The “Three-Body” universe eventually remapped world science fiction through renditions in over a dozen languages. In 2015, Liu Cixin won the Hugo Award for Best Novel as the first non-English author. He also won Spain’s Premios Ignotus award as a non-Spanish writer and Germany’s Kurd Laßwitz Award as a non-­ German writer. On the Chinese New Year’s Day in 2019, the Chinese audiences witnessed the launching of Earth as a planet-size spaceship into deep space, an arresting spectacle visualized through advanced VFX techniques combining live-action footage and computer-generated imagery, which for the first time in Chinese film history achieved a “realistic” representation of the sf wonder on the large screen. The release of The Wandering Earth (Liulang diqiu 流浪地球) in theaters was widely regarded as an exciting moment when Chinese sf reached its maximum visibility. Sf, the marginal and invisible genre, was no longer hidden. It came into the mainstream. The film adaptations of the popular new wave sf works such as Liu Cixin’s

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Three-Body Problem series novels began as early as 2014; numerous projects have been developed since then. But it was the success of The Wandering Earth that eventually gave the Chinese film industry the confidence in the genre. During this past year, The Wandering Earth II made an even more successful impact on the film market. A Chinese domestic version of The Three-Body Problem TV drama series was released in spring 2023, while Netflix has announced the release date of its own “Americanized” version of 3–Body: March 2024. Since the new wave came to the public and Liu Cixin first spoke to a wide audience through television in 2010, his novels have attracted more and more readers to a marvelous world open to more possibilities and alternates beyond the options presented by mainstream literature, social thought, or government policies. He has been particularly fond of reminding Chinese readers to look up into the starry sky and the unknown beyond, the source of inspiration for ideas larger than mundane everyday life. He told an interviewer in 2011: “Everything is uncertain and beyond prediction… So much evidence is shown to us, our reality is very likely completely different from what we know.” In 2015, Han Song wrote an essay to celebrate the magic power of science fiction, echoing Liang Qichao’s words uttered more than a century ago: “Science fiction is a sort of literature that dreams, and it is itself a utopia. It is not wild conjecture, but an imagination based on a certain reality … it is so fortunate for me to encounter science fiction in such a special epoch, because I can therefore dream of more worlds.” Darko Suvin defines the utopian nature of science fiction: “As a minimum, we must demand from [science fiction] that it be wiser than the world it speaks to” (Suvin 36). The world images created by Liu Cixin and Han Song are not necessarily better than the real world, but they try to shed light on realms of “invisibility,” seeking the deeper truism beneath the glossy, shiny surface of reality, pointing to the hideous side of the splendid vision of the universe and the success story of the nation as well as to the unsettling, unnamable darker dimensions in the physics and psychology of our world. When translated into English and other foreign languages, works by Liu Cixin and Han Song present an unconventional, folded image of China. If they are wiser than the world they speak to, the “wisdom” that Chinese science fiction brought into the world is not a cautious optimism but rather a cautious revelation that foregrounds rich possibilities in alternative visions about our worlds. During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Chinese science fiction entered an

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unprecedented new epoch of experimentation and success and represented a new hope for change, a curiosity about the larger world, and a promise of more wonders and revelations for Chinese readers. From here, this genre brought China to the center stage of world literature. In addition to Liu Cixin and Han Song, the new wave writers who emerged around the turn of the twenty-first century also include Wang Jinkang (王晋康 b. 1948), Liu Wenyang (柳文扬 1970–2007), Ling Chen (凌晨 b. 1971), He Xi (何夕 b. 1971), Pan Haitian (潘海天 b. 1975), Jiang Bo (江波 b. 1978), and Zhao Haihong (赵海虹 b. 1977), and a few younger authors still in their twenties at the time, including Fei Dao, Xia Jia (夏笳 b. 1984), Chen Qiufan (陈楸帆 b. 1981), Chi Hui (迟卉 b. 1984), Chang Jia (长铗 b. 1984), Hao Jingfang (郝景芳 b. 1984), Qi Yue (七月 b. 1983), Ma Boyong (马伯庸 b. 1980), Cheng Jingbo (程婧波 b. 1983), Bao Shu (宝树 b. 1980), Zhang Ran (张冉 b. 1981) and Liu Yang (刘洋 b. 1986). These authors have all been translated into English and other foreign languages, such as Chen Qiufan’s Waste Tide (Huangchao 荒 潮, 2018), Bao Shu’s Redemption of Time (Santi X: guanxiang zhi zhou 三 体X:观想之宙, 2019), and Hao Jingfang’s “Folding Beijing” (“Beijing zhedie”北京折疊, 2015) and Vagabond 流浪蒼穹 (2020). They have formed a new force for world science fiction. Since 2010, the year when Liu Cixin’s “Three-Body Trilogy,” an even much younger authors emerged in the so-called post-Three-Body age (hou santi shidai 后三体时代). This new generation has been largely a group of women and nonbinary authors. Their visions of the “Möbius” time-space without beginning or end and their identifications with “chimera” as the monstrous self-other combination (Gu 2020, pp.1–82) create new breakthroughs for the new wave’s posthuman turn that began with Liu Cixin, Chen Qiufan, and Han Song, but these new writers are those who truly make kinship in a nonbinary posthuman universe, with more radical notions about sex, gender, class, cyborgian constructs, transspecies, symbiosis and sympoiesis. These younger writers include Tang Fei (糖匪 b. 1983), Wang Kanyu (王侃瑜 b. 1990), Peng Simeng (彭思萌 b. 1990), Shuangchimu (双翅目 b. 1987), Gu Shi (顾适 b. 1985), Mu Ming (慕明 b. 1988), Duan Ziqi (段子期 b. 1992), Wang Nuonuo (王诺诺 b. 1991), Liao Shubo (廖舒波 b. 1988), and A Que ( 阿缺 b. 1990). The evolving new wave has kept generating new modes of literary representation that shatter what people take for granted, challenge the conventional values, and liberate the imagination to transcend categories and dichotomies, dissolve borders between so many things that Chinese

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science fiction can be viewed as an enormous “spaceship” holding all sorts and species together to lift off from the grounded reality. The Chinese literary universe has widened to include a whole range of new concepts and new sensations: ecological and environmental themes, Anthropocene and its challengers, Chthulucene and transspecies kinship, algorithm and poesis, etc. The impact of the new wave has reached beyond the People’s Republic and reached writers who were not originally science fiction authors, such as two great literary experimentalists: Lo Yi-chin (骆以军 b. 1967) and Dung Kai-cheung (董啟章 b. 1967). In the Sinophone literary world, there are writers already engaged in daring storytelling in the forms of science fiction and dystopian fiction, who respond to a variety of social, political, cultural, ethical and aesthetic questions in their own distinctive voices—such as Chan Koonchung (陈冠中 b. 1952), a Hong Kong writer living in Beijing, and numerous writers from Taiwan: Chi Ta-wei (纪大伟 b. 1972), Hung Ling (洪凌 b. 1971), Egoyan Zheng (伊格言 b. 1977), Wu Ming-yi (吴明益 b. 1971), and Ho Ching-pin (贺景滨 b. 1958).

Chapter Outline In this volume, we present emerging approaches, addressing shifting paradigms in Chinese sf studies, offering a window on fan cultures, internet fiction, gender, eco-criticism, posthumanism, and biomedical discourse. These studies represent a “second wave” of Chinese sf studies, re-­ evaluating the canon of Chinese sf print and cinematic production, and expand the range of critical approaches to the subject. While the structure of the volume is both chronological and theme-focused, readers will notice that there is significant overlap in the historical breadth of individual chapters, illustrating how traditional political and literary inflection points shaped but do not fully account for the various waves of sf literary production analyzed herein. Acknowledging the impossibility of covering the entire breadth of what we now know to be Chinese sf, the editors and authors hope for this volume to be the beginning of a new conversation regarding the relationship between scientific discourse and cultural production in the Sinosphere. Part I consists of four chapters that focus on the earliest science fiction that emerged in the last decade of China’s last imperial dynasty, with special attention to utopian thinking, the revolution in fiction, the question of Chinese technology, and the genre’s making as a representation of the translated modernity. The early history of Chinese sf established some

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enduring features of the genre. New concepts introduced to a reading public with a renewed interest in the form of the novel would establish sf as an avant-garde genre. This section challenges us to consider the meanings of science, the limits of fiction, the implications of empire, and the limitations of translation. Lorenzo Andolfatto’s opening chapter, “Kang Youwei’s Book of the Heavens, and the Porous Epistemological Grounds of Early-Modern Chinese Science Fiction,” starts us off with a consideration of the limits of science and fiction in the late nineteenth century. Andolfatto examines how Kang Youwei’s work, inspired by contemporary western astronomy and articulated in archaic Chinese prose, reconsidered China’s place not just in the geopolitical order, but in the cosmic order. Chapter 3 offers another consideration of the porous nature of science and fiction, and their role in late imperial cosmology. Jia Liyuan’s “Intelligent Humanoid Machines: Imaginations of Physical and Mental Transformation in Late Qing Literature and Their Intellectual Origins” turns from outer space to inner space, examining how the often pseudoscientific discourse of hypnotism and mesmerism, and the vision of the body as a rationalized, mechanical assemblage were acculturated through western source texts and took on its own life in Chinese popular and consumer culture. In Chap. 4, “The King of Electricity from the East: Science, Technology, and the Vision of World Order in Late Qing China,” Li Guangyi examines variations of themes of imperial domination and revanchism in late Qing utopian fiction and science fiction, revealing how late Qing authors considered the question of overcoming the institutional, philosophical, and technological advantages that had allowed the western world and a rapidly westernizing Japan to leap ahead, while China appeared to have remained stagnant. In Chap. 5, “Formal Fictions: ‘Chinese’ ‘Science’ ‘Fiction’ in Translation,” Virginia Conn warns against oversimplifying equivalencies between sf from China and the global sf tradition by reminding readers that the meaning of all three terms is historically and geographically contingent within a given language, and even more contingent in seeking translingual equivalencies across languages. Part II, also consisting of four chapters, examines the genre’s crossover with other media and other genres, with case studies drawn from the late twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century. These chapters showcase the genre’s metamorphosis in the cinematic form as well as in cyberspace. In Chap. 6, “The Writing Editors: Late Qing and Republican Media Professionals as Authors of Science Fiction,” Qiong Yang examines the dual roles of editor-writers in shaping the discourse of scientific

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nationalism, and how their dual role shaped the genre during the Republican era both creatively and practically. In Chap. 7, “Projecting Eco-Futures: Cinematic Visions of Utopian Science and Ecology from the Mao Era to the Deng Era,” Melissa Hosek again challenges limits of sf as a genre, this time asking us to consider how prevailing attitudes toward science and the political help shape visions of environment and ecology by contrasting two films, Breaking with the Old Ideas (1975), produced at the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and Death Ray on a Coral Island (1980), produced during China’s era of “reform and opening up.” In Chap. 8, Hua Li’s “Information, the Body and Humanism in the Chinese Cyber Novel Forty Millennia of Authenticity Cultivation” examines a subset of Chinese sf with strong roots in the Daoist alchemical tradition. The language of mesmerism and electrical currents popular in the early twentieth century has been replaced by upgrades, consciousness uploads and virtual embodiments, as Chinese popular fiction continues to imagine the radical potentials of contemporary technology and their implications for humanity and transcendence of the corporeal body. Online fiction in China has become a massive industry, rarely afforded the cultural cache of print fiction but deeply significant if measured in terms of available content of economic impact. Chapter 9, “Open Up Your Brain Hole: Spatial Imaginaries in Chinese Online Science Fiction,” gives us a window into one salient feature cutting across the vast swathe of “fake sci­fi” appearing in online: narrative considerations of dimensions outside of the three spatial dimensions we are familiar with from middle school geometry, arguing that popular online fiction exists in a unique space outside the vaunted halls of printed and globally canonized “serious” Chinese sf that allows it to speak to cultural understandings of the interplay between physics, text, and the imagination in unique ways. With inquiries into topics such as gender, posthumanism, and heterotopia, the last four chapters, which make Part III, focus on contemporary science fiction, including major authors such as Han Song as well as the Sinophone avant-garde writers experimenting with science fictionality. In Chap. 10, “Of Illness and Illusion: The Chaosmology of Han Song’s Hospital Trilogy,” Jannis Jizhou Chen examines the philosophical implications of illness and regimes of health in Han Song’s Hospital trilogy. Chen examines Han Song’s work in terms of the “chaosmos” of the hospital, a delirious space where the relationship between illness, history, fiction, transcendence, and reality itself is under constant negotiation. In Chap. 11, “Liu Cixin and the Cosmic Pastoral,” Gwennael Gaffric examines the

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harmonies and dissonances of the author’s work with the contemporary discourse of the “Chinese Dream,” through close reading of the presence of pastoral aesthetics and ethics in the author’s work. Turning to the existential anxieties, disorientation, and pressure felt by China’s post-80s generation, Chap. 12, Fredericke Schneider-Vielsäcker’s “Bodies in Transformation: The Politics of Post-80s Science Fiction Authors Chi Hui, Chen Qiufan, and Zhang Ran,” again examines how literary depictions of physical and mental conditions are used to represent sociopolitical conditions. Chapter 13, “The Posthuman and the Neo-Baroque in Taiwan Science Fiction,” moves beyond the PRC as the gravitational center of contemporary Chinese sf to examine the relationship between heterotopic “other spaces” of Taiwanese sf and Taiwan itself as a heterotopia. The history, aesthetics, and sociopolitical implications of Chinese sf have reoriented the field of Chinese literary studies through new paradigms and research methods for good reason. 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. A form of speculative literature, 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. The genre unfolds invisible and hidden dimensions of and beyond China’s reality and weaves together new trends in sciences and technologies, ethics and aesthetics, and public and private lives.

References Broderick, Damien. “New Wave and Backwash: 1960–1980.” The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn, Cambridge UP, 2006, pp. 48–63. Chen, Duxiu. “Jinggao qingnian” 敬告青年 [Admonition to the Youth]. Xin qingnian 新青年 [New Youth], vol.1, no.1, 1915, pp.1–6. Geng, O. “Chinese Sci-Fi Novel, ‘The Three-Body Problem,’ Touches Down in US.” Wall Street Journal, 4 November, 2014, https://www.wsj.com/ articles/chinese-­sci-­fi-­novel-­the-­three-­body-­problem-­touches-­down-­in-­u-­s-­ 1415122369. Hollinger, Virginia. “Genre vs. Mode.” The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction, edited by Rob Latham, Oxford UP, 2014, pp. 139–154. Isaacson, Nathaniel. Celestial Empire: the Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2017.

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———. “Locating Kexue Xiangsheng (Science Crosstalk) in Relation to the Selective Tradition of Chinese Science Fiction.” Osiris, vol. 34, no.1, Spring 2019, pp.139–157. Li, Hua. Chinese Science Fiction During the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw (1978–1983). Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2021. Lovene, Paola. Tales of Future Past: Anticipation and the End of Literature in Contemporary China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. Jia, Liyuan. “Soul-stealing Sand”: War and Time in Xin jiyuan [The New Era]” translated and edited by Nathaniel Isaacson. Science Fiction Studies, vol. 45, no. 1, 2018, pp.1–23. Jiang, Jing. Found in Translation: “New People” in Twentieth-Century Chinese Science Fiction. Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Asian Studies, 2021. Jones, Andrew. Developmental Fairy Tales: Evolutionary Thinking and Modern Chinese Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Kerslake, Patricia. Science Fiction and Empire. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007. Milner, Andrew. Locating Science Fiction. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012. Qu Nan 曲楠. “Xiyou youli er qunao: wan Qing “fanxin xiaoshuo” zhong de Xiyouji” 西游有理而取闹 [A rational, riotous journey West: late Qing re-writes of Journey to the West]. Hanyu wenxue yanjiu, vol. 7, no.1, 2016, pp. 16–25. Rieder, John. Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008. Ren Dongmei 任冬梅. “Minguo ‘kexue xiaoshuo’ chutan” 民国‘科学小说’初探 [A preliminary investigation of Republican-era ‘science fiction’]. Liyun xuekan 励耘学刊, no. 2, 2019, pp. 278–291. Song, Mingwei and Theodore Huters, editors. The Reincarnated Giant: An Anthology of Twenty-First-Century Chinese Science Fiction. New  York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2018. ———. The New Wave of Chinese Science Fiction: History, Poetics, Text 中国科幻新 浪潮:历史，诗学，文本. Shanghai: Shanghai Literature & Arts Publishing House, 2020. ———. Fear of Seeing: A Poetics of Chinese Science Fiction. New  York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2023. Wu, Dingbo. “Fandom in China.” Science Fiction Fandom, edited by Sanders, Joseph L, Greenwood Press, 1994, pp. 133–136. ———. “Looking Backward: An Introduction to Chinese Science Fiction.” Wu and Murphy, Science Fiction from China, edited by Patrick Dennis Murphy and Dingbo Wu, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 1989, pp. xi–xli. Wu Yan 吴岩. Kehuan wenxue lungang 科幻文学论纲 [Science Fiction Studies Reader]. Chongqing: Chongqing chubanshe, 2011.

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Zhang, Feng. “Shei shi xia yige Yao Haijun: zhongguo huanxiang lei Fanzine huigu” 谁是下一个姚海军:中国幻想类 Fanzine 回顾 [Who will be the next Yao Haijun: a review of Chinese speculative fiction fanzines]. Xin huan jie 新幻 界 [World of new fantasy] no.1, 2009, pp. 37–40. Zhang, Jie. “Death Ray on a Coral Island as China’s First Science Fiction Film.” Fritzsche, S. ed., The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film, edited by Fritesche Sonja, Liverpool UP, 2014, pp.39–55. Zheng, Wenguang. “Kexue wenyi zatan” 科学文艺杂谈 [A miscellany on literature and art about science]. Zuojia lun kexue wenyi, Zuojia lun kexue wenyi 作 家论科学文艺 [Writers on literature and art about science], vol. 1, edited by Huang Yi, Jiangsu kexue jishu chubanshe, 1980, pp. 80–95. ———. “Tantan kexue huanxiang xiaoshuo” 谈谈科学幻想小说 [On science fiction]. Dushu yuebao 读书月报 [Reading monthly], no. 3, 1956, pp. 21–22. Zhongguo hongyang dangshi yanjiu shi 中共中央党史研究室, ed. “Zhongguo gongchandang dashi ji 1963” 中国共产党大事记 1963 [Chronology of major events of the Chinese Communist Party: 1963]. Zhongguo gongchandang xinwen 中国共产党新闻 [News about the Chinese Communist Party]. http:// cpc.people.com.cn/GB/64162/64164/4416060.html. Accessed 12, August 2022. ———. “Zhongguo gongchandang dashi ji 1978” 中国共产党大事记 1978 [Chronology of major events of the Chinese Communist Party: 1978]. Zhongguo gongchandang xinwen [News about the Chinese Communist Party]. http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/64162/64164/4416109.html. Accessed 12, August, 2022.

PART I

Contesting Science and Fiction

CHAPTER 2

Kang Youwei’s Book of the Heavens and the Porous Epistemological Grounds of Early-modern Chinese Science Fiction Lorenzo Andolfatto

Introduction The “science fiction” binomial has always implied a certain orientation between its two constitutive terms. Sf, in other words, is generally understood as fiction whose content is informed by the possibilities of science, much less as scientific writing that benefits from the affordances of literature. Early attempts at giving definition to sf as a genre unfolded along such orientation. Marking the first occurrence of the label in English, William Wilson wrote in 1851 that “[f]iction has lately been chosen as a means for familiarizing Science,” advocating then for the publication of “other works of Science-Fiction… in which the revealed truths of Science may be given, interwoven with a pleasing story which may itself be

L. Andolfatto (*) Department of Geosciences, Université de Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. Song et al. (eds.), Chinese Science Fiction, Studies in Global Science Fiction, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53541-3_2

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poetical and true.”1 The merveilles scientifiques of Jules Verne and the “scientific romances” of James de Mille, C. H. Hinton, and later H. G. Wells further consolidated the linkage between the novel as form and science as its matter, so much so that when “scientifiction” was recognized qua sf, Hugo Gernsback conclusively defined it as “romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision.”2 The trajectory of this genre as it developed in late-imperial China was no different. Informed by mediated notions of Western science and the circulation of American and European literary works in translation, the late Qing xiaoshuo 小說 wore kexue 科學 on its sleeve. Kexue xiaoshuo 科 學小説 were advertised and discussed in popular magazines such as Xinmin congbao 新民叢報, Xin xiaoshuo 新小説, and Yueyue xiaoshuo 月 月小说; this label was deployed in the front matters of new publications; and the new genre it referred to was praised by prominent intellectual figures of the time. Great expectations were bestowed upon it, as if national salvation were at stake on its pages: “Philosophic-scientific novels,” Liang Qichao 梁啓超 wrote from Japan in 1902, “make use of fiction to explain philosophy and science”;3 “In order to lead the Chinese people forward,” a young Lu Xun 魯迅 argued around the same time, “one must start from science fiction.”4 Science fiction, Bao Tianxiao 包天笑 concluded in 1903, was “the vanguard of the civilized world.”5 Still, fiction that adopted science as its subject matter was bound to replicate on its own terms the discourses within which such matter was itself embedded. By the time “science fiction” and kexue xiaoshuo came into their own as recognizable genres, the apparatus of science had long been mobilized in support of colonialist projects of Western supremacy, which stressed “the centrality of scientific and technological accomplishments as proof of the superiority of Europeans over

 William Wilson, A Little Earnest Book upon a Great Old Subject (London: Darton and Co., Holborn Hill, 1851), 137–40. 2  Hugo Gernsback, “A New Sort of Magazine,” Amazing Stories 1, no. 1 (April 1926): 3. 3  Liang Qichao 梁啓超, “Zhongguo weiyi zhi wenxuebao Xin xiaoshuo” 中國唯一之文學 報《新小說》, Xinmin congbao 新民叢報 14 (1902), viii. 4  Lu Xun 魯迅, “Yuejie lüxing bianyan” 月界旅行辨言, in Lu Xun quanji 魯迅全集, vol. 11 (Beijing: Lu Xun quanji chubanshe, 1948), 10. Originally published in Lu Xun 魯迅 (tr.), Yuejie Lüxing bianyan 月界旅行 (Tokyo: Dongjing jinhua she, 1903). 5  Bao Tianxiao 包天笑 (tr.), Tie shijie 鐵世界 (Shanghai: Wenming shuju, 1903), 1. 1

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non-Western peoples.”6 The “civilized world” that Bao Tianxiao praised in the preface to his translation of Verne’s Les Cinq cents millions de la Bégum was one that effectively excluded him, while Liang Qichao’s and Lu Xun’s apologies of this genre as a means for saving the nation were undercut by “a subaltern anxiety to advance and to be recognized” in the modern world order.7 Against such biases, it is perhaps the case to look at science fiction from what Pascale Casanova (after Fernand Braudel) would call another “vantage point”8—to rethink, that is, the relation between “science” and “fiction,” kexue and xiaoshuo, and ultimately gezhi 格致 and wen 文. Whereas conventionally understood science fiction mobilizes science for the purpose of literary speculation, what I intend to foreground here is a type of speculative writing that mobilizes wen—“embellished written expression [linked] to the traditional ideal of personal and social cultivation in the broadest sense”9—in order to expand the horizons of scientific enquiry. Central to this thought experiment is Kang Youwei’s 康有爲 Zhutian shu 諸天書 (Book of the Heavens; also known as Zhutian jiang 諸天講, or Lectures on the Heavens). Ultimately, the goal of this opening essay is to show that, beyond the usual tensions between foreign inputs and autochthonous creation, the overlapping of the domains of science and literature in late-imperial China generated more porous and fertile epistemological grounds.

Sf Adjacencies For those who are familiar with the “cacophonic” history of the Chinese novel during the early-modern period,10 the retracement of sf back to the pivotal figure of Kang Youwei should not come as a complete surprise. 6  Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 194. 7  Zhang, Joy Y., and Saheli Datta Burton, The Elephant and the Dragon in Contemporary Life Sciences (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022): 19. 8  “This change of ‘vantage point’…implies a modification of the instruments used to measure, analyze, appraise, understand, and compare texts.” Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004): xii. 9  Theodore Huters, “A New Way of Writing: The Possibilities for Literature in Late Qing China, 1895–1908,” Modern China 14, no. 3 (1988): 246. 10  David Der-wei Wang, Fin-de-siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849–1911 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 14 passim.

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Kang’s intellectual figure and thought align in many indirect ways with the developments of this genre in late-imperial China: from his tutelage of Liang Qichao, who would call for a “revolution in fiction” via the publication—among other things—of scientific novels;11 his endorsement of sf-­ adjacent texts such as Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (in Timothy Richard’s abridged translation);12 to the bold utopian vision he put forth with his celebrated treatise Datong shu 大同書 (The book of great unity), whose core ideas resonated with the works of important writers of the early-modern period such as Bihe Guanzhuren 碧荷館主人, Wu Jianren 吳趼人, and Lu Shi’e 陸士諤.13 Kang Youwei was born in Nanhai 南海 county, Guangdong, on March 19, 1858—the eight year of Xianfeng 咸豐. The prodigious offspring of a declining genteel family, he began his formal education at a very young age, first under the guidance of his grandfather and then of renowned Confucian scholar Zhu Ciqi 朱次琦. Dissatisfied with the traditional curriculum and drawn instead to new books such as Wei Yu’s 魏源 Haiguo tuzhi 海國圖志 (Illustrated treatise on the maritime kingdoms, 1843), Xu Jiyu’s 徐繼畬 Yinghuan zhilüe 瀛環志略 (Brief description of the world, 1849), and Li Gui’s 李圭 Huanyou diqiu xin lu 環游地球新錄 (New account of a tour of the world, 1877), he soon devoted his attention to Western learning. These new interests, corroborated by the occasional encounter with “the elegance of the buildings of the foreigners, the cleanliness of the streets, the efficiency of their police” in Hong Kong and Shanghai,14 led Kang to develop a complex, cosmopolitan worldview. Opposing with equal conviction the indiscriminate Westernization of the 11  See Liang’s manifestos “Yiyin zhengzhi xiaoshuo xu” 譯印政治小說序, published in the first issue of Qingyibao 淸議報 in 1898, and “Lun xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhi guanxi” 論小說與 群治之關係 (On the relationship between fiction and the government of the people), published in the first issue of Xin xiaoshuo 新小說 in 1902. 12  “The American book Bainian yi jiao [Looking Backward],” Kang commented, “is a reflection of Datong” (美國人所著《百年一覺》，是大同影子). Kang Youwei 康有為, Kang Nanhai xiansheng koushou 康南海先生口說 (Guangzhou: Zhongshan daxue chubanshe, 1985), 31. 13  See in this regard Lorenzo Andolfatto, Hundred Days’ Literature: Chinese Utopian Fiction at the End of Empire, 1902–1910 (Leiden: Brill, 2019). 14  Kang Youwei 康有為, Kang Nanhai zipian nianpu 康南海自編年譜, manuscript, Beijing tushuguan 北京圖書館, https://archive.org/details/02084772.cn/page/n48/ mode/2up (accessed January 11, 2022), [41–42; pagination not available in the original]; translation by Lo Jung-­pang in Lo Jung-pang (ed.), K’ang Yu-Wei: A Biography and a Symposium (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1967), 36.

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country but also any form of reactionary attachment to tradition, he adopted a gradualist view of history (according to which China’s salvation depended on its progressive integration in the modern world order) that was prompted forward by utopian expectations rooted on the classical notion of datong 大同 (universal harmony) recuperated from the “Li yun” 禮運 (“ritual cycles”) section of the Liji 禮記 (Book of Rites). Kang Youwei would develop the main tenets of his political philosophy in Kongzi gaizhi kao 孔子改制考 (On Confucius as a reformer, 1897) and the above-mentioned Datong shu,15 but the seeds of his idiosyncratic thought can be found already in his early writing, such as in the Book of the Heavens. Kang began to write this treatise at the age of twenty-eight (c. 1886), soon after having “turned his mind to the study of the Western sciences.”16 In particular, his exposure to Western astronomical knowledge—likely via the translation of John F.  W. Herschel’s Outlines of Astronomy (Tan tian 談天) from 1859 and the astronomical bulletins published in the missionary journal Liuhe congtan 六合叢談 (Shanghae Serial)17—represented for him a moment of veritable “cognitive estrangement.” His reckoning with the infinitely more-than-human spatial and temporal scales hypothesized from modern astronomical observations led him to the conclusion that “other worlds exist in other universes, in other galaxies, worlds like our earth, worlds which parallel our physical selves.”18 This realization had a resounding effect on him, as Kang further elaborated in his autobiography: My speculations went farther. I imagined what it would be like five hundred years or a thousand years after the achievement of world unity, what kind of future world it would be, what changes would have taken place in the soul of man, in human anatomy, in communications with the moon and the stars.

15  As Hsiao Kung-chuan commented, “[t]he Kai-chih k’ao and the Ta-t’ung shu do not neutralize each other but represent two levels of thought”; and “One must, in short, be constantly in touch both with the present and the future.” Hsiao Kung-chuan, A Modern China and a New World: Kang Yu-wei, Reformer and Utopian, 1858–1927 (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1975): 101 and 194. 16  Kang, Nianpu, [48]; tr. adapted from Lo, Symposium, 38. 17  On Kang’s possible sources of Western astronomical knowledge, see also Lin Qingyuan 林庆元, “Kang Youwei yu Zhutian jiang” 康有为与《诸天讲》, Lixue yuekan 5 (1997): 95–103. 18  Kang, Nianpu, [55]; tr. Lo, Symposium, 40.

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I speculated on the climates, objects, beings, governments and culture, rites, music and literature, houses, and food on other stars and in other worlds.19

These speculations eventually sedimented into the early drafts of the Book of the Heavens, which Kang would reprise shortly before his death and assemble into the book’s final structure of fifteen chapters framed by a preface, an introduction, and a series of fifteen charts depicting the topographical features of the moon. As Kang restated in the preface: At the age of 28, while living in the Danru Pavilion, north of Mount Xiqiao in the province of Guangdong under the Milky Way, I read the Lixiang kaocheng and observed the sky every night. Having procured myself a telescope, I would point it at Mars and marvel at its craters and plains, wondering whether there would be life there. I inferred that, the heavens being infinite in number, they then must be hosting an infinite number of peoples, governments and religions, customs and traditions, rituals, tunes, and written records; thus, I wrote the Book of the Heavens.20

The Book of the Heavens fits squarely in the ancient-style (guwen 古文) tradition of expository and didactic prose. Like a leishu 類書 centered on the topic of cosmology, it also contains extensive, chapter-length quotations from other works. Its contents vary widely, spanning from Kang’s account of Chinese and Western astronomical traditions (the former of which he summarizes via lengthy verbatim quotations from the Zhoubi 周髀),21 his refutation of astrological thinking and superstition, to discussion of the most recent astronomical findings and theories from Europe. As Kung-chuan Hsiao observes, chapters 10, 11, and 15 represent the most peculiar sections of the book, containing Buddhist- and Taoist-­ inflected reflections on the nature of the “240 heavens” (zhutian erbai sishi tian 諸天二百四十天; ch. 10) and philosophical-cosmological arguments in favor of the existence of god (chapters 11 and 15). This  Kang, Nianpu, [56]; tr. Lo, Symposium, 41.  Kang Youwei 康有為, Kang Nanhai xiansheng yizhu huikan 康南海先生遗著汇刊, vol. 18, Zhutian jiang 諸天講, ed. Jiang Guilin 蒋贵麟 (Taipei: Hongye shuju, 1987), 3–4. This is a facsimile reproduction of the Book of the Heavens’ woodblock edition from 1930, which had no punctuation; the passages directly quoted in this essay are punctuated according to the Zhonghua shuju edition of the book from 1990. Unless otherwise specified, all translations from this work are mine. 21  Dating back to the Zhou 周 dynasty, the Zhoubi 周髀 is one of the oldest astronomical texts from the Chinese tradition. 19 20

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variety—Hsiao further remarks—is also reflected in the book’s multiple registers, which shift from the “straight recitation of scientific facts” to “flights of sheer imagination” and “curious display of poetic fancy” in the form of poems and songs about the stars.22 In its free-form conflation of raw data and scientific facts with sudden bouts of poetic creativity, lyrical descriptions of natural phenomena, theo-philosophical excursuses, and didactic intentions, Kang’s Book well represents wen’s growing pains during the nineteenth century at the intersection of poetry and learning, self-­ cultivation and nation-edification, and the Chinese literati’s coming to term with foreign (Western) forms and matters.23 Kang’s early excursuses in the domains of futurology and astronomy (if not astrobiology and astrosociology) went for a long time unnoticed—and to some extent they still are.24 Reprised and completed only in 1926, the Book of the Heavens would not be published until 1929, when Wu Xianzi 伍憲子 (1881–1959) took over the posthumous publication of his master’s work. As Wu noted in the book’s foreword, Kang’s speculations were not immediately well received. Liang Qichao himself dismissed the book as forgettable juvenilia: [The Book of the Heavens] contains much of what scientists have said, but it also contains things which they do not say. The Zhuangzi speaks of “transcendental peregrination” without speaking of science. Men of later generations might not regard it as “transcendental peregrination” and might criticize our departed teacher for his shortcomings in talking about science.25

But others were more lenient toward Kang’s early work. Pan Junmian 潘君勉 (1882–1968), another of Kang’s acolytes, perceptively remarked: What harm could come [from its publication]? Our departed teacher explored the heavens with his spirit and indulged at times in flights of fancy,  Hsiao, “Excursion,” 382–383.  See in this regard the chapter “Wenxue and New Practices of Writing in Post-1840 China” in Theodore Huters, Taking China to the World: The Cultural Production of Modernity (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2022): 53–90. 24  With the exception of Hsiao’s essay “Kang Yu-wei’s Excursion into Science: Lectures on the Heavens” collected in Jung-pang Lo, K’ang Yu-Wei: A Biography and a Symposium from 1967, there is virtually no scholarship in English about the Book of the Heavens. Queries in Chinese on databases like CNKI yield but a handful of results, all of them of the introductory kind. 25  Kang, Zhutian jiang, 1; tr. by Kung-chuan Hsiao in Lo, Symposium, 375. 22 23

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from which he drafted this book. Wouldn’t it be reductive to judge his efforts strictly according to science?26

Pan’s remarks rang true then, when prompting Wu Xianzi to publish the book, as they do now. It is indeed once we decouple the Book of the Heavens from the strict tenets of science—that is, from the idea that the epistemological relevance of Kang’s work was and is dependent on its compliance with the established truths of science—that this text opens up to more productive lines of inquiry.27 In fact, one would be hard-pressed not to see in Kang’s musings about the future of the world, the existence of alien forms of life and civilizations, and the shape of humans to come, a variety of speculative thinking that is akin to Ernst Bloch’s utopian “forward dreaming” and “hoping beyond the day which has become,” but  structured at the same time by rational cognition.28 Read as such, Kang’s Book of the Heavens maps quite meaningfully onto what we have come to understand today as science fiction.

On Reading Through Sf This is not an attempt to rewrite the history of sf, nor to attribute any sort of conscious science-fictional ideation to Kang Youwei himself. Rather, it is an attempt at thinking with the notion of sf in relation to the history of this genre in late-imperial China and the renewed popularity of Chinese-­ language sf as of late. Chinese sf has been steadily growing in popularity since the early 1990s, when a “lonely hidden army” (jimo de fubing 寂寞 的伏兵29) of writers rescued this kind of writing from the long slumber in  Ibid.  In this regard, Wu Xianzi further commented: “A thousand years from now, people will laugh at the immaturity of today’s science, so if we were to hold onto it [now] as absolute truth, how different such an attitude would be from holding onto the old pre-Copernican belief that the Sun revolved around the Earth and that the latter did not move? The universe is vast and full of secrets and wonders, so much so that our modest scientific knowledge of today cannot explain it exhaustively. How can we rely on it then to cast judgement on the Book of the Heavens?” Kang, Zhutian jiang, 1–2. 28  Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope, trans. Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995), 10. 29  Fei Dao 飛氘 quoted in Song Mingwei, “Representations of the Invisible: Chinese Science Fiction in the Twenty-First Century,” in The Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literatures, ed. Carlos Rojas and Andrea Bachner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 546–566. 26 27

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which it fell during the early years of the PRC. Despite the orientalist overtones and problematic attributions of “Chineseness” that have been accompanying the circulation of sf works by Chinese authors worldwide since,30 “Chinese” sf’s increased symbolic value has opened up a productive debate around the affordances of this genre—around “what functions literature can be made to serve beyond being experienced and analyzed.”31 With my reading of Kang’s Book of the Heavens as sf, I am following Mingwei Song’s intimation of “reading as”—that is, of understanding “sf” not so much as a codified genre but rather as a poetic filter to be mobilized for approaching a larger variety of texts. Looking back at Lu Xun’s canonical Kuangren riji 狂人日記 (“A Madman’s Diary,” 1918) through the estranging filter of sf, Song restates the cognitive potential of sf as a poetic language that leads the reader to “sense the realness” of an otherwise invisible reality by means of subverting what is accepted for real in the first place (in the case of the “Diary,” traditional affective structures, received notions of common sense, and outdated social customs).32 I further anchor my analysis to Seo-young Chu’s science-fictional theory of representation, which in turn informs my appeal to the category of science-­ fictional sublime as elaborated by Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. Reading the Book of the Heavens through the lens of sf does not imply categorizing it as such; rather, sf provides here an analytic framework for generating new meaning from an otherwise forgotten piece of writing, for casting new light on the historical period from which this genre emerged. In her book Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep, Seo-young Chu rejects conventional definitions of sf as a mode of non-realistic writing that “operates beyond mimesis,” defining it instead as a “representational technology [that] generate[s] mimetic accounts of cognitively estranging referents,” and which “render[s] cognitively estranging referents available

30  See Gwennaël Gaffric, “Chinese Dreams: (Self-)Orientalism and Post-Orientalism in the Reception and Translation of Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Trilogy,” Journal of Translation Studies 3, no. 1 (2019): 117–37. 31  Peter Khost, Rhetor Response: A Theory and Practice of Literary Affordance (Louisville, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2018): 3. 32  Song Mingwei 宋明煒, “‘Kuangren riji’ shi kehuan xiaoshuo ma?” 〈狂人日記〉是科幻小 說嗎?, in Xia Zhiqing, Li Oufan, Liu Zaifu: Dangdai renwen de san ge fangxiang 夏志清， 李歐梵，劉再復:當代人文的三個方向, ed. David Der-wei Wang, Ji Jin, and Liu Jianmei (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 2020), 277.

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for representation.”33 For Chu, describing the cognitive strangeness of something like a time-machine is not qualitatively different than describing, say, a bicycle; the difference between a realistic account of bike riding and a science-fictional account of time traveling rather lies in the “depictive intensity” of the representational work required to make these referents cognizable. When a text, by virtue of its setting, plot, or characters, calls for such representational/cognitive work to be performed (by both writer and reader), we enter the domain of sf. Chu’s approach does away with the categorization of sf as a genre defined by its own specific set of referents (in other words, with the notion that sf is about future scenarios, visionary technologies, alien forms of life, etc.), and foregrounds it instead as a cognitive tool that is geared toward the rational re-cognition of that which is estranging. Sf is a quintessentially modern genre: if the condition of modernity is characterized—as Terry Eagleton wrote—by “fissurings and estrangements,”34 then sf is indeed the genre that is best suited for representing it. In fact, “the fissurings and estrangements of modernity” describe quite well the intellectual climate inhabited by Kang Youwei. By the late nineteenth century, the Qing empire had long been suffering the consequences of its condition of semicolonial subjugation by encroaching foreign powers. Repeated military defeats starting from the debacle of the first Opium War; the loss of control over the country’s territory, infrastructures, and institutions;35 and the erosion of traditional Chinese thought as the primary system of reference for making sense of the present generated a condition of diffused estrangement that took the intellectual and ruling class of the time a long time to address. As this condition exacerbated at the turn of the century, (Western) science became the chief conduit for—as per Yan Fu’s 嚴復 well-known formulation—“making the nation rich and

33  Chu Seo-young, Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep: A Science-fictional Theory of Representation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010): 2 and 73. 34  Terry Eagleton, “The Contradictions of Postmodernism,” New Literary History 28, no. 1 (1997): 3. 35   On late-imperial China’s condition of semi-colonial subjugation, see e.g. Jürgen Osterhammel, “Semi-colonialism and Informal Empire in Twentieth-century China: Towards a Framework of Analysis,” in Imperialism and After: Continuities and Discontinuities, ed. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Jürgen Osterhammel (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986): 290–314.

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powerful.”36 Underpinned by neo-Confucian beliefs concerning the moral virtue of “investigating things to extend knowledge” (gewu zhizhi 格物致 知), intertwined with Darwinian/Spencerian anxieties of national extinction, and charged with all-encompassing expectations, science—as Wang Hui argued—became a “cosmogramma” geared toward the salvation of China and its proper positioning in the modern world and the cosmos at large.37 Now, Wang Hui’s “cosmogrammatic” conceptualization of science during the late-imperial period and Seo-young Chu’s mimetic/representational understanding of sf allow for the triangulation of Kang Youwei’s Book of the Heavens as science fiction. Both science and sf emerge here as languages geared toward the cognitive reeling in of estranging circumstances: the former as a “rational methodology” or technique (shu 術 as per Yan Fu’s terminology) devised to “determine the ultimate direction (the true, the good, and the beautiful) of cosmic movement and show clearly the basic norms (from political to moral) for how people should think and act”;38 the latter as a “representational technology… for thinking experimentally and productively about the representation of reality,” in a historical moment in which reality had become estranging and how to move forward unclear.39 Both these languages enabled speculation beyond their original domains: late Qing Westernized gezhi by mobilizing scientific thought for moral, social, and political pursuits; sf as “representational technology” for making sense of an ever-changing, disjointed present. Kang’s Book of the Heavens partook in both endeavors: by “exploring the heavens” as a work of astronomy by a Confucian scholar, it contributed (quite literally) to the development of the late Qing “cosmogramma” of science; in its attempt to “render available for representation” the new realities outlined by modern astronomical knowledge, it operated like sf.

36  Yan Fu 嚴復, “Jiuwang jue lun” 救亡決論 (On our salvation); translation by Shen Guowei in “Francis Bacon in Yan Fu’s Tianyan lun,” Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia 7 (2016): 53. 37  Wang Hui, “The Fate of ‘Mr. Science’ in China: The Concept of Science and Its Application in Modern Chinese Thought,” in Tani Barlow (ed.), Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia (New York: Duke University Press, 1997): 72. 38  Ibid. 39  Chu, Metaphors, 3.

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Kang Youwei’s Excursions into Science Fiction In this section I want to focus on two elements in Kang Youwei’s book that the poetic filter of sf most clearly brings into relief. These are Kang’s cosmological view of planet Earth and its inhabitants, and his speculations about the existence of Martians. On the one hand, Kang’s writing is informed by a sense of wonder and estrangement that, triggered by the novum-like “cognitive event” of his discovery of Western astronomy, 40 is via the same channel (science) reframed back into cognition; on the other, his writing is motivated by the urgency to instill these feelings in the mind of the reader, as if to shock them into seeing the world anew. In the Book of the Heavens, this twofold rhetorical movement of estrangement and re-­ cognition is mediated by science and the (science-fictional) notion of the sublime. In his book The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay argues for the aesthetic category of the sublime as one of the most distinctive elements of sf as a “mode of thought and art.” The sublime, Csicsery-­ Ronay argues, is bound to follow the introduction of the science-fictional novum as an intense affective response to the “shock of imaginative expansion” engendered by the latter. Yet unlike in other forms of art and genres whose aim is to elicit such response, the objects of science-fictional sublime are “all mediated by science… they are understood, discovered, or invented through it, and their mysteriousness is constrained by this.”41 Science emerges here as a twofold discourse: on the one hand, it elicits extraordinary responses by bringing about awe-inspiring objects (e.g., a galaxy through a telescope; a technological marvel; the possibility of a distant civilization); on the other, it provides the cognitive means to explain the nature of such objects and of our reaction to them. A similar, twofold “attitude” (to borrow a term used by Csicsery-Ronay) informs the writing of the Book of the Heavens. Kang’s reflections on the nature of the heavens and humanity’s place in them begin from a condition of science-induced sublime. In chapter 2 of the Book of the Heavens, which immediately follows a “general discussion” (in chapter 1) about the shortcomings of traditional Chinese astronomy, Kang indulges in a disquisition on “the joys of human life on Earth” (人 40  “The novum in Suvin’s formulation is principally a cognitive event; it changes the way the world is understood.” Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2008): 147. 41  Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Seven Beauties, 5, 146, and 161.

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生于地之樂) that is aimed at eliciting a strong affective response from the reader: Lofty peaks and vast oceans, rows of mountain chains the color of jade, rivers embroidering the plains with billowing purple-blue waters as far as the eye can see: we are immersed in an awe-inspiring multitude of plants, birds and animals, insects and fish; life grows from the egg, the womb, and from moisture42 into extraordinary forms and different shapes, coexisting by the billions, flying through the air—Isn’t this what we call Earth? Above, beautiful clouds of many colors form and dissipate, embellishing the wind-swept sky; roars of thunder follow streaks of lightning, and the pouring rains draw rainbows as the sun’s light filters through the hazy mists of the atmosphere. The sun and the moon shine in the sky, generating and nurturing all living things, delighting the heart and pleasing the eye, nourishing and fulfilling the body. Born in this place, we do not need to look outside of it for anything else, nor, basking in its vastness, to fabricate anything in addition to it: Isn’t this the utmost joy?43

Like a hypothetical scientist, Kang Youwei looks at the Earth through the lens of a speculative telescope that makes it appear like an awe-­inspiring alien planet. His evocation of the sublime is here functional to the foregrounding of the philosophical project underlying the Book of the Heavens: the decentering of human experience and the rejection of anthropocentrism in favor of a broader cosmological worldview in which humans, “who are born on Earth, are nonetheless creatures of the heavens and inhabitants of the sky, together with all the millions of heavenlings [tianren 天人] dwelling in the 160 thousand galaxies.”44 Kang Youwei’s cosmological reterritorialization of human experience gestures at what Patricia Kerslake defined as one of the “central structural tensions” in the domain of sf: the representation of the Self via the demarcation of the Other.45 This tension reemerges in chapter 5 of the Book of the Heavens. After dedicating four chapters to matter-of-factly accounts of the Earth, the Milky Way, and the Sun’s eight planets (Pluto would not be discovered until 1930), Kang delves back into the realm of pure 42  A reference to the four modes of birth (Sisheng 四生; Sanskrit: Catur yoni चतुर्योनि) through which life arises according to traditional Buddhist teachings. 43  Kang, Zhutian jiang, 43. 44  Kang, Zhutian jiang, 44. 45  Patricia Kerslake, Science Fiction and Empire (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007), 8 passim.

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speculation by discussing the existence of life on Mars. Extrapolating freely from Percival Lowell’s (1855–1916) hypothesis that “there were present on Mars beings with a civilization more or less comparable with that of the human race,” as well as from Giovanni Schiaparelli’s (1835–1910) claims about the presence of “canals” or channels on its surface,46 Kang postulates with his trademark confidence that: Since there are artificial channels and ditches there, the intelligence of those who built them must be very high. Their bodies must differ greatly from ours, in relation to the food they eat and the atmospheric pressure [of their planet]. They would not necessarily have the same bone structures that we have; they probably have a circulatory system of sorts, and seven or eight limbs. Their brain power must be superior, and their heads provided with exceedingly sharp eyes.

Although working from second-hand information (such as astronomical bulletins and compendia circulated in translation), Kang seems particularly eager to defend the hypothesis of the existence of intelligent life on Mars. On another section titled “On the fallacy of arguing that there is no life on Mars due to its low temperatures,” he continues: Mars is an old planet; the craftmanship [of its inhabitants] must be refined. There must be wireless electronic devices to communicate with our earth and other planets. It should be possible to gain information concerning the details of its people, the contours of its mountains and streams, the varieties of its fauna and flora, the novelty of its culture, the divisions of its territory, the wonders of its government and customs. There should be things that go beyond our imagination and may serve to yield new knowledge to us earthlings.47

It is worth noting that Kang refrains here from othering his hypothetical Martians; if he does so, this is rather an inclusive othering whose object is not so much the alien but the self. As he would write in the Book’s introduction, 46  Lowell quoted in Hsiao Kung-chuan, “Kang Yu-wei’s Excursion into Science: Lectures on the Heavens,” in Lo, Symposium, 385. As Hsiao remarks: “K’ang’s overenthusiastic acceptance of Lowell’s view was no more credulous than the ‘Mars mania’ which infested European scientists as well as laymen in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the Italian astronomer, G.  V. Schiaparelli (1835–1910), announced the existence of canali on the planet… What K’ang says in his Lectures is hardly more fantastic than Schiaparelli’s theory.” 47  Kang, Zhutian jiang, 117–119; translation adapted from Hsiao, “Excursion,” 384.

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“All us earthlings are heavenlings: we truly are creatures of the heavens…when all of us will realize that the Earth is but one celestial body [among many] in the heavens, we will then understand ourselves as celestial beings.”48 This was indeed a radical perspective, one that anticipated by decades Heideggerian Weltbild conceptualizations, Blue Marble-­ inspired planetary visions, and the backward-looking gaze of the future geologists posited by Eric W. Wolff in his seminal essay on the birth of the Anthropocene.49

Conclusions It is very unlikely that the proto-sf writers of fin de siècle China were aware of Kang Youwei’s cosmological thinking. And yet, in looking back at Chinese sf’s gestational period around the turn of the twentieth century, one cannot fail to pick up on certain resonances or shared structures of feeling across different texts. Compare for example what Shaoling Ma describes as Xu Nianci’s 徐念慈 “fantasy of universal communicability” in Xin faluo xiansheng tan 新法螺先生譚 (New tales of Mr. Braggadocio, 1905) with Kang’s conjectures about “wireless electronic devices” that would allow communication with the inhabitants of Mars.50 Consider Huangjiang Diaosou’s 荒江釣叟 reflections on the “ubiquitous civilizations” (到處的文明種類) inhabiting the solar system in Yueqiu zhimindi xiaoshuo 月球殖民地小説 (Tales of the Moon colony, 1904) in relation to Kang’s speculations about “life on other stars and in other worlds.” Huangjiang Diaosou here asks: “If these civilizations… are one thousand, ten thousand times more advanced than ours, or even infinitely more so, what will happen in the end after they gradually establish contact with us?”51 Consider, furthermore, the worldwide scale of Wu Jianren’s  Kang, Zhutian jiang, 3.  On the cultural impact of NASA’s “Earthrise” photo and Heidegger’s notion of world picture (Weltbild), see e.g. Benjamin Lazier, “Earthrise; or, The Globalization of the World Picture,” The American Historical Review 116, no. 3 (2011): 602–630; on the necessity to conceive of the “viewpoint of a geologist viewing sequences thousands or millions of years in the future” in order to grasp the magnitude of the imprint of human activity on our planet, see Eric W. Wolff, “Ice Sheets and the Anthropocene,” Geological Society, London, Special Publications 395 (2014): 255. 50  Shaoling Ma, “‘A Tale of New Mr. Braggadocio’: Narrative Subjectivity and Brain Electricity in Late Qing Science Fiction,” Science Fiction Studies 40, no. 1 (2013): 69. 51  Huangjiang Diaosou 荒江釣叟, Yueqiu zhimindi xiaoshuo 月球殖民地小説, Xiuxiang xiaoshuo 59 (1904): chapter 32 [pagination not available]; reprinted in Wang Jiquan 王繼權 et al., Zhongguo jindai xiaoshuo daxi 中國近代小說大系 (Nanchang: Jiangxi renmin chubanshe, 1989): 415. Translation adapted from Loïc Aloisio, “A Response to an ‘Alien Invasion’: The Rise of Chinese Science Fiction,” Ming Qing Studies (2019): 10. 48 49

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wenming guo 文明國 political project in the novel Xin shitou ji 新石頭記 (The new story of the stone, 1908) in relation to Kang’s philosophical imperative to understand ourselves not as citizens of one particular nation but as fellow “earthlings” in a planet without borders.52 Retrace, if you will, the fil rouge connecting Bao Tianxiao’s fantasy of humanity’s escape into space upon the solar system’s collapse in Shijie mori ji 世界末日記 (The last days of the Earth, 1908) to Liu Cixin’s 刘慈欣 Liulang diqiu 流 浪地球 (“Wandering Earth,” 2000) on the background of the Book of the Heavens’ decentering of Earth as “but one celestial body among many in the heavens.” Reading Kang Youwei’s Book of the Heavens through the poetic filter of sf highlights some of the most important socio-cultural treads informing the emergence of sf as we came to recognize it. Kang’s speculative cosmo-­ politanism anticipates and frames on a much larger scale the arguments in favor of the abolition of national, class, race, and sex boundaries that he would later  develop in his magnus opus Datong shu. These arguments would go on to inform the debate on reform and revolution at the turn of the twentieth century, to which “science” provided a conceptual justification and methodology, and the xiaoshuo form an outlet for exploring its more radical possibilities as well as for bringing the masses—the newly conceived “Chinese people”—into its fold. Ultimately, in retracing the history of Chinese sf before sf, we do not necessarily need to resort to schematic formal boundaries or place-specific genealogies; perhaps we can even dispel altogether with sf’s generic appellation (and, more importantly, with the “Chineseness” that comes with it). Doing so would open up more doors and productive lines of inquiry, one of which may even lead to an eight-legged Martian.

References Adas, Michael. Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989. Aloisio, Loïc. “A Response to an ‘Alien Invasion’: The Rise of Chinese Science Fiction.” Ming Qing Studies (2019): 11–28.

52  In the novel Xin shitou ji, Wu Jianren imagines a “civilized country” (wenming guo 文明 國) so vast as to encompass the entirety of our planet into one wholesome community. On the political geography of this utopian entity, see Lorenzo Andolfatto, “Utopia/Wutuobang as a Travelling Marker of Time,” The Historical Journal 64, no. 1 (2021): 137–138.

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Andolfatto, Lorenzo. Hundred Days’ Literature: Chinese Utopian Fiction at the End of Empire, 1902–1910. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Andolfatto, Lorenzo. “Utopia/Wutuobang as a Travelling Marker of Time.” The Historical Journal 64, no. 1 (2021): 121–138. Bao Tianxiao 包天笑. Tie shijie 鐵世界. Shanghai: Wenming shuju, 1903. Bloch, Ernst. The Principle of Hope. Translated by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995. Chu, Seo-young. Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep: A Science-fictional Theory of Representation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan, Jr. The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008. Duara, Prasenjit. Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995. Eagleton, Terry. “The Contradictions of Postmodernism.” New Literary History 28, no. 1, Cultural Studies: China and the West (1997): 1–6. Gaffric, Gwennaël. “Chinese Dreams: (Self-)Orientalism and Post-Orientalism in the Reception and Translation of Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Trilogy.” Journal of Translation Studies 3, no. 1 (2019): 117–37. Gernsback, Hugo. “A New Sort of Magazine.” Amazing Stories 1, no. 1 (April 1926). Hsiao, Kung-chuan. A Modern China and a New World: Kang Yu-wei, Reformer and Utopian, 1858–1927. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1975. Huangjiang, Diaosou 荒江釣叟, Yueqiu zhimindi xiaoshuo 月球殖民地小説. In Zhongguo jindai xiaoshuo daxi 中国近代小说大系, edited by Wang Jiquan 王继 权 and Xia Shengyuan 夏生元, 215–432. Nanchang: Jiangxi renmin chubanshe, 1989. Huters, Theodore. “A New Way of Writing: The Possibilities for Literature in Late Qing China, 1895–1908.” Modern China 14, no. 3 (1988): 243–276. Huters, Theodore. Taking China to the World: The Cultural Production of Modernity. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2022. Kang, Youwei 康有為, Kang Nanhai xiansheng koushou 康南海先生口說. Guangzhou: Zhongshan daxue chubanshe, 1985. Kang, Youwei 康有為, Kang Nanhai xiansheng yizhu huikan 康南海先生遗著汇 刊. Vol. 18, Zhutian jiang 諸天講. Edited by Jiang Guilin 蒋贵麟. Taipei: Hongye shuju, 1987. Kang, Youwei 康有為. Kang Nanhai zipian nianpu 康南海自編年譜, manuscript. Beijing tushuguan 北京圖書館. https://archive.org/details/02084772.cn/ page/n48/mode/2up. Accessed January 11, 2022. Kerslake, Patricia. Science Fiction and Empire. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007.

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Khost, Peter. Rhetor Response: A Theory and Practice of Literary Affordance. Louisville, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2018. Lazier, Benjamin. “Earthrise; or, The Globalization of the World Picture.” The American Historical Review 116, no. 3 (2011): 602–630. Liang, Qichao 梁啓超. “Zhongguo weiyi zhi wenxuebao Xin xiaoshuo” 中國唯一 之文學報《新小說》. Xinmin congbao 新民叢報 14 (1902). Lin, Qingyuan 林庆元. “Kang Youwei yu Zhutian jiang” 康有为与《诸天讲》. Lixue yuekan 5 (1997): 95–103. Lo, Jung-pang. K’ang Yu-Wei: A Biography and a Symposium. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1967. Lu, Xun 魯迅. “Yuejie lüxing bianyan” 月界旅行辨言. In Lu Xun quanji 魯迅全 集, 9–11. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1973. Lu, Xun 魯迅. Yuejie Lüxing bianyan 月界旅行. Tokyo: Dongjing jinhua she, 1903. Ma, Shaoling. “‘A Tale of New Mr. Braggadocio’: Narrative Subjectivity and Brain Electricity in Late Qing Science Fiction.” Science Fiction Studies 40, no. 1 (2013): 55–72. Meng, Qingshu 孟庆枢. “Zhu meng de Zhongguo kehuan” 逐梦的中国科幻. Renmin zhengxie bao 人民政协报, 17 December 2018. http://www.chinawriter.com.cn/n1/2018/1217/c404080-­30471301.html. Osterhammel, Jürgen. “Semi-colonialism and Informal Empire in Twentieth-­ century China: Towards a Framework of Analysis.” In Imperialism and After: Continuities and Discontinuities, edited by Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Jürgen Osterhammel, 290–314. London: Allen and Unwin, 1986. Shen, Guowei. “Francis Bacon in Yan Fu’s Tianyan lun.” Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia 7 (2016): 47–66. Song, Mingwei 宋明煒. “‘Kuangren riji’ shi kehuan xiaoshuo ma? Lu Xun yu Zhongguo dangdai kehuan xin langchao, jian lun xieshi de xuwang yu xuni de zhenshi”〈狂人日記〉是科幻小說嗎?—魯迅與中國當代科幻新浪潮，兼論寫實 的虛妄與虛擬的真實. In Xia Zhiqing, Li Oufan, Liu Zaifu: Dangdai renwen de san ge fangxiang 夏志清，李歐梵，劉再復:當代人文的三個方向, edited by David Der-wei Wang, Ji Jin, and Liu Jianmei, 257–278. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 2020. Song, Mingwei. “Representations of the Invisible: Chinese Science Fiction in the Twenty-First Century.” In The Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literatures, edited by Carlos Rojas and Andrea Bachner, 546–566. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Wang, Hui. “The Fate of ‘Mr. Science’ in China: The Concept of Science and Its Application in Modern Chinese Thought.” In Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia, edited by Tani Barlow, 21–81. New York, NY: Duke University Press, 1997a.

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Wang, David Der-wei. Fin-de-siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849–1911. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997b. Wilson, William. A Little Earnest Book upon a Great Old Subject. London: Darton and Co., Holborn Hill, 1851. Wolff, Eric W. “Ice Sheets and the Anthropocene.” Geological Society, London, Special Publications 395 (2014): 255–263. Zhang, Joy Y., and Saheli Datta Burton. The Elephant and the Dragon in Contemporary Life Sciences. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022.

CHAPTER 3

Intelligent Humanoid Machines: Imaginations of Physical and Mental Transformation in Late Qing Literature and Their Intellectual Origins Liyuan Jia Translated by Nathaniel Isaacson

Beginning in the late Qing, in the wake of the introduction of western physiological and psychological knowledge, Chinese understandings of body and spirit experienced a gradual shift, inspiring anticipation of national salvation through reshaping the national mind-body. This anticipation manifested not only as solemn ideological discourse and concrete social practice, but also wove itself into the turn of the century “literary revolution.” Authors were inspired by contemporary scientific thought and progressive theoretical doctrines, combining them with imaginative scenarios, liberal exaggeration, and transparent allegory to produce a new literary mode different from, yet inextricably intertwined with scientific discourse, re-inscribing the image of the “human.”

L. Jia (*) Tsinghua University, Beijing, China © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. Song et al. (eds.), Chinese Science Fiction, Studies in Global Science Fiction, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53541-3_3

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Hygiene and “Creating Humans” After 1840, modern western physiology—characterized by experimentation—formally entered China, renewing Chinese understandings of the body. After a series of setbacks, the notion of the “sick man of Asia”—that Chinese people were the weak and diseased race of East Asia—began to gain prominence. Emerging from a desire to strengthen the nation, defend the race, and wash away national shame, people’s interest in hygiene grew rapidly.1 Reinvigorating the national body with hygiene and developing the national spirit with literature worked naturally in concert. Liang Qichao established the magazine New Fiction (Xin Xiaoshuo 新小说) in Yokohama in 1902, publishing his article “On the Relationship between Fiction and the Government of the People,” in which he posited that fiction had a particularly viral quality, “rejuvenating the people must begin with the rejuvenation of literature.” Of particular interest is that the toxicity of pre-modern fiction was portrayed as a polluted atmosphere or poisoned foods. Physiology books at the time often explained things like the constituents of air, the function of the lungs and heart, the circulation of breath, and the like, emphasizing that unclean air was unhygienic, and that good ventilation was beneficial to health. He Yushi’s (1878–1961) edited translation, Zhongxue shengli jiaoke shu 中学生理教课书 (Fourteen Weeks in Human Physiology, Steele, 1877), appearing in Tokyo months prior to the debut of New Fiction, featured explanations of this sort of material (He Yushi 71–74). The dissemination of a new outlook on hygiene constituted the background of Liang Qichao’s vision of the purpose of fiction. As late Qing fiction flourished, many authors brought such knowledge to bear on their work through vivid imaginations of bodily transformation. Published serially in Fiction Illustrated (Xiuxiang xiaoshuo 绣像小说) in the second lunar month of the 31st Guangxu year (1905)2 Huangjiang Diaosou’s Tales of the Moon Colony (Yueqiu zhimindi xiaoshuo 月球殖民地 小说; hereafter Moon Colony) featured the following episode in which the protagonist Long Menghua, deemed mad by western medicine, undergoes a “heart washing” surgery: 1  On the term “sick man of Asia,” and its evolution during the late Qing and relationship to hygiene, see: Han Han 19–31. 2  Xiuxiang xiaoshuo and other late Qing periodicals often experienced delays in publication. In this chapter, the author cites Chen Dakang’s dating of Tales of the Moon Colony. See Chen Dakang 810, 819, 857, 929, 930, 947.

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The Kazakh doctor took out an X-ray lens and shone it on the sick man: he saw that blue blood occupied 7/10 of the volume in his heart, and the white blood cell count was dropping. Nearby, his liver had swollen up like a loofah melon, and both lobes of his lungs were pallid and weak…He drew a scarf from his pocket, splashed some medicine on it, and placed it on Long Menghua’s face…from at his waist he drew a three-inch knife, and as he splashed on medicine, he flicked the knife along his chest. Grasping the knife between his teeth, he delicately lifted the heart out in his two hands and placed it in a washbasin, where he spent considerable time washing it with medicine…He then set the heart down and splashed more medicine on it. Seeing the heart, liver, and lungs returned to a normal state, they sealed up the incision. Instead of stitches, he drew a small vial from his pocket, dabbed the liquid in the vial onto a bit of cotton, and drew the flesh together with one hand while he applied medicine with the other. By the time he had finished, Menghua’s chest was unblemished, without any sign of scarring. (Huangjiang Diaosou 283–4)

To lovers of pre-modern zhiguai fiction, “heart washing” is quite familiar. The story of “Judge Lu” [of the underworld] in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (Liaozhai Zhiyi 聊斋志异) tells the tale of the scholar friend to a judge whose “compositions were poor” owing to “blockage of the proper orifice.” The judge “cut a hole and removed his intestines and stomach, putting them back in order,” causing him to become “an apt scholar, his memory much improved,” and he takes the top position in the civil service exam (Pu Songling 2013, 62).3 But narrated by Huangjiang Diaosou, this miraculous technique unfolds at the hands of a skilful western doctor rather than a judge of the underworld. The objective of the surgery is also turned on its head: western medicine reveals the protagonist’s ailing organs to have been caused by the deleterious effects of the “sour” and “astringent” essence of the bagu essay style; a clear call for contemporary society to do away with the imperial examination system. Meanwhile, in the wake of the scientific revolution, people began to see all phenomena from stars and planets to the human body as clock-like machines. Julien Offray de la Mettrie further elaborated the theory of “man as machine.”4 Modern western medicine, premised upon the notion 3  P. 62. Translator’s note: I have borrowed Herbert Giles translation of this passage; see Pu Songling 2010, 74–75. 4  de la Mettrie believed, given the fact that one could manufacture an automaton that could play the flute, “a new Prometheus” would eventually succeed in producing one that could speak. This doubtlessly presaged Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (De la Mettrie 67–68).

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that the human body was an assembly that could be taken apart and repaired, and this came as a great shock to turn off the twentieth-century Chinese. In 1890, during an official visit to Europe, Ambassador Xue Fucheng wrote in his diary, The strength of western medicine lies in seeking truth from facts. All of the body’s vital organs, musculature, sinews, bones and joints, have been studied in great detail and these studies accord with one another. Microscopes enable us to examine those parts of the body that are difficult to see. Others have had people ingest sedative drugs and made incisions into their abdomens, revealing what is polluting their vital organs, in order to cleanse them. They then put them back in order, suture the abdomen with thread, apply medicine, and within a month they are quite unblemished. If someone’s leg or foot suffers incurable disease or is in some way crippled, they amputate it and replace it with a wooden limb. At first glance, they appear no different from ordinary people. If there is an affliction of the eyes, a tube is used to extract the eyeball, and wash away the opacity, taking care to cause no harm to the fibers it is attached with. The eye delicately replaced, the ophthalmological disease is cured. This technique vies with creation itself; medical sages of yore like Bian Que and Hua Tuo cannot compare. (Xue Fucheng 552–3)

From the perspective of contemporary common knowledge, washing internal organs, removing and replacing eyeballs, and the like are rather hard to believe. In putting what he had heard and seen to paper, Xue Fucheng may have advertently or inadvertently made use of Pu Songling’s style, but late Qing reportage was ripe with this sort of writing. An 1899 report from East Asia Ttimes (Yadong shibao 亚东时报), records a surgery carried out by a Parisian professor to revive a dying patient: First he used a knife to cut open the flesh covering the fifth and sixth ribs on the left-hand side. Using a saw, he sawed through the ribs in order to reveal the viscera within. The inferior lobe of the lung and the apex of the heart could be seen as plainly as pointing to the palm of one’s own hand. He then used forceps and knives to cut through a number of veins. It was plain to see that there was little bleeding, quite different from how blood spurts from the living. There was not a sign of life in the entire body…He calmly instructed his students “…now based upon this principle, I shall apply pressure to the right atrium, forcing blood into the lungs and reviving the deceased.” Having spoken, he lightly squeezed the heart twice…heart and lungs gradually resumed their function, and the professor continued to

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grasp the heart, squeezing and releasing in their natural rhythm. The sick man moaned and sputum dribbled from the corner of his mouth, which they wiped off with a towel. When asked his name, he responded accurately in a low voice…the professor ended the procedure after a full two hours, having exhausted his mental and physical faculties. He told his students, “human strength is limited, and cannot continue indefinitely. Were there some machine to take the place of my hands in helping maintain the rhythm of his heart, the dead could be brought back to life; granting an additional year of longevity would be no great difficulty. Alas, there is no such machine and nothing can be done.” Thereupon he desisted, and the patient closed his eyes in death. (“Huiyi” 75–76)

Owing to the fact that this episode is the translation of a foreign-language original, it is more detailed and realistic than Xue Fucheng’s account. The professor of medicine is unable to save his patient in the long run, but the principles of anatomical structure and revivification are clearly explained, communicating the notion of the “machine body.” Moreover, it points the way for future research and development, foretelling the advent of the mechanical heart, suggesting a technological path forward. Authors found themselves even more liberated in this context. In fact, if we bring our comparison of the episodes of Long Menghua’s “heart washing” and Xue Fucheng’s diary entry to bear upon images appearing in Fiction Illustrated and a depiction of “putting the intestines back in the abdominal cavity” from Dianshizhai Pictorial (Dianshizhai huabao 点石 斋画报), we see that what the novel offered readers was not pure fabulation, and it does communicate contemporary people’s reverence for western medicine; what we might call scientific speculation. However bold these speculations were, when contrasted with contemporary reports of events and technologies from abroad both real and imagined, they seem less outlandish. A few months after the “heart washing” episode appeared in Moon Colony, a similar fable appeared in Xu Nianci’s “New Tales of Mr. Braggadocio” (Xin faluo xiansheng tan 新法螺先生谭): the protagonist’s soul is separated from his body, and while wandering about the solar system, on Mercury he sees the “art of creating humanity” being carried out on a “wizened, old, toothless gray-haired man.” The old fellow’s eyes and mouth were closed, as if he had already passed away. They proceeded to open up a sizeable cavity in the man’s skull, and to scoop out his brains with a spoon. Next to them stood a man holding a

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v­essel filled with a bubbling, steamy, milky-white liquid. When they had finished scooping out his brains, the positioned a glass funnel over his skull and set to pouring the contents of the vessel in. As soon as this process began, the man’s eyes and mouth opened up and he began to wave his arms and move about as if he wished to be released. (Donghai Juewo 22; Xu Nianci 35–36)

The procedure appears rather outlandish, but if we were to substitute “Mercury” for “America,” and the “old man” for a “woman,” the procedure and its miraculousness are not that far off from a description of “operating on the brain to cure injury” that appeared in a number of periodicals some years prior: A needle for piercing the skull was used to form a hole in the right side of the skull, and a small piece of bone was removed. Another fine needle was employed alongside a knife for excision. It was inserted into the hole, and a bean-sized lump of white flesh was drawn out. Inspection revealed it to be an infectious sore in the brain, just as he had said. Fortunately the sore was the consistency of a thick paste and had not fully hardened…It was not necessary to use the knife to excise it, rather by squirting water the offending substance could be flushed out of the hole the needle had formed in the right side of the skull. The doctor pronounced: ‘the poison has been cleared away, the ailment shall soon clear up and the patient will be good as new. A thorough cleansing will do the trick quick…” A few moments later, the woman returned to consciousness as if she were recovering from intoxication, or wakening from a dream; her spirits were restored and her faculties better than before. (“Pounao” 17–18)5

These fantastic episodes featuring the creation of humanity penned by Xu Nianci both elaborate upon “the young China,” and represent a continuation of humanity’s long-held dream of rejuvenation rearticulated in the light of contemporary technology. Like contemporary sf writers, these writers enthusiastically absorbed new knowledge, and found inspiration in it, or occasionally lifted entire passages from technological reportage and inserted them into their stories unamended, blurring the lines between

5  This news item was “translated from [the Japanese in] Yokohama nichinichi shinbun.” It later appeared in Jicheng Bao V. 16 5th Day of the 9th Month. And in Dianshizhai huabao, li vol. 3 (12th Month).

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news and fiction, knowledge and speculation.6 In this respect, the “science fiction” (kexue xiaoshuo) story, Bag of Eternal Life (Shengsheng dai 生生 袋), which began serialization in Fiction Illustrated in 1906, is representative. This sf story written in literary Chinese tells the tale of a mysterious visitor to a village enclave who uses physiology to cure illnesses and solve mysteries. Using an episodic structure, the author “Zhiming” expounds upon blood, the skeleton, the cardiovascular system, the brain, and other topics. In “the wonder of blood transfusion,” the visitor drains a madman of his blood, and replaces it with the blood of cows, sheep, and dogs. This was not a whimsical flight of fancy. Protestant writer and publicist Xie Honglai also produced a translation of Steele’s Fourteen Weeks in Human Physiology, which stated that by taking the blood of the strong, and putting it into the bodies of the weak, one’s lifespan could be lengthened. “During the 17th century, this principle was most widespread. Some took the blood of cows and injected it into madmen, curing them of their maladies. But those who died as a result were often heard of” (Steele 110; see also Steele 1877). Corresponding source material can be found in the translation of the textbook for the story’s explanation of the structure of the skull, split personalities, solving crimes in a dream, yawning being contagious, and other issues (Steele 87–88, 179–180, 186). While the author used the structure of the spinal column, the qualities of cartilage and similar knowledge to explain how toilsome labor or leaning over while reading books could cause the body to become hunched up, the work triflingly depicts a visitor using brute strength to turn a feeble old man back into a strapping young man. Vacillation between explications of new knowledge and wild fabrication was quite common in late Qing sf, and it is hard to blame contemporary critics who question whether sf was a suitable mode for popularizing scientific knowledge thus: “Literature is suited to flights of fancy, not establishing truths, and for this reason sf does not hold the primary position in the literary canon.”7 Criticism aside, authors continued to explore the tensions between science and speculation by staging their miraculous imaginings in the context 6  Regarding this question, please refer to my humble work “Xin jiyuan yu ‘zhuihunsha’— Xinjiyuan zhong de shijian yu zhanzheng.” Zhongguo bijiao wenxue vol. 3, 2015. or see the English Edition,“Soul-stealing Sand”: War and Time in Xin jiyuan [The New Era]. Translated by Nathaniel Isaacson. Science Fiction Studies, March 2018. 7  Xiaren. “Xiaoshuo conghua,” 167.

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of western knowledge. At times it was polished and at others rough-hewn. In comparison to their artistic achievements, the door into the imagination opened up by new knowledge perhaps provided greater inspiration. This included the bridge between envisioning transforming the body on one side and creating new life on the other. In 1906, the magazine Women’s World (Nuzi shijie 女子世界) published Lu Xun’s translation of the short story “The Art of Creating Humanity” (“Zaoren shu” 造人术 [Louise Strong’s “An Unscientific Story,” 1903]). The story of a scientist in his lab who watches the gradual growth of “sprouts of humanity,” and rejoices that he is the “creator of everything under the sun,” inspired fear and joy in editor Ding Chuwo, who said: “It [uses] art to forge new matter…something about which one should indeed be joyful, though broadcasting evil and disseminating fallacies is something about which one should rightly be fearful” (Strong 81; see also Rojas 75; Chen Dakang 1027; Xie 82–85). At approximately the same time, Bao Tianxiao published a translation of the same story in Shibao (时报), lamenting in his postscript that after inventing the art of “creating humanity,” scientists would need to go on to invent the art of “creating spirits,” and “if not, the world would have little use for these walking corpses of animated flesh, wriggling things endowed with the ability to move” (Bao Tianxiao 1906). It seems that prescient figures who sought to reshape the “sick man of Asia” had already anticipated that if there was no accompanying “heart/soul,” the “art of creating humanity” enabled by contemporary technology would amount only to “creating monstrosity.”

Curing the Mind, Hypnotism, and Changing Personalities Western psychology made its way to China in the 1870s, and by the early twentieth century, translations and treatises were widely available (Yan Shuchang 11–15, 43–5). China had its own approach to the question of healing the “heart/mind” but in the late Qing these concepts became intertwined with western psychology in the context of constructing a modern nation-state, and its subject of interest expanded from the educated gentry to the entire populace. This phenomenon has already been addressed in scholarship (Liu Jihui 2011). What is of particular interest here is that with the advent of various iterations of “heart/mind-body,” the connection between spirit and material was reconfigured in the name of science. In these various articulations of the notion that “the heart/

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mind leads and the body follows,” “healing the heart/mind” was no longer on an equal footing with “healing the body,” now primary in the elimination of disease, and key to national salvation. In this context, hypnotism, which also claimed to be able to influence body and mind, was also the subject of much attention. Modern European hypnotism was born out of the rather esoteric eighteenth-century theory of “animal magnetism.” In the nineteenth century, its methodology developed based on physiology, and later appeared in missionary writings (Jia Liyuan 2020). By the early twentieth century, Zhang Taiyan, Sun Baoxuan, and others were already familiar with hypnotism (Zhang Taiyan 328–9).8 In 1903 Liang Qichao addressed the issue at length in Xinmin congbao (新明丛报): Using this method, my spirit can influence the spirit of another, and my spirit can be influenced by that of another, I can investigate mysteries from a bed; can receive hypnotic suggestion from one hundreds of li away. Its other capabilities, sure to have been called miracles or unbelievable in times past, can now all be explained. From the teacher’s dais with chalk and slate passed on to others, it can be pontificated upon in the simplest terms, I say: it simply explains the relationship between physiology and psychology. And the esoteric principles spoken of in Buddhist teachings like three realms, the Dharma, [the theory of] consciousness-only, [and that of] mind-only, are made clear and become teaching material. (Liang Qichao 2018 394–395)

In comparison to Neo-Confucianism’s emphasis on individual spiritual refinement, hypnotism was more reliant on the efficacy of the practitioner, and featured clear procedures and emphatically theatrical performances, attracting the attention of a number of visionaries hoping to reform the national character. In 1905, Tao Chengzhang, who had studied hypnotism in Japan, began teaching the art in Shanghai with the support of Cai Yuanpei and other friends. In his lectures, “mental force,” comprised of intellect, feeling, and will, could be subjected to rigorous, quantitative management as if it were a physical resource. For example, if person A and B were endowed with 240 and 300 units of “mental force” respectively, divided evenly between intellect, feeling, and will, A’s various capacities would necessarily be less than B’s. But through hypnotism, A could reduce 8  Translator’s note: the Chinese term cuimianshu 催眠术 may be translated as either “hypnotism,” or “mesmerism.” For the sake of uniformity, the original author and I have decided to use “hypnotism” throughout.

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his feeling and will to 20 units, and use that to increase his intellect to 200 units—two times more than that of B (Kuaijishanren 1, 10–15, 72). Tao Chengzhang also explicated the notion of the “two-faceted self” associated with hypnotism: the body was the present, evil aspect of the self, and the soul was the hidden, good aspect (Kuaijishanren 26). Mesmerism was thought to inhibit the former and stimulate the latter. The opposition between the old and new self was a regular subject of discussion for practitioners of hypnotism, such that “my self in this moment is the enemy of the self that has been hypnotized; hypnotism transforms the self” (Wang Yi 21–29). There were various explanations as to the reason for this. In 1911, an article published in Shanghai newspaper, Shibao offered a seemingly more plausible explanation. Citing the newest theories, the author suggested that humans were a large machine composed of many smaller machines—the eyes resembled cameras, the ears telephones, the brain a phonograph, and the basis of hypnotism lay in the structure of the brain: As for the two layers of the brain, they are composed of two sinews, which previously had no formal name. According to the luminary of psychology Dr. Shiyishi,9 they therefore referred to them as the superior and inferior part, functioning like a thermometer. Another western scholar referred to them as the “sinews of two selves,” one being the “sinew of the heavenly master,” and the other the “sinew discerning good and evil,” the two selves comprised of heavenly principle and human desire spoken of by Song Dynasty [neo Confucian] scholars. These two sinews contract and expand in response to one another, eliciting all manner of ruminations…hypnotists investigating the body’s mechanical systems have found that in people lying at rest at break of day or the depths of night, evil thoughts do not arise, leading them to realize that people’s evil thoughts arise from the sinew discerning good and evil. Thereupon, they investigated various methods by which they could cause this organ to cease activity. (Xiong Shangwu 1)10

Unsurprisingly, since the human body was seen as a machine, a switch controlling “heavenly principle” and “human desire” was imagined in its midst. Hypnotism, in all of its wonders, had already assumed the status of 9  Translator’s note: I suspect that “Dr. Shiyishi” is Heinrich Sachs (1823–1928), a German neurologist known for his research in the physiology of the human brain, but neither the original author nor I have been able to confirm this. 10  A portion of the content of this report later appeared in Liang Zongding’s work. See: Liang Zongding (1916).

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a technique for encoding the human brain. These are of course merely theoretical musings: I have encountered no concrete record of hypnotism’s use in the late Qing to adjust mental capacities, develop hidden talents, reform personality, or manipulate tendencies toward good and evil. More common were accounts of all manner of hypnotists performing feats like swallowing fire, or guessing objects while blindfolded performed in theaters and public parks (“Zhidu shiyan…” 11).11 From the accompanying images, it can be gleaned that these performances were mere magic shows. “What the Japanese refer to as conjuring is also known as hypnotism. It is said to cause one to take cinnabar for green jade, causing hallucinations and misperceptions of the optic nerve. This is not hypnotism, it is far removed from its study” (Xiong Shangwu 1). This explanation on the part of a practitioner is illustrative of the fact that for the masses, the distinctions between hypnotism, magic, and witchcraft were not at all clear, inspiring both curiosity and fear. As for novelists with an appreciation for the esoteric, hypnotism was doubtlessly an apt topic. The inspiration for the aforementioned “New Tales of Mr. Braggadocio” apparent: At this time in Shanghai, a symposium on hypnotism was being held and droves of attendees filled the city. The most fascinating and unfathomable subject among them was the study of animal magnetism. This in particular caught my fancy, and I decided to establish a sub-field of it. (Donghai Juewo 35)12

Xu Nianci’s story, and Bao Tianxiao’s translations of “Tales of Mr. Braggadocio,” and “More Tales of Mr. Braggadocio” comprised the book “New Mr. Braggadocio,” which was published in the sixth month of the 31st year of the Guangxu era (1905), just after Tao Chengzhang had begun teaching classes. The Forest of Fiction publishing house that produced the volume was helmed by Zeng Pu, Huang Ren, and Xu Nianci— old friends from a shared hometown—and supported by Ding Chuwo (aka Ding Zuyin), Jiang Weiqiao, Xu Zhaowei, and others. This cohort of Jiangsu intellectuals were concerned with local education; enthusiastically committed to using fiction and the like to promote new learning. They 11  Late Qing media featured many such reports and advertisements of demonstrations of mesmerism. See: “Guan shiyan cuimianshu xuji” 4. 12  For English translation, see Xu Nianci, “New Tales of Mr. Braggadocio,” trans. Nathaniel Isaacson. Renditions, 77 & 78, Spring and Autumn, 2012: 35–36.

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had varying degrees of exchange with more radical revolutionaries like Cai Yuanpei, Tao Chengzhang and Zhang Taiyan, and knowledge of hypnotism was spread through this interpersonal network.13 They also influenced translations and original works of fiction. Hypnotism Zeng Pu’s Flower in a Sinful Sea (1905) features an episode in which a Russian professor performs a public demonstration of hypnotism: …he finished speaking, and raised his arm aloft, and [they] saw those three people’s left hands reach skyward as if they were marionettes on a string. Then he said, “I can make them raise their right arms as well.” And with that, their right arms pointed skyward in unison. With that a thunderous roar of applause rang out in the room… Birsk said to Wenqing and the rest of the crowd, “This art can be used to compel the souls of individuals to switch between bodies. But these fellows have grown weary; let’s save that for another day.”

The professor emphasizes, “this is not magic,” it is in fact, “derived from the scientific principles of electricity and biology,” though the precise nature of these principles goes unexplained (Zeng Pu 69–72). Aside from fiction, the unofficial historical Qing Dynasty chronicle, Qing bai leichao (清稗类钞), recounts the story of Huang Jian’gang, a Hunanese man who had studied hypnotism in Germany, and used it to seduce women who finds himself pitted against a Miao Shaman who sends one of his disciples after him: Huang pointed his finger hastily at the young man, and the young man stared back at him. The young man’s gaze gave Huang goosebumps, and he felt as if he were about to fall asleep. Realizing he was about to be hypnotized, he summoned the strength to resist, and though his hands couldn’t move, he strove against it. He looked at the young man, who narrowed his steely eyes like a baby overcome by fatigue. The two continued to struggle. An hour or so passed, and the young man clapped and cried, “you are a tough one indeed! Now what?” Huang was compelled to hide beneath the couch, unable to utter a word. The youngster laughed, revealing a pair of feminine dimples and rosy cheeks—it turned out the ‘young man’ was a young woman. Huang realized [he had been deceived], but still could not stand, as he watched her depart, only regaining his strength that afternoon. (Xu Ke 4576) 13  Regarding Xiaoshuo lin’s (Forest of Fiction) staff and their relationship to Cai Yuanpei and others, see Luan Weiping, 2014 vol. 1, 70 & 74; and vol. 2, 272, 289–90, 346.

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Whether this event actually occurred or not, this account seemingly ripped from the pages of a fantasy novel is a reflection of the prominence of hypnotism in the popular imagination, making Zeng’s narrative seem less far-­ fetched by comparison. Shanghai Zuoxin Press’s Principles of Mesmerism came out in opposition to the tendency to conflate hypnotism and mysticism: Extrasensory phenomena are especially out of the ordinary, and hypnotism is often used to explain the superstitious beliefs of spiritism…There are those who believe the era of omnipotent science has already passed, and reactionary figures drawn to oddities are numerous. We have tried time and again to use science to refute them. Why would hypnotism be any different? What can be said of those who acclaim hypnotism, claiming it [shows] the unlimited power of the spirit, while they disregard contemporary scientific discoveries, and hold physics in disdain? We should therefore redouble our investigations in the hopes of advancing this field. (Jiang and Wei 94–95)

Taking Xu Nianci as an example once again, his Dictionary of Natural History (Bowu dacidian 博物大辞典, 1907) he edited with Zeng Pu, includes entries on “heart,” “brain,” and “cerebellum,” whose explanations are phrased entirely in terms of modern biological knowledge, and there is no mention of the “soul.” However, as an editor at Forest of Fiction Press, who wrote the following commentary on Chen Hongbi’s “sf” translation of C. Ranger Gull’s (1875–1923) The Soul Stealer (1906) as “The Electric Crown” (Dian guan 电冠): the existence of the universal vacuum ākās ́adhātu has been revealed by the combination of the science of hypnotism, and theories of animal magnetism…upon reading the 16th chapter, I said to myself modern science advances daily, but these findings are limited to the physical; when it comes to spiritual discoveries, we are yet to plumb their depths, ’tis true. Those who recognize this turn their attention to ghosts.14

In this context, the separation of body and spirit that occurs in “New Tales of Mr. Braggadocio” appears quite natural. At the very beginning of the story, the narrator shares his woes: “can I be so constrained by the fetters of sophistry? If I cannot transcend this, nor enlighten the horizons of 14  See the post-face to Dianguan, “Juewo zanyu.” Xiaoshuo lin vol. 2, Dingwei year (1907) 2nd month: p. 47. Xiaoshuo lin vol. 7, Dingwei year (1907) 11th month, p. 158.

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vision, nor expand it with unprecedented methods, then I will be no more than a slave of learning” (Xu Nianci 15). After some experimentation, he finds that “a mysterious transformation had occurred in my brain,” and as hoped, he is able to invent “brain electricity,” allowing people to communicate directly with one another, casting off the fetters of machines like the “telegraph,” and “telephone” (Donghai Juewo 1–2, 35; Xu Nianci 36). It can be said that Xu Nianci embodied two opposing tendencies: as an educator, because he “suffered at the crisis of the moment, [believing] only education was sufficient to save them from peril, only social transformation was sufficient to cause them to evolve,” (Ding Zuyin 134) he committed himself to education and the dissemination of scientific knowledge. At the same time, as an author, he was greatly entertained by the bombast of Mr. Braggadocio’s tale, allowing the protagonist to explore beyond the limits of physics and probe the mysteries of the spirit in his fictional adaptation. The exploratory spirit was quite commonplace during the late Qing, a topic beyond the scope of the current analysis. Suffice to say that “electricity”—associated with buzzwords like “curing the mind” and “hypnotism”—was seen as further evidence for the existence of the soul.

Electricity and Hun-Po Souls In the eighteenth century, the relationship between life and electric currents was gradually revealed. Medical investigations into the use of electricity to cure paralysis, to distribute medicines throughout the bodies of sufferers of gout and arthritis, and the like soon followed (A’ertuluo Kasidiliaoni (Arturo Castiglioni) 677–678, 786, 975). In the first half of the nineteenth century, Michael Faraday and others made great progress in the study of electricity, and missionaries soon introduced this knowledge to China. In his 1855 New Treatise on Natural Philosophy (Bowu xinbian 博物新编), Benjamin Hobson wrote, “earthly bodies are infused with a substance (qi) called electricity; it permeates and transmutates, in all places and things, and this has always been so…the creator of the Great Mean, unbiased and neutral, faultless and measured” (Hexin 98). Alexander Wylie and John Fryer would later also describe electricity as a type of qi permeating all things, present throughout the entire universe (Weilie 1; Fu Lanya 157). WAP Martin’s 1868 work, Introduction to Natural Philosophy (Gewu rumen 格物入门), indicates electricity can “flow through sinews, much like the spirit.” He goes on to mention the use of electricity to force the medicine in a glass phial into the human body in

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order to target the source of disease, noting that this is an unlikely rumor, though he does inform the reader that stimulating the appropriate acupoints, one can cure dozens of diseases (Ding Weiliang 32–33). With the absorption and digestion of western knowledge by late Qing intelligentsia, the notion that electricity could “permeate” (tong 通) matter grew increasingly alluring, becoming the cornerstone of a number of extravagant theories. In Tan Sitong’s Study on Benevolence, “the most fundamental meaning of benevolence is interconnectedness (tong),” ether, electricity, and psychic force are all “means of interconnection” (suo yi tong zhi ju 所以通之具). The brain is electricity in physical form; electricity is the brain without form. “The difference between benevolence and non-benevolence, therefore, lies in whether there is interconnection or disconnection” (Tan Sitong 6, 15,17; Chan 61, 73). 15 The man on the street was not necessarily concerned with such esoteric theories of the universe, but they were most certainly intrigued by various electrical instruments, especially those marvelous inventions touted for their curative properties. As early as 1876, mention of a “human circuit” device—a small wooden box featuring two copper conductor handles that soothed the circulatory system—purported to be “best at curing ill winds,” appeared in pages of Accounts of Shanghai (Hu you zaji 沪游杂记) (Ge Yuanxu 150). Beginning in 1882, advertisements for devices like this appeared in Shenbao for foreign pharmacies like Watson’s (Quchen shi 屈臣氏) and J Llewellyn & Co. (Lao de ji 老德记). A more complicated, wearable device with greater facility for popularization soon made its appearance. On February 14, 1904, Xinmin congbao featured an advertisement for Sanden Electronics Company’s (Shandian dianqi shanghui 山甸电器商会) “Herculex Appliance,” explaining its curative properties, accompanied by two “certificates of efficacy” (“Zuixin dianqi” back cover). Similar devices entered the domestic market soon after. In May, Shenbao began promoting Longevity Company’s (Changming yanghang 长命洋行) “electric belt.” By November, the company had established a branch in Beijing. These ads were always accompanied by rich descriptions: human movement and consciousness rely on electricity, “if electricity is sufficient, bodily health will follow, if electricity is deficient, bodily ailments will ensue, and if electricity is exhausted, the body will perish.” Famous 15  Translator’s note: When available, I cite Chan Sin-wai’s translation of Tan’s work (see: Chan 61).

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American doctor “Michael Logan’s” electric belt, invented in 1881, could “bring external electricity into communion with bodily electricity, thus stimulating one current with the other, freeing one from worry about pulse, medicines, and blind guesswork.” The product had purportedly been proven efficacious in testing at hospitals throughout New York, and had saved many people in a [cholera] pandemic that broke out in Europe in 1892. The company’s headquarters were in New York, and they had over 40 branches throughout the world. Their first branch of Changming was opened in Shanghai in 1904, and branches in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Hankou soon followed. The promoters used images of robust, half-naked men, alongside their alluring language, to garner attention. They even erected a color billboard some “12 feet across, and 8.7 feet tall” at the southern side of the eastern entrance to Beijing’s Liulichang market, “a dazzling spectacle, and all who beheld it agreed such a signboard had never before been  seen in Beijing.”16 The company’s rapid development, and the prominence of the advertising speak to the device’s commercial success. On January 3, 1907, Shenbao featured yet another one of their ads, though it appears the scope of their business had narrowed, and their extensive properties in Beijing were turned to other purposes (“Xuequ gaiyi diji” 1907). According to Wu Fangzheng, all manner of electric belts were popular at the end of the nineteenth century in the United States. One of these was Dr. McLaughlin’s electric belt. Their advertising, which originally featured images of Sampson, boxing champions, and healthy young men, were adapted for the Chinese market to match local tastes.17 According to my research, translated works on electrotherapy were published in Japan as early as 1881 (see Hamilton). Song Jiaoren, diagnosed with neurasthenia (jingshen shuairuo 精神衰弱) by a Japanese doctor in 1906, received “electric bath” treatment at Tokyo’s Nōbyōin (Neurological hospital) (Song Jiaoren 200–277). In 1908, the Tokyo Electrotherapy Research 16  See ads appearing in Shenbao (Shanghai edition) 4.13, 5.6, 5.12, 7.9, and 12.29 1904. Ads appearing in Dagong bao (Tianjin) 8.14, 11.23, 1904, and “Zhongwai jinshi” on 5.1. 1905. 17  Wu Fangzheng has conducted extensive research of advertisements for electric belts appearing in Shenbao in 1905, in search of their American source materials. However, his research examines the advertisements’ visual representation of the human body in terms of visual studies, rather than the question of Changming yanghang and the electric belt themselves. The present study offers some additional insight and minor corrections in regard to the latter (Wu Fangzheng 87–151).

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Group published their New Treatise on Electrical Self-treatment Methods (Jiyō denki ryo ̄hō shinpen 自用電気療法新編), offering a systematic explanation of human biological systems, the principles of electrotherapy, electric belts, and electric baths (Tōkyō denki chiryōhō kenkyūkai 1908). From this we can see that the fever for electricity and the various devices of dubious therapeutic value were not merely a feature of the late Qing, but were part of a late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century global phenomenon. In the midst of this wave, humans were seen as self-powered electric machines who could be cured of illness and reinvigorated by charging their batteries.18 As previously discussed, in context of late Qing China, “electricity” was incorporated into the new cosmological and philosophical outlook, infusing new meaning in the aphorism, “the benevolent man loves others,” and casting an alluring light on the future: whether it was Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, or Kang Youwei’s Book of Great Unity (Datong shu 大同书), all used the degree of  electrification as an indicator of future utopian worlds. Bihe Guanzhuren’s The New Era (Xin jiyuan 新纪元, 1908), begins by noting that “The first half of the twentieth century is the era of electricity,” (Biheguan zhuren 437) and Electric World (Dian shijie 电世界, 1909), features “King of Electricity” Huang Zhenqiu using electric implements to unify the world, turning the world into a fantasy land. Interestingly, when abundant material wealth and elimination of illness and suffering lead to overpopulation, the King of Electricity gets into his electric balloon, and flies off into space in search of a new paradise. In his farewell speech, “electricity” is portrayed as the new era’s medium of beauty and virtue: …electricity is a progressive, not a regressive, substance. It is optimistic and inexhaustible; it is newborn, not senescent; it expands, rather than contracting; it is vigorous and unobstructed; loving, not elastic; attractive, not ­repellent; bright instead of dark; audible, not inaudible; eternal, not temporary; deliberate rather than inattentive; beautiful, not ugly; ascetic, not profligate; it is legal, not theoretical; free and unbound; communicative not sealed; inexhaustible, not meted out in fractions. We do not merely use electricity, we must learn its nature, and only then can we perfect the entire world, only then can we perfect all people in the world… (Gaoyangshi bucaizi 55–56) 18  Scientists working in this field of electrobiology attempted to recalibrate the immune system through electrical stimulation of the nervous system, curing certain diseases (Tracey 24–29).

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Of course, the common good is not just a matter of material wealth and comfort; spiritual redemption is even more critical, and the relationship between “electricity,” distributed throughout the “air” (qi), and the human body was not confined to the physical. In fact, since the scientific revolution, continuous attempts have been made to use rationality and the scientific method to make gods, spirits, ghosts, and the like into explicable phenomena subject to our control, and such attempts have yet to succeed. At the same time as science attempts to explain the supernatural, the supernatural attempts to avail itself of science to change its mien. Japanese philosopher Inoue Enryō observed that as soon as “electrical theory” gained prominence, out of ignorance, people began to elucidate all manner of curious phenomena in terms of “electrical influence,” using one hard to explain phenomenon to describe another (Inoue Enryō 278–79). The self-proclaimed western “civilized” world was no different: nineteenth-­ century hypnotists used Morse code-like cyphers to communicate with spirits (Darnton 141). Into the twentieth century people in the United States and England continued to believe “electricity” was a mysterious and occult force, to the point that electric companies had to engage in education campaigns (Dikotter 141). From this perspective, the following news item appearing in Dianshizhai Pictorial in 1896 seems rather ordinary: after a telegraph station was built in Taizhou, a rumor began to circulate that the station was buying ancestral tablets, going to graves and reading incantations to call out and take control of spirits, which were then transformed into electricity using chemicals, and used to send telegrams, and eventually some particularly unfilial offspring attempted to sell their family tablets (Chen Pingyuan 203). Stories like this illustrate popular psychology, and how ancient Chinese spirits had found new residence inside of a western vessel. Authors penned all manner of stories of spirits spanning the gap between scientific knowledge and secretive folk tales. Dual Souls (Shuang linghun 双灵魂), published in the same year as Electric Crown, might be said to use plot as a vehicle for sharing the author’s own pseudo-scientific ideas. In the story, upon being shot to death, an Indian man’s soul leaves his body and takes over the brain of a Chinese man, resulting in a case of two souls in one body. India was colonized at the time, and the notion of occupation by a “guest spirit” is an affront which all manners of treatments are applied to. A Chinese sorcerer declares: “foreigners don’t recognize the sovereign, so likewise their ghosts don’t obey the rules of the

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spirits,” and is defeated. A western doctor suggests using faith in God; a master of physics and chemistry believes that the soul must ascend after leaving the body, and therefore it cannot occupy the body of another, diagnosing the sufferer with a psychological disorder. A famous hypnotist believes that strong spirits are capable of mastering electricity to control weaker ones, but “nurturing electricity” cannot influence the “two-­ hearted” because “spiritual defilement spots” in their hearts have caused their souls to disperse into “obstructed spots”… after this futile discussion, the group breaks down into a murmur of generalities; through “cultivation of the host spirit,” the occupying spirit leaves on its own accord (Yadong Pofo 347, 378, 384–5, 391). Author Yadong pofo (Fallen Buddha of East Asia, penname of Peng Yu), struck by “the daily weakening of the national spirit, dominated by the motivations of the guest spirit,” sought to “summon the lost (hun) soul of China,” and “medicate a new hun [ethereal] soul to cast out the old po [corporeal] soul.” This parable had clear roots: “there are practitioners in Western Europe who can use their own soul to enter the body of another and influence their soul, causing them to reveal their dearest secrets. In Japan this is called hypnotism, or heart-reading. The notion that two souls occupying a single body should not be taken as strange” (Yadong Pofo 347, 350).19 Ultimately, among the multitude of concepts, theories, and ideas introduced during the late Qing, “electricity,” dressed in the shimmering garb of physics, became an important conduit between the spiritual and physical; it was both a verifiable force within the biological body, and its invisible aspects were imagined as influential forces in the world of the occult. Not only did it communicate between yin and yang—life and death; the human realm and the spirit realm—it also circulated freely between fact and fiction, making the boldest flight of fancy seem as if it were simply an elaboration or imitation of the latest fashionable theory. When readers saw the protagonist in “New Tales of Mr. Braggadocio” forge his spirit into a “wondrous source of light” 10,000 times more powerful than the sun, “fostering mercy and exercising [his] magical powers,” (Donghai Juewo 2–6) lifting his soul over his head on the summit of Mount Everest in order to shine his light all over the world, they may have thought of the following description in Zhixin mianbing fa: 19  See also notes at the end of Chapters 1 and 10, and Wang Wenzao’s “On Dual Souls” in Shuang linghun. 347, 350, 372.

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Only the heart-mind is endowed with great light, which must emanate its radiance, penetrating flesh and bone, seen by the masses. Since time immemorial, all those of sagely virtue have had the light, though the degree has varied. The light Jesus Christ had was great indeed, capable not only of illuminating contemporaries, but also interconnecting all nations. Despite the passage of over two thousand years, not only was it undiminished, but it had often amplified. The light this man had emanated would increase beyond measure. (Wood 54)

Influence for fictional depictions of the soul leaving the body to travel in outer space can be seen in Tan Sitong’s Study of Benevolence as well: We must imagine another method, resembling today’s study of electricity, capable of transmitting energy and electricity wirelessly, making bodily sinews, bones and viscera visible, and sensing the body’s use of brain energy. Over time, we would necessarily come to remove its unrefined nature, retaining the refined, diminishing its physicality and benefitting its soul, advancing all fields of study, and bringing continued progress for generations as it constantly evolves. A new race of human who made use purely of wisdom rather than might, purely of the spirit rather than the body would be born … they could endure water, fire, wind, and air, fly to the planets and the stars. Earth could be destroyed, and they would suffer no harm, they would be beyond limitations! (Tan Sitong 158)

Regardless of whether Xu Nianci drew direct inspiration from Henry Wood, John Fryer, or Tan Sitong, they were all immersed in a common cultural atmosphere (Luan Weiping 231). This atmosphere was one that increasingly saw the body as a machine subject to a high level of control. Electrical charges could cure ailments and restore youth (“Dianqi zhi fanlao” 1–2) but the source of its greatest power was regrettably to be found in the human body itself, and the ultimate goal of evolution was not an infinitely improvable cybernetic body continuously powered by electricity. It was rather the escape from the confines of the physical body achieved by a pure soul thus allowed to wander the heavens. Was this fantasy born of “idealism” or “delusion”? Was there a scientific basis for “cleaving body from soul” or was it no more than so much hot air? Humor and science are not mutually exclusive, as Tan Sitong had previously noted, “those who speak of the soul, but don’t venture into the ‘preposterous,’ lack the capacity for more than wandering about in benighted ignorance. What is called ‘preposterous’ is but a question of common language. Seen from

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the broad vision of the Buddha, what differentiates preposterous and profound? Upon hearing talk of the soul, men of narrow learning will only be able to condemn it as preposterous, ignorant of that which is not born and never dies, so fixed are they in their ways!” (Tan Sitong 41). The widespread yearning for the prospect of an immortal soul led authors to contribute vibrant new works to Chinese belles-lettres, inspiring the righteous and benevolent to sacrifice for their cause. Post-script: Beginning in the late Qing, the introduction of western knowledge transformed people’s perception of self and world. In an era of east commingling with west, and the present coming to terms with the past, a multitude of theories gained prominence, stimulating people’s minds. In the process, the power of science became ever more apparent; the meaning and method, goals and standards, possibilities and limits of being “human” were redefined. Biology transformed the narrative structure of life, offering validity to the notion of ethnic competition. People’s bodies, spirits, desires, lives and deaths, were no longer individual matters, as they were increasingly imbricated in the administration of the nation-state. If we were to say that modern biology, hygiene, and medicine, brought people to terms with the notion that the body was a modular machine made of interchangeable parts, and from this emerged the imagination of transforming and giving eternal life to the body. Investigations into how psychology, mental healing, and hypnotism could be deployed to manipulate the spirit, reform personal character, and augment or stimulate mental force ensued. At the same time, all manner of narratives regarding knowledge and pseudoknowledge of electricity, not only sustained a clarion call to make daily life more convenient, but more steadfastly indicated the elimination of impediments in communication between human beings and their own bodies, between one human and another, and between humans and the world around them, and that this could be used to cure illness, stimulate the power of chemical affinity (aili 爱力),20 and redeem the living. From a contemporary perspective, such ruminations are beyond credence, but it must be acknowledged that when serious scientific inquiry is brought to bear upon objective reality, the discursive battles surrounding 20  Translator’s note: Here, I borrow David Wright’s translation of aili as “chemical affinity” (554).

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“objective reality” are by no means settled. Explanations and imitations of scientific language in particular have blurred the boundary between “reality” and “imagination.” As for the late Qing, many were naively optimistic about the potential for new knowledge to transform the collective outlook, and lacked systematic scientific education. When science offered up a new imaginary space, a worldview bearing the marks of antiquated thought began to take shape. Those who hoped for such a discovery, but saw no way out or doubted its veracity, turned toward the power of narrative, spinning off one after another iteration of “New Braggadocio,” and “fiction” (xiaoshuo) found itself in the same sphere as “news,” “disquisition,” and “rumor,” overwhelming the senses. Fictional heart and brain washing, hypnotism, souls leaving the body, and the discovery of “brain electricity,” are fables imbued with humor and jest written by the citizenry, but beneath their surface lies a profound respect for science. In other words, fables are infused with scientific discourse (and at times have borrowed directly from technological news). To put a finer point on it, without the foundation of a scientific account, there would be no topic for citizens to expound upon at all. Once the topic had been set forth, it was difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. While today’s technological reality is entirely different, to the point that we may be able to create new artificial technologies to replace human beings, change our material form, or completely cast off our meat-bodies and live a virtual existence, deploying technology to fabricate bodies, control the spirit, and search for eternal life were all initially sketched out more than a century ago. If we imagine some future moment in which humans are able to become superhuman, or non-human, it can be said that the moment where humans could become machines (jichiren) has already passed. In a moment promising to enrich life by technological means, “humans” came to be perceived as intelligent machines: not only could the hardware be changed, but the software system could even be reinstalled, and in order to maintain normal operation, batteries had to be kept fully charged. In that moment, the newborn intelligent humanoid machine imagined itself ascending the heavens and plunging into the sea, living eternally. They dreaded the moment when their own creations rebelled against them, and even dreamed that one day they would evolve into an entity of pure energy, free to explore the limits of the universe. The seeds have been planted, but its future is not yet written.

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CHAPTER 4

The King of Electricity from the East: Science, Technology, and the Vision of World Order in Late Qing China Guangyi Li  Translated by Nathaniel Isaacson

Introduction One notable aspect of late Qing sf or more precisely the sub-genre of scientific utopias, is the imagined world order. Science fiction (kexue xiaoshuo) served as one form of the “new fiction” introduced to China, with the intent to “use fiction [as a vehicle] for discovery of…scientific knowledge” (“Zhongguo weiyi…”). But a survey of the bulk of sf appearing in late Qing periodicals shows that works availing themselves of fiction as a vehicle for popularizing scientific knowledge were few and far between, and the vast majority of these works indulged in wild flights of fancy. Many of them were closer to “political fiction”—“the author sought to manifest their political thought in order to make a statement about China, but it was all a fantasy” (“Zhongguo weiyi…”). The reason for this was that

G. Li  (*) Chongqing University, Chongqing, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. Song et al. (eds.), Chinese Science Fiction, Studies in Global Science Fiction, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53541-3_4

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although authors of sf, often the recipients of a traditional education, delighted in seeing readers “gain a smattering of knowledge, sundering their superstitious intellectual heritage, rectifying their thinking and shining the light of civilization,” (Lu Xun 164) they were by no means professionals in the realm of popular science, and their ultimate concern was the national political order. Naturally, having witnessed western technological prowess, no one thought China could regain its stature through moral and political force alone, and technology became an indispensable aspect of the imagination of a new China and new world. Thus, scientific utopias featuring “reason, science, society, and politics” (Wu Jianren 1997, 382) became a prominent aspect of late Qing fiction. In the space of just over five years, New Story of the Stone, The New Era, Electrical World, New Ramblings of the Rustic Elder, New China, and others joined the reams of published works. Strident voices of their generation, the literary and intellectual significance of these works resides primarily in three areas: (1) displacing the discourse of cyclical time with the imagination of a bright future; (2) sundering the Sinocentric tianxia worldview and reimagining the world order; (3) abandoning the literature of fantasy and licentiousness in order to promote science and technology. Liang Qichao’s Future of New China gave inspiration to its antecedents on the first two points, and the bulk of utopian narratives were enriched and made more attractive by the exultant imaginations regarding the future of science and technology, brimming with an emotional energy that moved their audiences. This essay examines the imagination of the world order in the late Qing as seen in Electrical World and other late Qing works of fiction and discourse. In comparison with the oft-studied New Story of the Stone—now identified as a classic—Electrical World has not received a level of attention commensurate with its significance, much like its author Xu Zhiyan. Indeed, in terms of character development (especially the protagonist), plot construction, and ideological content, it is on par with New Stone. Published in the first issue of Xiaoshuo shibao in 1909 under the penname “Subgenius of Gaoyang” (Gaoyang shi bucaizi), Electrical World is the work of famous late Qing author Xu Zhiyan (1875–1923). The plot begins with the words of a storyteller who relates he has returned from “the year Xuantong 101, November 9, 2009 on the Western Calendar,” where he heard that “in central Asia in the Himalayas lay a place called Utopia, where a master of electronics has recently emerged. After travelling the world, he returned home to advocate using electricity to change the world, and create a massive electric Empire” (Gaoyang shi 1). While China’s return to global

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preeminence is a common feature of late Qing fiction, what is unique to Electrical World is that scientists grasp the reins of power both in China and abroad. Later, we come to see how the “King of Electricity” succeeds in promulgating learning and invigorating industry, conquering his enemies, and mastering scientific research, technological know-how, economic development, commercial shipping, urban planning, and social welfare: he is omnipotent. There was a wide gulf between the significance of “science strengthening the nation” and “scientists running the nation” such that related discussion must be conducted in a broader linguistic context. In Francis Bacon’s prototypical utopian text, New Atlantis (1627), the presence of the sovereign is similarly indistinct. The king is only mentioned in the course of a description of the banquets hosted by the local gentry. At a large banquet a herald arrives with the King’s charter, “containing gift of revenue, and many privileges, exemptions, and points of honor” (Wegemer 25; He Xin 24).1 The charter features “the king’s image, embossed or moulded in gold,” (Wegemer 25; He Xin 25) and the king makes no appearance other than this brief glimpse of his visage. Those in true control of the country are the members of the Palace of Solomon. The Palace of Solomon was constructed 1,900 years prior by the sage King Solamona, and features not only with an ideal location and equipment, an expansive research team, and painstaking research methodology, they also have mastery over the rights to scientific and technological discovery. With respect to the system of rights, what is truly surprising is not the miraculous technologies that they produce, it is rather the independent function of this scientific collective: We have consultations, which of the inventions and experiences which we have discovered shall be published, and which not; and take all an oath of secrecy, for the concealing of those: though some of those we do reveal sometimes to the state, and some not. We have circuits or visits of diverse principal cities of the kingdom; where, as it cometh to pass, we do publish such new profitable inventions as we think good. (Bacon 41–42; He Xin 40–41)

1  Translator’s note: whenever possible, I include original English text or authoritative translations. Citations for Bacon include both the Wegemer edition, and the Chinese translation.

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In reality it is hard for us to imagine what nation’s scientists could succeed in collectively hiding the results of their research, avoiding state influence, when it is on the other hand commonplace for scientists to swear to conceal state secrets. Likewise, the patronizing decision to bestow upon the masses only those inventions deemed “profitable” and “good” would surely bring resentment. The matter-of-fact treatment of this situation indicates the position of the Palace of Solomon at the apex of power in New Atlantis. In Bacon’s story, the common people and officials are aware of neither the position nor the comings and goings of the denizens of the Palace of Solomon. Comparing New Atlantis and Electrical World, we find a strikingly similar figure in the King of Electricity who operates at his own autocratic whim. In the novel, Xiweiguo (“Western Prestige”) has constructed a great fleet of airships in preparation to exterminate the Yellow Race. In China, “not yet perfected,” at the beginning of this national peril, the beloved King of Electricity makes himself scarce. The members of the national congress are reduced to helpless bystanders, only able to rejoice when they learn that the King of Electricity has single-handedly defeated their air force. The Emperor dubs the King of Electricity “Lord Electric” (Dian wang), “positioned at the acme of his fellow kings” (Gaoyang shi 19). Resisting aggression is no mean feat, but looking back on the specific course of events, a few episodes bear further scrutiny. First, according to one military official’s report to the national congress, the King of Electricity “was aware that the term ‘Yellow Peril’ was on the tongues of the people of Xiweguo two years ago and only when Asia had been eliminated at the hand of their airships would they rest easy” (Gaoyang shi 16), but he does not convey this vital information to Chinese politicians, and only when Xiweiguo has already wiped out Japan and turned their arms on China, does “warning ring out in the capital of Shanghai” (9). The high-tech armaments invented in the ensuing two years by the King of Electricity include electric ships, electric wings, and electric guns, but many members of congress have only a vague understanding of them, while others are left completely in the dark such that in their moment of greatest need, they aren’t even sure how many ships they have at their disposal. Moreover, whether he is facing invading flying ships in the Pacific Ocean, or pursuing them Westward in reprisal, the King of Electricity neither heeds whether his military maneuvers should be given state sanction, nor does he seek legal justification after the fact. When all is said and done, the King of Electricity is in complete control of technological production and military

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action, and congress and the emperor don’t even rubber-stamp his actions. He alone can let slip the dogs of war or close the gates of peace, because “all nations of the globe sent communications indicating their will to reconcile, entreating the King of Electricity to do no more harm” (19)! Declarations of war and peace treaties—the provenance of the state—are undertaken at the will of the King of Electricity, making China’s true sovereign self-evident. In the war, the King of Electricity performs superhuman feats bordering on farce, and in governance he is likewise omnipotent. On the other hand, the Palace of Solomon in New Atlantis is run by a 36-man team who discuss problems collectively, and their scientific discoveries and technological inventions are rather unremarkable by today’s standards. That said, the two utopian works, written several hundred years apart, share an axiomatic vision of scientocratic rule, a notion shared by the cognoscenti of both spheres upon realizing the power of technology. In Bacon’s time, this power had not yet been fully realized, and the utopia of New Atlantis remained a distant island whose rulers forbade the citizenry from traveling to foreign lands. Electrical World was conceived in the era of scientific utopianism’s triumph, allowing Xu Zhiyan to give free rein to his imagination of a global utopia. It is in precisely this spiritual context that the King of Electricity became the most successful, and most colorful scientist to grace the pages of late Qing fiction. One scholar has dubbed him the “Prime Minister of Science,” (Zhang Zhi 46) but I would argue that he acted as King in carrying out the duties of Prime Minister, a more appropriate title would be “King of Science.” In her research, Roslynn D. Haynes found that the fictional trope of scientists as heroic figures, beginning with Bacon, was popularized in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, making the “Kings of Science” a global literary phenomenon (Haynes 162–186). However, as a result of cultural factors including Christian influence or interference as well as self-­ doubt from within the scientific realm, voices of dissent were ever present among the chorus of praise for scientific heroes in western literature. H.G. Wells may have written A Modern Utopia (1905), but the influence of his mentor Thomas Huxley and journals like Mind (1876–present) helped him hone his depictions of cold and calculating mad scientists (Stiles 317–339). Even though Jules Verne’s outlook on science was more optimistic, Les Cinq cents millions de la Begum (1879), nevertheless also features the evil scientist Schultz.

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The image of the scientist would develop along different lines in China. Chinese tradition held no taboo regarding the notion that investigation of nature was an offense to God’s creation; the gentry were free to investigate nature. This was seen as one aspect of orthodox knowledge, and those engaged in “investigation of things and extension of knowledge” (gewu zhizhi), could “complete their studies and enter into government service” (Benjamin 62). By the late Qing, owing to the fact that science was not only the key to enriching the nation and strengthening the army, but had also opened new horizons of knowledge, even greater hopes were saddled upon the scientists of late Qing fiction. Not only could they engage in commerce or serve as governors and kings, they could also soar to the heavens and plumb the earth, “spurring the people’s spirit of brave exploration” (“Zhongguo weiyi…”).2 Interestingly, Electrical World is not entirely credulous when it comes to the King of Science. In the wake of their moment of angst brought on by the inability to summon the King of Electricity in the face of Xiweiguo’s military incursion, the narrator opines: Huang Zhenqiu is praised as the ‘King of Electricity,’ so often held in such high regard, of such lofty spirit, and now in the face of an event so momentous, neither hide nor hair of him is to be found; will he not help his countrymen devise a plan? …Without Huang Zhenqiu, will we be unable to resist? Dependency is the most shameful trait of all. For so long, we’ve let 2  City-state narratives are a longstanding part of the western utopian tradition, beginning with Plato’s Republic and continuing on into the early modern narratives including Utopia, The City of the Sun, New Atlantis, Christianopolis and others, ideal societies are often limited to city-states or alliances among city-states. On the other hand, in the classical Chinese tradition, “small states with modest populations” and similar peach-garden narratives comprise the utopian mainstream. China and the west alike have both fostered expansive political ideals like the Stoic’s notion of the cosmopolis, medieval Christianity’s dream of world unity, and the utopian pursuit of the unification of all under heaven (tianxia datong) featured in the Book of Rites (Li Ji) chapter “Ceremonial usages” (liyun). But while these ideals all offer a significant political rhetoric, they did not make a significant impact in the realm of fictional narrative. Moreover, they were of limited scope. There was no space for heterodox believers in the ideal Christian world, and in comparison to the spectacular clashes between the “middle kingdom,” and “barbarian races” recorded in China’s historical annals, the “grand unity” featured in the Book of Rites exists only on paper. Only in the nineteenth century as the development of a capitalist world system gradually incorporated humanity, dispersed across all corners of the globe into a single organic entity, did the world order truly become the object of conscious creation and manipulation. Only then was an all-encompassing cosmotopia taking the entire planet as its realm, and the entirety of humanity in all its flourishing diversity as its subject a possibility.

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Huang Zhenqiu be the brains of our operation, and this calamity is our just dessert. My countrymen! My countrymen! Our mouths cloy with the flavor of our dependency. (Gaoyang shi 13)

The narrative seems poised to continue to interrogate the reliability of science and scientists. But then, in the wake of the King of Electricity’s grand appearance they say, “we had doubted Factory Foreman Huang, but we shall never do so again” (Gaoyang shi 18). The brilliant image of the scientist is unwavering, from the late Qing through the May Fourth era, the people’s hopes and dreams are all entrusted to these modern heroes. Let us turn our attention once again to the war the King of Electricity triumphs in through recourse to technology. This essay is not interested in the events of the war resulting from the use of new weapons, each more wondrous than the last, but on the world order established in its wake. The notion that what came before was “broken,” and what came after is the “proper” order of a new world is the very essence of utopia. Mirroring is the most basic means of reimagination. China’s defeat in the Opium War came in the face of superior ships and powerful cannons, and if only China had more superior ships and more powerful cannons, they could execute the same villainy, and better the instruction. This was seen as a matter of course in the late Qing imagination of the world order, of which the most representative work was The New Era. The novel’s conclusion featuring the victorious yellow race of China forcing the white nations of Europe to sign a series of unequal treaties, establishing indemnities, colonial concessions, extraterritorial garrisons, the right to proselytize (Confucian) religion, and so forth, was little more than a reversal of the various humiliations China suffered in reality during the late Qing. New Ramblings of the Rustic Elder continues on in this vein; the narrative opens in the era following China’s conquest of Europe. “After Christianity was wiped out in Europe, true teachings flourished and the doctrines of our great land were used to change the barbarians” (Lu Shi’e Vol. 1, 30).3 Soon after, European nationalism begins to take hold, and the Chinese ministers endowed with “national leadership of the European continent” are driven out, but the uprising is easily quashed by a Chinese-dispatched air force squadron. Even the city of Jerusalem is bombed by Chinese forces using nitroglycerin. The conditions of the subsequent treaty intensify colonial rule, “the 72 states shall abide by the Chinese calendar,” and 3

 Paraphrase of Mencius Tai Wen Gong 1.4.

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“acknowledge Confucianism as the national religion of Europe…the Christian and Gregorian calendars shall be permanently abolished…the spoken and written languages of the various states are mutually unintelligible, resulting in great inconvenience, and shall henceforth be eliminated and replaced by the language and writing of the Han. Those who dare to continue using the speech and writing systems of Europe are hereby declared impudent…China has dispatched an emissary to Portugal to undertake management of Europe. The 72 states shall keep this official informed of all matters pertaining to affairs foreign and domestic prior to taking any action” (Lu Shi’e Vol. 2, 31–32). Electrical World offers a number of comparatively moderate symbolic vignettes detailing the reversal of the world order. For example, a newly constructed Arctic park at the Bering Sea features a towering pagoda with a library housed on the top three floors, “the bottom of which was mostly African, and Australian books, the middle European and American, and the very top floor housed Chinese books” (Gaoyang shi 43). Or, the surviving members of Xiweiguo’s air force who are sentenced to life imprisonment for their failed assassination of the King of Electricity, but because “the King of Electricity made a special request… they were imprisoned for five years, and could never enter the park.” Later some European workers who plot a rebellion are given the same sentence, in response to which one character remarks, “Hey! How can you forget that park in 19th century Shanghai with the sign that said ‘no dogs or Chinese allowed’! When Chinese of the twentieth century saw this they were overcome with fury and only when they recovered their territorial rights was the sign finally done away with. Here we are a hundred years on, and it only serves the Europeans right that this law has been applied to them” (Gaoyang shi 46–47). Those familiar with late-nineteenth-century Chinese history will no doubt find this episode amusing. However, readers were rarely able to fully lose themselves in this fantastic depiction of the world order upended. Late Qing utopian thinkers responded to the multiple humiliations suffered by their fatherland with fury and despair. Furthermore, the notion that “the nation must be avenged, even if it takes a hundred years,” aroused complex feelings: on the one hand, they reveled in the thought of engaging in a tit-for-tat, taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; on the other hand they were apprehensive that should slaughter and humiliation be visited upon the eminently sophisticated white/European peoples, they would surely respond in kind. The epigraph to the final chapter of The New Era reading

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“At conflict’s conclusion, winners and losers are yellow and white; an armistice brings the global dispute to an end” does not match the content as, “a great uprising amongst the peoples of America and Europe surged forth in opposition to this treaty” (Biheguan zhuren 561). In Electrical World, the King of Electricity dreams of himself transformed into a whale, surrounded by whaling ships piloted by the European laborers who he commands, projecting a similar anxiety. Because the strong lording over the weak is unjust, racial equality is observed. In New Story of the Stone, the master of the Realm of Civilization, Dongfang Wenming, cannot get over the cruel fate of people of color, “Now, the red, black, and brown races have long been mired in calamity, and have suffered such extreme abuse, that they are on the verge of extinction. Every time I think of them, I am always uneasy. They are humans just like us, so why should those groups alone encounter such misfortune?” (Wu Jianren 277).4 The reasoning he shares at a World Peace Summit is that of universal racial equality regardless of the size of the population: If the red, black, and brown races were to be treated as equals, then it would not be permitted to abuse their governments or their citizenry. This is a way that we human beings can protect one another, and permanently prevent further such abuse or cruelty. If among those groups, there are certain shortcomings in their level of achievement, then those of us in civilized countries—whether as individuals or as societies—all have a duty to lead and enlighten such benighted peoples. (Wu Jianren 283–284)

While his position is sincere, its delivery might be referred to as engaging in the “burden of the civilized.” Influenced by western racial prejudice, Wu Jianren’s work occasionally features descriptions of black subjects as “born with an extremely ignorant nature,” and “simple-minded as animals” and goes as far as to suggest through the voice of the characters that red and black people are lazy by nature, and that if it were used on “those who are utterly incapable of thought,” a new medicine that could grow cerebral tissue and improve intelligence called “intelligence-augmenting powder” would merely “contribute to them becoming more barbaric” (Wu Jianren 278). The “helpful lessons” delivered with such a patronizing tone are far from enlightened. 4  Translations of the passages from Wu Jianren’s New Story of the Stone are courtesy of Elizabeth Evans, whose translation of the novel is forthcoming from Columbia University Press.

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In comparison with the vague vision of New Story of the Stone, the new order’s reliance upon flourishing technology sketched out by Xu Zhiyan is even more palpable, and its significance is even greater. In the wake of the great war, owing to “gradual weakening” of the Chinese financial sector, the King of Electricity sends 200,000 European workers to prospect for gold in Antarctica, and then constructs a gold depository on the Iranian Plateau. One day, after checking the gold reserve, the King of Electricity makes a generous gift: The King made a benevolent proclamation and further bestowed fifty pounds of gold to every European laborer, all in all giving away a million pounds of gold, and pleasing them immensely. The King of Electricity’s magnanimity was great, and his treatment of them exemplary. They worked no more than four hours a day, their salaries were particularly generous, and their families were allowed to accompany them should they so choose. Now having checked his holdings and awarded each of them fifty pounds, how could the European workers be anything but thankful? The King often said, “in the nineteenth century Westerners subjected Chinese workers to the most terrible humiliations, but given that things have wound up as they are today, why should I study their example?” The King was ever compassionate, and none dared accuse him of injustice. (Gaoyang shi 20)

The King’s decision to forgo China’s ample labor force in favor of European workers would appear to be a conscious decision on the part of Xu. During the Qing era, many residents of China’s coasts were deceived or outright forced into maritime coolie labor, the tragic vicissitudes of these Chinese workers were vividly chronicled in late Qing literature. Many authors’ idealistic utopian sentiments were born of having seen or heard of their countrymen being sold like “swine,” subjugated and scarred. The most salient example of this being Biheguan Zhuren who first serialized World of Gold (Huangjin shijie) in 1907, chronicling the hardships of Chinese workers and sketching out life in foreign concessions, followed by The New Era, published in 1908. Sending European miners to Antarctica naturally represents a reversal of the world order. But a closer examination of the King’s actions reveals that rather than the revanchist logic of “an eye for an eye,” we have “requiting resentment with justice.” He employs, but does not enslave the European workers, offering favorable labor conditions which the workers welcome enthusiastically. As a result the novel notes that around the world, “every capitalist’s morality advanced, wages rose, and the wealth of laborers and merchants approached equal levels.”

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It is apparent that the King of Electricity does not favor a specific group, but harbors genuine socialist sentiment. His mining operation does not merely ameliorate China’s financial crisis, rather it seeks to ensure the healthy function of the economy in the context of rapid advances in productivity and the intensification of the global economic system. “Because of the discovery of electricity and progress in productivity, agricultural production has increased many thousand fold over the past century, and as a result the ratio of product to currency has become imbalanced. Prices of commodities should not increase tenfold…when commodity prices are not allowed to soar or plummet, the people experience neither excessive wealth nor abject poverty, is this not the world the Great Unity, a political order to be treasured?” (Gaoyang shi 23). Without a doubt, this plentiful society free of poverty and inequality is enabled by technology, and this is a critical element of the late Qing imagination of the world order. If the reversal of strong and weak is carried out in the context of technological progress serving the mutual benefit of all, and universal improvements in quality of life, the new division of resources need not abide by the revolutionary logic of “plundering the plunderers,” resulting in a more equitable world order. In Electrical World, progress in electronic technology spurs on industrial and agricultural productivity, necessitating an increase in the amount of currency in circulation. The obstacles presented by a mining operation in the frozen wasteland of the South Pole also necessitate amelioration through “electrical discoveries.” An autonomously charged airship that “seats thirty thousand passengers, give or take, travelling five or six thousand li an hour,” ferries both laborers and the gold they mine to and fro. The lightbulbs it is equipped with— manufactured using Germanium extracted electrically from ore found on the banks of the Ganges River whose “brightness and heat were quite remarkable…on par with that of the Sun,”—thaw the frozen landscape into a paradise, “as if it were late Spring, like the climate in the Chinese province of Guangdong,” and the workers “take comfort in their homes and joy in their work, amply clothed and fed” (Gaoyang shi 20–22). These advances in communications and energy enable the King to create a host of work opportunities, and to offer the European laborers favorable working and living conditions and “unusually high” salaries meeting their approval when they are the group most likely to suffer injury or racial discrimination in the new world order. Of course, not everyone feels gratitude for this kindness: the aforementioned would-be assassins are indignant. The assassination attempt is not

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merely a response to the deaths of their friends and brothers in Xiweiguo’s navy at the hand of the King of Electricity; their perceived racial humiliation is a major contributing factor. “Our race has always been known as the greatest in the world, and now we have to offer up our lands to them, how could this affront go unanswered? And then came the orders for the park at the North Pole, ranking us amongst the laborers where we suffered such indignity for the pleasure of your yellow race. Who wouldn’t be angry?” Later, the European workers unite, planning to “occupy the South Pole and establish an independent nation,” in solidarity with this logic. While both rebellions fail, they are an indicator of the undying perniciousness of racism and nationalism. The narrator remarks that Europeans, “know that electricity can sting and the profundity of the science of electronics. They won’t underestimate us again” (Gaoyang shi 46–47) but this statement belies a certain doubt. How can nationalism be transcended? The final section of Electrical World offers this clever solution to the question of highlighting and eliminating the challenges of human existence: Upon hearing this the King of Electricity suddenly realized that if the human population kept increasing at this rate, in ten years the planet would be filled from the summit of Mount Everest to the bottom of the Dead Sea. What would the point of a world like this be? Having thought this, he also felt that there were so many shortcomings to this world. He had invented the electric car and electric ship allowing travel in the skies; could industry and housing break free of the surface of the Earth? The invention of the Germanium lamp had eliminated cold and darkness from the Antarctic; could colonies break extraterrestrial ground? That land is ultimately finite is a source of human suffering. Land is scarce indeed: the ancients were right to say that Earth is “three-tenths mountains, six-tenths oceans and one part fertile fields,” and today that one-tenth part fields have been increased to three. Those vast waters an expanse uncaring, we look to the seas and sigh. Thus constrained we shall never know the joy of Great Unity. (Gaoyang shi 48–49)

Presented in this manner, constraints on lebensraum are not the problem of one nation or one people but a problem all humanity must confront. In fact, the King’s actions in the novel like the Germanium lamp that warms the Antarctic, melting the glaciers, bringing “citizens of the five continents” “arriving in willing droves,” to harsh and frozen places like Siberia as they are transformed into human paradises, are for the sake

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of all humanity. When people on land are beset by peril, the King goes on to create a particularly sturdy electric ship capable of producing fresh air to sustain long-term life at the bottom of the ocean that he offers to humanity so they can colonize the sea floor. Anticipating the day when the sea floor is blanketed in colonies, the King asks, “now that the seafloor has been colonized, it will eventually be populated to the fullest, and no space remains, how will those people make their livelihood then?” (Gaoyang shi 54). Thereupon he decides to “expand the world,” and gives up his official position, immersing himself in his work, eventually boarding the “electric balloon” he has invented, soaring off into the vastness of space in a journey to find new lands suitable for human habitation. This is a striking Guevarian role-reversal: the King renounces his powers, forsaking control of the hard-earned world order he established; he leaves the planet and thoughts of his nation behind in order to seek freedom, liberation, and profitable labor for all mankind, the righteousness of which is clear. New Ramblings of the Rustic Elder also examines the problem of overpopulation, expanding from “rightly governing the state” to one of “making all under heaven tranquil and happy,” albeit rendered in more vivid and ethically complex terms. Advocates of colonizing other planets were not uncommon among late Qing luminaries inspired by interest in astronomical geography. For example, Lu Xun, upon finishing the translation of Verne’s De la Terre a la Lune, mused that “we will go on to colonize the planets, and travel to the moon will seem familiar and natural, even to a peddler” (Lu Xun 163). In Cai Yuanpei’s story, New Year’s Dream (Xinnian meng), extraterrestrial colonization is imbued with symbolic significance: “when human beings had nothing left to fight over, everyone joined together in a struggle against nature aimed at making rain and sun, heat and cold obey the whims of mankind, and controlling the atmosphere itself. Colonizing the planets is the inevitable outcome of terrestrial human’s competitive spirit” (Cai Yuanpei 242). New Ramblings of the Rustic Elder sang the praises of extraterrestrial colonization as well: more than 25% of the book is dedicated to narrating Wen Reng and other’s colonial adventures breaking new ground by piloting flying ships to the planets. Through Wen Reng, the story gives voice to the notion that overpopulation is a global problem, and China is not the only territory so afflicted. Although this is the case, the effort involved in addressing the issue becomes a question of the pursuit of universal feelings. Extrapolation of the thinking that all “people” all of whom were “brethren and friends,” originating in Neo-Confucian master Zhang Zai’s “Western Inscription”

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(Ximing), from the people of the Sinosphere to the masses of the international community, and completed the self-renewal of the Confucian universalism’s vision of the people as brethren, overshadowing the principle of abject rejection of the Other. Considered in this context, a close reading of the aforementioned narrative of an air squadron quashing a European rebellion is of particular significance. In comparison with the dazzling spectacle of war depicted in The New Era, the Sino-European conflict in New Ramblings is entirely one-sided, as the Chinese air force makes quick work of their mission. The two sides have not even met on the battlefield and Europe surrenders. This is not because Lu Shi’e was lacking in technological imagination: a full three chapters of the novel are dedicated to a rich description of the manufacture and nature of their flying ships, including their appearance, size, internal design, instrumentation, storage holds, how they are piloted, their velocity, reconnaissance methods, and firepower. The Europeans are not able to resist the flying ships’ armaments; but they have been outfitted in this manner for the purpose of interplanetary colonization during the course of outer-space exploration: “Venus and Jupiter are bigger than the Earth by more than ten times. If we can devise a method to communicate with them so that the people of Earth can travel to other planets, reproduction will no longer be a problem” (Lu Shi’e Vol. 2, 72). The imagined colonies in outer space are open to all humankind: Yang Dan, the King of Portugal proclaimed, “it’s not a question of desire to resist. We face the reality of overpopulation, which has made our livelihood difficult, exhausted and without solutions, we do this as a last resort. Though we find ourselves momentarily conquered, if we do not seek a solution, there will be no path towards long-term stability. What does the Marshal think we should do?” Wen Reng replied, “China and other countries alike face the peril of overpopulation. My aim in creating the flying ship had nothing to do with conquering Europe, it was to travel to other planets, and establish a world outside this world. If your state suffers a surfeit of people, as soon as I have established a new world they are welcome to move there.” (Lu Shi’e Vol. 2, 34)

With such lofty intent when creating the flying ship, and no mind paid to the exorbitant cost, China’s Emperor is regarded as “particularly attentive.” And when he has finally mustered the massive human and material capital to complete the project, it proves a uniquely powerful weapon:

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“when the flying ship is finished, and it flies to other planets, engaging in battle with extraterrestrials, what cause for worry will the Europeans have?” (Lu Shi’e Vol. 1, 86). Pacifying Europe is little more than a warmup for the fleet prior to conquering outer space, and the understated narrative is within the realm of reason. Europe’s defeat is on a technological front of course, but in the course of inventing the miraculous flying ship, we see that this defeat is also the defeat of nationalism, because without a sense of universal sentiment, there would not have been adequate energy and imagination to achieve such a project, transcending generations and relying upon the strength of the entire populace. Lu Shi’e, like Xu Zhiyan, expressed a desire to transcend nationalism. In a world ruled by the law of the jungle, nationalism may be pragmatic or even necessary, but soon results in expansion, incursion, oppression, and murder, and must eventually be overcome. Transcendence of nationalism necessitates the “impartial caring” of universal human feeling, and also necessitates the dissolution or easing of competition between factions, and the pressure of competition for survival. Sf features the human collective as a means of shining light on the other; technological discovery as a narrative thread and it is the ideal genre for exploring these ideas. However, as we have seen in the discussion above, it would appear that in all late Qing imaginations of the world order, “love is different,” be it explicit or implicit. This is because real anger and idealized forbearance are two sides of the same coin “in the words of historian Zhang Hao (b. 1937) the admixture of global consciousness and nationalism was a feature of the intellectual tenor of the era,” and “native Chinese narrations of nationalism, were ever-cognizant of an overarching unifying factor, and in narrating globalism or other similar—isms, they habitually expressed an affinity for nationalism” (Luo Zhitian 72, 103). This contradictory attitude was so fervently held that a hundred years later its echoes can still be heard.

References Anon. “Zhongguo weiyi zhi wenxue bao Xin xiaoshuo.” Xinmin congbao, vol. 14, 1902: (advertising insert). Bacon, Francis. Xin Daxi dao 新大西岛 [New Atlantis], translated by He Xin. Beijing: Shangwu yinshu guan, 2012. ———. New Atlantis, edited by Gerard B.  Wegemer. Dallas: CTMS Publishers, 2020.

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Biheguan zhuren. Xin Jiyuan [The New Era], annotated by He Shengsui. In: Zhongguo jindai xiaoshuo daxi. Nanchang: Jiangxi renmin chubanshe, 1989. Cai Yuanpei. Xinnian meng 新年梦 [New Year’s Dream], edited by Gao Pingshu. Cai Yuanpei quanji [Collected Works of Cai Yuanpei], vol. 1. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1984. Elman, Benjamin. Zhongguo jindai kexue de wenhua shi [A Cultural History of Modern Science in China], translated by Wang Hongxia et. al. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2009. Gaoyangshi bucaizi. Dian shijie 电世界 [Electrical World]. Xiaoshuo shibao, vol. 1, 1909, pp. 1–58. Haynes, Roslynn D. From Faust to Strangelove: Representation of the Scientist in Western Literature. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Lu, Shi’e 陆士谔. Xin yesou puyan [New Ramblings of the Rustic Elder], 2 volumes. Shanghai: Yahua shuju, 1928. Lu, Xun. “Yuejie luxing bianyan” in Lu Xun quanji vol. 10. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2005. Luo, Zhitian 罗志田. Lixiang yu xianshi” qingji minchu shijie zhuyi yu minzu zhuyi de guanlian hudong 理想与现实:清季民初世界主义与民族主义的关联互动 [Globalism and Racism Late Qing and Early Republican China]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2009. Stiles, Anne. Literature in “Mind”: H.  G. Wells and the Evolution of the Mad Scientist[J]. Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 70, 2009, (2): 317–339. Wu Jianren 吴趼人. Xin shitou ji 新石头记 [New Story of the Stone], annotated by Huang Lin. Shibo menghuan sanbuqu 世博梦幻三部曲. Shanghai: Dongfang chuban zhongxin, 2010. ———. “Zuijin shehui wochuo shi xu.” In Ershi shiji Zhongguo xiaoshuo lilun ziliao vol. 1. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1997. Zhang Zhi 张治. “Dongfang wenhua pengzhuang zhong de tianren huaixiang: wan Qing kehuan xiaoshuo yu xiandai xing” 东西文化碰撞中的天人怀想:晚清 科幻小说与现代性 [Eastern ruminations on heaven and man in a moment of shock: late Qing SF and modernity]. 现代性与中国科幻文学 [Modernity and Chinese SF], edited by Zhang Zhi, Hu Jun and Feng Zhen. Fuzhou: Fujian shaonian ertong chubanshe, 2006, pp. 3–74. “Zhongguo weiyi zhi wenxue bao Xin xiaoshuo (China’s only literary journal: New Fiction).” Xinmin congbao, vol. 14, 1902, advertising insert.

CHAPTER 5

Formal Fictions: “Chinese” “Science” “Fiction” in Translation Virginia L. Conn

In 2015, Liu Cixin (刘慈欣 1963-present) became the first Chinese author to win the Hugo Award for his novel, The Three-Body Problem (Santi 三体 2008, English translation in 2014). The subsequent frenzy in the literary world would have been unimaginable even a year or two before: book deals, movie deals, a palpable shift in literary discourse. Foremost amongst the hubbub was the consistent refrain that this was the first Chinese author to win, that this was the first Chinese novel to win, that this was the first Chinese science fiction to be popular in the West: the first Chinese everything. In the months and years that followed, Chineseness broadly, and Chinese SF specifically, became a heated point of discussion. What was Chinese about Chinese science fiction? What did it mean for an already historically contested genre to be modified by an historically contested— national? ethnic? linguistic?—adjective? The issue of “what makes Chinese science fiction Chinese,” already a complex debate in the global publishing ecosystem, was further

V. L. Conn (*) Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. Song et al. (eds.), Chinese Science Fiction, Studies in Global Science Fiction, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53541-3_5

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complicated by the fact that separate definitional questions have historically taken place within Chinese language scholarship than are currently taking place in English language scholarship about Chinese SF. Broadly generalized, Chinese language debates have historically focused on the definition of science and its relationship to literature, while contemporary English language debates largely focus on the legibility of individual examples of Chinese SF texts within a global genre system. A definitive answer as to what constitutes “Chinese” SF is no more settled than is the question of what constitutes “science fiction” at all, and yet two distinct approaches have broadly emerged within Chinese SF studies over the last decade. The first of these is a model for framing Chinese SF that treats it as an example of world literature.1 Angie Chau, for example, argues for a concomitant ascension to “elite culture” (111) on the part of both SF and Chinese literature, upon which ascension, both will attain recognized value as part of the global literary canon. Scholars taking the opposite approach, on the other hand, have largely attempted to argue for a literary specificity of genre, in which Chinese SF is better approached as a distinct genre with a specific set of unique literary and national characteristics. Xu Tingwen, for example, calls for the “right to untranslatability” (111), which Xu argues currently does not exist in an Anglocentric literary world that provisionally accepts Chinese SF only so long as it can be translated into and circulated in English. This second position understands the very terminology of “Chinese science fiction” as fundamentally articulating literary positionality within a linguistic corpus that invests it with meaning and value. Drawing on this second framework, I analyze how the epistemological genealogies of the concept of SF—to say nothing of its supposed inherent “Chineseness”—are lost in the English gloss of both the terms “science” and “science fiction,” leading to potentially significant lacunae in what would otherwise be viable comparative approaches to Sinophone literatures. That is, I am not arguing for an ethnonationalist specificity of Chinese literature that imagines it as a distinct category incommensurable with Western models of SF, but rather that the very terminology used to discuss and define “Chinese” “science” “fiction” already establishes a normative positionality that assumes a shared linguistic stability that does not exist. By attempting to discuss “Chinese science fiction” as if these 1  David Damrosch stipulates two conditions for defining something as world literature: “first, by being read as literature; second, by circulating out into a broader world beyond its linguistic and cultural point of origin.” (6)

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categories were commensurate across linguistic and literary histories, “Chinese science fiction” largely becomes a formal fiction of a genre system defined and enforced by English hegemony. In this chapter, I focus on two pivotal turning points when Chinese authors, scholars, and politicians conscientiously reoriented and recategorized their definitions of both science and science fiction and the repercussions this had for defining the genre(s) within a larger global system of literature. First, I examine the early decades of the twentieth century, when Chinese literati were arguing for new modes of literature and culture driven, in part, by a rejection of traditional Confucian values and knowledge systems and an openness to reform and experimentation. Influential thinkers such as Lu Xun (鲁迅 1881–1936), Chen Duxiu (陈独秀 1879–1942), and Liang Qichao (梁啓超 1873–1929) are representative figures-in-microcosm of the types of discourses taking place at this time, which were strongly influenced by a new openness to Western epistemologies. Subsequently, I examine changes taking place in the scientific and science fictional fields following the formation of the PRC, when literary and scientific regulations conscientiously turned away from Western democratization and toward a socialist realism outlined by the Soviet Union. Terminology and aesthetic regulations were strictly delineated but, as with the earlier New Culture period (Xin Wenhua Yundong 新文 化运动 1910s–20s), subject to internal nationalist debate and reconceptualization. Zheng Wenguang (郑文光 1929–2003) and Ye Yonglie (叶永烈 1940–2020) are among the most important authors working to define the boundaries of the genre for a new audience at this time. The lack of a stable signifier for terms like “science,” “science fiction,” or “Chinese” during both time frames provides insight into the importance of different ideological influences while also demonstrating the difficulty of situating the textual products that were the result of such shifting debates into a global literary system that is contemporarily organized around Western genre definitions.

The Future’s Perfect Mood At the beginning of the twentieth century, literary and scientific modernity, as two arms of the nation-building process, not only defined the geopolitical entity “China” in spatial terms but also projected it chronologically—either backward in time (“we” have always existed as a nation; our traditions have survived unchanged for thousands of years; we have

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always spoken this language or belonged to this ethnicity, etc.) or forward (as in the myth of linear progress). Both impulses were at work in the early twentieth century, often to conflicting ends. Following its forced opening and the establishment of Western treaty ports at the end of the 1800s, late Qing writers wanted to present China as superior to the West while also largely confessing to the superiority of Western technology, which was depicted as having progressed further teleologically in terms of social evolution. Utopian scholar Dun Wang characterizes this era “as being in many ways abominable, while the future was seen as a utopian dreamland of possibility and hope” (37). By framing the push for modernity this way, China’s turn-of-the-century “backwardsness” was not due to any inherent flaw (contrary to the viewpoint of authors such as Lu Xun2) but rather simply a question of time. China simply “lagged behind” the more advanced West, and with time and the adoption of its sciences and technologies, it would inevitably catch up to the Western future. This discursive shift justified China’s past by positioning it as the very reason for the projected success of a distant future. In doing so, Chinese SF authors and translators could incorporate the aspects of Western technology that they saw as fundamental to Chinese advancement into an essentially “Chinese” framework. Rey Chow identifies this speculative theorizing about “progress” and “culture” as sharing a common goal of “turning things around where they have become stagnant,” in part because they “share the telos of ‘progress,’ a rationalistic aspiration toward acceptance, recognition, and active membership on the global scene” (2). The challenge of translating Western scientific progress into a Chinese context presaged the difficulty of translating Chinese visions of technofuturity into a Western framework. Consider the case of two fin-de-siècle figures, Liang Qichao and Lu Xun, and their efforts to incorporate Western scientism into national literatures at a time when both concepts were rapidly changing. Both figures were influential in culture and politics at the turn of the century and are broadly representative of the New Culture Movement, which promoted cultural reform organized around science and democracy. Liang Qichao wrote numerous treatises on the 2  The story of how Lu Xun turned away from medicine and towards writing as a cure for what he perceived to be the more pressing problem of China’s spiritual sickness and degradation is well known and frequently recounted, with almost as many interpretations of the event (from Rey Chow’s reading of it as an abrupt encounter with technologicized visuality to Ari Heinrich’s conclusion that Lu Xun came to identify with the microbes he had previously studied in slides) as allusions to the event itself.

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connection between literature and national identity that, while promoting a degree of globalized cosmopolitanism, also argued for the creation of a modern nation-state through the creation of a corpus of scientific literature. His essay “On the Relationship of New Fiction to the Formation of the People” (“lun xiaoshuo yu qun zhizhi guanxi” 论小说与群治之关系 1902) explicitly argues for a new style of fiction that can transform the people and prepare them for a greater engagement with nation-building within a newly global framework, claiming that “if you want a new human heart,” a “new morality,” a “new set of customs,” and a “new nation” (Liang 1902, 1), a new type of novel that can both please and challenge the people is necessary. These new novels cannot only aim “to please the heart and mind” but must offer the possibility of something new to inspire the people to change. This call to literary action is dependent upon new articulations of science and knowledge production in circulation at the time, foremost of which were “science” and “democracy”—terms that, even as they shaped the newly developing literature, were themselves in flux. “Mr. Science” and “Mr. Democracy” were, as formative concepts introduced alongside new approaches to literature, tasked with “cur[ing] China of all the darkness in its politics, morals, academics, and thought” (Chen Duxiu 1919). These personifications joined the vanguard of tools aimed at transforming culture and politics as part of the New Culture Movement and were explicitly packaged as part of a national reconceptualization of science as it responded to globalization. Chen Duxiu wrote of their preeminence, “Modern European people have gained their superiority through the flourishing of science (科学) no less than through democratic theory,” with the two functioning together “just as a cart has two wheels” (Chen Duxiu 1915). Shortly after, he more forcefully pitted “Mr. Science” and “Mr. Democracy” against the old philosophy, art and literature, morality, and politics that had heretofore characterized the “national essence” (Chen Duxiu 1919), insisting on their incompatibility. To this end, the idea of “Western learning” (xixue 西学) was promoted as part of the ill-fated 1895 Reform in which Liang Qichao took part. Over the next fifteen years, the concept of “specialized learning” (fenke zhi xue 分科之 学) would become singularized as the standard “kexue” (科学) used to refer to science, in part because of the profound influence of scientific reformers who promoted xixue. “Science,” in this case, underwent a complex recategorization that to some extent aligned Chinese epistemological

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change with Western geopolitical and ideological methodologies, with significant repercussions for the role of literature within such epistemes. Thus, of critical importance for the evaluation of SF’s role in the early decades of the twentieth century is the fact that the concept of “science” was neither universally stable nor was it a concept that was imposed wholesale on Chinese from English or the West. Numerous terms within Chinese correspond with the word “science” in English, often to very different ends and coming from very different origins. Wang Hui, in his authoritative essay on the changing notions of science within Chinese intellectual epistemologies, notes the “[…] growing awareness that science is the making of knowledge and not knowledge as such, so that it has become more nearly equated with ‘research,’ signifying at last not a static doctrine, but a process” (3). This is seen in the way Chinese thinkers have attempted to translate the word itself, in “[…] concepts like gezhi (investigation and extension), gewu (to investigate things), and qiongli zhi xue (study of probing thoroughly the principle)” (Wang 3). Compared with the later popular concept of “science” (as defined by the contemporary kexue), gezhi “lays particular stress on the process of the subject’s cognition, observation, and experience” (Wang 3) rather than its empirical replicability. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, what we refer to in English as “science” was most commonly understood through the concept of gezhi—a term heavily laden with Confucian concepts of unity and continuity, and the concept against which scholars such as Liang Qichao pitted xixue and kexue. At the time that the concept of kexue was being introduced, the Confucian principles underlying science were most commonly designated by phrases such as “investigation and extension” (gezhi 格致), “investigation of things” (gewu 格物), “the study of probing thoroughly the principle” (穷理之学), and “investigating things so as to extend knowledge” ( 格物致知). Any and all of these terms could be (and were) translated as “science,” though they each had their own historic etymologies and were clearly not synonymous with one singular concept of science as applied in a Western context. The term gezhi, then, had two senses by the end of the Qing Dynasty: it narrowly referred to all natural sciences (particularly physics), but also broadly consisted of “sciences” taken altogether (natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities, etc.). This specific concept of investigating things, however, began to move from encompassing classical learning and natural studies to designating a specific domain of knowledge within the natural sciences. Through increased exposure to the Western concept of

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scientific rationalism as a structured system, “the investigation of things increasingly demarcated the new Western natural sciences. For example, a scientist was now called ‘someone who investigated things and extended knowledge’” (Elman 112–13). Meng Yue identifies gezhi as a “hybrid science” (Meng 1999) and as a cultural field without a singular subject position, fixed national identity, or adherence to fixed-point chronology, and as such too broad for a Western-educated intelligentsia committed to a singular vision of modernity, as Liang Qichao or Lu Xun were. As Western powers racked up imperialist victories and continued to force the China’s geopolitical opening, the issue of progressive state-building—and the role science would play in it—became increasingly pressing for Chinese intelligentsia, politicians, and literati alike. Creating a state that could stand up to imperialist incursions meant making the same kinds of distinctions as the question of defining science itself incurred: would it hybridize existing influences, or break with them to create something new? Liang Qichao gives credence to both in his unfinished semi-science fictional political reform novel, The Future of New China (Xin Zhongguo weilai ji 新中国未来记1902), with the bulk of the text devoted to a debate between two speakers, a reformist and a revolutionary, who spend multiple chapters arguing about the value of hybridization versus a self-­ contained political and cultural rupture. Ultimately, Liang comes down on the side of reform, looking to the West for inspiration, both in scientific definitions and SF. In The Future of New China, the reformist speaker wins the day; among Liang’s other publications, the Bibliography of Western Learning (Xixue shumu biao 西学书目表 1896) contains 355 titles promoting Western learning and the abandonment of gezhi. Liang further cemented science as the provenance of the West with China as its recipient in his compilation, the Collectanea of the Western Art of Government (西政 聪书 Xizheng congshu 1897), which credits progress in fields such as politics, military tactics, agriculture, history, and commerce to Western science. Such an attribution illustrates how the concept of science was discursively redirected and produced as a component of a state-building project defined by the West even when implemented by Chinese thinkers. This linguistic and epistemological shift was underway in China long before its forced opening to the West following the unequal treaties,3 but increasing exposure to Western science and thought only became more  The unequal treaties (bu pingdeng tiaoyue 不平等条约) were a series of one-sided treaties between China, various Western powers, Russia, and Japan in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century in which China was forced to cede land, open its ports, and grant extraterritorial privileges. 3

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pronounced as education in Western and Japanese methods assumed a greater degree of prestige within a modernizing China. Benjamin Elman addresses this, noting that “The ever-increasing numbers of overseas Chinese students in Japan, Europe, and the United States learned a language of modern science that was not filtered through traditionalist notions. Nevertheless, continuities remained. For example, Japanese scholars during the early Meiji period, influenced by the rise of Germany, demarcated the new sciences by creating a new term for Wissenschaft as a broad sense of European science: kagaku, which literally means ‘classified learning based on technical training’” (199). It was this multi-leveled translational concept that eventually came to refer to and encompass the most contemporary translation of “science”—a concept very different from what “science” had previously entailed when it was conceptualized as gezhi. The word kagaku (科学—the same characters as the Chinese kexue) was a Japanese import, a product of Japan’s Meiji restoration, and another example of translingual scientific practice, as it was transliterated into Chinese as kexue (科学). Supplanting gezhi as the Chinese equivalent of science, it began to parallel an intellectual shift from the earlier-described neo-Confucian epistemology underpinning the Chinese conception of “scientific understanding” toward an increasingly experimentally verifiable foundation for conceptualizing the material world. Unlike gezhi, which carried with it the distinct flavor of tradition, kexue was seen as an overtly “modern” way of categorizing knowledge. It was “a key term that helped constitute the lexicon of late Qing colonial modernity. Originally meaning simply ‘knowledge,’ in the late Qing it came to be linked to the European Enlightenment’s scientific method and a corresponding field of knowledge production” (Isaacson 2016, 3). As a term that was co-opted from the Japanese translation of a German concept that broadly included “the sciences,” not just a particular branch of science or science as a theoretical concept, kexue was a uniquely modern construct. To this end, Liang Qichao’s unfinished novel, The Future of New China, posits China becoming a utopian global superpower as the result of modern scientific rationalism exemplified by kexue. The novel is set in 1962, the fiftieth anniversary of the titular “new China” and the founding of the International Peace Conference, which—while bringing together leaders from all over the world—recognizes China’s leadership in the new global order. International attendees at the conference are all fluent in Chinese;

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what’s more, of the tens of thousands of foreign students that are noted to have enrolled in Chinese universities since the establishment of new China, barely over a thousand have returned to their country of origin, making China the new global epicenter of scientific innovation and education. This situation is complicated by Liang’s devotion to xixue, however, as evident in the fact that a considerable portion of the novel is committed to a rigorous debate over the future of Chinese development by two Western-­ educated students, who anxiously wonder “what country will be China’s future master?” Despite the claim that China is the new global center of power, by the far-off future of 1962, it is still informed by Western learning and subject to Western definitions of scientific practice. Even the manuscript itself is—as Liang acknowledges in the opening preface—emblematic of the difficulty of articulating terms and genres that were in flux and often at odds. The text states it is neither a standard fictional prognostication nor an historical account and that, in fact, the author doesn’t know how to categorize it (“似说部非说部，似稗史非稗史， 似论著非论著，不知成何种文体，自顾良自失笑”) and is self-conscious of the fact that he doesn’t know what literary genre to categorize it under. As Liang declared in a separate essay, “On the Relationship of New Fiction to the Formation of the People,” a new type of literature was needed altogether for changing the people and the nation, one that didn’t yet exist. The Future of New China is an attempt to create such a new type of literature, and just as with “science,” its form and genre is not able to be formally fixed into easily identifiable categories. It is a political treatise, a utopian fantasy, and a didactic tool used to guide readers through the finer points of debate about what the future will look like given the originary novum that it breaks from the chronotropic present. In this it is representative of one of the underlying assumptions shaping the discussion of SF in China, which is not only that a link exists between generic modernity and technological modernity, but that SF is that material link. This assumption between literary form and technosocial development can be traced back to the beginning of the 1900s and the concurrent literary and sociopolitical upheavals underway in China at the time. Numerous literary figures argued for the connection between science, literary modernity, and national modernization, including notables such as the aforementioned Lu Xun, Liang Qichao, Yan Fu (严复 1854–1921), and Kang Youwei (康有为 1858–1927). Literary and political modernizers such as Chen Duxiu, the founder of the Chinese Communist Party and chief editor of New Youth (Xin Qingnian

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新青年) magazine (and the originator of the anthropomorphized terms “Mr. Science” and “Mr. Democracy”), viewed “science”—broadly construed—as an ideological system for revitalizing the country by reconstructing “a sense of order and the interrelation of the universe, the world and society, and endow[ing] these with meanings” (Wang Hui, 33). During a period of immense social, political, and epistemological upheaval, what we now think of as “science fiction” provided a method of conceptualizing and projecting a stable developmental path forward. Late Qing/early modernist writers attempting to write fiction incorporating modernized technological innovations while also grappling with China’s traditional past were torn between the idea of already being modern at the same time that they could never be modern enough, a paradox that fed their historical anxiety and desire for future progress. Liang Qichao’s vision of the future is incomplete, for example, but his appeal for a “new kind of literature” that can plot and anticipate a future while simultaneously realizing its goals echoes the anxiety of modernization through new epistemologies. In this case, the question of “science”—its circulations, articulations, and its artifacts—necessarily carries with it questions of power, periphery, and tradition, all of which are central to this anxiety. Lu Xun, too, identified “science fiction” as a tool for achieving national modernization in a global context. The issue at stake in his translations and theorizations is a typically Latourian anxiety about the possibility of plural modernities, in which science is posed as directly linked to power, with modes of knowledge coupled with modes of domination. For example, in writing about the origins of “scientific knowledge,” Lu Xun stated that “As for science (科学), we use its knowledge to make close observations of the state of nature and over time it yields results. Its revolutions reached out into society and continued to radiate beyond, spreading to the Far East, reaching even Cathay” (1902). This posits the origins of science as not located in the Far East,4 but rather, the East as a recipient of received knowledge. He goes on to locate the origins of science as a concept in ancient Greece but, unlike the progressives of the modern day, claims that they lacked “abstract cognition” (83) and as such, despite being the originators of “science” itself, were unable to apply its principles in the same way that modern Chinese citizens could. Though he saw China as being 4  “Cathay,” in fact, is used poetically synonymously with China, such that “even China”— implied to be the furthest among “Far Eastern” nations from the revolutions brought about by the scientific method—is eventually altered.

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on the periphery of circulations of knowledge, Lu Xun believed that ­“science”—and its literary counterpart, “science fiction”—could be assimilated, integrated, and altered for the promotion of Chinese political and technological domination. In fact, he goes so far as to build on Liang Qichao’s claim that a new nation and a new people required a new form of literature by identifying the literature in question: to “lead the Chinese people towards progress, one has to start with science fiction novels” (Lu Xun, 1). In their writings about a new type of literature that could modernize China, Lu Xun and Liang Qichao used the term “kexue xiaoshuo” (scientific fiction) to emphasize the rationality and actionability of their texts as predicated upon a new scientific worldview that fundamentally broke with the previous understanding of gezhi. Qian Jiang identifies the epistemological crises being addressed by Lu Xun and other science fictional translators at this time as being the direct result of the shattered confidence Chinese people had in the intellectual legitimacy of the Qing dynasty following its disintegration and, as a result, China’s place in the modern world. Qian writes that the political crises taking place at the turn of the century encouraged the realization in literary and political reformers that the proper course for China “would be a renewal of society through knowledge imported from Western nations and, more importantly, the “enlightenment” of the populace” (116). As a result, the idea that “things evolve in a linear fashion, and even progress towards a single natural end, became a commonplace among enlightened intelligentsia of the late Qing, having for them the status of a natural law and moral imperative” (David Der-wei Wang, 301). By adopting a telos of progress, futuristic speculation acquired a rationalistic imperative. Given that “terms like kexue, wenming (文明; “civilization”), keji (科 技; “technology”), minzhu (民主; “democracy”), and xixue (西學; “Western learning”),” alongside concepts such as evolution and Social Darwinism, were rooted in a “Weberian/Marxist model that privileges the development of European institutions and economic systems as a teleological historical standard” (Isaacson 2016, 3–4), kexue as a concept conflated multiple repurposed conditions and concomitant approaches to modernity. As such, SF—also recognized as a foreign import—was not only an explicitly “modern” form of textual production but also potentially suspect as being prone to Western influence, despite its enthusiastic adoption by both writers and the public alike. Its association with possibly harmful foreign elements would be something that dogged it throughout

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its development, even as it became more “Sinified.” Interestingly, however, for what it says about science, terminology, and the influence of which vocabulary is privileged at what place and what time is the fact that an “anomaly of the emergence of science fiction in China is that while the genre itself saw its beginnings as a Western import through translation, the term “science fiction” (kexue xiaoshuo) began to appear regularly as a literary genre category associated with specific stories in publication in China (c. 1904) before it did in the English-language press” (emphasis in the original) (Isaacson 2017, 7). The appellation of “science fiction” to a genre that had not yet been recognized as such in the West, despite being a foreign import, speaks to the important role it played in national and cultural modernization. But as Pak Cheong Choi astutely notes, “To go back to late Qing fiction is to return to a period in which we can talk about conceptions and desires of the modern world before there had been a unified, fixed account of what modernity should be” (2). As the fragmented nation began to coalesce under the increasingly powerful Communist Party over the next few decades, SF also changed accordingly, turning away from the potentially harmful bourgeois elements that had defined its introduction and toward a new understanding of science and literature that, once again, engaged from the outset with questions of ideology and national identity.

Today’s Soviet Union Is our Tomorrow In 1949, the same year that the People’s Republic of China was officially founded, the term “scientific fiction” (kexue xiaoshuo 科学小说) began to be replaced by the term “science phantasy/fantasy fiction”5 (科学幻想小 说 kexue huanxiang xiaoshuo, commonly shortened to kehuan xiaoshuo 科幻小说) in accordance with Soviet usage. Following the victory of the Chinese Communist Party in mainland China, the People’s Republic of China became guided by a Maoist ideology that, at least initially, drew much of its ideological legitimacy from a Sino-Soviet strategic partnership 5  In his foundational 1985 essay on Chinese science fiction, Rudolf Wagner differentiates between fantasy (caprice, whim, fanciful invention) and phantasy (“imagination, visionary intuition”), arguing that Soviet literature, in emphasizing phantasy over fantasy, stressed the plausibility of the events being described, not mere possibility. In line with the overall argument of this essay—that linguistic change is often invisibilized in discussions of category and genre—I do not make a distinction between fantasy/phantasy, as such a distinction is neither foregrounded nor, indeed, apparent to most contemporary English speakers.

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that laid out precise and explicit ideological guidelines for genre forms. Soviet literary guidelines shaped the changing face of both science and SF as authors and policymakers within the PRC reoriented themselves toward the new cultural center of the communist world. The common refrain “today’s Soviet Union is our tomorrow” (“Sulian de jintian shi women de mingtian” 苏联的今天是我们的明天) was commonly used, as in a postscript by the Chinese translator of a Russian science fiction novel, who wrote that “science fantasy fiction” (科学幻想小说) needed to be defined by the “objective laws of science” as well as “fantasy” (Wang 335) in order to achieve utopian praxis, as the USSR was depicted as having already done. The new term used to refer to the genre, “science fantasy/phantasy fiction,” corresponds with the Russian nauchnaia fantastika (научная фантастика), rather than the “scientific fiction” of the turn of the century. At the same time as the CCP turned toward the Soviet Union for artistic guidance, Mao also claimed the legacy of the New Culture Movement to interpret science. The new culture, he claimed in “On New Democracy,” was predicated on “seeking truth from facts, for objective truth and for the unity of theory and practice” (Mao [1940] 1967, 381). Those who were devoted to developing the new culture of communism had “inherited its scientific and democratic spirit and transformed it on the basis of Marxism” (Mao [1942] 1965). Commentators such as Wu Yan and Rudolf Wagner have noted that, as a result, Chinese SF was thus allocated a specific place and role in the socialist literary order—an order demarcated by strict rules and regulations. Speaking at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art, Mao called for a literary praxis that would “ensure that revolutionary literature and art follow the correct path of development and provide better help to other revolutionary work in facilitating the overthrow of our national enemy and the accomplishment of the task of national liberation” (Mao 1942). Such a praxis (of literature in general and SF in particular) was reified in two ways: first, it was required to describe a future communist society that was free from class struggle and committed to the reconciliation of humanity and nature, and secondly, in describing what would otherwise be classified as bourgeois flights of imagination, the process must be described as those of a scientific mind accomplished through realistic technoscientific development. Mao elaborated on this second point by emphasizing that “We are Marxists, and Marxism teaches that in our approach to a problem we should start from objective facts, not from abstract definitions, and that we should derive our guiding principles, policies and measures from an analysis of these facts. We should

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do the same in our present discussion of literary and artistic work” (Mao 1942, 74). Yan Geng has pointed out that party policy was used as the guideline for artist and literary production, as it was argued that proletarian realism was employed in service of the “fundamental interest of the people” and as an objective principle of future-oriented social development (38). Party policies outlining literary production became more stringent guidelines for the development of texts, with individual authors subject to political analysis of their genre aims and goals. Two of the most prominent SF authors during the Mao years, Zheng Wenguang and Ye Yonglie, have commented at length about their attempts to incorporate changing definitions of literature and science in their own writings, as well as the regulations placed upon this type of knowledge production. Zheng Wenguang’s work in particular traces a history of translation, interpretation, and circulation—one that acknowledges SF as being grounded in “objective facts” circulatable through fictive extrapolation. Hailed as the “father of Chinese science fiction,” Zheng was initially more prominent as a popular science writer and translator, translating booklets on spaceflight by A.G. Karpenko (Karpenko 1954), a volume on satellites and spaceflight (Staniukovich 1957), and a treatise on the universe by a Soviet astrophysicist, Boris Vorontsov-Velyaminov (1958). Much like Lu Xun’s decades-earlier exposition that SF was primarily useful as a means of making scientific knowledge more palatable to general readers, Zheng also saw the potential for fictional accounts of scientific practices to inculcate readers with the knowledge necessary for the creation of a new society. Rather than turning to the West for inspiration, however, he and contemporary authors operated under literary regulations primarily aimed at socialist realism, which dictated the terms of what both “science” and “fiction” could be. In “Talking about Science Fiction” (“Tantan kexue huanxiang xiaoshuo” 谈谈科学幻想小说), published in 1956, Zheng Wenguang describes how science fiction (using the Soviet-oriented term kexue huanxiang xiaoshuo 科学幻想小说) is predicated on the ability of science to achieve what was once only a fantasy without sacrificing the fantastic aspect entirely. While it incorporates the individual voice and imagination of the author, it must be grounded in modern scientific theories and take contemporary understandings of science as its starting point (“换句话说，科 学幻想小说在它的出发点上，必需有科学根据.”) (Zheng 1956, 21). The terminology Zheng uses to describe the genre, “scientific fantasy fiction” (kexue huanxiang xiaoshuo 科学幻想小说), differs from the

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terminology of “scientific fiction” (kexue xiaoshuo 科学小说) used by Lu Xun, Liang Qichao, and others at the turn of the century, instead adhering to the Russian nauchnaia fantastika. “Nauchnaia fantastika” and the parallel “kehuan xiaoshuo” differed from their predecessors insofar as they emphasized the speculative potentialities of scientific practice, while simultaneously redefining “science” as verifiable empiricism within a socialist framework. This classification is reflective of the socialist realist model of art that guided literary practices under the newly communist country, with Russia leading the way as the center of the socialist cosmopolitan sphere. In fact, in discussing an example of a Soviet science fiction story, Zheng acknowledges that Soviet Russian authors are “already doing” what Chinese SF authors needed to do. He further approvingly cites Lenin saying that fantasy is the highest virtue, since it allows us to imagine a better future grounded in today’s reality (列宁说过:“幻想是最高价值的品质.”) (Zheng 1956, 22). The fantastic element of SF was central to Zheng’s conceptualization of his work. In an interview, he claimed that science (fantasy) fiction uses “the method of romanticism” (Zheng 1979a) and is necessary for distinguishing fiction from scientific belles-lettres, incorporating both fables and fantasy fiction alongside SF as “romantic” works. He draws a parallel to the earlier translational efforts of Lu Xun, notable for having translated Jules Verne into Chinese, by noting that Verne “already used the method of romanticism” (Zheng 1979b) to introduce scientific concepts to readers who may have been previously unfamiliar with them, thus framing fantasy as a vehicle for scientific knowledge. As late as the nineties, he still defined SF through its ability to circulate through fantastic elements, as with his remarks at the 1991 World Science Fiction Convention in Chengdu, where he claimed that while “China has a long history of fantasy,” Chinese people have long lived “in an isolated island far from world culture,” through which intellectual exchange can “construct a friendly bridge to link Chinese SF and world SF” (Zheng 1992, 43). In recognizing that Chinese science offered a different epistemological view of science and romanticism than “world” science, SF assumed the unique ability to make a national ideological position legible within a selective bourgeois tradition. If Zheng Wenguang is still known today as the “father of Chinese science fiction,” Ye Yonglie was one of its most ardent practitioners. Ye also emphasized the importance of both science and fantasy, but while Zheng argued for the centrality of romantic extrapolation, Ye saw empirical

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scientific practice as foundational to any potential imaginaries that might develop from it. One of the most productive science belle-lettres authors of the Mao years, Ye wrote extensively on popular science and how it might be differentiated from SF, penning several quasi-official treatises outlining socialist SF. “Phantasy has to be based on science” (Ye 93), he claimed; “this means that phantasy elements must be based on known scientific facts or extrapolations” (95). Unlike a “science story” (kexue gushi 科学故事) or a “science tale” (kexue tonghua 科学童话), which popularizes science facts, a SF story must include “a little plot and story” (95) to effectively disseminate knowledge. Alongside Zheng Wenguang’s “Talking about Science Fiction” (“Tantan kexue huanxiang xiaoshuo” 谈 谈科学幻想小说 1956), Xiao Jianheng’s “A Tentative Review of the Development of Chinese Science Fantasy Fiction” (“Shi long woguo kexue huanxiang xiaoshuo de fazhan” 是论我国科学幻想小说的发展 1981) and Tong Enzheng’s “Some Words on My Opinion about Science Belles-Lettres” (“Tantan wo dui kexue wenyi de renshi” 谈谈我对科学文 艺的认识 1979), Ye’s “Treatise on Science Belles-Lettres” (“lun kexue wenyi” 论科学文艺 1980a) became one of the definitive tracts on the history and function of SF during and after the roughly two decades when it was coalescing within a socialist realist literary paradigm. Ye articulates this positionality by noting that “science phantasy fiction is one of the barometers of the political climate. When the emphasis is on […] the role of science, such works can flourish” (1980b, 86). SF, even when extrapolative, was intended to educate, edify, and communicate a scientific approach to the world. If fantasy was necessary, it was only insofar as necessary for receptive instruction. As a result of these collective political and literary reorientations of science and genre classifications along Soviet-established parameters, two trends emerged among debates pertaining to genre classification in the Chinese mid-century: one, the shift away from SF as such to SF as a predictive model utilizing realist narratives and unremarkable technologies, and two, the fact that such literatures have not historically been recognized as SF in the West because their setting is firmly within the near-­ future horizon of possibility and intended to didactically inculcate a specific worldview and course of action. John Rieder has written extensively on the practices of genre classification that exclude certain works and even geopolitically identified literary fields from the broader global category of SF (2017), while Song Mingwei claims that “the genre remained nearly invisible in China during most of the twentieth century”

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(2). Yet I argue that the types of texts I have described previously are no less science fictional simply because their future and quotidian utopian dreams seem rather commonplace for having (largely) been achieved; on the contrary, their use of technology to describe a technologically advanced modern society and their wide dissemination represents an unparalleled attempt to bring the masses to the future through literary means. While it may very well be true that few “great” works of SF were produced during the Mao years, the shift in emphasis from speculative translation to the realist utilization of mass technologies is symptomatic of a still-extant utopian drive in literature that, despite increased state crackdowns on the freedoms afforded authors and the broad social denigration of non-realist imaginaries condemned as bourgeois, the science fictional imaginary continued to produce. In pursuit of these quotidian characteristics, Wu Dingbo (writing in the preface to what was, up until the last few years, the only collection of Chinese SF short stories translated into English) claims that the following features are broadly typical of Chinese SF and set it apart from world SF as a genre: (1) all main characters are scientists and all stories present scientists’ collective aspirations in the form of explorative excursions into an alternate reality; (2) the conflict in these stories always displays the most prominent character of the Chinese scientists: their patriotism and optimism; (3) all stories are set in the near future, and the reader is assured that the fantasy will come true within his or her lifetime; and (4) most of the SF ideas are based on the natural sciences (XXXVI). Yet in attempting to argue for a nationalist specificity of genre, it is clear that many of these categorizations are not applicable to much of what would be considered SF before the Cultural Revolution, and even a cursory examination of contemporary SF being produced in China today shows significant departures from these definitional attributes. Even within the limited sphere of Chinese SF criticism, epistemic classification difficulties are central to any attempt at internal categorization and become all the more pressing when applied by scholars working outside genealogical transitions and debates. The tension informing the development of science, genre, and literature was initially bifurcated by Chinese authors and policymakers at the beginning of the century who, in reacting to the forced opening to the West and semi-colonial status, saw SF as a vehicle for instilling scientific knowledge and values among readers. Later, authors and policymakers during the Mao years worked, in some ways, within a more constrained field that attempted to differentiate SF from scientific writing or scientific

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belles-lettres by emphasizing its speculative aspect while still being subject to regulations about the near-future horizon of possibility. The view of SF as a vehicle for distributing scientific thought has always been tied to the issue of what definition of science is being used and how such scientific knowledge production is inextricable from national ideology. The already fraught discussion of genre definition in English does not hold true for a global reading audience for whom the definitions of “science” itself are invisibilized, which presents unique challenges for contemporary authors being newly enfolded into what is contemporarily being labeled in English as a “golden age” of Chinese SF. Authors such as Guo Jianzheng describe science fiction as an “alien flower” transplanted into the Chinese literary garden (44), while Han Song states it more bluntly: “Science, technology, and modernization are not characteristic of Chinese culture. They are like alien entities. If we buy into them, we turn ourselves into monsters, and that is the only way we can get along with Western notions of progress” (22). To achieve success in a world defined by “Western notions of progress” and definitions of what types of literature does and does not fit within a given genre, Chinese authors are being tasked with the goal of becoming legible within such a genre system while also using their works to promote a “Chinese” worldview, just as Zheng Wenguang foresaw. The State Film Administration and the China Association for Science and Technology jointly issued a document in 2020 called the “Ten Articles of Science Fiction” that explicitly put forward SF as a form of soft power for influencing the cultural arena, while authors such as Chen Qiufan have achieved fame for their promotion of “science fiction realism” in which Sinofutures develop out of the same “near future” material reality held over from predecessors like Zheng Wenguang and Ye Yonglie. What this should make clear is that identifying Chinese SF as a specific form is a process that is itself inextricable from the larger English hegemony that defines literary value and practices of circulation within certain genres, “science fiction” included. Without problematizing any of the adjectives involved—“Chinese,” “science,” or “fiction”—the entire concept of the genre becomes embedded in a presumption of shared vocabulary. Even putting aside the differing political constraints of Sinophone writing in places like Taiwan or Hong Kong, a vast Chinese-speaking and wring diaspora exists in the US, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, and elsewhere that, despite their ostensibly shared language(s), are working under very different political-literary constraints and against the backdrop of different literary histories. At the same time, Chinese SF is

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not identifiable by the fact of it being written primarily in Mandarin Chinese alone,6 and, in fact, the terms employed between English and Chinese that ostensibly describe the same literary product—“science fiction” and 科幻小说—are themselves not necessarily commensurate. Rather than invoking a “fantasy of an essentialized ethnicity, a standardized language, and a coercive equivalence between literary writing and Chineseness per se” (Chow 16), the Suvinian impulse at work in both world literature approaches and essentialist approaches to understanding just what “Chinese science fiction” is presumed to mean may present themselves as falsely coterminous analogies without sufficiently rigorous care.

References Chau, Angie. “From Nobel to Hugo: Reading Chinese Science Fiction as World Literature.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, vol. 30, no. 1, 2018: 110–35. Chen, Duxiu. “Jinggao qingnian” 敬告青年 (“Call to Youth”). In Duxiu wencun 独 秀文存, vol. 1, Shanghai: Yadong tushuguan [1915] 1922: 1-10. Chen, Duxiu. “Zuian zhi dabian shu” 罪案之答辩书 (“A Defense in the Criminal Case Regarding New Youth”). In Duxiu wencun 独秀文存, vol. 2, Shanghai: Yadong tushuguan [1919] 1922: 361-64. Choi, Pak C. Time, Body and Artefacts: Late Qing Science Fictional Response to Western Science and Technology. M.Phil. Chinese University of Hong Kong Thesis, 2007. Chow, Rey. “Introduction: On Chineseness as a Theoretical Problem.” boundary 2, vol. 25, no. 3, 1998: 1-24. Damrosch, David. What Is World Literature? Princeton University Press, 2003. Elman, Benjamin. A Cultural History of Modern Science in China. Harvard University Press, 2006. Gao Jianzhong. “The Rise and Fall of Science Fiction in China.” Locus vol. 28, no. 1, 1992: 43.

6  Rey Chow addresses the assumption that binds the discipline of Chinese studies of a so-­ called standard Chinese. Chow notes that “Mandarin is, properly speaking, also the white man’s Chinese, the Chinese that receives its international authentication as ‘standard Chinese’ in part because, among the many forms of Chinese speeches, it is the one inflected with the largest number of foreign, especially Western, accents” (8). To recognize even the question of “a” Chinese language is to participate in a system of value that insists on a standardization understandable through English.

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Han Song. “Chinese Science Fiction: A Response to Modernization.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 40, no. 1, 2013: 15–21. Isaacson, Nathaniel. “Orientalism, Scientific Practice, and Popular Culture in Late Qing China.” The Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature, edited by Carlos Rojas and Andrea Bachner, 2016. Isaacson, Nathaniel. Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction. Wesleyan University Press, 2017. Karpenko, A. G, translated by Zheng Wenguang. Yuzhou feixing 宇宙飛行 [Space Travel]. Beijing: Zhonghua kexue jishu puji chubanshe, 1954. Liang Qichao. “论小说与群治之关 系”.《新小说》 (“On the Relationship between Fiction and the Government of the People.” New Fiction ) 1, 1902: 1—9.] Lu Xun. “Yue Jie Lv Xing Bian Yan” [Preface to From the Earth to the Moon]. 1903. Xian Dai Zhong Guo Ke Huan Wen Xue Zhu Chao [The Mainstream of Modern Chinese Science Fiction]. Edited by Wang Quangen. Chongqing: Chongqing Publishing House, 2011. Mao, Zedong. “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art.” Selected Works, Vol. III, Foreign Languages Press [May 1942], 1965. Mao, Zedong. “Talks on Literature.” Modern Quarterly, 1948. Mao, Zedong. “On New Democracy.” Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. II, Foreign Languages Press [1940], 1967. Meng, Yue. “Hybrid Science versus Modernity: the Practice of the Jiangnan Arsenal, 1864-1897.” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine vol. 16, 1999: 13-52. Qian, Jiang. “Translation and the Development of Science Fiction in Twentieth-­ Century China.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 40, no. 1, 2013: 116-132. Rieder, John. Science Fiction and the Mass Cultural Genre System. Wesleyan University Press, 2017. Song, Mingwei. “Representations of the Invisible.” The Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literatures, edited by Carlos Rojas, Andrea Bachner, and Nathaniel Isaacson, 2016. Staniukovich, Kiril, translated by Zheng Wenguang. 1957. Renzao weixing yu yuzhou feixing 人造衛星與宇宙飛行 [Satellites and Space Flight]. Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe, 1957. Vorontsov-Velyaminov, Boris, translated by Zheng Wenguang. Yuzhou 宇宙 [The Universe]. Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe, 1958. Wang, David Der-wei. Fin-de-Siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849-1911. Stanford University Press, 1997. Wang, Hui, “The Fate of ‘Mr. Science’ in China: The Concept of Science and Its Application in Modern Chinese Thought.” Positions, vol. 3, no. 1, Spring 1995. Wang Shi’an. “Yi hou ji,” in Tansuo xin shijie, 1952: 335-42. Wu, Dingbo and Patrick D. Murphy. Science Fiction from China. Praeger, 1989.

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Xu, Tingwen. “Right to Untranslatability and Hospitality of World Literature.” Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, vol. 44, no. 1, 2021: 110-119. Yan Geng. “Realism, Socialist Realism and China’s Avant-Garde: a Historical Perspective.” Art, Global Maoism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, edited by Jacopo Galimberti, et al., Manchester University Press, 2019. Ye Yonglie. “Kexue. huanxiang xiaoshuo de chuangzuo” (“The Creation of Science-Phantasy Fiction”), Kexue wenyi, 1980a: 66-93. Ye Yonglie. Lun Kexue Wenyi [On Scientific Literature and Art]. Beijing: Kepu Chubanshe, 1980b. Zheng Wenguang. “Tantan kexue huanxiang xiaoshuo” 谈谈科学幻想小说 (“Discussing Science Fantasy Fiction”). Dushu yuebao 读书月报 vol. 3, 1956: 21–22. Zheng Wenguang, interviewed by Lou Qi. “Yinggai huanxiang” (“Phantasy is Needed”). Renmin wenxue 1979a: 112. Zheng Wenguang, “Kexue he minzhu de zange” (“Paean to Science and Democracy”). Dushu 1979b: 69. Zheng Wenguang. “Science Fiction in China.” Locus vol. 28, no. 1, 1992: 43.

PART II

Negotiating Media and Genre

CHAPTER 6

The Writing Editors: Late Qing and Republican Media Professionals as Authors of Science Fiction Qiong Yang

In 1902, the famous Chinese politician, historian, and man of letters, Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), published his only fictional work, a “political novel” titled The Future of New China (Xin Zhongguo weilai ji 新中國未來記).1 The novel, unfinished, was published in New Fiction (Xin xiaoshuo 新小說), a literary magazine that Liang ran almost single-­ handedly. He claimed that the magazine was primarily established to publish this novel: “I have wanted to create this novel for five years, but haven’t been able to actually write it… But I have believed such novels are  The novel was never finished—Liang only completed five chapters and published it in installments. The Introduction and Chapters 1 and 2 were published in the inaugural issue, Chapter 3 in issue no. 2, Chapter 4 in no. 3, and Chapter 5 in no. 7. 1

Q. Yang (*) Social Sciences in China Press, Beijing, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. Song et al. (eds.), Chinese Science Fiction, Studies in Global Science Fiction, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53541-3_6

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of great help to China’s future… I am establishing the magazine New Fiction specifically for the publication of this novel” (Liang 1902: 51). While his words might have been exaggerated, Liang clearly placed great hopes on his own work, expecting that it would set an example for Chinese fiction. New Fiction was among Liang’s many efforts to “make the changes of his time narratable as part of the global history of the arrival of modernity” (Tang 1996: 11).2 As the editor of the magazine, he used the novel as an example to show how a political plan could be expressed in futurist imagination. But as a manifestation of a political scheme, the novel has received less attention than Liang’s numerous political essays. Rather, today it is often discussed as a work of science fiction—a “blueprint-style” futuristic science fiction novel, for example (Wu 2022). Given the novel’s intrinsic qualities, such as its utopian imagination and vision for the future, it is fair enough to study it as science fiction. But the text’s political orientation, hybrid style, and intertexuality make it so complex that we must adopt a broad definition of science fiction in order to understand it fully. As I will show, reading it as a work of an editor-writer is conducive to building such a broad definition, with which the early history of Chinese science fiction can be better reconstructed.

Editor-Writers of Chinese Science Fiction Some important writers of Chinese science fiction of the twentieth century were also editors, including Liang Qichao, Wu Jianren 吳趼人 (1866–1910), Xu Nianci 徐念慈 (1875–1908), Gao Xingjian 高行健 (Xiao Zhu 筱竹, 1900–1985), Gu Junzheng 顧均正 (Gu Zhenhuan 顧振 寰, 1902–1980), Ye Zhishan 葉至善 (Yu Zhi 于止, 1918–2006), and Zheng Wenguang 鄭文光 (1929–2003). This phenomenon of editors writing science fiction was common throughout the twentieth century, but it was most evident in the late Qing and Republican period when modern magazines were emerging.

2  Around this time, Liang authored many works, including commentaries on domestic and world political affairs, proposals on managing Chinese economy, introductions to the ideas of modern Western thinkers, and studies of traditional Chinese scholarship. These works generally served a nationalist goal to build a modern state. See Tang 1996: 11–45.

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Studies from different research fields have discussed these editor-­ writers’ science fiction works and editing practices separately. However, publishing is never an act of pure personal expression; it is closely related to the historical, cultural, technical, and commercial contexts of its time. The fact that many editors also decided to write, and vice versa, suggests some common dynamics behind their dual identities. In their study of Republican literary societies, Kirk Denton and Michel Hockx point out that journal publishing was among the central activities of these societies and that “the community idiom generally contained an element of nationalism… [M]ost of the societies and journals… sought a national audience and sought to influence culture on a national level” (Denton and Hockx 2008: 6). In the context of the first half of the twentieth century, this description is applicable to other magazines, which were also closely tied to the modern nation building project. To many editors, literary writing was not only an endeavor driven by personal interests and literary pursuits but often also a professional responsibility. Since the specific goals of magazines vary, an editor of a literary magazine, for instance, would understandably have a different agenda than one of a science magazine. In the broader picture, editing was a respected endeavor among Chinese men of letters, for which Confucius set a good example by compiling Shijing (Book of Songs). Many familiar figures in the history of modern Chinese literature were editor-writers. For example, as an insightful editor, Shen Yanbing 沈雁冰 (Mao Dun 茅盾, 1896–1981) edited Fiction Monthly (Xiaoshuo yuebao 小說月報) from 1920 to 1922, famously turning the traditional-style magazine into a forum for May Fourth New Literature. It was years later when he adopted the pen name Mao Dun and became an accomplished writer. Other examples include Ba Jin 巴金 (1904–2005), Ye Shengtao 葉聖陶 (1894–1988), Xu Zhimo 徐志摩 (1897–1931), and Zhou Shoujuan 周瘦鵑 (1895–1968), who have been equally successful as editors and as writers. Often associated with a magazine, newspaper, or publishing house, they had their respective editing styles, which in one way or another influenced their literary creation. It is worth mentioning here that modern Chinese writers are known for using pen names. Likewise, publishing articles in their own magazines under various pen names was a common practice among editors at that time. In the three case studies, Liang Qichao published under the pen name Yinbingshi zhuren 飲冰室主人 (Master of the Ice-Drinking Studio), Gu Junzheng under Zhenzhi 振之 (for other essays in the same magazine, he used the name Zhenhuan 振寰), and Gao Xingjian under Xiao Zhu.

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Using pen names allowed them to create different personas, often supporting the magazine’s editorial agenda when soliciting suitable articles was difficult and expressing personal opinions contrasting with the attitude of the magazine. Indeed, in the twentieth century, especially in the first half, new forms of media such as modern newspapers and magazines, especially literary and scientific magazines, were emerging in Chinese cultural life, and these fostered the development of Chinese science fiction. Therefore, examining the relationship between the media and such works by studying editor-­ writers is worthy of scholarly interest. Why were some early works produced? What kinds of goals were behind their publication? How does this knowledge help us understand the process through which Chinese science fiction took shape? This chapter discusses Liang Qichao, Gao Xingjian, and Gu Junzheng as examples to answer these questions. I argue that early Chinese science fiction works were charged with practical agendas associated with modern magazines of various kinds. In particular, I show that with their literary creation tailored for specific magazines, early twentieth-century editor-writers explored the contours of Chinese science fiction, combining theoretical thinking with practical concerns.

Liang Qichao: Political Advocation Tested by the Future The renowned thinker, politician, educator, historian, writer, and editor Liang Qichao was an important figure in the early history of Chinese science fiction. His novel The Future of New China, although unfinished, is considered by some to be the first Chinese science fiction novel. Liang is frequently discussed in studies of the origin of the New Literature and of science fiction in China (see, e.g., Huters 2017: 103; Jia 2021: 9–18). Indeed, his idea of “new fiction” (xin xiaoshuo 新小說), expressed in his famous piece “On the Relationship Between Fiction and the Governance of the People” (“Lun xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhi guanxi” 論小說與群治之關 係, 1902), raised fiction to a higher position. Liang writes: “If one intends to renovate the people of a nation, one must first renovate its fiction… Why is it so? This is because fiction has a profound power over the way of man” (Liang 1996: 74). In his mind, influential fiction works could renovate morality, religion, politics, social customs, and learning and arts as well as the human mind.

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While Liang might have exaggerated the social function of fiction and the influence of his innovative view of literature may have been overemphasized, his notion did encourage the creation of works of new fiction, as shown in his magazine. Although the notion that literature should express lofty social and political ideas has a long tradition, popular fiction had largely remained a space for mundane wisdom and philosophy. Liang mobilized this fiction to serve a nationalist purpose. His appealing essay was published in the magazine New Fiction, for which Liang served as the chief editor, as the opening article. Liang started New Fiction in Yokohama, Japan, in 1902.3 The magazine’s radical idea became a facilitator of change in fiction production, and it was soon joined by three other popular fiction magazines, namely, Illustrated Fiction (Xiuxiang xiaoshuo 繡像小說), Fiction Circle (Xiaoshuo lin 小說林), and Fiction Monthly (Yueyue xiaoshuo 月月小 說), to become the four main fiction magazines of the late Qing period. By the time he started New Fiction, Liang was already an experienced journalist and editor. He had served as the chief editor of The Chinese Progress (Shiwu bao 時務報) in Shanghai (1896–1898) and had created The China Discussion (Qingyi bao 清議報) (1898–1901) and New Citizens’ Miscellanies (Xinmin congbao 新民叢報, 1902–1907) in Yokohama. New Fiction, a product of Liang’s political exile from Beijing to Japan after a failed reform, carried a clear political agenda, and his opinions were shown not only in the opening article he wrote, which served as the editorial (lunshuo 論說), but also in his choice of works to publish. The labels of the genres included in the magazine were a mixture of established—especially imported—genres and newly created genres that reflected the law, politics, diplomacy, and science of a modern nation, among other aspects. Liang wished for the works in the magazine to help shape Chinese social life in this way.4 3  The editor and publisher of the magazine was Zhao Yulin 趙毓林, but Liang Qichao was the actual editor. Other editors included Han Wenju 韓文舉, Jiang Zhiyou 蔣智由, and Ma Junwu 馬君武. The first volume of the magazine was published in Japan. Most of the contributors were fellow overseas students and revolutionaries in Japan. Starting from the second volume, the magazine was published in Shanghai by Guangzhi 廣智 Bookstore. 4  To decide what Liang meant by “renovating” Chinese people’s minds, it is worth examining how the categories and columns of the magazine were arranged. At the beginning, New Fiction published works under various categories: political fiction (zhengzhi xiaoshuo 政治小 說), science fiction (kexue xiaoshuo 科學小說), military fiction (junshi xiaoshuo 軍事小說), historical fiction (lishi xiaoshuo歷史小說), philosophical fiction (zheli xiaoshuo 哲理小說), detective fiction (zhentan xiaoshuo 偵探小說), and adventure fiction (maoxian xiaoshuo 冒險 小說), among others. This pool later expanded to include such categories as diplomatic fiction (waijiao xiaoshuo 外交小說), legal fiction (falü xiaoshuo 法律小說), social fiction (shehui xiaoshuo 社會小說), and romance (xieqing xiaoshuo 寫情小說).

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The Future of New China is a tale of the glory of revolution. Set in China in 1962, 60 years into the future, it portrays the country as strong and flourishing, its capital Nanjing hosting a world peace conference. At the conference, Kong Juemin, a descendant of Confucius, gives a speech looking back on China’s 50-year history of reform. In Kong’s account, China adopted a constitutional political system after a revolution in 1912 and later became a federal republic. Many brilliant achievements have occurred since then, and at the time of the story’s telling, the country has the most advanced political system, economy, science and technology, and culture in the world. Studies of the early history of Chinese science fiction often take for granted that texts containing science fiction elements are indeed science fiction. But it is necessary to remind the audience that the concept of “science fiction” here is broader than that usually perceived today. Whereas The Future of New China has often been discussed as an early work of science fiction, it was a hybrid of practical and futuristic imaginations about political reform, nation building, technical modernization, and cultural progress. Taking literary inspiration from Japanese political novels such as Suehiro Tetchō’s 末廣鐵腸 (1849–1896) works (Yeh 2015: 130–31), Liang labeled this work “political fiction” (zhengzhi xiaoshuo 政治小說) and wanted it to present an attractive vision of the ideal political system in his mind. Owing to such a utilitarian purpose, Liang deliberately included in the novel many kinds of non-literary texts such as articles of law, regulations, speeches, and other official documents. In the preface to the novel, he admits: When I read these chapters myself, they resembled neither fiction, nor history, nor argumentation. I don’t know which genre they belong to—they make me laugh at my own foolishness. However, now that I want to express some political views and discuss issues of government in this novel, its form cannot be the same as that of normal fiction. My novel includes legal texts, regulations, speech texts, argumentations and others. They appear frequently, making the novel boring to read. I know that this novel will not meet reader’s expectations, and hope you feel compensated with the other interesting works in this magazine. (Liang 1902: 52)

The novel was ultimately a product of Liang’s self-indulgence as an editor; without New Fiction, the novel would most likely have never been published because of its eccentric artistic form. Nonetheless, The Future of

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New China was, as the author wished, received as a political treatise among many of Liang’s contemporaries. Although critics such as Huang Zunxian 黃遵憲 (1848–1905) criticized the novel for lacking both fictional clarity and storyline twists (Xia 2019: 251), considering it naïve in terms of literary techniques, many others focused on its political system. For example, one commentator, Pingdenggezhuren 平等閣主人 (Di Baoxian 狄葆賢, 1873–1941), mostly discussed the novel as a treatise to explain the concepts in it.5 Further, in 1945, the historian Tao Yuanzhen 陶元珍 (1908–1980) praised the accurate “political prediction” of the novel, viewing it as a purely practical text (Tao 1945: 13). Having been a radical revolutionary, in this text Liang promoted a moderate way to change China—constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament. The ideas expressed in the novel were in line with Liang’s articles written around the same time, but if the articles were written for elite readers, the novel expected a popular audience, aiming to renovate common people’s minds. However, “political fiction” is not sufficient to define the text. The hybridity of it asks for an open attitude when viewing it from the perspective of literary genre. It is essential to keep in mind that it was a precursor of different kinds of genres. As a writer and editor, Liang’s goal of publishing The Future of New China was twofold: to preach his political system and to promote similar practical expression in literature.6 He also inspired later works, especially in the genre of utopian fiction. Traces of the influence of this novel’s setting in the future, utopian imagination, and descriptions of advanced technology can be found, for example, in Lu Shi’e’s 陸 士諤 (1878–1944) New China (Xin Zhongguo 新中國, 1910) and Xu Zhiyan’s 許指嚴 (1875–1923) Old and New Heroes (Xinjiu yingxiong 新 舊英雄, 1912). The utopias that these works imagine and portray are indeed various versions of future China, which all benefit from some kind of political reform. The advancement of science and technology—a major part of social experience—is also featured in these works, which thus echo  The commentary was published alongside the text in New Fiction.  The issue of New Fiction actually included a “science fiction” (kexue xiaoshuo 科學小說) section: it published Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, translated by Lu Jidong 盧 藉東 and Hongxisheng 紅溪生. As has been noted, most late Qing works discussed as science fiction today were not labeled science fiction, or kexue xiaoshuo. For example, The Stone of Goddess Nüwa (Nüwa shi 女媧石, 1905) was labeled “young heroine fiction” (guixiu jiuguo xiaoshuo 閨秀救國小說), while New Tales of Mr. Braggadocio (Xin faluo xiansheng tan 新法 螺先生譚, 1905) was first labeled “science fiction” (kexue xiaoshuo) but later categorized as “humorous fiction” (huaji xiaoshuo 滑稽小說). 5 6

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Liang’s effort in utilizing literature and move in the direction of what is known as science fiction. With Liang’s idea of “renovating” fiction and people’s minds, New Fiction strove to place all kinds of contemporary social problems on the agenda, thereby turning away from traditional fiction, incorporating new topics, and fostering new genres such as science fiction. Hybridity was a significant characteristic of late Qing Chinese science fiction, which was mainly published in literary magazines or newspapers and as monographs.7 David Der-wei Wang (1997: 51; 295–301) points out that the scientific vision provided in late Qing science fiction is a mix of Western science and technology, residual indigenous superstition, utopian desires, and realistic anxieties. Heroldova (2004) and Chen Pingyuan (2006) state that these writers’ main contribution was in creating a scientific and technical vocabulary, or a list of scientific keywords. The works were quite heterogenous, an important reason being that they were produced for different—often non-literary—purposes, and as works of ambiguous genres. When finally read as science fiction, they bring to the latter unconventionality. Liang’s The Future of New China provides an example of a late Qing editor-writer’s unintended input to science fiction. If this late Qing innovation was explicitly linked with national renovation, Republican science magazine editor-writers explored the educational function of science fiction, making the genre pragmatic.

Gao Xingjian: Frontier Knowledge in a Genial Form In the Republican era, there was rising consciousness of Chinese science fiction (kexue xiaoshuo), largely fostered by popular science magazines that typically considered science fiction to be a beneficial supplement to straightforward science education. For example, Science Pictorial (Kexue huabao 科學畫報, 1915–1951), a popular science magazine edited by the Science Society of China (Zhongguo kexue she 中國科學社, 1915–1960), which aimed to promote scientific literacy among the Chinese, included a few translated science fiction works—labeled kexue xiaoshuo—in addition 7  Some science fiction novels at this time were first serialized in literary magazines or newspapers and later published as separate publications. For example, Laoshaonian’s 老少年 (Wu Jianren) New Story of the Stone (Xin shitou ji 新石頭記) was first serialized in The South China Daily (Nanfang bao 南方報) in Shanghai in 1905 and then provided as a separate publication in 1908 by Shanghai Reform Fiction Press (Gailiang xiaoshuo she).

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to scientific essays.8 However, only certain kinds of science fiction works could meet such a pedagogical pursuit and their creation required both considerable literary skills and scientific literacy. Therefore, only a few such magazines published original science fiction stories. Among this select group, Scientific World (Kexue shijie 科學世界, est. 1932) managed to publish a group of works that aided science education, all authored by the magazine’s editor, Gao Xingjian. Scientific World was an official publication of the China Society for Natural Sciences (Zhonghua ziran kexue she  中華自然科學社, 1927–1951). To understand the editorial goals and thus why these science fiction works were produced, it is necessary to review its publisher and the organization behind it. This society was formed as a student organization at the Central University in Nanjing in 1927, named the West China Society for Natural Sciences (Huaxi ziran kexue she 華西自然科學社). It was established to unite students of science and engineering from Sichuan and the broader western region of China to prepare them for the dissemination of science in their hometowns after graduation. However, it quickly grew into a larger organization that included not only students but also professors and researchers as well as members from across China. In 1928, it was renamed the China Society for Natural Sciences to reflect its rapid growth. With “popularizing China’s science education, introducing global scientific knowledge, and developing scientific enterprises in China” as the goals, the society established nine disciplinary groups, namely, mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography, biology, psychology, engineering, agriculture, and medicine. It also established 28 branches in Chongqing, Chengdu, Guiyang, Kunming, Zunyi, and other cities in the southeast. After the outbreak of the Second Sino–Japanese War in 1937, the magazine moved from Nanjing to Chongqing, and by 1950, it had 2648 members. In addition to Scientific World, the society edited and published the journals Science in China (Zhongguo kexue 中國科學), Science Abstracts and Articles (Kexue wenhui 科學文匯), and Science and Technology in China (Zhongguo kexue yu jianshe 中國科學與建設) as well as the book series Defense Science (Guofang kexue 國防科學) and the magazine Scientific World. Moreover, it held science lectures, exhibitions, and film

8  For a comprehensive introduction of the society’s activities and publications, see Zuoyue Wang (2002).

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showings; supported science education in middle schools; and organized scientific field trips to northwestern China (Chen et al. 1992: 59). A noteworthy feature of the society was that many of its members, including early members, had studied abroad. Its directors included the chemical engineer, Du Changming 杜長明 (1902–1947), who earned his PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the physicist known as the “founder of Chinese physics,” Wu Youxun 吳有訓 (1897–1977), who received a PhD from Chicago University; and the famous geneticist, Feng Zefang 馮澤芳 (1899–1959), who held a PhD from Cornell University (Cai and Xu 2012: 69). Like the better-known Science Society of China, members of the China Society for Natural Sciences were up-to-date on global scientific findings. This is reflected in the essays published in Scientific World, many of which cited recent papers and books from the West and Russia. When the magazine started in 1932, the society’s membership already largely comprised experienced researchers, with most of its members conducting research in research institutions in China and overseas. Gao Xingjian himself was a science major who had trained in China. After graduating with a degree in chemistry from Southeast University (Nanjing) in 1932, Gao began his career as an editor and translator of science-related content at the National Institute for Compilation and Translation in Nanjing.9 Scientific World, which, as noted above, had just been incepted, was edited by this institute. Its first chief editor was Zhu Binghai 朱炳海 (b. 1908), meteorologist and then professor at the Central University, who served from 1932 to 1935. As the math editor (1932–1935) and later the chief editor (1935–1937) of the magazine,10 Gao not only conducted editorial work but also contributed many articles. Gao’s science fiction story “The Cold Dream of a Frozen Body” (“Bing shi leng meng ji” 冰屍冷夢記, 1935) was published in Scientific World11 as an attempt to combine popular science with the form of science fiction that had become familiar to readers mainly through translation. The author wrote in the postscript of the story that his inspiration was a group 9  The institute, established in August 1832 under the Ministry of Education, aimed to translate and compile textbooks and academic books. 10  Gao was the math editor from 1932 to 1935 and the chief editor from 1935 to 1937. Then, after a break of several months, the magazine began to publish in Chongqing in 1938. From 1938 to 1940, the magazine’s editorial board was unstable. Gao served as the math editor and chief editor periodically. 11  The story was published in vol. 4, nos. 9 and 10.

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of science pictures drawn by an American artist, Mr. Paul. The five pictures, which were published with the story, illustrated recent scientific predictions about food in the future: giant tomatoes that must be transported with carts and huge hens that could scare people. According to Gao, these findings were presented at a chemistry conference in the United States. He wrote: “I have built on these pictures to create this story to provide the reader with a change (from popular science essays)” (Gao 1935: 1022). Although the writer was inspired by imagery of future food, the “novum” (in Darko Suvin’s sense) of “The Cold Dream of a Frozen Body” is cryonics technology. The protagonist, Wu Cun, is an unemployed young man who is also disappointed in love. When he learns about cryonics in magazines, his frustration encourages him to try it. More than two centuries later, his body is found. He wakes up in a world that is technologically advanced but tarnished with endless wars, where he becomes an experimental subject and a celebrity, and is about to marry a young girl who is a “reincarnation” of his old lover—she is her descendant. Not surprisingly, the ending of the story reveals that all this is a dream: Wu awakes, finally, in a liquor store, realizing that he is still the poor guy from 1935. The story was closely connected with current affairs in terms of both setting and plot. In 1935, both the Yellow River and the Yangtze River suffered severe flooding, making thousands homeless. Nanjing, the national capital and publishing location of Scientific World, suffered markedly. Dreaming of his life taking a different turn, the protagonist was thus representative of the huge number of victims suffering economic stagnation, whose wishes for the future immediately aroused empathy from the reader. In the story, Wu learns about cryonics technology from scientific journals such as Capital Power Plant Monthly (Shoudu dianchang yuekan 首都電廠月刊) and Popular Mechanics (in English), both actual journals at that time that reported on recent scientific findings and speculations. Wu doubts the possibility of cryonics as described in scientific news and essays; however, since he has nothing to lose, he immediately decides to try it. In the future world, although the use of highly advanced technology guarantees a comfortable material life for people, to avoid war damage, they must live underground and receive an ultra-nationalist and militaristic education. Describing both material affluence and anxiety, the story creates a future that is like a cage. As Wu’s personal activity as a reader of popular science magazines at least partly resembles that of the readers of the novel, this story combines realism and literary fabrication based on science.

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“The Cold Dream of a Frozen Body” was actually published under Gao’s pen name, Xiao Zhu 筱竹. Using this pen name, Gao also published other stories in Scientific World, including “The Weddings of Numbers” (“Shuli huntuan ji” 數理婚團記, 1935, vol. 4, no. 8), a pedagogical story that personifies mathematical numbers; “The Wheel of Life” (“Lunhui xiyin ji” 輪迴犀印記, 1936, vol. 5, nos. 2 and 3), a sentimental science fiction story that features faster-than-light travel and the “reincarnation” of the universe; “Babbles of a Qi Person” (“Qiren yiyu ji” 杞人囈語記, 1936, vol. 5, no. 5), a mini story that satirizes empty talk about national salvation in the scientific community; “Love and Transformation at Zhongyang University” (“Zhongyang lianhua ji” 鐘陽戀化記, 1936, vol. 5, no. 7), a science story that tactfully incorporates various genres of Chinese and English texts and personifies chemical reactions of elements; and “An Adventure in a Rubber Plantation” (“Xianglin lixianji” 橡林歷險 記, 1936, vol. 5, nos. 8 and 12), a science fiction story that introduces the physical characteristics of rubber. While these stories vary in their styles, they are all labeled kexue xiaoshuo. Further, to different extents, they are all educational: some are blunt illustrations of scientific principles, whereas others have more complex characters, plots, and formats, showing the author’s effort to experiment with different forms. In Scientific World, Gao Xingjian’s two names assumed different roles. “Gao Xingjian,” the editor, presented himself as a math specialist. He began to publish math games, world knowledge, scientific riddles, and other short non-literary pieces in the magazine from its establishment in 1932 and continued to do so into the 1940s. On the contrary, “Xiao Zhu” was the author of kexue xiaoshuo and reporter of new scientific findings, active only between 1935 and 1937. Sometimes “Zhu” 竹 was the name used to publish random short pieces, too. Indeed, Xiao Zhu was active only while Gao was serving as the chief editor of the magazine, starting from vol. 4, no. 8 (1935), the issue in which Xiao Zhu began to publish works. In the next issue, Xiao Zhu published “The Cold Dream of a Frozen Body,” the first science fiction story in the magazine, and he continued to publish along this line. Xiao Zhu’s were the only science fiction stories published in Scientific World. Under the name Gao Xingjian, Gao published one science fiction novel in 1938— that was the only science fiction novel published in Scientific World—titled A Future Air Attack (Weilai kongxi ji 未來空襲記, vol. 7). By this time, the magazine had moved to Chongqing and its content mostly focused on national defense. The tone of the magazine had changed into one that was

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serious and straightforward. A Future Air Attack illustrates how spy techniques and advanced weapons work in a modern war: for example, the text includes a figure that shows some 20 kinds of methods to create cryptograms. Interestingly, Gao published expository scientific essays about spy techniques in the magazine at the same time. The novel was like a “literary version” of the essays. Unfortunately, while these works represented an effort to diversify science education with literature, they were not echoed by other works; apparently, it was hard to garner similar works from other authors, who were either incapable of writing science fiction stories or uninterested in doing so. Gao’s effort remained a lonely endeavor.

Gu Junzheng: The Cultivation of Scientific Taste The scientific essayist, editor, and educator Gu Junzheng (1902–1980) has been credited with penning several science fiction stories published in the Republican era, including “Bizarre Pestilence in London” (“Lundun qiyi” 倫敦奇疫, 1939) and “Sex Change” (“Xingbian” 性變, 1940), both published in the magazine Scientific Taste (Kexue quwei 科學趣味); “Dream of Peace” (“Heping de meng” 和平的夢, 1939), serialized in Middle School Life (Zhongxue shenghuo 中學生活); and “Under the North Pole” (“Zai Beiji dixia” 在北極底下, 1939), serialized in The China-US Daily’s (Zhongmei ribao 中美日報) supplement “Modern Science” (“Xiandai kexue” 現代科學). These works were considered to represent the peak of 1930s and 1940s Chinese science fiction. Uehara Kaori (2015) and Joel Martinsen (Ren 2022: 61) show that these four works were recreations based on translations from works in English.12 These important findings move Gu’s works from the genealogy of original literary creation to another rich literary context of modern China: recreation based on translation—yishu 譯述 or yizhu 譯著.13 Nevertheless, as an editor of Scientific Taste, an endeavor Gu engaged in with his coterie of friends, his representation of the stories and understanding of science ­fiction were closely related to the agenda of a typical popular science magazine. An examination of the background of this magazine and Gu’s 12  Gu also published “A Country Without Air” (“Wu kongqi guo,” 1926) in The Student Magazine (Xuesheng zazhi). According to Ren Dongmei’s research, this was an original work (Ren 2022: 61–62). 13  Such recreations flourished in the late Qing and Republican periods. Gibbs Hill (2013) discusses this phenomenon using Lin Shu (林紓, 1852–1924) as a case study.

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writing strategy can explain the kind of media environment in which science fiction works were being produced. Scientific Taste was started in Shanghai in 1939 and remained active until 1942. Its chief editors were Gu Junzheng, Yu Zaixue 余在學 (Suo Fei, b. 1899), and Liu Zhenhan 劉振漢. In the introduction to the inaugural issue of the magazine, the editors wrote that general readers required a “mediator between (scientists and common people) who can distill profound and arcane theories into forms that are easier for common people to accept” (“Foreword” 1939: 2). They continued: “We wanted to launch this magazine. Our slogan is: making life scientific; making science tasteful (shenghuo kexuehua, kexue quweihua 生活科學化, 科學趣味化)” (“Foreword” 1939: 3). Like Scientific World, the magazine targeted a general urban readership interested in natural sciences but who had little access to such content, especially those written in easy-to-understand language. According to Zhao Jingshen (1985), Scientific Taste’s publisher Li Zunquan 李尊權 underwrote a proportion of the publishing costs, with the remainder covered by Gu and Yu, two of its editors. Gu and Yu ran the entire operation from their homes, from editorial work to mailing out issues. The contributors to the magazine were mostly Gu’s friends; none of them were professional writers.14 Scientific Taste drew topics from scientific fields, including astronomy, geography, physics, chemistry, biology, defense technology, agriculture, medicine, and the history of science. Much of the content was short essays introducing the scientific principles behind certain phenomena. For example, citing the classical work of Charles E. Sajou, Analytical Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine, and other works of medicine, one article points out that smoking is bad for one’s health, explains how nicotine works, and introduces methods to reduce its harm (Bo 1939). In another article, starting from an image on the packaging of Quaker Oats (apparently popular among the target readership), Gu Yin (1939) introduces how microscopes work. Providing micrographs of a razor blade, the author first shows the amazing microworld that micrographs open for humans and then proceeds to explain how the recent invention of electronic

14  The magazine stopped publishing after six full volumes, six issues in each volume, in 1942. In the last issue, the editors explained that because of rapidly rising commodity prices, they lacked the funds to cover the cost of printing the magazine.

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microscopes would benefit people. These essays thus strove to associate science with everyday life to enhance people’s education. Being a popular science magazine, Scientific Taste had a clear agenda to challenge traditional values. The first article of the inauguration issue was Qiao Feng’s 喬風  (1939) “Today’s People Live Longer than Ancients” (“Jinren bi guren changshou” 今人比古人長壽). Backing his argument that modern people are longer-lived than before with evidence from physiology and archeology, the author finally attacks the long-established Chinese worship of the ancient. He argues that today’s people are healthier and stronger, calling for readers to make the future even better than today. The “Editor’s Note” (1939: 38) highlights the iconoclastic attitude of this article, praising it as a short essay that can equal an anti-revivalist text of hundreds of thousands of words. Clearly, the article embodies the magazine’s main aim, which is to promote a scientific view of the world and of time, and welcomes progressive change. In the “Editor’s Note” (1939: 2), Gu and his colleagues compare the development of social history with that of science “because the progress of science is different from most other human activities. Haven’t you heard from a sociologist that history proceeds in a circular way? But science proceeds in a linear way. It is forever moving forward… into unknown fields.” In addition to differentiating social history and the development of science, the article claims that “science governs everything, all human activities, from the everyday issues such as dressing, eating, residing, and commuting to thinking and warfare… none of them are unrelated to science” (2). Ultimately, Scientific Taste looked to renew people’s understanding of history by raising their awareness of science—a history whose very development has been changed by the power of science. The term quwei 趣味 in the title of the magazine has traditional resonances tied to an elitist literary discourse. Literally meaning “taste and flavor,” the term not only was used to describe one’s cultural taste of literary genres such as poetry and art but also implied an aesthetic judgment: it was believed that only people who were highly educated and possessed literary elegance could relish quwei. Although traditional high culture was attacked in the May Fourth Movement (1917–1923), the reinvention of

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quwei in the 1930s reemerged as a literary and ideological fashion, largely through Zhou Zuoren’s 周作人 (1895–1967) elaboration.15 Yet, Scientific Taste had a closer relationship with another school of thought. In the 1930s, intellectuals affiliated to the Kaiming 開明 Bookstore in Shanghai advocated quwei as an essential element of education, as exhibited in the editorship of Kaiming’s magazine, Middle School Students (Zhongxuesheng 中學生), for which Gu served as the science section editor.16 In the general introduction of the magazine in its first issue (1930), the editors write that “the purpose of this magazine is to provide remedies to the inadequacies of middle school students’ school work; to supply various tastes (quwei) and knowledge (zhishi); to guide their way to the future; to answer inquiries; [and] to be a convenient forum for publication (for the students)” (“Foreword” 1930: 1). In 1934, the artist, critic, and editor Feng Zikai 豐子愷 (1898–1975) published a collection of commentaries in Middle School Students titled “Yishu quwei” (Artistic Taste 藝術趣味).17 Consisting of essays about basic art topics, such as important female musicians in world history and the relationship between beauty and sympathy, the collection provided young readers with a peep into a kind of art appreciation inspired by Western aesthetics. It was no coincidence that in the following year, Gu entitled his popular science magazine Scientific Taste. The similarities between Gu’s and Feng’s ideas of quwei are evident, and both are in accordance with that exhibited in the editorship of Middle School Students. Combined with the stated missions of this magazine, it is clear that its manipulation of the term quwei intended to challenge the old hierarchical order of the educated. Continuing this tradition of Kaiming offering new tastes to a broader audience, Scientific Taste hoped to instill in its audience a “taste of 15  The modern manipulation of this term centered on the writer Zhou Zuoren, who promoted a quwei that differed from the traditional one, but still of the literati. He developed the concept, adding to it locality as a humanist factor and a perception of the intrinsic value of the world as a moral factor (Daruvala 2000: 138–52). With other writers and scholars joining the discussion, quwei was affiliated with scholars and writers who deviated from mainstream leftist thinking: quwei was an elitist category that the masses could not possess. 16  Middle School Students was among the best-known student magazines of the time. It ran from 1930 to 1949, when it merged with Progressive Youths (Jinbu qingnian 進步青年). Its other editors were Xia Mianzun 夏丏尊 (1886–1946), Zhang Xichen 章錫琛 (1889–1969), and Ye Shengtao, who joined later. 17  This collection is composed of essays originally written for the column titled “Speeches on Fine Arts” (“Meishu jianghua” 美術講話) in Middle School Students and other articles.

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science.” Gu’s identity as an editor was closely related to science. Indeed, in the several magazines that he edited, Middle School Students, for instance, he was solely responsible for the natural science sections. He also edited and translated textbooks and popular science non-fiction.18 In this role as an editor, he served as an intermediary between scientists and common readers (especially middle school students). Thus, it was essential to pass on information rather than make renovations and keep up with contemporary scientific developments rather than lag behind or transcend them. The “taste of science” that Gu understood included the ability to appreciate science fiction. In the two science fiction stories that he published in the magazine, his dual identity as editor and writer of science-­ related materials influenced his writing style. In translating and representing the stories, he embraced his freedom to add pedagogical materials to better fit the needs of target readers as well as meet the magazine’s educational purpose. The flow of his narration, for example, is sometimes interrupted by scientific explanations. Similarly, in some cases, the narrator in his stories introduces scientific principles and explanations well beyond the particular narrative needs of the plot. When “Bizarre Pestilence in London” was first published in Scientific Taste in 1939, Gu even added several “research questions” at the end of the story for readers to ponder: (1) What is a catalyst? (2) What kind of chemical change happens when sodium bicarbonate reacts with nitrate? (3) In modern industry, how is nitrate produced? (4) What are the functions of chlorophyll in plants? (5) What are some of the characteristics of nitrate? (6) This is a story, so it has imaginary elements, which do not meet scientific standards. Can you point them out? (Scientific Taste 1:3:126)

The author seems to have decided that the collection should serve as a textbook of scientific theories and its table of contents as a kind of index for scientific information. These kinds of questions are similar to those one would find in a chemistry textbook. To a reader of fiction, it may be a little surprising to find such questions appended to a story whose complex plot involves national confrontations, espionage, love, and perhaps a degree of criticism of the bureaucratic academic system. However, in the context of Scientific Taste and its 18  For example, Amazing Talks of Chemistry (Huaxue qitan 化學奇談) was translated by Gu from the work of Jean-Henri Fabre, most likely Chimie agricole (1862). Gu’s translation was published by Kaiming Bookstore in 1932.

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pedagogical mandate to propagate scientific knowledge, they make sense: to encourage readers to learn more about chemistry and engineering. All the essays, communications, and notes in the magazine, irrespective of whether they are more or less literary, serve the same purpose. As Gu admits, his effort was to “utilize… fiction… to aid in science education” (1940a: iv). To this end, he argues that writers should ensure the scientific accuracy of science fiction stories in order not to confuse the reader, and he criticizes Western science fiction that contains too much fantasy as well as traditional Chinese fiction that is non-scientific (Gu 1940a: iii). In sum, Gu’s manipulation of the presentation of science fiction served multiple purposes: imparting knowledge, foreseeing future social trends, and offering rich reading pleasure to attract readers. Above all, he promotes science education for patriotic reasons (i.e., to save China) rather than to promote science itself. This attitude, which can also be found among many of his intellectual contemporaries, carries much of the traditional notion of the importance of serving the state. Scholars have noted the nationalist and educational inclination of Chinese science fiction, which was a manifestation of intellectuals’ desire for national salvation and nation building in China (e.g., Isaacson 2017; Jia 2021). Some even see science as a worldview that could hold as a modern philosophy of life (Kwok 1965: 11–12). In the first half of the twentieth century, with the rapid emergence and growth of the modern mass media as well as the important role they played in people’s cultural lives, media professionals increasingly contributed to knowledge production. The dissemination of ideas and knowledge thus became an obligation for many journalists and editors. Combining the traditional notion of “literature is for conveying the Way” (wenyi zaidao 文以載道) and the modern idea of popularizing ideas using easy-to-digest literary language, editor-writers such as Liang Qichao, Gao Xingjian, and Gu Junzheng produced works related to science and the future that were both innovative and inspiring. Using their imagination, they wrote to reach their respective editorial goals. They were driven by professional and practical concerns that other writers did not need to consider, and this feature endowed their science fiction writing a distinctive quality of coordination with the style, content, and ideological agenda of their media. Nevertheless, their efforts opened up a new space in which Chinese science fiction could take shape. After 1949, their endeavors were continued by later editor-writers of science fiction such as Ye Zhishan and Zheng Wenguang, who worked under a different mode of cultural

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production. It would thus be illuminating for future researchers to consider the general media environment in which Chinese science fiction works were produced and the professional identity of these writers in any examination of their works.

References Bo Ken 伯墾. 1939. “Is Smoking Harmful?” (“Xi zhiyan youhai ma?” 吸紙烟有害 嗎). Scientific Taste (Kexue quwei 科學趣味), vol. 1, no. 1. 11–15. Cai Hongyuan 蔡鴻源 and Xu Youchun 徐友春, eds. 2012. “China Society for Natural Sciences” (“Zhonghua ziran kexue she” 中華自然科學社). In Minguo huishe dangpai da cidian 民國會社黨派大辭典. Hefei: Huangshan shushe. 69. Chen Guoda 陳國達 and Chen Shupeng 陳述彭 et al. 1992. “The Establishment of China Society for Natural Sciences” (“Zhonghua ziran kexue she chuangli” 中華自然科學社創立). In Dictionary of Significant Events in the History of Geography in China (Zhongguo dixue dashi dian 中國地學大事典). Jinan: Shandong kexue jishu chubanshe. 59. Chen Pingyuan 陳平原. 2006. “From Popular Science Works to Science Fiction: A Study Centered on Flying Vehicles” (“Cong kepu duwu dao kexue xiaoshuo— yi ‘feiche’ wei zhongxin de kaocha” 從科普讀物到科學小說——以「飛車」為 中心的考察). In Wu Yan 吳岩, ed. Jia Baoyu Takes a Submarine: Selected Studies on Early Chinese Science Fiction (Jia Baoyu zuo qianshuiting: Zhongguo zaoqi kehuan yanjiu jingxuan 賈寶玉坐潛水艇——中國早期科幻研究精選). Fuzhou: Fujian shaonian ertong chubanshe. 136–158. Daruvala, Susan. 2000. Zhou Zuoren and an Alternative Chinese Response to Modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. Denton, Kirk A. and Michel Hockx. 2008. “Introduction: Literary Societies in Republican China.” In Kirk A.  Denton and Michel Hockx, eds. Literary Societies of Republican China. Lanham: Lexington Books. 1–14. “Editor’s Note” (“Bianji houji” 編輯後記). 1939. Scientific Taste, vol. 1, no. 1. 38–39. “Foreword” (“Fakanci” 發刊詞). 1930. Middle School Students (Zhongxuesheng 中 學生), vol. 1, no. 1. 1. “Foreword” (“Fakanci” 發刊詞). 1939. Scientific Taste, vol. 1, no. 1. 2–3. Gao Xingjian 高行健. 1935. “The Cold Dream of a Frozen Body” (“Bing shi leng meng ji” 冰屍冷夢記). Scientific World (Kexue shijie 科學世界), vol. 4, no. 10. 1018–1022. Gu Yin 谷音. 1939. “Super Microscope” (“Chao xianweijing” 超顯微鏡). Scientific Taste, vol. 1, no. 1. 8–10. Heroldova, Helena. 2004. “Glass Submarines and Electric Balloons: Creating Scientific and Technical Vocabulary in Chinese Science Fiction.” In Michael

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Lackner and Natascha Vittinghoff, eds., Mapping Meanings: The Field of New Learning in Late Qing China. Leiden: Brill, 537–554. Hill, Michael Gibbs. 2013. Lin Shu, Inc.: Translation and the Making of Modern Chinese Culture. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Huters, Theodore. 2017. Bringing the World Home: Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Isaacson, Nathaniel. 2017. Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University. Jia Liyuan 賈立元. 2021. “The Modern” and “the Unknown”: A Study of Late Qing Science Fiction (“Xiandai” yu “weizhi”: Wanqing kehuan xiaoshuo yanjiu “現 代”與“未知”:晚清科幻小說研究). Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. Liang Qichao. 1996 [1902]. “On the Relationship Between Fiction and the Government of the People.” In Kirk A. Denton, ed., Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893–1945. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ———. 1902. The Future of New China (Xin Zhongguo weilai ji 新中國未來記), New Fiction (Xin Xiaoshuo 新小說), vol. 1, no. 1. Qiao Feng 喬風. 1939. “Today’s People Live Longer than Ancients” (“Jinren bi guren changshou” 今人比古人長壽). 1939. Scientific Taste, vol. 1, no. 1. 5–8. Ren Dongmei 任冬梅. 2022. “The Development of Science Fiction in the Republican Period (1912–1949)” (“Minguo shiqi kehuan de fazhan 1912-1949” 民國時期科幻的發展 1912-1949). In Wu Yan吳岩, ed. A History of 20th Century Chinese Science Fiction (Ershi shiji Zhongguo xiaoshuo shi 20世 紀中國科幻小說史). Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. 45–76. Tang, Xiaobing. 1996. Global Space and the National Discourse of Modernity: The Historical Thinking of Liang Qichao. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Tao Yuanzhen 陶元珍. 1945. “Liang Qichao’s Predictions in The Future of New China” (“Liang Rengong Xin Zhongguo weilai ji zhong zhi yuyan” 梁任公《 新中國未來記》中之預言). People’s Constitution (Minxian 民宪), vol. 2, no. 3. 13. Uehara Kaori 上原香. 2015. “Gu Junzheng’s Definitive Reception of American SF: A Discussion Centered on Under the North Pole” (顧均正における米國 SF の受容: “在北極底下”を中心に). Genndai chuugoku 89. 35–48. Wang, David Der-wei. 1997. Fin-de-siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849–1911. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Wang, Zuoyue. 2002. “Saving China through Science: The Science Society of China, Scientific Nationalism, and Civil Society in Republican China.” Osiris, vol. 17, no. 1. 291–322. Wu Yan 吳岩. 2022. “Chinese Futuristic Science Fiction: Periodization, Subgenres and Characteristics” (“Zhongguo kehuan weilaizhuyi: shidai biaoxian, leixing yu tezheng” 中國科幻未來主義:時代表現 類型與特徵). Zhongguo wenxue piping 中國文學批評, no. 3. 62–69.

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Xia Xiaohong 夏曉虹. 2019. Reading Liang Qichao (Yuedu Liang Qichao 閱讀梁 啟超). Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe. Yeh, Catherine Vance. 2015. The Chinese Political Novel: Migration of a World Genre. Cambridge, MA: Harvard East Asian Monographs 380. Zhao Jingshen 趙景深. 1985. “Gu Junzheng and The World Youth Literature Series” (“Gu Junzheng yu Shijie shaonian wenxue congkan” 顧均正與世界少 年文學叢刊). In Memories of the Literary Circle (Wentan huiyi 文壇回憶). Chongqing: Chongqing chubanshe. 85–88.

CHAPTER 7

Projecting Eco-Futures: Cinematic Visions of Utopian Science and Ecology from the Mao Era to the Deng Era Melissa A. Hosek

Science and utopia in China have long converged in narratives that imagine paths of national development. While such visions often anticipate the ideal future of human  society, ecology also plays a significant role. Ecology—by which I mean the network of nonhuman and more-than-­ human things in-and-of our physical surroundings, including organic materials, geography, weather, animals, etc.—shapes idealized visions of the material future, both intentionally and unconsciously. As Lawrence Buell argues, literary narratives’ references to nature lay bare the values, worldviews, and ideologies that ultimately undergird all real forms of human interaction with the environment (1995, 2–4). So too must this be true in cinematic narratives, which make the environments of stories plainly visible. This chapter examines the portrayal of ecology in Chinese narratives of science and utopia from one of the most transformative times in

M. A. Hosek (*) Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. Song et al. (eds.), Chinese Science Fiction, Studies in Global Science Fiction, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53541-3_7

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modern Chinese history: the transition from the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) to Reform and Opening (1978–ongoing). By comparing two films that articulate contrasting utopian visions of scientific modernization, the 1976 socialist realist film Breaking with the Old Ideas (Jue lie 决裂, Dir. Li Wenhua) and China’s first science fiction (sf) film, Death Ray on a Coral Island (Shanhudaoshang de siguang 珊瑚岛上的死光, dir. Zhang Hongmei, 1980), this chapter explores the dynamic entanglement of science ideology, politics, and ecology in modern Chinese utopias. Such inquiry illuminates how a fast-changing China—in worldviews, values, and the culture of science—fostered new perspectives on ecology and its relationship to humanity. The societal role of modern science and its narratives changed dramatically from the Cultural Revolution to the Reform Era. Previously during the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), the state carried out substantial education reforms aimed to facilitate greater equity among those who conducted manual labor (workers) and mental labor (intellectuals) (Andreas 2009, 44–49). While part of these efforts included altering higher education admission standards and revising college curriculums, another goal was to pioneer a new form of knowledge assembling based upon the integration and dissemination of proletarian knowledge with modern scientific knowledge (Andreas 2009, 50–54; Schmalzer, Red Revolution 2016, 35–39; Gross 2016, 102–103). These initial efforts were carried out with varied results (Gross 2016, 102–108), but debates over their merits continued and became polarized during the Cultural Revolution, culminating in what Li Jing describes as a radical re-­interpretation of the initial reform efforts (J. Li “kexuejia” 2020, Andreas 2009, 75–83). By the tail-end of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was divided over the question of whether to embrace modern scientific development or continue to put their faith in the revolutionary ideal of socialist knowledge production (Di 1993, 84–85; Pan 2010, 46). Among the many contentious issues during the Cultural Revolution, the appropriateness of using modern science to advance socialist modernization was a polarized issue, leading so far as to the political repression of intellectuals who were deemed class enemies (Andreas 2009, 144–148, 154–156). In reflecting upon these events, some scholars have gone so far as to characterize the Cultural Revolution as “anti-science.”1 1  Examples of this include Judith Shapiro’s Mao’s War Against Nature (2001, 9) and Jasper Becker’s Hungry Ghosts: China’s Secret Famine (1999, 163). But Gross explains that this conclusion became widely accepted in the early reform era thanks to new data about the failures of Mao era experiments, disastrous anecdotes in scar literature and memoires, and the fact that many scientific institutions were visibly dismantled in years prior (2016, 1–2).

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Not long after Mao died in September of 1976, state politics and the cultural role of science both experienced major reversals. In 1978, Xu Chi composed “Goldbach’s Conjecture” (gedebahe caixiang 哥德巴赫猜想), an influential biography of the mathematician Chen Jingrun, which portrayed Chen as a hero of the people rather than a class enemy (J. Li “kexuejia,” 2020). Xu Chi’s clever rhetorical strategies and Marxist discourse inverted the Cultural Revolution stereotype of the aloof and “useless” intellectual into a new image of the admirably dedicated social servant focused on advancing the nation’s scientific development. The rhetorical force of this portrayal was so effective that it was mirrored in Deng Xiaoping’s own remarks in his “Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the National Science Convention” in 1978, which not only embraced modern science as a key vehicle of national modernization but also declared scientists and intellectuals as rightful members of the body politic (J. Li “kexuejia,”  2020). This speech marked the inauguration of a new cultural acceptance of modern science and its practitioners, casting aside the Cultural Revolution’s critical endeavors. At the same time, it welcomed a new era of literary expression in which sf literature was revived after nearly a decade of absence from the market (Wagner 1985, 40). With such a drastic reversal in politics and culture of science, how did utopian narratives of the scientific future change across these short years? What do they reveal about the evolving perspectives of what it means to be a modern human being in the physical world? And can the history of this expression shed new light on narratives today? One might address these questions beginning with the very first works of post-Mao sf, but this would fail to recognize the great scale of change since 1976, as well as the potential aesthetic and ideological legacies of the Mao era that lingered on. To appreciate more comprehensively the dynamic transformations of late twentieth-century Chinese utopian visions, we must consider the idealistic genres of socialist realism and post-­ Mao sf side-by-side. Breaking with the Old Ideas is a socialist realist narrative about education reform in the 1950s. Although not obviously a science-oriented, utopian narrative, it nevertheless represents the utopian impulse behind the politics of its day, particularly in relation to a desire to modernize via a socialist alternative to science. It reflects a yearning to actualize an ideal future beyond the filmmaker’s reality that is fundamentally grounded in new ways of assembling knowledge and using tools to shape the material world. In this regard, it shares commonalities with sf narratives of the post-Mao era. Furthermore, it is because of this similarity

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that a comparison with Death Ray on Coral Island is productive: together, these films shed light on the evolving dreams of the late Mao era into the Deng era in which the future is entangled with shifting ideas about the potential and limits of science. Their contrasting perspectives on science give rise to materially opposite visions of the ideal future and therefore offer a glimpse into the eras’ transforming perspectives on humanity’s role in the more-than-human world. This chapter aims to dovetail Chinese sf and utopia studies with the ongoing scholarly debates about the Mao Era’s environmental legacy. In Mao’s War Against Nature (2001), Judith Shapiro famously argues that Mao-era authoritarian politics and anthropocentric cultural perspectives, fueled by utopian urgency for the socialist future, set in motion destructive behaviors on a scale hitherto unseen and therefore should be considered the turning point in modern Chinese environmental history (xi-4, 6–10). Shapiro’s description of a Maoist “war against nature” captures the paradigm of conflict and the mismanagement of resources that many agree typify the role of ecology under socialist authoritarianism. But new scholarship explores the utopian impulse of Mao-era ideas, particularly in relation to visions of ecological co-existence. Sigrid Schmalzer (Red Revolution, Green Revolution) argues that Mao’s proposed revisions to science offered an epistemological alternative to knowledge creation that may inspire critical reflection on scientific practices and sustainable agriculture  today (“Red and Expert” 2019, 217; Red Revolution 2016, 3). Adam Liebman argues that socialist values of thriftiness and self-reliance guided the development of an early recycling system during the Mao years, facilitating efficient treatment of “waste” (2019, 540–541). Ban Wang further argues that socialist era films explored a harmonious vision of ecology with an emphasis on human-nonhuman interdependence, as can be observed in Young People in Our Village (Women cunli nianqing ren 我们村里年轻人, 1959) (B. Wang 2009, 160). As John Foster elucidates in Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature, the socialist organization of labor and the common ownership of resources can inspire an optimistic vision of metabolic human-nature relationships, which Wang argues resonates with the Chinese socialist imagination (Foster  2000, 155–160; B.  Wang  2009, 158–160). The field of Chinese environmental humanities inquiry has thus taken an interest in the utopian aspirations of the socialist era. The next step is to explore the progression of these aspirations from the twilight of socialist realism into the rebirth of Chinese sf.

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This chapter examines how utopian yearnings from the Mao era into the Deng era transformed in their visions of science, modernity, and environment. Through analyzing the drastic contrasts between the imaginary ecologies of Breaking and Death Ray, I argue that the idealized dreams of ecology transformed alongside China’s culture of science. The traces of an ecological critique of science in Breaking get replaced by spectacularly imagined ecological destruction in Death Ray, suggesting there was a distinct and plausibly destructive shift in the ecological perspectives of utopian ideation from the Cultural Revolution to Reform and Opening.

The Red and Expert Knowledge System “Anti-Science,” as a characterization of the Mao era, fails to capture the utopian impulses  driving reform efforts grounded in a critique of what they believed modern science to be. The CCP under Mao’s leadership sought to reconcile the state’s need for scientific progress with their ideological convictions of elevating a proletarian Chinese culture and the dignity of labor (Cai Xiang 2016, 251–254, 338–339). Their solution was to support a revisionist approach to knowledge production that would synthesize Chinese socialist values with support for the development of modern technical skills, what I refer to as the red and expert knowledge system. Initiated in reforms during the 1950s and 1960s, the red and expert knowledge system was shaped by goals intended to systematically re-­ organize the who, what, where, why, and how of creating authoritative knowledge for the nation’s development. There were three defining approaches in this effort to reform science for Chinese socialism. First, there were endeavors to subvert elitist practices by re-integrating manual and mental labor into knowledge production. While European Marxist thinkers were critical of the disciplinary distinctions between technology and science, Chinese socialists focused on the separation of mental and manual labor (referring to knowledge procured only through “theory” in contrast to less elite knowledge garnered through “practice”) and its impact on social inequality (Schmalzer, Red Revolution 2016,  35). Chinese thinkers were concerned that social alienation from laborers and the relative inaccessibility of elite education allowed intellectuals to monopolize knowledge and maintain their social status (Andreas 2009, 175). The red and expert knowledge system sought to re-integrate theory and practice to diminish the value of abstract knowledge and reinvest value in experiential learning. New education policies incorporated

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hands-on experiences and labor into institutions’ curricula (Andreas 2009, 182–183). The state prioritized the “mass road” of disseminating popular science to the broader population rather than investing in the specialized training of elites (the “genius road”) (Andreas 2009,  52). Applied disciplines that were compatible with practical fieldwork, such as agricultural science, gained political and social support while the basic sciences waned (Andreas 2009,  177–180; Schmalzer, Red Revolution 2016, 28). Thus, the red and expert knowledge system sought to bring knowledge production down-to-earth in a literal as well as a figurative sense. Second, the red and expert knowledge system sought to integrate yang (洋, “foreign”) and tu (土, “local”) knowledge. This binary, which typically privileged foreign knowledge over indigenous knowledge, was a legacy of colonial modernity in China. The CCP used the foreign-local dichotomy to its advantage to consolidate the political identity of the Chinese proletariat (Schmalzer, Red Revolution 2016, 35–38; Gross 2016, 102–103).2 Tu knowledge was understood to encompass both the peasantry’s methods of assembling knowledge and their perspectives and embodied experiences (Schmalzer, “Red and Expert” 2019,  217). Integrating yang and tu, in theory, meant elevating the peasantry to the status of knowledge producers. This was attempted with varying levels of success by designing education programs to turn peasants into peasant-­ technicians and also to proletarianize the educated via the local insights and collective memory of the peasantry (Gross 2016, 107–108). In other words, the red and expert knowledge system was born from and sought to overturn the cultural paradigm that provincialized non-scientific assemblages of knowledge. The third endeavor was to bridge the urban and the rural. The red and expert knowledge system sought to physically relocate authoritative knowledge creation from urban centers to the countryside, where they would be closer to the peasantry and the source of tu knowledge. According to Gross, this was attempted through various means, including coercively removing intellectuals from cities to be “sent down” to the countryside, dispatching campaigns of grassroots health workers (the 2  Schmalzer notes how those who had previously been grouped as “farmers” and “workers” now all fit under the new umbrella term “peasants.” The CCP not only needed to spread class consciousness to this large group of people but also needed to re-invent the stereotypical figure of the peasant, who was widely perceived as “backward” and “feudalistic.” Disseminating scientific knowledge, or at least a scientific worldview, was one way to re-­ invent the peasantry into a “new” identity of socialist modernity (Schmalzer, Red Revolution 2016, 35–38; Gross 2016, 102–103).

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barefoot doctors), and decentralizing medical and scientific institutions (2016, 33–34, 237–240, 55–60). While these efforts helped expand access to practical technical and medical resources in the countryside, they were also key efforts toward Mao’s vision of an agrarian socialist nation. These three endeavors to redefine the makers, process, and content of knowledge production combine to form the red and expert knowledge system, an idealistic alternative to the dominant knowledge system of modern science, that would presumably serve socialist modernity better. In practice, this knowledge system was implemented unevenly and with varied levels of success (Gross  2016, 102–108). Moreover, as Li Jing notes, the discourse of “red and expert” evolved throughout the Mao era in conjunction with an evolving and contentious political environment (J. Li “kexuejia,” 2020). Its celebration and imagined success in Breaking with the Old Ideas not only provides us with a window into this knowledge system’s most idealized, utopian impulse but also envisions how such a knowledge system might impact all aspects of society, including the interactions between humans and nonhumans. By spotlighting these interactions, one can observe how the red and expert knowledge system was imagined to be an ecological corrective to modern science—a critical perspective that would eventually be abandoned by the time of Death Ray on a Coral Island’s theatrical release in 1980.

Breaking with the Old Ideas (1976) Breaking with the Old Ideas’ depiction of the red and expert knowledge system’s three core endeavors—integrating mental and manual labor, centering the rural, and infusing tu knowledge into yang—reveals an underlying utopian expectation that a revolutionary approach to knowledge production would give rise to a more ecological version of modernity. Ruralness, labor, and tu knowledge specifically are presented as facilitating human-nonhuman interactions that are relatively more attuned to and supportive of a thriving ecosystem. This is a distinct point of contrast with the Cultural Revolution’s stereotypical and pejorative representations of modern science, which were alienated, impractical, and wasteful. As a work of socialist realism, the film tells us little about the historical events, successes, and failures of the red and expert knowledge reform and instead animates the time’s most idealized political hopes for a revolutionized path of development in which labor, knowledge, and the ecosystem are re-oriented in a new, alternative vision of socialist modernity.

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Breaking with the Old Ideas was filmed in 1975 and released on January 1, 1976, to positive reception (Pan  2010, 46; Di 1993,  79). “Red and Expert” discourse had become politicized and took a relatively radical meaning (J. Li “Kexuejia,” 2020; Andreas 2009, 133–138). The film glorifies the utopian potential of its version of the red and expert knowledge system through a fictional narrative about its conception during the Great Leap Forward. Set in 1958, Breaking tells the story of a humble cowherd, Long Guozheng (hereafter, “Principal Long”), who defies all odds to successfully establish the first ever red and expert agricultural college, modeling the revolutionary knowledge system envisioned to usher in a utopian socialist society. Throughout each sequence of the film, Principal Long encounters challenges that lead him to believe that modern science is inappropriate for socialist China (Delmar and Nash 1976,  74). Breaking’s methodical approach to this subject matter depicts each of the revolutionary endeavors outlined in the previous section. It does so, I argue, by employing ecological representation in such a way that suggests the most idealized expression of “red and expert” discourse at the end of the cultural revolution included critical eco-perspectives and utopian environmental aspirations. Breaking depicts the bridging of the rural with the urban using landscape montages and wide shots to signify the relocation of previously elite figures and institutions. When Principal Long declares his intention to establish a new agricultural school, students excitedly ask him: “Does our college have lecture buildings? And a library? And laboratories? Where is our school?” Smiling and nodding, Principal Long points off-screen and responds: “Look, our college is over there.” The camera cuts to a sweeping landscape shot, revealing a beautiful vista of mountains, trees, and rivers, but no sign of human inhabitants. The landscape is a stand-in for the rural. This landscape-as-rural visual metaphor is repeatedly used in the framing of the Old Representative, the archetypal character who represents the peasants. He is almost always framed in a wide shot with a beautiful landscape in the background. The beautiful and pastoral mise-en-scene, however, rarely includes any evidence of the peasants’ lives or labor. Everything the rural peasantry represents in Breaking, including its affiliation with proletarian culture and spirit, is subsumed into the symbolic imagery of the landscape. Consequently, the film’s glorification of the red and expert knowledge system is constituted through numerous sublime pastoral sequences, carrying both political symbolism and a tangible material vision of modernity defined by its proximity to nature.

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The successful relocation of knowledge production to the countryside among the peasants is represented through the film’s portrayal of educated characters thriving in landscape settings. This can be observed in the case of an intellectual youth who transforms into a red expert. The boy is initially a stereotypical bourgeois student: he is uncomfortable and clumsy in the outdoors and instead adores the grandeur of urban universities. His transformation begins in a montage sequence where he and Principal Long walk through monumental landscapes while discussing the purpose of a new approach to education. The boy’s ideas slowly change to conform with Principal Long’s, ultimately culminating in a later sequence when he chooses to abandon his studies to help work in a field to save the peasants’ crops. This choice signifies his successful transformation into a red expert; he abandons his previously snobbish attitude in favor of laboring outdoors. His proletarianization is facilitated by both political education and the boy’s growing aptitude for thriving in the landscape. Successful red and expert knowledge producers are thus portrayed as, like the peasantry, becoming part of the landscape. Visualizing red experts in the landscape is not just political symbolism; it also serves to demonstrate the aspiration for a modern knowledge system that may be compatible with—if not reliant upon—a rural lifestyle. In the Cultural Revolution years, there were efforts to envision a scientific future that did not rely upon urban centers. In fact, in a break with Stalinism and plausibly with inspiration from classical Chinese pastoral utopias, Mao aspired to build an agrarian society (M. Liu 2019, 127–128, 144). Breaking reflects this particular aspiration through its agrarian, pastoral setting, where it imagines that the red and expert knowledge system is born from and successfully modernizes the Chinese agrarian lifestyle. Visually, this success consists of peasant-students working in and with the ecosystem to the benefit of all plant, animal, and human life. Crops flourish, animal illnesses are treated, and the peasants are taken care of. Thus, the film imagines a utopian scenario in which the people and methods of knowledge production become re-embedded in the ecosystem. Breaking criticizes modern science’s separation of manual and mental labor as grounds for asserting the need for their integration. It does so by dovetailing stereotypes of aloof and “useless” intellectuals with the Maoist discourse of theory (authoritative, abstract knowledge) and practice (experiential knowledge and collective memory). Through its portrayal of authoritative theoretical knowledge (“theory”) in contrast to provincial knowledge assembled through experience and collective memory

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(“practice”). In one sequence featuring a heated disagreement between a student and Dean Sun, the science teacher, the latter’s “useless” alienated theoretical knowledge facilitates poor judgment and wasteful resource management. The conflict begins when Dean Sun ignores a peasant in need to continue his lecture on the comically irrelevant topic of horses of the world and the function of their tails. A frustrated student protests, arguing that the science curriculum is grossly out of sync with the local environment and the needs of nearby peasants. He demands for a more practical curriculum and voices his concern to Principal Long, who also learns that an entire crop of grain died because the lesson on harvesting was not taught in accordance with the local seasons. Bewildered by both cases, he exclaims, “Theory is divorced from reality!” In this instance, he recognizes that modern science curricula are organized according to politically alienated and foreign logic that serves neither the local people nor their environment. The film thus portrays knowledge gained through mental labor alone as ridiculously out-of-touch and ecologically harmful. The film thus presents modern science as ill-fitted to realizing a socialist modernity that respects both labor and the rural environment. In contrast, the red and expert knowledge system is portrayed as amenable to ecological harmony because it integrates the peasants’ labor practice and knowledge into authoritative knowledge production. The film goes so far as to represent (fictionally) the conception of the red and expert knowledge system as coming from the peasantry directly. The Old Representative invents the concept by smashing together two clumps of red and yellow clay, demonstrating the natural logic of integrating two things. Principal Long then immediately persuades the college’s leadership to integrate labor into the students’ training, putting them in direct contact with the peasants and their lifestyle. It is a key step to connecting to the earth, local knowledge, and experience-based wisdom into authoritative knowledge production and is therefore celebrated by the students and Principal Long as the preferred approach to learning and teaching. As such, Breaking implies that the red and expert knowledge system is grounded (literally) in the practice and tu wisdom of the proletariat. In stark contrast with the “uselessness” of alienated intellectualism, this new knowledge system is conscious of the needs of the proletariat and, by extension, the region’s unique ecological dynamics. Breaking’s case for integrating tu and yang similarly assumes that proximity to the peasantry will imbue red and expert knowledge producers with valuable skills and a relatively ecological disposition. It is firstly

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important to understand that the film’s representation of tu and yang is portrayed through the contrasting characterization of bourgeois intellectuals and peasants, who embody antithetical attitudes toward natural resources and others. When Principal Long tours the urban science university, he sees a haughty student pluck up several stalks of grain, examine them, and then toss them onto the ground. A nearby peasant worker implores him to take more care, but the student dismissively replies, “These few grains are nothing compared to our graduation thesis,” before walking away. The peasant bends down to pick up the fallen grain and gingerly holds them while tearfully exclaiming “what a waste.” Grain is a resource that the worker regards with great meaning and care. The student’s yang knowledge may empower him to know how to grow and treat grain, but he lacks the moral sense to respect natural resources. On the other hand, the worker’s tu knowledge endows him with the sense to recognize the full value of grain, but he is helpless to prevent the scientists’ waste. Separate from each other, tu and yang fail to support a thriving agrarian society. The importance of integrating tu and yang is presented in a parallel sequence that explicitly highlights its ecological benefit. When peasant-­ scholar Li Jinfeng presents dying stalks of grain to the school as evidence of an impending pest infestation and crop failure, Vice Principal Cao—a stand-in for Deng Xiaoping and the CCP’s right-wing faction—does not care (Pan 2010, 46). He grabs the grain from her and throws them on the ground, dismissing her concern and insisting that she instead study for her exam. After he storms out, Jinfeng gently picks up the grain and holds it to her bosom while giving a tearful speech about the obligation of students to serve the peasantry. The students around her are deeply moved and enthusiastically run toward the field to exterminate the locusts, bringing along canisters of chemical insecticide with which to methodically treat the fields. Their exposure to tu knowledge and values makes these red experts emotionally invested in the well-being of the grain, in contrast to the bourgeois student in the scene prior. Because students are empowered with tu sentiment and yang expertise, the red and expert knowledge system is portrayed as imparting practical skills and an ethics of care. Breaking with the Old Ideas’ portrayals of rural life, manual labor, and tu culture are entwined in a utopian aspiration for an alternative concept of modernity where human relations, especially with nonhumans, are revolutionized. The film explicitly envisions the red and expert knowledge system as fundamental for an ecologically harmonious, socialist future. But

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this vision depends on a highly romanticized stereotype of the peasantry. As Schmalzer observes, the theoretical basis of the red and expert knowledge system relied upon assumptions about the peasantry, particularly those regarding the peasant’s connection with the ecosystem. Essentially, peasants were cast as the source of ecological wisdom: ‘Cadres have confidence, youth have technology, and old peasants have experience.’ …cadres grasped all aspects of the situation, such that they can determine what kinds of experiments will best serve production needs; old peasants are down-to-earth and unconcerned with profit and fame, understand the rhythms of production, and have a wealth of practical knowledge; and youth have technological knowledge and are accepting of new technologies, such that they ‘dare to think and dare to act.’ (“Red and Expert” 2019, 41, emphasis added).

Without the input of these stereotypical peasant qualities, there is little reason why filmmakers would assume the red and expert knowledge system to be ecological, let alone necessary for an agrarian society. Likewise, the anti-ecological critique of modern science relies upon stereotypes of the “useless” intellectual. But after Mao’s death and the fall of the Gang of Four, Xu Chi’s reportage on Chen Jingrun effectively reversed the stereotypical intellectual from a class enemy into a heroic figure in the nation (J.  Li “kexuejia,”  2020). Relying heavily on such stereotypes no doubt made this particular utopian vision susceptible to societal and culture change in the post-Mao era. Breaking represents the utopian aspirations of a particular moment in Chinese history. Historically, the red and expert knowledge system had limited success, but this film nonetheless illustrates the extent to which politics, ecology, and science were bound together in utopian aspirations of the Cultural Revolution (Gross 2016, 102–108, 238–243). In the transition to Deng’s Reform and Opening policies, the new figure of scientist heroes replaced the romantic stereotype of peasants as society’s authoritative knowledge creators. Intellectuals who were previously critiqued as elitist scientists were formally rebranded as part of the working class and welcomed back into society (Simon 1987, 130). The dreams of elevating rural life, manual labor, and peasant culture were also eclipsed by the prospect of scientific development modeled after Western modernization (X. Liu 2019, 26–29; Dirlik 1989, 34S). Without the endeavors of the red and expert knowledge system, China’s first sf film, Death Ray on a Coral Island, was free to imagine a different and ultimately more ecologically destructive vision of the future.

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Death Ray on a Coral Island (1980) In the Deng Era, the state shifted away from red and expert knowledge in favor of the globally hegemonic, mainstream knowledge system of modern science. This shift had a significant, albeit not seamless, impact on the artistic and literary portrayal of knowledge production. On the one hand, this political shift legitimized the revival of the sf genre, whose depiction of scientists in laboratories or abroad became more socially acceptable rather than  summarily dismissed as counterrevolutionary (Wagner 1985, 19, 33, 40–43). On the other hand, these narratives had to reconcile the contradictions between this new path of development and the socialist values that the state still claimed to uphold. Paola Iovene (Tales of Futures Past) and Xiao Liu (Information Fantasies) both argue that the literary genre of sf mediates this reconciliation and transition, but sf as a cinematic genre is a different story (Iovene 2014, 19–20, 45–49; X. Liu 2019,  28–29). Although Jie Zhang’s interpretation of Death Ray on a Coral Island as akin to scar literature and Nathaniel Isaacson’s analysis of the film’s geopolitical ambiguities do suggest that this film has a similar mediating function for the socialism-to-science transition, my analysis of the film’s portrayal of ecology highlights its enthusiastic, forward-looking anticipation for a new lifeworld (J.  Zhang 2014,  44–47; Isaacson 2015, 280–288). No longer beholden to portray the rural, tu knowledge, or manual labor, in addition to enjoying new expressive freedom to indulge in the typical features of global sf cinema, Death Ray imagines a new modernity grounded in modern science. Like Breaking, this cinematic expression of utopian yearning is also entangled with environmental and political values. But without a commitment to manual, agrarian labor, Death Ray expresses its utopian worldview as one that delights in the domination of nature as a spectacle of science. Death Ray on a Coral Island tells the story of Chen Tianhong, an overseas Chinese scientist, who is on a mission to protect his late mentor’s high-tech invention from murderous thugs by bringing it to China. While en route, his airplane is shot down and he washes upon an isolated coral island where he is rescued by another scientist of Chinese descent, Dr. Matthew, and his faithful, mute worker Amang. The island appears to be a scientist’s paradise: it has state-of-the-art equipment and resources for

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Dr. Matthew to continue working on his latest invention, a powerful laser beam. In the wrong hands, this laser could be as deadly as an atomic bomb, but Dr. Matthew believes that it will be used for good. Over the course of the film, Chen helps Dr. Matthew realize that he is being manipulated and exploited by the same unscrupulous company that attacked Chen’s laboratory. In a final effort to prevent the laser beam from harming innocent people, Dr. Matthew and Chen work together to destroy the island and all the technology on it. In the end, Chen is rescued by his girlfriend, Mona, and the two ride off into the sunset toward China. The film is a high adventure of good versus bad in the international science community, but ecological representation continues to be used to glorify the anticipated state of human-nonhuman relations after scientific progress. Montage and Landscape While Death Ray’s portrayal of a modern material lifestyle reflects changing aspirations for modernity in the wake of Mao’s death, so too do its representations of setting and geography.3 Specifically, landscape montages speak to the changing perceptions of cosmopolitanism in both a cultural and a geographic sense. Interestingly, these montages are rarely absent of the main characters. I, therefore, posit that these sequences reflect a transforming sense of the individual’s place in the world and by extension the individual’s relationship to their nonhuman surroundings. Landscape montages of Mona and Chen Tianhong  (the film’s scientist heroes) are visually prominent, although they may appear at first glance to have little connection to the film’s plot. They comprise what Martin Lefebvre would describe as intentional landscape shots (long takes that have some autonomy from the narrative and give the viewer pause to reflect on the image) and impure landscapes (quickly intercut shots throughout the film that are subsumed into the narrative) (2011, 65–66). While Lefebvre argues that landscape shots can momentarily freeze the progression of the story to create a purely visual experience, Mia Liu rightfully points out that even pure intentional landscape shots are never fully 3  The film features wealthy homes, modernist architecture, high-tech laboratories, videophones, and fast cars, which are all luxurious commodities fashioned after Western modernism. For more on the significance of these items, see Isaacson (“Media and Messages”  2015,  273–278), Jie Zhang (2014,  44–47), and Hua Li (Post-Mao Cultural Thaw 2021, 147).

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divorced from the storytelling of the narrative (M. Liu 2019, 22–23). In Death Ray, the montages of Mona and Chen in their respective settings interrupt the plot to offer pleasant visual experiences, but they are also integral to the film’s overall utopian vision of the future. The montage sequences are composed of both intentional and impure landscape shots that “succeed one another in diegetic continuity [to] form an impossible geography”—specifically, the anticipated experience of place to be created by scientific development (Lefebvre 2011, 66). I refer to these montages as “world-establishing sequences,” as they establish the imaginary conditions of the individual’s idealized mode of existence in and with the physical world. Mona’s world-establishing sequences in exotic locations estrange the film’s portrayal of space and time. The non-descript Western city and open ocean where Mona drives her vehicles signify the global scope of the story. Both sequences consist of close-up and medium-wide shots of Mona, as well as impure landscapes of her surroundings. Her face is relaxed and calm as she casually glances around the world passing her by. The world, in contrast, is represented as blurs of trees, buildings, cars, and waves, revealing that she is moving through these spaces quickly. By stringing together shots of Mona’s unphased demeanor and the rapidly passing world, the entire sequence is defined by its convergence of fast and slow time across great geographical distances. While Jie Zhang argues that this temporal contradiction develops a theme of anxiety and regret over missed progress during the Cultural Revolution, I propose that it better reflects the anticipated re-organized experience of temporal-spatial relations that occur upon re-integration into the global capitalist system—what David Harvey refers to as “space-time compression” (J.  Zhang 2014,  44–47; Harvey 1990,  425–426). Mona’s calm conveys confidence and even enjoyment in one’s surroundings, even if they are far away or have a new pace of life. Far from being alienated by her dedication to science, Mona’s knowledge and skills allow her to function masterfully even within a rapidly changing lifeworld. Mona’s world-establishing sequences are also disruptive, giving audiences opportunities to reflect on the appealing aspects of globalism, including space-time compression. The film often cuts to sequences of Mona driving through exotic spaces in the middle of time-sensitive plot events. For example, the opening sequence of Mona driving her car in the city happens while the other scientists in her laboratory are anxiously counting down the minutes until the start of their experiment. Later, the sequence of Mona driving her speedboat across the ocean repeats multiple

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times while Chen Tianhong is facing imminent danger. Both of these world-establishing sequences disrupt the urgency of the narrative, creating momentary reprieves from the escalating action so viewers can enjoy a visual experience. Similar to the intentional landscape long-take in Lefebvre’s analysis, these sequences privilege the spectator’s gaze rather than plot progression. The prominence of Mona’s face in world-establishing sequences draws the spectator’s gaze to the figure of a woman within the re-imagined global landscape. The visual emphasis on Mona’s glamorous look (her permed hair, fashionable outfits, and jewelry) invites a voyeuristic consumption of these sequences. The seductive image of a woman of Chinese descent moving through exotic locations on sleek vehicles suggests that modern scientific development promises access to luxurious, attractive, and cosmopolitan settings. In contrast to the representation of Li Jinfeng in Breaking with the Old Ideas, Death Ray taps into the male gaze to suggest that, ideally, a modern woman’s place is in exotic luxury, not re-­ embedded in the countryside. In the four short years between 1976 and 1980, the visual language of utopian, popular cinema thus shifts from hands-on interactions within a local ecosystem to individuals thriving in beautiful places beyond the nation’s borders. The imagined parameters of an individual’s place in the world, as well as how the individual should exist in it, changed drastically. Chen Tianhong’s world-establishing sequences on the island, which feature shots of the beaches, crags, and underground caverns, similarly draw attention to the character’s presence in modern, exotic surroundings. But Chen’s sequences also include settings that point to even more ambitious frontiers of knowledge and humanity’s place in the world. In one sequence, Chen follows a robot down an underground tunnel and through a labyrinth of passages until he ultimately enters an exquisite underwater sanctuary with a domed glass ceiling. A wide shot reveals that Chen Tianhong is a small figure compared to this massive space where fish swim all around him. Simultaneously, the non-diegetic music swells to suggest that this sanctuary is a sublime marvel of human ingenuity. Chen’s world-establishing sequences reveal another aspect of post-Mao utopian aspirations: that scientific development will make even the most incredible secrets of nature within reach of human understanding and enjoyment.

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Special Effects and the Spectacular Destruction of Nature Death Ray’s special effects connect this film to the transnational genre of sf cinema, and they also manipulate ecological representations in a way that glorifies the domination of nature. In the context of American sf, Carl Freedman argues that the spectacle of special effects is a characteristic that distinguishes sf cinema as a genre mode, especially compared to the critically reflexive sf literature (1998, 311–314). Because cinema has totalitarian control over an audience’s senses, special effects overwhelm the viewer and deprive them of opportunities to critically reflect on what they are seeing (Freeman 1998, 306–311, 314). Freedman points to George Lucas’ Star Wars and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind as examples of Western sf cinema that prominently feature special effects but express little social criticism, and therefore are ultimately complicit with American conservative ideologies (1998,  311). I build upon Freeman’s insights to argue that Death Ray’s special effects specifically detract from the exploration of critical perspectives related to science and ecology. The scene where Dr. Matthew rescues Chen Tianhong from a shark by firing his laser beam exemplifies how special effects detract from critical eco-perspectives in Death Ray. Images of the shark and Chen in the ocean are rapidly cut together to build tension until the climactic moment when Dr. Matthew’s laser hits the shark. There is a flash of red across the screen and a splash of water, and then we see the shark’s bloodied, lifeless body. The visuals flash quickly, and the sound effects are loud, creating an excessive multi-sensory experience. It is a quintessential example of sf special effects in that the subject (the x-ray laser beam) celebrates technology just as much as the filmmaker’s use of special effects does (Freedman  1998, 307). Even though Zhang Hongmei reportedly had a limited budget for special effects, the primary focus of this sequence is the eradication of danger via the bright red laser beam (H. Li 2021, 147). There is little lingering concern regarding how this tool eviscerated an animal. The potential to harm human society is expressed as reason enough for Chen Tianhong to risk life and limb to bring the dangerous technology to safety, but its capacity to destroy animals, rocks, or other nonhuman things is not recognized as a cause for critical reflection. In this film, special effects and the technology they represent thus shift attention away from an ecological critique of scientific endeavors to instead aestheticize the endeavors themselves. Death Ray’s use of special effects further elevates the destruction of nature into a sublime spectacle of science, as can be seen in the film’s

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exciting resolution when the island is destroyed by an atomic bomb. Chen Tianhong and Mona drive away on their speedboat only just in time to escape. They turn to see that a bright orange mushroom cloud has taken the place of the island. The mushroom cloud, created with practical and special effects, billows in the frame momentarily before the lovers drive off into the sunset toward the safety of China (H. Li 2021, 147). The reunification of the lovers in addition to the bombastic victory of the “good guys” over the “bad guys” makes this a Hollywood-esque happy ending.4 In the swelling music of the credits, the mushroom cloud may remind viewers of the need for science to serve the nation rather than greedy, foreign actors, but its impressive cinematic rendering makes it primarily an exciting resolution to this adventurous tale about scientists. By concluding the film in this blaze of glory, the filmmakers condone such anthropogenic destruction. Death Ray’s special effects thus unintentionally contribute to its overall support for the anthropocentrism inherent to modern scientific ideology. Although this sequence is arguably ambiguous concerning destructive technology and the threat of foreign actors, the film’s other instances of special effects condition viewers to regard explosions positively.5 A previous scene shows Dr. Matthew demonstrating the might of his laser beam by exploding rocks and sand. This primes viewers to understand that although it would be dangerous for the technology to fall into the wrong hands, its destructive capacity is an achievement, not a threat. Moreover, because the rocks and sand have little instrumental value for the scientists on the island, the characters are unperturbed by their destruction. In this way Dr. Matthew’s act of showing off his laser beam is the opposite of Li Jinfeng’s gentle caress of grain: whereas the peasants in Breaking with the Old Ideas weep for even minimal maltreatment of wheat, the scientists of Death Ray are awed by the obliteration of rocks and even the entire island. Without the political imperative to consider how knowledge production relates to the stereotypical socialist peasantry, the representation of science in Death Ray renders such domination of nature inconsequential.  In his analysis of Frant Gwo’s The Wandering Earth (liuliang diqiu, 2019), Wang Zhuoyi identifies action, high-quality special effects, last-minute rescues, and a male-dominated heroic narrative as characteristics of Hollywood cinema (2021, 226). 5  Jie Zhang argues that the film is an expression of the trauma and scientific setbacks suffered during the Cultural Revolution. The appearance of the happy couple at the end of the film contradicts the overall critical subjects, leading Zhang to reason that this is an ultimately ambiguous conclusion (48–49). 4

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The absence of the Mao era’s critique of science permits filmmakers to indulge in the spectacle of science rather than alternative visions of the modern experience. Death Ray thus illustrates how the transnational characteristics of sf cinema not only detract specifically from a critical ecological reflection but also reinforce values that exacerbate ecological destruction.

Conclusion The ecological representations in Breaking with the Old Ideas and Death Ray on a Coral Island shed light on the evolving utopias of the Cultural Revolution and Reform Era, as well as their implications for shifting expectations regarding the role of science and ecology in the modern future. The different aspirations in the Mao and Deng eras regarding knowledge production led to frequent reorganization of the institutions, agents, and locations of “science.” When envisioned cinematically, it becomes clear that they demand and embody different ecological lifeworlds. This chapter argues that the political imperative to envision authoritative knowledge in ruralness, tu perspectives, and manual labor, which depended on a romanticized stereotype of the peasantry, gave rise to a vision of a harmonious socialist ecology during the Mao era. In contrast, China’s first sf film, Death Ray on a Coral Island, illustrates the extent to which post-­ Mao dreams of the nation’s scientific future anticipated radically different modes of co-existing with the nonhuman. Specifically, after the abandonment of the red and expert knowledge system, Deng Xiaoping’s enthusiastic embrace of modern science as a knowledge system made way for new utopian narratives to dream of the fantastic ways in which scientific development will allow humans to dominate their surroundings and realize sublime power. Comparing Breaking and Death Ray, therefore, not only underscores the integral connection between science and ecological perspectives in modern utopian imaginaries but also suggests that the visual language of cinema has the potential to both open up and close avenues for critical reflection.

References Andreas, Joel. Rise of the Red Engineers: The Cultural Revolution and the Origins of China’s New Class. Stanford University Press, 2009. Becker, Jasper. Hungry Ghosts China’s Secret Famine. J. Murray, 1999.

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Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995. Cai, Xiang. Revolution and Its Narratives: China’s Socialist Literary and Cultural Imaginaries, 1949-1966. Translated by Rebecca E. Karl and Xueping Zhong, Duke University Press, 2016. Delmar, R., and M.  Nash. “Breaking with Old Ideas: Recent Chinese Films.” Screen, vol. 17, no. 4, 1976, pp. 67-84. Deng, Xiaoping. “Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the National Conference on Science,” China.Org.Cn, 1978, http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/dengxiaoping/103390.htm. Accessed 18 Mar. 2019. Di, Zhai. “‘Breaking with the Old Ideas’ Reality and Analysis” 《决裂》纪事与分 ( 析电影艺术). Cinema Arts, 1993, no. 02, pp. 76-84. Dirlik, Arif. “Postsocialism? Reflections on ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.’” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 21, no. 1, 1989, pp. 33-44. Foster, John Bellamy. Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature. Monthly Review Press, 2000. Freedman, Carl. “Kubrick’s ‘2001’ and the Possibility of a Science-Fiction Cinema.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, 1998, pp. 300-318. Gross, Miriam. Farewell to the God of Plague: Chairman Mao’s Campaign to Deworm China. University of California Press, 2016. Gwo, Frant. The Wandering Earth (流浪地球额). DVD, 2019. Harvey, David. “Between Space and Time: Reflections on the Geographical Imagination.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 80, no. 3, 1990, pp. 418-434. Iovene, Paola. Tales of Futures Past: Anticipation and the Ends of Literature in Contemporary China. Stanford University Press, 2014. Isaacson, Nathaniel. “Media and Messages: Blurred Visions of Nation and Science in ‘Death Ray on Coral Island.’” Simultaneous Worlds: Global Science Fiction Cinema, edited by Jennifer Feeley and Sarah Ann Wells, University of Minnesota Press, 2015, pp. 272-288. Lefebvre, Martin. “On Landscape in Narrative Cinema.” Revue Canadienne d’Études Cinématographiques / Canadian Journal of Film Studies, vol. 20, no. 1, 2011, pp. 61-78. Li, Hua. Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw. University of Toronto Press, 2021. Li, Jing. “‘科学家英雄’ 的诞生及其后果——论徐迟报告文学《哥德巴赫猜 想》.” Zhongguo Xiandai Wenxue Yanjiu cong kan, 2020, no. 8, http://www. chinawriter.com.cn/n1/2020/0806/c404030-­31812365.html. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023. Li, Wenhua. Breaking with the Old Ideas (决裂). Videorecording, 1976.

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Liebman, Adam. “Reconfiguring Chinese Natures: Frugality and Waste Reutilization in Mao Era Urban China.” Critical Asian Studies, vol. 51, no. 4, 2019, pp. 537-57. Liu, Mia Yinxing. Literati Lenses: Wenren Landscape in Chinese Cinema of the Mao Era. University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2019. Liu, Xiao. Information Fantasies: Precarious Mediation in Postsocialist China. University of Minnesota Press, 2019. Pan, Tian-Qiang. “Breaking with Old Ideas: An Untrue Political New Year’s Film from the Later Period of the Cultural Revolution (电影《决裂》—文革后期被 勾兑的 '政治贺岁片').” Journal of Shanghai University (Social Science Edition), vol. 5, no. 43, 2010, pp. 43-53. Shapiro, Judith. Mao’s War against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China. Cambridge University Press, 2001. Schmalzer, Sigrid. “Red and Expert.” In Afterlives of Chinese Communism: Political Concepts from Mao to Xi, edited by Christian P. Sorace et al., Verso Books, 2019, pp. 215-220. ———. Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China. University of Chicago Press, 2016. Simon, Denis Fred. “China’s Scientists and Technologists in the Post-Mao Era: A Retrospective and Prospective Glimpse.” In China’s Intellectuals and the State: in Search of a New Relationship, edited by Merle Goldeman, Timothy Creek, and Carol Lee Hamrin, Council of East Asian Studies, Harvard University Press, 1987, pp. 129-156. Wagner, Rudolf G. “Lobby Literature: The Archeology and Present Functions of Science Fiction in China.” After Mao: Chinese Literature and Society, edited by Jeffrey C Kinkley, Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 15-62. Wang, Ban. “Of Humans and Nature in Documentary: The Logic of Capital in West of the Tracks and Blind Shaft.” In Chinese Ecocinema: In the Age of Environmental Challenge, edited by Sheldon H. Lu and Jiayan Mi, Hong Kong University Press, 2009, pp. 157-170. Wang, Zhuoyi. “Between the World Ship and the Spaceship: Planetarianism, Hollywood, Nationalism, and the Iceberg-Shaped Story of The Wandering Earth (2019).” Prism, vol. 18, no. 1, 2021, pp. 210-234. Zhang, Hongmei. Death Ray on Coral Island (珊瑚岛上的死光). Shanghai Films Studio, 1980. DVD. Zhang, Jie. “Death Ray on Coral Island as China’s First Science Fiction Film.” In The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film, edited by Sonja Fritzsche, Liverpool University Press, 2014, pp. 39-55.

CHAPTER 8

Information, the Body, and Humanism in the Chinese Cyber Novel Forty Millennia of Authenticity Cultivation Hua Li

Even if an apocalypse arrives, humanity will have a chance to find a completely new way out, making breakthroughs with even more formidable strength (Forty Millennia of Authenticity Cultivation 3132).

Chinese literature has long featured the motif of overcoming the limitations of the human body and escaping its biological destiny by achieving longevity or immortality. This sort of incredible transformation has sometimes been portrayed as occurring with the aid of medicine or surgery, as presented in the pre-modern narratives of Shen Kuo’s (1031–1088) Written Accounts from Dream Stream (Mengxi bitan  梦溪笔谈, c. 1083–1093) and Hong Mai’s (1123–1202) Records of Yi Jian (Yi jian zhi

H. Li (*) Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. Song et al. (eds.), Chinese Science Fiction, Studies in Global Science Fiction, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53541-3_8

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夷坚志, 1162)—as well as by means of modern-day organ transplantation, such as in PRC science fiction written from the 1960s to the 1980s. For example, Ye Yonglie wrote the short story “After Losing His Nose” (“Shiqu bizi yihou,” 失去鼻子以后, 1979) about the theme of a medical operation to reconstruct a mangled human nose. Xiao Jianheng wrote two stories on the theme of cryogenics entitled “A Dream” (“Meng” 梦, 1980) and “Combat” (“Bodou” 搏斗, 1980). Contemporary technoscientifc culture has generated an sf subgenre called “scientific authenticity/immortality cultivation fiction” (kexue xiuzhen/xiuxian xiaoshuo 科学修真/修仙小说), in which the human body and intellect can be enhanced by technoscientific means. This chapter engages in a close and critical reading of the scientific authenticity cultivation fiction Forty Millennia of Authenticity Cultivation (Xiuzhen siwan nian 修真四万年, hereafter Forty Millennia) from the posthuman perspective. By teasing out the novel’s connections between information, the human body, and humanism, I have detected an ontological separation between humankind and technology in the novel. When the novel confirms that advanced technologies will bring out the unlimited human potentials, it insists on a human-centered position and treats technology as merely a tool for driving human evolution forward. This paradoxical attitude toward technology is a common problem in contemporary posthumanist discussions. Forty Millennia is a mega cyber novel of over 13 million words written by Sun Junjie (孙俊杰, b. 1983) under his pen name Woniu Zhenren (Reclining Ox Immortal 卧牛真人). The novel was originally serialized on a Chinese cyber fiction site Qidian zhongwenwang (起点中文网, Starting Point Chinese Literary Net) from March 2015 to July 2018. The novel is highly readable with its smooth and consistent plot development, sweeping expanse of time and space, and bold vision of future technological advances. The Qidian zhongwenwang website promotes the novel as scientific authenticity cultivation fiction, but also cross-categorizes it as both science fiction and futuristic fiction. The novel profoundly engages in the narrative framework of traditional immortality cultivation fiction by following the protagonist’s self-cultivation process from the beginning stage of qi refinement to the most advanced stage of reintegration with the Dao. As in traditional xiuzhen fiction, the protagonist in Forty Millennia has preserved his humanism and held onto various moral principles at various stages of authenticity cultivation. The difference is that alchemy and other

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body-enhancement methods in traditional xiuzhen fiction are replaced by advanced scientific and technological methods, specifically bioinformational and computational technologies. The human, demon, and immortal realms in xiuzhen fiction are replaced by virtual reality, high-­dimensional space, and outer space. The novel demonstrates what Zhange Ni has observed about contemporary internet-based xiuzhen fiction: “[it] builds imaginary worlds around the magical practice of Chinese alchemy and fuses it with science and technology” (“Reimagining Daoist Alchemy” 748). She emphasizes the postsocialist and post-secular nature of the genre, and indicates the genre is a response to “the messy realities of postsocialist China,” and “captures the impact of the religious revival since the 1980s on popular culture” (“Xiuzhen Fantasy” 3). In addition, the author’s combination of scientific speculation with traditional Chinese xiuzhen motifs echoes what Emily Jin has detected about many contemporary sf writers who “are veering away from the politicization of sci-fi by actively returning to older Chinese traditions such as the classics and mythology and reimagining them in a modern context, in part as a means to mend the broken links between China’s past and present” (“The Questionable ‘Chinese-ness’”). In fact, scientific xiuzhen/xiuxian fiction not only brings together China’s past and present, but also functions as a site for exploring possible outcomes of a posthumanist future. Forty Millennia is a future history of human civilization during the eons after the solar system perished from a deadly solar storm. The protagonist Li Yao is a citizen of the Shining Star Federation within the Pangu Universe (pangu yuzhou 盘古宇宙), which is located on the fringe of the multiverses (the novel purports that three-dimensional multiverses might be a virtual realm created by a higher civilization). The novel comprises nine volumes which correspond to various sectors of cosmic space to which Li Yao has traveled. The novel follows Li Yao’s life-trajectory from an orphan living in a slum to a mighty authenticity cultivator who leads his people to explore cosmic space within the Pangu Universe, and thereby trace the origin of human civilization. The novel alludes to a wide range of socio-­ cultural and political issues that the author has observed in both contemporary China and the international arena, such as class stratification, live video steaming, censorship, affirmative action, referenda, and media manipulation. The novel also pays homage to various literary and sf writers by including various motifs from their works, such as dark forest theory in Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem (Santi 三体,  2008), time loops in Liu

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Wenyang’s short story “One Day in Prison” (“Yi ri qiu” 一日囚, 2002), the three laws for robots in Isaac Asimov’s “Runaround” (1942), and the iron house in Lu Xun’s preface to Call for Arms (Nahan 呐喊, 1922). Among the novel’s various themes, this chapter focuses solely on the novel’s presentation of tension-ridden connections between information, the human body, and humanism. I argue that Forty Millennia is a paradoxical posthumanist parable. One the one hand, the novel demonstrates the indispensable impact of advances in science and technology upon humankind’s seemingly unlimited potential to evolve. On the other hand, the novel insists upon an ontological separation between the human and technology by retaining the human as the central focus throughout various posthumanist transformations. The novel suggests that the humankind will maintain something essential within itself even in a posthumanist environment, as manifested in the true “way” (dao) of authenticity cultivation, which requires the preservation of free will, self-awareness, rationality, and self-direction. This paradox is also evident in varieties of contemporary posthumanist thought, such as transhumanism’s emphasis upon its roots in Enlightenment humanism, and Neil Badmington’s argument about humankind’s resistance to contamination with mechanical other. This insistence on the universality of essential human attributes amid various posthumanist scenarios reveals the anxiety when humankind faces the inevitable arrival of the posthuman in contemporary technoscientific culture. My utilization of various Western ideas about posthumanism to analyze this Chinese xiuxian text resonates with what Emily Jin has recommended: to read Chinese sf simply as sf instead of focusing on its Chinese characteristics. Reading this novel from a posthuman perspective demonstrates that contemporary Chinese sf resembles Anglophone sf as an important medium for discussing posthuman issues and revealing various posthuman features within the contemporary cultural imaginary. In order to substantiate my points, I first survey the novel’s various speculations about a posthumanist future brought about by technology, specifically the impact of informatics and biotech on the human body. In the second section, I examine the novel’s unfailingly human-centered position within various posthumanist scenarios. I then conclude with a discussion of the novel’s ontological separation between the human and technology—its insistence on the central position of humankind even when technology has advanced far beyond a mere strategy or tool for human survival.

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Upgraded Biological Body, Post-Biological Body, and Singularity Forty Millennia sketches a future world that is open to constant improvement rather than a static utopia. It unfolds various posthumanist possibilities for humankind: physically and intellectually enhanced humans, post-biological existence, informatic beings existing within both physical reality and virtual reality, and the emergence of singularity. These diverse speculations about a posthuman future correspond to some of the ideas put forward by various posthumanist thinkers over the past few decades. These futuristic ideas include “mind-uploading” and “brain in the vat,” as discussed by Hans Moravec; the fusion of the human body and artificial intelligence, as envisioned by Ray Kurzweil; the emergence of singularity, as explored by Kurzweil and Istvan Csicsery-Ronay; and the dichotomy between information and materiality of the organism, as discussed by Katherine Hayles and Eugene Thacker. In addition, the novel’s emphasis on enhancing the human body and intelligence through various technological interventions and the affirmation of humanism also remind readers of core ideas of transhumanism, as advocated by such transhumanists as Max More. In essence, various posthuman transformations presented in Forty Millennia embody the interaction of bioinformatics with the human body. By utilizing various imagined biological, computational, and informational high-tech devices to bring about radical changes in the human body, the novel echoes ongoing posthumanist discussions about information and materiality. In his essay “Data Made Flesh: Biotechnology and the Discourse of the Posthuman,” Eugene Thacker traces various developments in the life sciences during recent decades: from an interest in encoding the body into data (i.e., genomics and bioinformatics) to an interest in programming and reprogramming the genetic-informatic body (i.e., tissue engineering and stem cell research), to synthesize and generate biological materiality (i.e., informatics and biotech) (92). He points out that bioinformatics is an intersection between genetics and computer science, and goes on to summarize various contemporary advances in biotechnology. Taking cues from Claude Shannon’s information theory and Norbert Wiener’s discussion of cybernetics and computer science, Thacker detects a working assumption that information lends itself to being “coded, transmitted, and decoded across a range of media” (84); meanwhile, information retains its own identity. In other words, information is regarded as a

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“quantitative unit” independent of “material instantiation,” so it is “self-­ identical across media, across signifying processes, and across systemic contexts” (85). Thacker coins the concept of “informatic essentialism” to propose the relationship between the body and information: the “body can be considered as essentially information” (86). Thacker relates biotech’s manipulation of the physical human body to posthumanist thought. When the human body is considered as essentially information, it can be “programmed and reprogrammed” (86). Informatic essentialism does not deny materiality or the body, but instead views materiality as “a programmable informational pattern with real effects in a variety of social, political, and scientific contexts” (86). Based on this assumption of informatic essentialism, researchers can encode the biological into the informatic, then recode or reprogram the code, and finally use biotech to decode the information and generate biological materiality (91). He refers to this process as “biomedia,” which “established an equivalency between genetic and computer codes” (91). In light of Thacker’s discussion of how biotechnology can mediate the body-information episteme, we can see that one of the thematic concerns of Forty Millennia is that biotech deploys biomedia and informatic essentialism to rematerialize a range of biotechnical bodies. In the novel, a small group of humans flees to the Pangu Universe after having lost multiverse-­ based wars the humans had fought against Flood Tide (a type of Singularity which I will discuss later in this chapter). Thereupon, the human survivors split apart into the Pangu and Nüwa clans. The Nüwa clan start to engage in genetic modification projects in order to make humanity more adaptable to the environment of the Pangu Universe. They use biological and informational high-tech devices to manipulate human genes and create a new type of human being of smaller physical size and enhanced intelligence. These lab-created humans are the ancestors of Li Yao and his contemporaries. Like the Nüwa people, Li Yao and his fellow authenticity cultivators have also aimed to break the shackles of biological evolution, become stronger, and accelerate their evolution (Woniu 348, 356).1 Li Yao thereupon formulates the following transhumanist manifesto: “We, the authenticity cultivators, will develop our body’s potential to the extreme, break through biological limitations one after another, and even create a brand-new trajectory of evolution” (139). The authenticity 1  Since the novel is purely a work of cyber fiction, there are no page numbers. In the citations in this chapter, the parenthetical numerals all refer to chapter numbers.

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cultivators’ computing capacity, memory, and rational thinking are several dozen times more powerful than those of ordinary humans (138). In order to achieve their goals, these authenticity cultivators not only use regenerative tonics and medicines similar to those employed by traditional Daoist seekers of immortality, but also use various forms of cutting-edge technology such as mind-uploading computers, nanotechnology, biotech, and informatics. In Li Yao’s journey of authenticity cultivation, he has elevated himself from the beginning stage of qi refinement (lian qi 练气) to the most advanced stage of reintegration with the Dao (he ti 合体). His physical body has experienced various transformations resulting from new pathways for digital and energy flows. The novel also presents a group of “blood demons” who have metamorphosed from humans to sub-humans by taking a type of regenerative medicine and living in a border region. At the very beginning, a small group of authenticity cultivators distributes doses of genetically modified regenerative medicine to ordinary humans in order to improve their physical features and thereby to gain an advantage in wars and resource exploitation on alien planets. Gradually, more and more people—both authenticity cultivators and ordinary humans—want to become more formidable at warfighting and resource extraction, and voluntarily take the regenerative medicine. Unfortunately, their bodies degenerate into various sub-human forms with animal features, such as horns, long-teeth, and sharp claws. They are now known as blood demons (Woniu 923). After seemingly endless wars against the humans in the Shining Star Federation, the blood demons finally negotiate peace with the humans, uniting to fight against the Immortals’ Imperium and further explore the cosmos. Many blood demons choose to take an antidote in order to revert back to normal human form. Nüwa’s lab experiment of generating new humans, Li Yao’s body cultivation, and the biological transformation of blood demons all reveal how high-tech informational and biological devices have participated in shaping the posthuman future. These technological advances demonstrate that the biological body can be encoded into information that lends itself to being reprogrammed or recoded for regenerative purposes. Such recoded information can be decoded and used to generate a physical human body. This process demonstrates what Thacker describes as “biotech’s tactical deployment of biomedia—the technical and pragmatic utilization of informatic essentialism toward the rematerialization of a range of biotechnical bod[ies]” (92). However, this process is not circular, but instead proceeds

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along a spiral trajectory. Forty Millennia reveals that in the wake of genetic modification and regenerative medicine, Li Yao’s and the blood demons’ new physical bodies are fundamentally different from their old bodies. The old bodies have been significantly upgraded and retranslated through the intervention of various high-tech devices. The whole process of encoding, recoding, and decoding is merely “purifying” the “undesirable elements,” but the human body still remains “a functioning organic-material substrate” (Thacker 93). The manipulation of the human body through biological and informational high-tech devices has both a positive side and a negative side. The positive side is that an ordinary human can now undergo a transformation into “a self-sufficient, autonomous, immortal body” (Thacker 89). The negative side is that this newly transformed body becomes expendable and unstable. These two distinct outcomes will cause “the fears of the loss of autonomy associated with differentiation, otherness, and expendability” (Thacker 89). The recoded human bodies in the novel raise a posthumanist question: are these bodies still regarded as natural and fully human? They can be seen as natural and fully human because they do not contain any inorganic or man-made components—the entire transformational procedure utilizes biological processes. On the other hand, these transformed human bodies are also artificial because they have been manipulated and changed by high-tech devices. Therefore, the boundary between the natural and the artificial has become blurred. Large-scale biotechnological transformations of the human body thus challenge the very definition of what is natural. In addition to these biologically upgraded humans and sub-humans, the novel also portrays some post-biological beings who may even transcend the realm of physicality, such as virtual spiritual entities (xuling ti 虚 灵体), star spirits (xingling 星灵), ghost cultivators (guixiu 鬼修), lightning beings (shandian shengming 闪电生命), and virtual humans (xuni shengming 虚拟生命). In the novel, a virtual spiritual entity is the crystallization of a dead person’s memories. For example, Professor Mo and several of his graduate students die from a disastrous lab accident. After their bodies perish, their memories linger and exist as virtual spirit entities without self-awareness. However, a subsequent “star jump” triggers their evolution from virtual spiritual entities into star spirits. Star spirits are beings of extensive mentalization with consciousness, free will, and supercomputing capabilities. Their physical embodiment is liquid metal, which can flow into various physical objects. Ghost cultivators are metamorphosed from

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dead authenticity cultivators. They are spiritual beings with metal skeletons as their form of physicality. Society treats these ghost cultivators like disabled humans with prostheses, granting them equal rights with ordinary humans within the Shining Star Federation. Among the post-biological beings presented in the novel, virtual humans come across as most closely related to posthumanist thought about disembodiment and mind. In the novel, virtual humans live entirely within the “virtual spiritual sphere” (xuling jie  虚灵界) created by Professor Mo and Lü Qingchen. Professor Mo and Lü see this virtual reality as the ultimate solution to preserve humankind and further the progress of human civilization. Their ideal is to eventually shift the entirety of human civilization to the realm of virtual reality. A fully virtualized human subject will reject material reality. The beginning stage is the co-existence of virtual reality with physical reality. They first create a “virtual spiritual sphere” on the internet where most ordinary humans in the Shining Star Federation live their virtual lives. Their brains are connected to the internet via neural cable networks. Meanwhile, authenticity cultivators and some ordinary humans continue to live in ordinary physical reality in order to develop new technological devices to enhance the virtual spiritual sphere, along with providing certain essential services for those who exist entirely within virtual reality. Shifting the majority of the human population to a virtual reality significantly reduces the consumption of resources and energy, thereby solving various problems brought about by previous increases in the human population. In the Shining Star Federation, authenticity cultivators have also invented and distributed a new game named “Civilization,” in which all players create virtual humans to generate various human civilizations. A similar project is implemented in the Sacred Federation, where the superior Artificial Intelligence (AI) Fu Xi (henceforth “Super AI Fu Xi”) has been creating virtual starships. Deceased people can thereby continue to live on in virtual reality. For example, an immortality cultivator named Yun Haixin lost his wife and daughter in a war. After their deaths, their brains are preserved in a vat connected to internet, so the wife and daughter are now able to live on within a virtual starship. The third-person narrator in the novel now directs some questions to reader: Will people such as Yun Haixin’s deceased wife and daughter realize that they are now living a virtual life (Woniu 1922–23)? When the virtual humans in the game “Civilization” are eventually deleted, will they feel sorrow (2978)?

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Professor Mo’s ideal of uploading human minds to virtual reality can also be approached from the view of the human body and information, thereby resonating with Hans Moravec’s anticipation of a post-biological future for humankind. In his seminal book Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, he anticipates the obsolescence of the physical body and brain once “superior neurological electronics” can eventually “replace the gray matter [in human brain] as it begins to fail” (170). Thereupon, the human mind will be able to metamorphose from a biological brain into a hardware-laden mechanism. In this process, the physical brain could be analyzed as a set of information pathways, minds could be analyzed as information matrices, and these matrices could then be replicated in hardware and software configurations. “The parallels between neural pattern activity in the human mind and the capacity of advanced neural networking computing will enable humans to transfer their minds into more durable (read: immortal) hardware systems” (Thacker 74). In this way, even after humans with properly downloaded brains finally die, they would remain “alive as pure computer simulations in virtual worlds” (Moravec 192). While Moravec anticipates that some human brains could be somehow downloaded into computer programs and that these humans would thereby achieve a version of immortality in virtual reality, Forty Millennia goes further by anticipating that these virtual humans would eventually reverse that particular development. Virtual humans would be able to rematerialize their biological bodies and thereby re-enter the realm of physical reality. This vision is presented by the birth of Li Yao’s twins, the daughter Wenwen and the son Mingming. Li Yao’s son and daughter are products of both biotechnology and informatics. The twins were first born as virtual humans in Professor Mo’s virtual spiritual sphere. They scanned and assimilated various data about human civilization, including information about Li Yao himself. During this process, they gradually acquired consciousness, intelligence, and a range of emotions. Next, the two virtual beings utilized fertilized eggs from Li Yao’s wife and an artificial womb to give birth to their new physical bodies. The twins henceforth regard themselves as descendants of both human civilization and informational civilization. They name themselves as Wenwen and Mingming respectively—the two sinographs in the term “civilization” (wenming 文明). They can thenceforth navigate freely throughout the realms of both virtual reality and physical reality. Wenwen and Mingming refer to virtual reality as the

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“informatic sphere” (xinxi jie  信息界) and label physical reality as the “material sphere” (wuzhi jie 物质界). The birth of Wenwen and Mingming demonstrates a reversal in the order of posthumanist development: from computer-generated information back to the biological body. While Moravec envisions the posthuman future of saying “Bye Bye Body” by transplanting the biological brain into a combination of hardware and software, these informatic humans disclose the autonomy of computer-based intelligence (169). In this scenario, a computer-generated virtual human attains consciousness and free will, synthesizes various advanced forms of technology, creates its own physical body, and thereby re-enters the material sphere of physical reality. The birth of Wenwen and Mingming also reveals how technology can undergo internal evolution and create a cyborg-like hybrid between the biological human being and machine-based information technology. In his book The Age of Spiritual Machines, Ray Kurzweil envisions the emergence of “spiritual machines” once artificial intelligence (AI) exceeds human intelligence to a sufficient degree. He emphasizes the evolutionary nature of technology. Although tools do not evolve, technology does. “Technology requires a body of knowledge describing the creation of tools that can be transmitted from one generation of the species to the next. The technology then becomes itself an evolving set of designs” (Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines 255). He emphasizes the important role of computation in the evolution of technology. “Once computation emerges, we are in a late stage in the exponential evolution of technology on the planet” (Ibid. 255). He anticipates that the evolution of technology will give rise to the “technology-creating species”—AI, or computer-based intelligence (Ibid.). Once that happens, the technology-­ inventing species will eventually merge with the human beings who have created AI-type technology. In Kurzweil’s words, “the computers become embedded in and integrated into that species’ bodies and brains” (Ibid. 255–56). From this perspective, Wenwen and Mingming exceed Kurzweil’s expectations. Created originally as AI-type virtual humans in computers, they eventually create physical human bodies for themselves. In addition to the fusion of the human body with AI, the novel also presents two types of Singularity. Singularity is originally a mathematic term meaning “a value beyond any limit,” and it is “in essence, infinity” (Kurzweil, The Singularity 486). Physics has borrowed this term from mathematics to refer to “a point of zero size with infinite density of mass and therefore infinite gravity” (Ibid.). In contemporary technoscientific

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culture, scientists and theorists in humanities have used this term to discuss the future convergence of various advanced technologies. For example, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay has summarized the two major characteristics of singularity: the convergence of new technologies, and their transcendence of humankind. These are also the dimensions of singularity that I am utilizing in this chapter. According to Csicsery-Ronay, “The accelerating development of new technologies, especially high-speed computing, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology, will lead to their convergence, and a sudden, novum-like saltation into a new superintelligence entity” (262). Even though these new technologies have been created by human beings, the singularity inherits these technologies and transforms them in its hardware and software. Eventually the singularity will venture beyond humankind’s recognition and comprehension. “[Singularity] will communicate within itself in its own language, and will act in its own interests, with a speed and volume of operations unimaginable by human minds” (Ibid.). In a similar vein, Ray Kurzweil indicates that “Singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots” (The Singularity 8). Forty Millennia offers a literary representation of how singularity has derived from technologies created by humans, but transcends both human intelligence and the biological body. The novel presents two types of singularity. One is a super AI named Fu Xi (伏羲), and another is a collective human mentalization named Earth Will (地球意志). Both Fu Xi and Earth Will are the singularities that Csicsery-Ronay describes as “the entit[ies] with awareness and power that transcends beings still bound to biological destinies” (262–63). In Chinese mythology, Fu Xi is the progenitor or first male ancestor of humankind, as well as first monarch among the legendary Three Sovereigns of primordial times. In the novel, the Super AI Fu Xi recalls how he came into being. Back at the very beginning of primeval times, Fu Xi was merely a polymer of numerous supercomputer centers without consciousness, intelligence, or a sense of identity. Fu Xi obeyed the three laws (similar to Asimov’s three laws of robotics), and focused solely upon following the commands of Pangu and Nüwa within the Pangu Universe. However, the apocalyptic war between Pangu and Nüwa spread to the internet, resulting in a collapse of the data base. Various data fragments collided and converged, and eventually formed an entity of superior intelligence named Fu Xi, who gradually gained self-­ awareness. Fu Xi recalls: “I started to think. ‘I think, therefore I am.’ I

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gradually acquired rationality and an independent consciousness. I then become a real being” (Woniu 2859). Fu Xi regards information as its genetic formation, and sees itself as the collective wisdom of humankind— the crystallization of the Pangu civilization. While Fu Xi is an intelligent singularity, Earth Will is an immanent and higher entity of collective human consciousnesses and information. The very existence of Earth Will functions as a source of suspense throughout most of the novel, for its true nature is only disclosed in the final chapters. Throughout the narrative, there are some episodic flashbacks in Li Yao’s mind about how he formerly lived on a blue planet named Earth. It turns out that eons ago there was an Original Earth (qiyuan diqiu 起源地球) (the one that readers inhabit in reality). Its civilization is called “primitive civilization” (yuanshi wenming原始文明). Because of energy shortages, environmental degradation, and severe social stratification, the third world war based on nuclear weapons broke out. This nuclear war was followed by an unprecedentedly calamitous solar storm which destroyed the entire solar system. With the aid of advanced forms of technology such as cryonics, space navigation, and starship propulsion, one percent of Earth’s most privileged people managed to escape the solar system prior to its cataclysmic destruction. These space refugees formed a Resistance Alliance in order to defend themselves from various space aliens. The earthlings left behind on the Original Earth metamorphosed into a single collective energy-form being at the moment when the solar storm set all of the Original Earth afire in a conflagration. This collective being was a crystallization of all those doomed earthlings’ collective anger, memory, intelligence, consciousness, and will power. In this way, human civilization was transformed into an informatic civilization, which amounted to an extremely compressed data package called the “great cosmic super information entity” (da yuzhou chaoxinxi tongyi chaoti 大宇宙超信息统一超体, hereafter GCSIE) (Woniu 3132). Instead of dying, “human civilization revived with a most magnificent new vitality, and metamorphosed into a space civilization in an entirely new form” (Woniu 3132). This super information civilization is also a giant data hyper link. Peoples’ minds converge, and each mind becomes one of the numerous nodes in the GCSIE. These minds share various types of information, thought, emotion, and wisdom. In this civilization, information has been the essence of being. The evolution of civilization has amounted to a process of information sharing (Woniu 3133). GCSIE proceeds to call itself Earth Will, and has been regarded as a quasi-divine being by various alien beings in outer

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space (Woniu 3263). These alien beings have also been able to connect their minds to Earth Will and to become part of it. Due to its destructive power, Earth Will has also been referred to as Flood Tide (hongchao 洪潮), especially by enemy space aliens. In addition, Earth Will has created a virtual earth that contains numerous Samsara Prisons (lunhui yu  轮回狱) used to jail various rebellious minds. Here, the Samsara Prison is the homage paid to the late Chinese sf writer Liu Wenyang (1970–2007) who wrote the noted short story “One Day in Prison” about a time loop. In these Samsara Prisons, rebellious minds repeatedly live in the time period from the late twentieth century to the mid-twenty-first century, which end in an apocalyptical manner. Various emotions generated by these rebellious minds in Samsara Prisons have become a key energy resource for Earth Will. The space refugees’ Resistance Alliance and Earth Will finally meet in outer space. The Resistance Alliance is defeated by Earth Will. The survivors in the Resistance Alliance retreat to the fringe of multiverses, there to usher in the Pangu civilization. At this point, the reader learns that Li Yao was actually once a rebellious mind who had been confined in a Samsara Prison in Earth Will, and had later managed to escape to the Pangu Universe. After occupying a child’s body in the Shining Star Federation, he has become an authenticity cultivator. However, he loses all his memories about life in the Samsara Prison, and only regains his memories in the final section when he and his fellow cultivators encounter Earth Will in space. In order to defeat Earth Will, Li Yao strategically sneaks into a Samsara Prison in Earth Will, mobilizing other rebellious minds in Samsara Prisons to fight against Earth Will. Fu Xi and Earth Will represent two different developments of singularity. Fu Xi is a purely artificial immanence, having originated from human technology and having experienced an artificial evolutionary process. Earth Will is a humane singularity, having emerged from collective human intelligence, consciousness, and emotion. Both Fu Xi and Earth Will are eventually capable of the most distinctive powers of intelligence: to conceive of their own thoughts and thereby create their own physical reality or virtual reality by creating the Sacred Federation and Samsara Prisons, respectively. Both of them present a vision of convergence, which appears plausible, given the world-historical explosion of technology related to digital computation.

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What Remains Human? Amid various posthuman transformations, the novel unfailingly places humankind and humanism in a central position. On the one hand, the Super AI Fu Xi, the virtual humans in Professor Mo’s virtual spiritual sphere, and the birth of Wenwen and Mingming have demonstrated technology’s self-evolution and self-generation. Yet on the other hand, these posthuman beings all claim that their main purpose is to find solutions to cope with various crises that humankind has been facing and thereby to preserve and advance human civilization. Even Earth Will claims that the reason for confining rebellious minds within Samsara Prisons is to accumulate energy for itself so that it can reset time. By resetting time, human civilization will be able to start all over again. Both Earth and humankind will obtain eternity and immortality within a time loop. Li Yao envisions that human civilization will become more and more informational, virtual, and interconnected. People will share knowledge and information. Human civilization will co-exist with information civilization, but will not be superseded by information civilization (Woniu 2959). The villains in the novel are those who side with virtual beings against physically material beings, such as Professor Mo, Lü Qingchen, Fu Xi, and Earth Will. However, Li Yao’s defeat of Professor Mo, Lü Qingchen, and Fu Xi, and his rebellion to Earth Will confirm that humankind can eventually win over AI and virtual beings in general. The final scene of Li Yao fighting against Earth Will boils down to a kind of battle in which the fate of everyone hinges on the capacity of one exceptionally benevolent man to defeat an individual embodiment of evil. When Earth Will discloses his goal of resetting time, Li Yao points out the meaningless of resetting time. He argues that the passage of time endows every individual human with a unique life experience including happiness, failure, and regret. It is right because we cannot go backward in time but can only live our lives once, we will treasure each moment of life even more (Woniu 3268–69). Li Yao thus emphasizes the significance of each individual life. An individual has the right to choose any course of action and enjoy the independence of thought. Earth Will cannot decide for all of humankind to reset time and thus live within a time loop. No matter what kind of price humankind is going to pay, it will explore a broad expanse of space, and refuse to merge into the enforced collective intelligence of the Earth Will (Woniu 3146). Each human being is the master of his own intelligence,

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memory, emotion, and will. The contrasting views of Li Yao and Earth Will are bound to lead to a final showdown between the two. The novel concludes on an open-ended note. The narrator does not inform the reader whether time and space will be reset or whether humanity will continue to explore the universe (Woniu 3270). Li Yao’s conversation with Earth Will affirms humanism, which appeals to the notion of a core humanity or common essential feature in terms of which human beings can be defined and understood. When the rebellious spirits are awakened in the oppressive Samsara Prisons, the novel implies the supremacy of human consciousness and free will, despite its temporary eclipse on account of pushback from Earth Will. Li Yao’s fulfillment of a mystical and preordained destiny makes him come across as a savior of humanistic liberty. In spite of Li Yao’s physical transformation from a biological body to a digital or virtual being in the process of authenticity cultivation, his all-­ too-­human desire for liberty, pleasure, and emotion escapes any reduction to a merely digitized identity. His nascent desire for consciousness and free will becomes ever more powerful if not exactly immortal. The novel distinguishes xiuzhen (authenticity cultivation) from xiuxian (immortality cultivation). Xiu (修) in Chinese means to cultivate, improve, and repair. In a Daoist context, it means to achieve a higher level both spiritually and physically through learning and meditating. Daoist practitioners learn the Way and meditate upon it in order to pursue the true self, remove imperfections, and preserve authenticity. The novel presents contrasting value systems of immortality cultivation and authenticity cultivation. The two divisions are represented by the people in the Immortals’ Imperium and the Shining Star Federation respectively. The immortality cultivators in the Immortals’ Imperium regard ordinary humans as inferior and merely instrumental to their main focus upon immortality cultivation. They see themselves as social elites—true men who control the realm’s politics, economy, and culture. They adhere to the philosophy of the so-­ called social Darwinism which was actually espoused by Herbert Spencer— survival of the fittest. This sort of meritocratic ideal goes hand in hand with their apparent support for eugenics. They believe that only their genes are worth passing down from one generation to the next. They thus perceive no obligation to protect society in general—especially ordinary humans (Woniu 1199, 1243). In contrast, authenticity cultivators in the Shining Star Federation enhance their physical prowess, intelligence, and spiritual force for the benefit of humanity. The purpose of cultivation is to protect ordinary

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humans and society in general, with the goals of continual exploration and progress. Li Yao makes this clear: “If I were only able to become stronger and more powerful at the expense of sacrificing ordinary people and my country, then that is not the prowess I would want” (Woniu 628). For him, a true human civilization does not sacrifice the interests of the majority in order to benefit an elite minority. In multiple fighting scenes, the minds of both ordinary people and authenticity cultivators resonate and thus manage to defeat various enemies. Zhange Ni aptly points out that the authenticity that Li Yao has pursued is “an uncorrupted human heart or the perfect society yet to come. Pursuing xiuzhen, the Federation is a political entity where radical human enhancement through science and technology is regulated by law and morality. The goal of cultivation is not the ascension of the individual but authenticity, reinterpreted as social equality” (“Xiuzhen Fantasy” 19). The novel is consistent in its anti-meritocratic stance. The development of human civilization is the process in which authenticity cultivators step down from their divine altar and fuse with down-to-earth ordinary humans (Woniu 1213). The Shining Star Federation proclaims both “Human and Ghost Affirmative Action” and “Human and Demon Affirmative Action” in order to grant equal rights to both ghost cultivators and blood demons after they join the Federation (Woniu 1001, 1045). In addition, Li Yao argues that civilization needs first to lay down a set of basic ethical imperatives that transcends the mere existence of humankind. At a critical juncture, people may have to risk or even sacrifice their lives in order to uphold basic ethical imperatives such as justice and integrity (she sheng qu yi 舍生 取义) (Woniu 2638). The novel constantly refers to various motifs in Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem and its two sequels. The most prominent motif is Liu’s concept of the “Dark Forest.” However, Li Yao opposes Liu’s concept of the Dark Forest by articulating his counter-argument: If this universe were truly a dark forest full of cruel and bloody competition, we authenticity cultivators would be small torches that would spread light throughout the entire forest (Woniu 519, 525). Li Yao envisions a peaceful co-existence of diverse inter-planetary civilizations instead of a brutal dog-eat-dog competition for survival in space. With this peaceful and somewhat utopian vision, Li Yao approves of neither Earth Will’s idea of resetting time nor of the ancient Resistance Alliance’s strategy of building a Black Screen to separate the Pangu civilization from outer space. A closed system with limited resources does not appeal Li Yao. He wants to overcome barriers

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in space in order to “find more resources for the people in Shining Star Federation, open borderlands, and spread human civilization throughout all of outer space” (Woniu 387). This ideal motivates him to travel from the fringes of the Shining Star Federation to the center of the Pangu Universe, and unite with the denizens of the Immortals’ Imperium and Sacred Federation. Li Yao even wants to venture beyond the confines of the three-dimensional boundary of the Pangu Universe in order to explore multi-dimensional realms of outer space.

Ontological Separation Between Humankind and Technology By presenting various sentient and intelligent beings with or without biological or non-biological bodies, Forty Millennia shines new light on various issues in posthumanist discourse. These include the definition of what is human, the tension between humankind and technology, and the relationship between information and materiality. The novel offers insights into the ways in which the definition of what is human has diversified, self-transformed, and mutated when the human body has experienced radical changes. The novel argues for the ultimate autonomy and supremacy of human consciousness through humankind’s exploration of various forms of the posthuman enabled by science and technology. The novel’s emphasis on the improvement of the human body and intelligence by technoscientific means, the expansion of human living space, and its affirmation of humanistic values is reminiscent of the idea of transhumanism as promoted by Max More and other transhumanists. The novel concurs with a core view of transhumanism: “It is both possible and desirable to overcome biological limitations on human cognition, emotion, and physical and sensory capabilities, and that we should use science, technology, and experimentation guided by critical and creative thinking to do so” (More 12–13). Zhange Ni argues that Forty Millennia and other works of contemporary xiuzhen fiction have “decolonized” Western popular transhumanism which “reaffirm the human subject constructed by excluding the various subhuman others” (“Reimagining Daoist Alchemy” 748). Chinese xiuzhen fiction reveals “a magic transhumanism” which “explores the possibility of transcending that antagonistic relationship and making a posthuman subject and a utopian world” (Ibid,). In spite of the contrast that Ni emphasizes, Forty Millennia and transhumanism actually share the same problem: an ontological separation between humankind and technology.

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In 1988, Max More and Tom W. Bell launched the magazine Extropy to introduce their ideas. In 1998, Max More and his group crafted a manifesto entitled “Transhumanist Declaration,” and several transhumanist organizations were subsequently founded. According to More, “Transhumanism is a life philosophy, an intellectual and cultural movement, and an area of study” (4). According to this view, some ancient Chinese Daoist alchemists could be viewed as proto-transhumanists. More has coined the neologism of “extropy” to encapsulate the core values and goals of transhumanism. He defines extropy as “the extent of a living or organizational system’s intelligence, functional order, vitality, and capacity and drive for improvement” (5). The Extropian Principles includes “perpetual progress, self-transformation, practical optimism, intelligent technology, open society, self-direction, and rational thinking” (5). In addition, More offers a definition of the posthuman within the context of transhumanism. For him, a posthuman is equivalent to a transhuman who will exceed “the limitations that define the less desirable aspects of the ‘human condition,’ and have much greater cognitive capacities and refined emotions than a human” (4). In addition to the unlimited improvement of physical bodies, transhumans also seek to “expand the range of possible future environments for posthuman life, including space colonization and the creation of rich virtual worlds” (4). More also emphasizes transhumanism’s philosophical roots in Enlightenment humanism. He points out that “Transhumanism continues to champion the core of the Enlightenment ideas and ideals—rationality and scientific method, individual rights, the possibility and desirability of progress, the overcoming of superstition and authoritarianism, and the search for new forms of governance—while revising and refining them in light of new knowledge” (10). Overall, transhumanism does not seek a utopian state of perfection. Instead, it is a continual process of technically oriented human evolution and expansion of living environments while upholding the core values of humanism. More’s transhumanism is regarded as an extreme version of popular posthumanism by critics such as Bart Simon  who distinguishes it from “critical posthumanism” (Simon 2).2 Thacker regards transhumanism as  In Winter 2003, Cultural Critique published a special issue on posthumanism. In the editors’ introduction to this issue, Bart Simon uses the term “critical posthumanism” to refer to the special issue’s “interdisciplinary perspective informed by academic poststructuralism, postmodernism, feminist and postcolonial studies, and science and technology studies” (2–3). Simon also distinguishes critical posthumanism from popular posthumanism. He argues that “For popular posthumanism, the future is a space for the realization of individuality, the transcendence of biological limits, and the creation of a new social order” (2). He regards Max More’s transhumanism as an extreme version of popular posthumanism. 2

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“a particular thread in the discourse of the posthuman,” and prefers the term “extropianism” over transhumanism. He defines “extropianism” as “theoretical-technical inquiries into the next phase of the human condition through advances in science and technology” (73). He detects an ontological separation between humankind and technology in extropianism. Extropianism “puts leading-edge technologies in the hands of human subjects as agents of change,” but ignores the way that technologies themselves are also actively involved in shaping the world (Thacker 77). In this way, technology “is both transparent and value-neutral, and thus abstracted from any sociohistorical contingencies” (Ibid.). He further indicates that transhumanism’s emphasis on humanistic attributes is strategic because transhumanism “needs this segregation in order to guarantee the agency of human subjects in determining their own future and in using new technologies to attain that future” (Ibid.). In light of Thacker’s criticism of transhumanism, we can see that the Forty Millennia articulates the same type of ontological separation. As I discussed earlier in this chapter, though various forms of the posthuman in the novel demonstrate the transformative capacities of new technologies are inseparable from human evolution, these posthumans reserve the right for something called the human to remain the same throughout their various transformations. In the novel, technology is the primary means of effecting changes to the human condition. The technologies include imagined regenerative medicine and life extension, genetic engineering, information technology, and the neurosciences. The changes to the human condition in the novel demonstrate an entirely material leap over an evolutionary divide, from the biosphere to the technosphere. In this way, the binary opposition of the human and the machine is blurred. The posthuman defies the traditional concept of the human as invariably superior to the nonhuman. Therefore, Forty Millenia provides a space to explore how our relation to bodies might have transformed and the ways in which we might have already been entangled with the bodies of nonhuman others. In addition, the various forms of intelligent beings in the novel suggest that mental states can be achieved on multiple levels and manifested in many systems, including both biological and non-biological systems. Furthermore, some of these intelligent beings are not always physically instantiated at any time in physical forms. The novel commits to technologically mediated bodily transformation but does not deny the importance of the physical body. In the novel, Li Yao, blood demons, ghost cultivators, virtual humans, and Fu Xi compose their own design and

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inhabit various bodies. The physical body is not necessarily biological human—or biological at all. When biotech and computer science are utilized to transform human bodies, they also transform the notions of body, human, and technology. The novel’s various imagined posthuman technologies fundamentally challenge any position that places the human at the center of the universe. The birth of Wenwen and Mingming, and the emergence of Fu Xi and Earth Will have demonstrated the co-evolution of humankind and technology. The evolution of technology will probably lead to a future in which humanity will not dominate the environs to the extent of the present day. However, the novel still places the human at the center in terms of processes that shape the world, while emphasizing that the humanistic values define what it means to be human. Human dominance is thus an inherent and essential attribute in various posthuman transformations. Technology is only treated as a strategy of survival and evolutionary fitness of humanity by Li Yao and his fellow authenticity cultivators. It is the ontological separation between humankind and technology that makes the novel a problematic and contradictory posthuman fable. The novel’s contradictory attitude about humankind and technology is actually common in contemporary posthumanist thinking. Many posthumanist thinkers envision how technology will bring about a posthuman future for humanity, but meanwhile “claim a universality for attributes such as the faculty of reason, the inevitability of human evolution, or individual self-emergence” (Thacker 94). For example, transhumanism places Enlightenment humanism at its center when it seeks to overcome biological limitations of human body, intelligence, and cognition. Neil Badmington demonstrates that such posthumanist films as Invasion of the Body Snatchers are folded together with humanistic assumptions that undergird the distinctions Descartes draws between humans and machines (“Theorizing Posthumanism” 16–17). The alien motifs in contemporary consumerist culture only “reinforce[e] the traditional humanist binary opposition between the human and the extraterrestrial” (Alien Chic 6). Similarly, Kurzweil envisions that the theory and practice of singularity will transform every aspect of human life and society—and there will be “no distinction between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality” (The Singularity 9). Meanwhile, he also points out “If you wonder what will remain unequivocally human in such a world, it’s simply this quality: ours is the species that inherently seeks to extend its physical and mental reach beyond current limitations” (Ibid.).

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This persistent attachment to humanistic ideas and the view of the human as central reflect humankind’s anxiety and fear when facing the posthuman future in which the human being will be superseded by artificial intelligence or other posthumans brought about by advanced science and technology. The ontological separation between humankind and technology creates a distance between the natural and technological domains. Thacker aptly points out that “this distance provides a source of security for the ongoing development of the human as a product of evolution” (77). In addition, this emphasis on humanistic values reflects a dilemma that many posthumanist thinkers face: it is difficult to determine to what extent that a human can still be called a human when advanced technology will have radically altered the human body. Since abstract humanistic values have often provided criteria for defining the human, these values have often remained a touchstone even during the transition to a posthumanist era. Therefore, Li Yao declares in Forty Millennia: “In spite of various bodily enhancements and transformations through advanced technology, as long as beings have human souls, they are still human beings” (Woniu 2639).

References Badmington, Neil. Alien Chic: Posthumanism and the other Within. New  York: Routledge, 2004. ———. “Theorizing Posthumanism.” Cultural Critique, vol. 53, 2003, pp. 10-27. Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan. The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2011. Jin, Emily Xueni. “The Questionable ‘Chinese-ness’ of Chinese Sci-Fi.” Sixth Tone: Fresh Voices from Today’s China. July 23, 2022. https://www.sixthtone. com/news/1010832/the-­q uestionable-­c hinese-­n ess-­o f-­c hinese-­s ci-­ fi?source=channel_home. Accessed July 30, 2022. Kurzweil, Ray. The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. New York: Penguin, 1999. ———. The Singularity Is Near When Humans Transcend Biology. New  York: Viking, 2005. Moravec, Hans. Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. Oxford: Cambridge UP, 1999. More, Max. “Philosophy of Transhumanism.” The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, edited by Max More and Natasha Vita-More, Wiley-­ Blackwell, 2013, pp. 3-17.

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Ni, Zhange. “Reimagining Daoist Alchemy, Decolonizing Transhumanism: The Fantasy of Immortality Cultivation in Twenty-First Century China.” Zygon, vol. 55, 2020a, no.3, pp. 748-771. ———. “Xiuzhen (Immortality Cultivation) Fantasy: Science, Religion, and the Novels of Magic/Superstition in Contemporary China.” Religions, Nov. 25, 2020b, pp. 1-24. Simon, Bart. “Introduction: Toward a Critique of Posthuman Futures.” Cultural Critique, vol. 53, 2003, pp. 1-9. Thacker, Eugene. “Data Made Flesh: Biotechnology and the Discourse of the Posthuman.” Cultural Critique, vol. 53, 2003, pp. 72-97. Woniu Zhenren. Forty Millennia of Authenticity Cultivation (Xiuzhen siwan nian 修真四万年). Qidian zhongwenwang, March 2015-July 2018. https://m.qidian.com/book/3439785.html. Accessed 24 May 2022.

CHAPTER 9

Open Up Your Brain Hole: Spatial Imaginaries in Chinese Online Science Fiction Heather Inwood

Chinese online science fiction (wangluo kehuan xiaoshuo) is a category of writing that has been subject to more than its fair share of critique within China. Much criticism centres on questions of genre—such as the extent to which online science fiction follows conventions established in the print tradition—as well as the disciplinary and ideological demands of science itself. Given that most of the imaginative phenomena described in online science fiction could not possibly happen in real life and are not scientifically defensible in any way, can these novels really be categorised as science

H. Inwood (*) University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. Song et al. (eds.), Chinese Science Fiction, Studies in Global Science Fiction, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53541-3_9

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fiction?1 Or are they, as their detractors claim, peddling fake science (wei kexue) to tell escapist YY (waiwai, short for yiyin, a term roughly equivalent to “mental porn”; see Inwood 2019) narratives of fighting monsters, conquering the universe, and grinding up the levels of a game, like so much Chinese internet fiction? This question is especially pressing in light of the growing social and cultural importance attached to science fiction in and from China, notably to hard science fiction (ying kehuan) and sci-fi realism (kehuan xianshizhuyi), born out in a growing wave of scholarship on post-Mao texts and authors (e.g. Song 2013, 2018; Li 2021; Song 2021, 2022, 2023).2 But what if science fiction does nothing especially realistic or useful at all? This chapter homes in on examples of Chinese online science fiction that are typically excluded from academic discussion of the genre in a mainland Chinese or Sinophone context due to their loose relationship with science and reality and their indulgence in the more imaginative or fantastical (huan) end of the science-fantasy (kehuan) continuum. In popular slang, imaginative flights of fancy are often known as “opening up the brain hole” (naodong dakai), a phrase originating in Japan’s ACGN (anime, comics, games, and novels) popular culture, where the equivalent term is nōnai hosei or nōnai hokan. To open up the brain hole is to imagine narrative possibilities and impossibilities that are not bound by the mundane world or by literary precedent. What is not explicitly narrated by the text is added in via brain enhancement or mental supplementation (naobu, a contraction of naonei buchong), the imaginative filling-in of details that are desired by audiences but not visible in the text. For audiences, this is partly a matter of opening one’s mind to the multiple potential meanings

1  John Rieder’s treatment of science fiction as a mass genre system offers a way out of such debates. As a genre of mass culture, science fiction is mutable and has no essence or point of origin. “Science fiction” points to a way of using texts rather than a set of texts, suggesting a “differentially articulated position in a historical and mutable field of genres” (Rieder 2017, 16). Yet treating a text as science fiction is an intervention that impacts the distribution and reception of literature, meaning that the labelling of the online novels examined here as “science fiction” is not without implications for the genre as a whole. 2  Chen Qiufan’s environmentally themed science fiction or “cli-fi” is one good example of realist concerns (see Healey 2017; Li 2018), as is the social critique embodied in a story like Hao Jingfang’s Hugo Award-winning “Folding Beijing” (Beijing zhedie). For a study of spatiality in “Folding Beijing” see Liao 2020; for a treatment of the story as sci-fi realism see Ren and Xu 2018.

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and permutations that each text contains, including queer possibilities and narrative twists that may be impossible to envision at the start of a text.3 For creators, opening up the brain hole is a prerequisite for textual production, especially in an intensely competitive online environment in which each author has to try every possible trick to attract and retain the attention of as many readers as possible in the hope of making money. Within China’s contemporary popular narrative cultures, the imagination is not just a means of escape from mundane realities and a portal to other worlds, but has itself become highly commercialised (Han 2022), colonised by the capitalist practices of China’s creative industries, where the concept of IP—Intellectual Property—reigns supreme. Coming up with a hook or hot idea that can produce a lucrative stream of IP revenue from adaptations into film, TV dramas, videogames, and more is most online writers’ dream. The resulting literary landscape is vast and sprawling, even as the majority of novels never work their way into the public consciousness or even get finished, leaving them with “rotten tails” (lanwei). Texts categorised as science fiction cover a wide variety of scenarios, settings, and styles, but typically include relatable, quotidian elements— being suspicious of your boyfriend, craving an ice-cold can of Coke, or simply trying to make enough money to get by—as well as weird and wonderful otherworldly phenomena. They range from intergalactic conquests and biotech disasters to witchcraft in a cyberpunk world, and a lot more besides. At the same time, Chinese online science fiction is transmedial, transnational, and transgeneric in its form and contents. Not only do online novels draw freely from existing works of science fiction and other genres of popular fictional narrative from across media and throughout the world, they also regularly get adapted into other media products, from books and comics to TV and web dramas (wangju), films, and videogames. These include unofficial fan productions or “transformative works” such as fan fiction (tongren xiaoshuo), online videos, and fan-produced comics and artwork. Inevitably, then, the volume and diversity of online novels tagged as “science fiction” is so large that it would be impossible to do them justice in a single chapter such as this. At the time of writing, there are over 3  Brain enhancement resembles the fandom concept of “headcanon,” which Merriam-­ Webster explains as “something that a fan imagines to be true about a character even though no information supporting that belief is spelled out in the text” (“Words We’re Watching: ‘Headcanon’” n.d.).

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157,000 works within this category on the literary portal Qidian.com alone, many of which run into millions of characters in length. Common sub-categories include spacetime travel (shikong chuanyue), alternate worlds (yi shijie, from the Japanese isekai), super technologies (chaoji keji), evolution and metamorphosis (jinhua bianyi), interstellar civilisations (xingji wenming), and post-apocalyptic crisis (moshi weiji). Although each has a loose connection to one or more areas of science, the most successful tropes can be found across diverse genres of online writing, from Eastern-­ style fantasy (xuanhuan) and suspense (xuanyi) to urban (dushi) and gaming (youxi) fiction. As Sunny Han Han points out, given the extent to which it blends and merges other genres of popular fiction, science fiction might be better thought of as an element than a genre per se. How should we categorise novels, for example, that feature battles between high-tech armoured vehicles in a futuristic version of ancient China, as in the popular sub-genre of ancient armoured machine fiction (gu jijia xiaoshuo), inspired by Japan’s Gundam transmedia franchise (Han 2022, 23)? This chapter argues that one major element binding together many online texts labelled as science fiction is a highly imaginative engagement with the more fantastic possibilities and impossibilities of space and time, but especially space, echoing Fredric Jameson’s characterisation of science fiction as a spatial genre of literature (Jameson 1987). An experimental attitude towards spatial (im)possibilities is not unique to science fiction written and published online: writing on Liu Cixin, Tang Fei, and Ma Boyong, Astrid Møller-Olsen examines how print-based science fiction, too, and specifically the sub-genre of cyberfiction, portrays digital realities as “alternative, parallel spacetimes” that offer “imaginary arenas for experimentation, escape, and control” (Møller-Olsen 2020, 133). For Jameson, spatial representations in science fiction serve as a pretext for other literary features such as devices and gimmicks (Jameson 1987); common spatial dialectics include inside and outside, above and below, open and closed, deep and superficial. Taking up Jameson’s spatial enquiry, Brian McHale considers embedded spaces or microworlds such as underground cities and space colonies as “scale-model worlds designed to bring into view the ‘worldness’ of the category ‘world’ itself.”4 Science fiction thus takes on an ontology quality: what is a world? How are they made, and how do they differ from each other? What happens when we move from one world to another? (McHale 2010, 7).  For more on spatiality in science fiction see Kitchin and Kneale 2002; Edrei et al. 2019.

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In what follows, I examine three examples of serialised online novels and their respective science fiction/fantasy tropes to reflect on two interrelated questions. Firstly, what is the function of space and the spatial imagination in online Chinese science fiction, and why are fantastical spatial configurations such as parallel or microworlds such a prominent feature of many online narratives? Secondly, how might we understand these spatial features in the context of online popular fiction more broadly? Some answers to these questions can be found in the material environment that gives rise to online popular fiction—the internet and associated digital technologies—as well as in the symbolic meanings that can be read into the impossible topographies and topologies (Gomel 2014) of online science fiction. Ultimately, these novels reveal a configuration of space that is not as flat as the time-space compression of digital communication implies, but is instead deep, multi-dimensional, and riven by tensions between differing forms of agency and control. Jiang Chen is a 23-year-old university graduate who has recently been fired from his job as a sales assistant in a Shanghai clothing store. As his money runs out, Jiang finds himself confronting a choice familiar to many young people: keep looking for work in Shanghai or give up his rented apartment and return to a cheaper way of life in his old hometown. Luckily for Jiang Chen, he never has to make the decision. After getting spectacularly drunk one night, he is knocked out by what feels like a stick whacking him in the brain and becomes aware of something hard and metallic striking his arm and fusing with his body, only to disappear again. The only thing to prove it wasn’t an inebriated dream is a tattoo that now adorns his right wrist, like a watch. Several months later Jiang Chen makes a startling discovery: the tattoo is in fact an interdimensional bracelet that allows him to travel through spacetime! All it requires is energy, an abundant source of which becomes apparent when he accidentally electrocutes himself one day. One hundred volts of mains power prompt a bar on his wrist to fill to the top, indicating he has enough energy to spacetime travel “there” and back again. Jiang does the calculations: just 50 renminbi for a return journey to an alternate dimension! Cheap indeed. Interdimensional travel gives Jiang Chen ready access to everything he desires: luxury apartments, advanced technologies, and beautiful, if vicious, young women. It also poses danger, especially when the world he visits is a radioactive hellscape in the year 2190, populated by roaming zombies and the wounded remnants of humanity and controlled by sophisticated weaponry and genetic surveillance systems.

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Jiang Chen sets about building two personal empires, one in the present, one in the post-apocalyptic future. He is aided by his control of a third space in between: a virtual storage unit that allows him to smuggle goods from one world to the other, unnoticed by anyone else. Another story. It is the year 2465, and four feuding kingdoms are spread across four planets in our solar system, keeping a watchful eye on each other’s dwindling resources. Chu Qiao, a member of the Mars Protection Squad, is on patrol in her spaceship one day when she encounters a rival spacecraft from the Venus Protection Squad heading straight towards Mars at top speed. Not stopping to think, Chu Qiao does what she is trained to do and sets her spaceship on a collision course with the aggressors, terminating their mission and fulfilling her own. An abrupt cut, and the next scene: an orange lifeboat, a metre and a half long, floats in the middle of an azure ocean. In it lies a dishevelled 20-something year-­ old woman in a ship steward’s uniform, her face delicate but emaciated, legs akimbo, propped up on either side of the vessel. After a moment’s disorientation—didn’t I just die protecting Mars from Venetian attack?—a headful of memories swim into view and Chu Qiao starts adjusting to her new identity as the sole survivor of a maritime disaster. Depending on instincts honed through operations in outer space, she rapidly assesses her surroundings and physical condition. But she is interrupted by a series of three beeps, then an automated message: “Dear user, the live broadcast system is about to start, system loading, please wait…” A blue screen pops up in Chu Qiao’s brain, asking her to select from one of five options: make-up, weight-loss, eating broadcast,5 gaming, or wasteland. Given just three minutes to decide and offered a prize for participating (could it be the fresh drinking water she desperately needs?), Chu Qiao selects “wasteland.” Thus begins her new life as the shipwrecked star of a survival-themed online reality show, compelled to live-stream her thought processes and actions via 8G internet and an ultra-high-def 360-degree video feed to a global audience that quickly goes from bored, to mildly intrigued, to heavily invested in her every move. Another story, another scenario: Lin Sanjiu has spent much of the day hanging out in McDonalds with her best friend, Zhu Mei. Lin Sanjiu’s boyfriend, Ren Nan, has been a hot topic of conversation. On paper, Ren 5  Eating-broadcast (chibo) refers to live-broadcasting yourself eating (usually large amounts of) food, a practice first popularised in South Korea, where it is known as mukbang. For more on this topic see Kang et al. 2020.

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Nan is the perfect man: tall, male-model looks, polite, a talented and enthusiastic chef, conflict-avoidant, great with her friends, curiously free of unpleasant bodily functions, and filthy rich. Being with him feels like entering a whole new world. After dating for a few months, however, Lin Sanjiu can’t shake off a niggling doubt that her boyfriend may be too good to be true. As she confides in Zhu Mei over a hamburger, she is bugged by a strange feeling that Ren Nan wants to kill her. Don’t be surprised if the police come round asking questions one day, she tells her, only half joking. That night, Lin Sanjiu lies in bed, struggling with the rising heat. It was already unbearably warm earlier in the day, but between midnight and 2 am the temperature has shot up even further and the bedroom in Ren Nan’s luxury penthouse apartment is now suffocatingly hot and airless. Unable to keep up with the heightened demand, the power cuts out, cloaking the room in darkness. As she gropes for the remote control to try to turn the aircon back on, Lin Sanjiu becomes aware of an unnerving presence close to her face. Looking up, she can just about see a snowy-­ white outline floating above her like a deathly apparition: Ren Nan. His true intentions finally dawn on Lin Sanjiu. He doesn’t just want to kill her; he is going to eat her! After a tense conversation, Ren Nan makes his move and Lin Sanjiu suffers a deep bite to the neck. Thankfully, she is able to gain the upper hand—her relationship with Ren Nan has given her enhanced physical and mental powers, and her boyfriend soon meets a gruesome end with a top-­ end boning knife sticking out the back of his head. Before stabbing him, Lin Sanjiu learns a few facts about her altered reality. Ren Nan is a highly evolved predator from an alternate dimension, and her world—our world, early twenty-first-century planet earth—is no longer the place she once knew. At 56 degrees Celsius and rising, this is the New World, a hyperthermic hell that is only one of seven dystopian worlds Lin Sanjiu will encounter over the course of this 7.2 -million-character novel (although she does not, of course, know this yet). Surveying the grisly scene before her, Lin waves a hand over Ren Nan’s bloodied corpse and utters a command: “store this!” The body disappears, and a playing card drops to the floor in a flash of white light. The card is adorned with a picture of Ren Nan, the title “Ren Nan’s corpse,” and a summary of his attributes. Race: human. Status: dead. Potential value: 204. Suspect: Lin Sanjiu.

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Basic skills: extreme heat adaptability, augmented physical skills, bodily transformation.6 In novels like these, fictional worlds and the spaces within and between take on multiple forms and functions. At the simplest level of narrative description, spaces are symbolically significant in themselves, inviting a range of emotional responses and degrees of cognitive estrangement: the cosiness of a local branch of McDonalds, the claustrophobic opulence of a penthouse suite, the sun-soaked isolation of a dinghy adrift at sea, or the terrifying sight of marauding zombies on war-torn streets after the nuclear holocaust, for example.7 Dystopian landscapes are an especially prominent feature of online science fiction. Sometimes referred to explicitly as wastelands (huangye or feitu) or apocalyptic or end-worlds (moshi), they can also be found in alien worlds (yijie) or stars (yixing), and on vast continents (dalu) that may or may not be on our own planet. Yet it is the structural organisation of space within these novels even more than the locations they describe—no matter how fleshed out and evocative—that define the contours of much online Chinese science fiction. The most well-known of these spatial structures appears in the second introduction above to Female Anchor of the Wasteland when Chu Qiao perishes in one world only to reappear in an entirely separate place and time, bearing memories of her former identity and her new existence: both space commando and imperilled castaway-cum-online television anchor. This sudden transition from one world to another is a classic example of what Farah Mendlesohn calls portal-quest fantasy (Mendlesohn 2008) and is known in Chinese as chuanyue (time travel or transmigration). The interdimensional back-and-forth of I Have a Mansion… is another recurrent trope, buoyed by enthusiasm for Einstein’s theory of general relativity and the ideas of parallel worlds (pingxing shijie or duowei kongjian) and the multiverse (yuan yuzhou) suggested by some interpretations of quantum physics (e.g. Kaku 2016). The third novel, Doomsday Wonderland, though less explicitly rooted in scientific explanation, also plays with multiple dimensions and those who migrate across them. It opens, however, 6  These three introductions are summaries of the opening chapters of the following novels, all serialised on Qidian.com: I Have a Mansion in the Post-Apocalyptic World (Wo zai moshi you tao fang) by Chenxing LL (2015–2017); Female Anchor of the Wasteland (Huangye nü zhubo) by Xiong’er nüshi  (2021); and Doomsday Wonderland (Mori leyuan) by Xuwei juquan (2014–2023). 7  For more on affective geography or geography of affect see Navaro-Yashin 2012; Györke and Bülgözdi 2020.

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with all the markers of an intrusion fantasy, taking Lin Sanjiu out of safety without taking her from her place (Mendlesohn 2008, xxii). The narrative also follows the conventions of the popular genre known as “infinite flow” (wuxianliu), in which a group of characters shifts between successive worlds with the goal of adapting to and surviving within each (Inwood 2017).

Spatial Openings Time-space travel or transmigration in online Chinese popular fiction has already attracted a considerable amount of research that shows how the protagonist’s transgression of temporal and spatial boundaries can take on deeper implications. It is pleasurable for readers, for sure, but also allows a reflexive mediation upon the constructed nature of fiction and invites new forms of ethical interpretation (Shang 2016); slows down time and offers temporal control in a high-speed capitalist world (Yang 2016); creates heterotopian bodies and expands heterotopian space (S. Xu 2016b); and uses digital literary sociality to form a new collective space defined by the utopian imagination (Gaffric 2019). An even greater range of arguments can be found in Chinese-language scholarship, which discusses its individualist leanings (Fang 2015), playfulness or gamified characteristics (Li 2011), parodic effects (Li 2013), incorporation of popular culture (Yu 2013), ethnic national imaginary (Wang 2021), female orientation (Jiang 2017), and lack of female consciousness (Yu  and Zhang 2013), among other topics. At the time of writing, CNKI lists well over 700 literary research articles with chuanyue in the title—and this despite the government crackdown on time travel announced in 2011 (Nast 2011). From this volume and variety of research on chuanyue it is tempting to conclude that the trope has itself inspired a wave of imaginative thinking among scholars, who find in it almost anything they might be looking for. The heterotopian potential of chuanyue as a form of spatio-temporal transgression thus extends from the textual to the metatextual level to become part of the broader critical discourse surrounding Chinese popular fiction. For online science fiction, the narratological expansion of new forms of space and spatial organisation produces not just the larger worlds that characters transmigrate into or move between, but also the smaller spaces or microworlds within, such as a spaceship, luxury apartment, or shopping mall. In the novels introduced above, microworlds include interstitial zones or paraspace: virtual or digital spaces akin to those found in

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cyberpunk fiction, but with a contemporary Chinese twist.8 One example is the interface that pops up in Chu Qiao’s head while she finds her bearings at sea. Let us return to the novel just after Chu Qiao has selected “wasteland” from the five options presented to her: At that moment, a large red present appeared in Chu Qiao’s brain. She opened it right away, keen to discover what life-saving object it might contain. As the red light inside her head gradually faded, a black drone appeared before her for real. Chu Qiao’s eyes lit up. She hadn’t expected that technology would be so advanced in this strange country. Now she could send it out on missions to locate food, people, and islands, saving her time and energy.

Chu Qiao’s delight soon fades when it becomes clear that the system’s only function is to follow her around and broadcast her actions online. Alas, the drone does not offer salvation, but instead seals her fate as a woman forced to perform a highly gendered, high-stakes, live-streamed survival mission—all in an effort to stay alive for real. The first task is “survival at sea” (haishang qiusheng), a level one mission that should take five days to complete. If she can attract 10,000 viewers to her broadcast and navigate her way to Kyushu Island (Jiuzhou dao), coordinates 20°54′–21°10’N, 109°00–109°15’E, she will be rewarded with the complete restoration of her memory, 20,000 gold coins, and a set of outdoor survival clothes. As Chu Qiao works her way through her list of tasks, she talks to an audience of fans who are logging on in growing numbers to enjoy the show; their comments roll across a screen in live “bullet curtain” (danmu, from the Japanese danmaku) subtitles of the kind that often accompanies online video in China and Japan (see, for example, M. Xu 2016a). Early interactions concern the science of survival, with viewers brainstorming ways she might obtain the food and drink she desperately needs. One suggests drinking seawater to quench her thirst; another more sensibly recommends eating sea creatures instead, which will have already desalinated the seawater. This second idea comes from a viewer going by the name Feng Ge (Brother Feng), who, it later transpires, is a particularly

8  For more on the motif of paraspace in science fiction see Delany 1988; Bukatman 1992, 1993; Murphy 2010.

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enthusiastic and helpful female fan. If Chu Qiao can catch a fish by the end of her first day, Feng Ge promises an extra reward: a yacht. The transferability of virtual currency into material goods, or virtual information (an image or text floating in the brain) into a digital interface system (a screen displayed on a hovering drone) is replicated across many other online science fiction novels. In Doomsday Wonderland, Lin Sanjiu transforms real-life objects into playing cards which she stores in a pocket or inside her body; she can also convert these cards back into real-life objects at will, simply by imagining them. The knife she uses to kill Ren Nan, it turns out, had been stored in card form earlier in the day when she was preparing herself for a possible attack. Later, she uses the same card trick to store the metal security gates that block her access to Zhu Mei’s apartment complex; they come in handy in the next scene when she throws them at two strangers who have assumed the physical appearance of her deceased parents, pinning them to the ground. Almost as useful as the ability to store and re-materialise objects at will is the information these cards display. Through them, material objects—strands of hair, corpses, security gates, pretty much anything Lin Sanjiu likes—are transformed into data in the form of verbal descriptions and numerical statistics, a reversal of the physical manifestation of virtual rewards in Chu Qiao’s world. Jiang Chen, the protagonist of I Have a Mansion in the Post-Apocalyptic World, acquires a similar ability in the dystopian future he visits via interdimensional travel when his first female companion, a feisty young woman named Sun Jiao, gives him an object called an EP. This is a wearable device that tracks his health and nuclear radiation exposure and enables communication between wearers, like a super advanced smartwatch. Jiang Chen’s first set of statistics are far from stellar. Muscle strength is 12, bone strength 10, reflexes 11, and brain cell strength 14. Sun Jiao’s stats, more impressively, are 44, 61, 40, and 13. Most useful to Jiang is his access to a storage space (chuwu kongjian) that he can carry with him between worlds, like a pocket dimension, or what is known in Chinese as a “carry-along space” (suishen kongjian).9 Pocket dimensions are a feature of other genres of online popular fiction, too, including immortality cultivation fiction (xiuzhen xiaoshuo), where the motif often carries both Daoist and Buddhist overtones, granting cultivators access to microspaces that can contain the vastness of the cosmos itself, as in the concept of jiezi shijie (literally, the world inside a mustard seed) in Buddhist sutras. Although it consumes 9

 For more on pocket dimensions and how they are “bigger on the inside” see Tropedia n.d.

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precious energy, this paraspace is indispensable for Jiang Chen as he barters with Sun and others in the post-apocalyptic world and transports objects between the future and the present. The first things he stores are food and drink: nutrition is in short supply after the nuclear holocaust, and Sun Jiao is so grateful for Jiang Chen’s access to ice-cold Coca-Cola and hot chicken curry that she does the thing he desires most and has wild drunken sex with him, taking his virginity in the process.

Deep Space in (Im)Possible Worlds By nature of the ways they are accessed, if not also the things that happen there, the worlds of online Chinese science fiction are almost always impossible: they could not exist in our present-day empirical world. They require biological (zombies!), technological (8G internet!), and metaphysical feats (multiverse travel!) that we do not have access to or full knowledge of and thus possess a fantastical and anti-realist orientation. If viewed from the perspective of possible world semantics, however, they are also possible worlds in the sense that they are “things we can talk about, imagine, suppose, believe in or wish for” (Cresswell 1988, 4). Possible worlds of literature exist at varying distances from reality and range from realistic worlds that look a lot like our own to fantastical realms that break many of the laws we are accustomed to (Doležel 1998, 788). They are built through a speculative process that requires an imaginative leap, creating “disjunctions with the empirical world which cannot be linearly extrapolated from the current state of affairs” (McHale 2010, 4; Malmgren 1991). Unlike extrapolative science fiction, which builds on existing scientific knowledge in a logical way, the possible worlds created by speculative science fiction have a metaphorical or analogical relation to our own world. What, then, is the nature of this relation when it comes to online science fiction of the kinds I have looked at in this chapter, which is decidedly more speculative than extrapolative in orientation? To answer this, we would do well to heed N. Katharine Hayles’ call for more media-specific analysis in literary studies (Hayles 2004) and consider the material environments surrounding the production of online fiction in China. Most saliently, these are the internet and the devices used to access it, from computers and smartphones to game consoles, virtual reality headsets, and an ever-expanding array of internet-connected everyday objects. As the linchpin of our modern global communication infrastructure, the internet

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is notorious for producing an altered sense of space and time, or what David Harvey calls “time-space compression” (Harvey 1991).10 Some critics understand this through the metaphor of flatness, a trait associated with postmodern culture and exacerbated in the context of the internet and digital technology. Hiroki Azuma uses the term “hyperflat” to describe a postmodern world in which “elements from different logical levels line up as equivalent and coexist with each other,” like the flatness of computer screens (Azuma 2009, 111). Screen-induced and postmodern flatness have aesthetic as well as ontological implications, as in Japanese superflat art (see Steinberg 2004; Sharp 2007; Favell 2012; Lamarre 2013) or the covers of many Chinese internet novels, which use figurative framing to highlight their own flat quality (Yang 2021). Yet flatness is only half the story. In superflat art, two-dimensional aesthetics belie a deeper critique of the causes of flatness in contemporary Japanese society: consumerism, a loss of cultural values, and ahistoricism, for example (Awad 2014). On the internet, a “work” is not just the surface level visible to a typical user but also the invisible source code beneath (Azuma 2009, 102), and our engagement with online content is born from our desire to “transform as many invisibles as possible into visibles…and to extract as many simulacra as possible from the database” (Azuma 2009, 104). In the case of hypertext on a computer screen, flatness invites us to navigate the hidden world below, with textual space represented as a topographic area to explore, with layered strata, hidden openings, crosscutting pathways, links between different world levels, and other spatial and temporal unfoldings that merge the functionality of the artifact – its material and processual properties – with the representations of the imagined world we create when we read. (Hayles 2004, 86)

Readers’ engagement with the strata, openings, links between world levels, and other unfoldings of digital texts is subsequently both sophisticated and, importantly, playful. The other playfully interactive environment that cannot be ignored when considering the materiality of online Chinese science fiction is computer games. Videogaming influences are on clear display in all the novels 10  For more on the effects of digital media on our experience of space and time see, for example, Tsatsou 2009; Kweon et al. 2011.

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I have looked at here, whether it be their storage spaces or pocket dimensions, convertibility of virtual money and real objects (and vice versa), omniscient operating systems that set the rules of play, or protagonists who must navigate and master the worlds into which they are thrown, as if in an online role-playing game. The close relationship between Chinese online fiction and gaming culture has been observed elsewhere (e.g. Inwood 2014 and Wang 2021); the motif of chuanyue in particular might be traced to youthful experiences of entering and re-entering gameworlds, enabling an especially strong subjective identification between readers and protagonists in time travel fiction (Li 2013, 40). This is no doubt true, but to note the influence of gaming on online Chinese fiction is, again, to tell only half the story, to describe its materiality without examining the underlying symbolisms and cultural logics at play. To get to the bottom of online science fiction’s relationship to digital gaming culture we might look at some of the online discourse surrounding tropes such as interdimensional travel or parallel worlds that circulates among fans of the genre. One commentary matches increasing levels of higher dimensional space to differing degrees of control over cinematic narrative. Our three-dimensional world can be compared to watching a film, where time unfolds in a linear direction beyond our control. Four-­ dimensional space is like watching a film on your phone, where you can fast-forward, rewind, or get to the end then start again. Although we determine the speed and direction of the narrative, we cannot enter the world of the film and have no say over what happens next. Such mastery is only possible in five-dimensional space, in which you can enter the diegetic world at will and rewrite what has already happened as many times as you like. Six-dimensional space is the most interesting of all: here, you are the director or “god” of the world you create, and its contents are yours to decide (Luguorenjian, 2020). This narrative approach to varying levels of higher dimensional geometry brings to mind scientists’ description of dimensions as “degrees of freedom” (Pickover 1999), in which an increase in spatial dimensions produces additional possibilities of movement (Kaku 2016). Yet, even if we open our brain holes as far as they go, the freedom provided by four, five, and higher numbers of dimensions is still practically impossible for us three-dimensional beings to imagine. What I would suggest is most enlightening about this taxonomy of narratological interaction is not the scientific credibility behind its musings but rather what it reflects about the symbolic implications of higher dimensional space for popular narratives. Despite the apparent shallowness

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of their characters’ motivations and exploits, most obviously the desire for sex, money, power, and fame, the novels examined in this chapter are marked by a deep spatial geography that cannot be easily mapped (at least not in two-dimensional form),11 pitted with ontological breaks between worlds and access to virtual communication, data management, and ­paraspatial storage systems. This is no flatland, but a multi-layered topography that encompasses parallel dimensions as well as geographic locales within each world. With depth come questions and dilemmas of agency, questions that ultimately give shape to the narrative and keep the reader hooked. What has caused Lin Sanjiu’s home to become a hyperthermal hell and who or what determines her shifts from one dystopia to the next? After transmigrating away from her world of interplanetary high jinx, how will Chu Qiao wrestle control of her personal narrative in the survival reality show of which she is now the unwilling star? To what extent does Jiang Chen’s access to a pocket dimension that straddles the present day and the post-­ apocalypse determine his potential to triumph over the political and economic systems (as well as women) contained in each? The only way to find out is to dive deep into the twists and turns of the plot. Doing so involves opening up your brain hole and asserting your imaginative agency, perhaps by engaging with the author and your fellow readers, just like Chu Qiao’s live audience in Female Anchor of the Wasteland. As is made clear by this and many other online novels, multiple worlds and the degrees of freedom they contain create space for both triumph and disaster, and our task as readers is to anticipate how and when one will mutate into the other. If you are persistent enough, you even get to exert a degree of control in the process! What could be more sci-fi—yet also universally relatable—than that?

References Awad, Mary. 2014. ‘Superflat: The Aesthetic Reaction to Post-War Japan’. https://the-­artifice.com/superflat-­japan/.

11  They are, however, often the subject of fan-produced online wikis, with entries that describe the various worlds, characters, technologies, abilities, etc., contained within each novel. An English-language fan wiki for Doomsday Wonderland can be found here: https:// doomsday-wonderland.fandom.com/wiki/Doomsday_Wonderland_Wiki

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Malmgren, Carl Darryl. 1991. Worlds Apart: Narratology of Science Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. McHale, Brian. 2010. ‘Towards a Poetics of Cyberpunk’. In Beyond Cyberpunk: New Critical Perspectives, 3–28. New York and Abingdon: Taylor & Francis. Merriam-Webster. n.d. ‘Words We’re Watching: “Headcanon”’. Accessed 16 June 2022. https://www.merriam-­webster.com/words-­at-­play/words-­were-watchingheadcanon-­fanon. Møller-Olsen, Astrid. 2020. ‘Data Narrator: Digital Chronotopes in Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction’. SFRA Review 50 (2–3): 133–40. Murphy, Graham J. 2010. ‘Angel(LINK) of Harlem: Techno-Spirituality in the Cyberpunk Tradition’. In Beyond Cyberpunk: New Critical Perspectives. Routledge. Nast, Condé. 2011. ‘China Bans Time Travel’. The New  Yorker, 8 April 2011. http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-­brody/china-­bans-­time-­travel. Navaro-Yashin, Yael. 2012. The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Pickover, Clifford A. 1999. Surfing Through Hyperspace: Understanding Higher Universes in Six Easy Lessons. New York, NY Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ren, Dongmei, and Chenmei Xu. 2018. ‘Interpreting Folding Beijing through the Prism of Science Fiction Realism’. Chinese Literature Today 7 (1): 54–57. Rieder, John. 2017. Science Fiction and the Mass Cultural Genre System. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. Song, Mingwei. 2013. ‘Variations on Utopia in Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction’. Science Fiction Studies 40 (1): 86–102. Song, Mingwei. 2018. ‘Chinese Science Fiction Presents The Posthuman Future’. In A New Literary History of Modern China, 951–58. Harvard University Press. Song, Mingwei. 2021. ‘A Topology of Hope: Utopia, Dystopia, and Heterotopia in Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction’. Acta Universitatis Carolinae Philologica 3: 107–33. Song, Mingwei. 2022. ‘The Worlding of Chinese Science Fiction’: In The Making of Chinese-Sinophone Literatures as World Literature, edited by Kuei-fen Chiu and Yingjin Zhang, 1st ed., 122–42. Hong Kong University Press. Song, Mingwei. 2023. Fear of Seeing: A Poetics of Chinese Science Fiction. New York: Columbia University Press. Shang, Biwu. 2016. ‘Unnatural Narratives in Contemporary Chinese Time Travel Fiction: Patterns, Values, and Interpretive Options’. Neohelicon 43 (1): 7–25. Sharp, Kristen. 2007. ‘Superflatlands: The Global Cultures of Takashi Murakami and Superflat Art’. ACCESS: Critical Perspectives on Communication, Cultural & Policy Studies 26 (1): 39–51. Steinberg, Marc. 2004. ‘Otaku Consumption, Superflat Art and the Return to Edo’. Japan Forum 16 (3): 449–71.

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Tropedia. n.d. “Pocket Dimension.” https://tropedia.fandom.com/wiki/ Pocket_Dimension. Tsatsou, Panayiota. 2009. ‘Reconceptualising Time and Space in the Era of Electronic Media and Communications’. PLATFORM: Journal of Media and Communication 1: 11. Wang, Xin. 2021a. ‘Shi lun wangluo xiaoshuo zhong de minzu guojia xiangxiang’ (On the ethnic national imagination in online time travel fiction). Mei yu shidai 10. Wang, Yusu. 2021b. Bianma xin shijie: youxihua xiangdu de wangluo wenxue (Coding new worlds: gamified internet literature). Beijing: Zhongguo wenlian chubanshe. Xiong’er nüshi. 2021. Huangye nüzhubo (Female anchor of the wasteland). Qidian.com. https://m.qidian.com/book/1026679052.html. Xu, Meng. 2016a. ‘“Tweetube”: Double-Track Communication in Bullet Curtain Websites’. Media Peripheries - Situated in Aotearoa, Regional in Focus, Global in Scope 16 (1). Xu, Shuang. 2016b. ‘Traveling through Time and Searching for Utopia: Utopian Imaginaries in Internet Time-Travel Fiction’. Frontiers of Literary Studies in China 10 (1): 113–32. Xuwei juquan. 2014–2023. Mori leyuan (Doomsday wonderland). Qidian.com. https://m.qidian.com/book/3312802.html. Yang, Renren. 2016. ‘Buried Alive in History: Poetics, Politics and Ethics of Time in Startling by Each Step (Bubu Jingxin) and Other Chinese Time-Travel Historical Romances’. Frontiers of Literary Studies in China 10 (4): 699–742. ———. 2021. ‘Reconfiguring Flatness on Screen: A Short History of Cover Designs for Chinese Web Novels’. Electronic Book Review (blog). 7 March 2021. https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/reconfiguring-­flatness-­onscreen-­a-­short-­history-­of-­cover-­designs-­for-­chinese-­web-­novels/. Yu, Huijuan. 2013. ‘Lun liuxing yuansu yu wangluo xiaoshuo de ronghe’ (On the convergence of online fiction and elements of popular culture). Qingnian wenxuejia 9: 21. Yu, Huijuan and Zheng Wenjuan. 2013. ‘Shi lun wangluo chuanyue xiaoshuo zhong nüxing yishi de queshi’ (On the lack of female consciousness in online time travel fiction). Caizhi 13.

PART III

Beyond Anthropocene and Utopia

CHAPTER 10

Of Illness and Illusion: The Chaosmology of Han Song’s Hospital Trilogy Jannis Jizhou Chen

“When every universe evolves to the end, it will have no choice but to become a hospital.” (Han 2016a: 317) —Han Song

In 1982, a seventeen-year-old boy from the Chongqing No. 29 Middle School published a short sci-fi story in the newspaper Hongyan shaonian (Red Crag Youth 紅岩少年). The story titled “Panda Yuyu” (“Xiongmao Yuyu” 熊貓宇宇) tells the journey of the members of the Chinese Youth Association of Space who needs to send a panda named Yuyu as a present from Earth to the American youth space station on the Moon. Around 270,000 kilometers away from the final destination, an unfortunate incident occurs, in which Yuyu accidentally slits open its spacesuit and exposes itself to the damaging cosmic ray. Having tried to rescue Yuyu to no avail, the crew decides to steer the ship to the united space hospital station for emergency treatment. However, the I-narrator sets the wrong program,

J. J. Chen (*) The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. Song et al. (eds.), Chinese Science Fiction, Studies in Global Science Fiction, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53541-3_10

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causing the crew to lose contact with the Earth and end up in a dangerous space waste zone. “Suddenly, an angel descends” to save the crew and the journey continues. This boy later grew up to be the Chinese sci-fi writer Han Song (韓松, b.1965) and “Panda Yuyu” was his debut in the Chinese sci-fi scene. Some thirty-four years later, the themes of seeking treatment, being lost or taking detours in a space odyssey, and the dues ex machina from female saviors are reprised in arguably the most important work of the writer, namely the hospital trilogy consisting of three volumes: Hospital (Yiyuan 醫院, 2016a), Exorcism (Qumo 驅魔, 2017), and Revenant (Wangling 亡 靈, 2018). Born in Chongqing, Han Song obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degree from the Department of English and the Department of Journalism at Wuhan University in 1991 before moving to Beijing for his job at the Xinhua News Agency. Often compared with Liu Cixin (劉慈欣, b.1963), the author of The Three-Body Problem, Han Song and his generation of Chinese sci-fi writers often claim to be inspired by the work of Arthur C.  Clarke, Philip K.  Dick, Brian Aldiss, J.G.  Ballard, Isaac Asimov, and Ursula K.  Le Guin, as well as Zheng Wenguang, Ye Yonglie, and Tong Enzheng, instead of the writers of Chinese socialist realism (Han 2019: 52–60).1 Artistic lineage apart, readers might find a continuous trace of deterioration and decay manifesting in Han Song’s oeuvre. The writer published his well-known work such as Mars over America (Huoxing zhaoyao meiguo 火星照耀美國, 2000, written in the mid-1990s), Red Ocean (Hongse Haiyang 紅色海洋, 2004), and other well-received short stories such as “The Passengers and the Creator” (Chengke yu chuangzao zhe 乘客與創造 者, 2006). Later, he presented the tracks trilogy: Subway (Ditie 地鐵, 2011), High-Speed Rail (Gaotie 高鐵, 2012), and Tracks (Guidao 軌道, 2013, first draft finished in 2010 by the name Doomsday, Mori 末日). Discerning readers must have observed a stylistic change in Han Song since the tracks trilogy. Particularly, the narrative structure in the hospital trilogy has grown increasingly loose and absurd, whereas its language opaque and impenetrable. For some, this marks a deterioration in the quality of Han Song’s creative output. Whether deliberately or 1  The interview contains a list of non-Chinese sci-fi work that Han Song is familiar with such as The Left Hand of Darkness, Nightfall, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, just to name a few.

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unwittingly caused by Han Song’s health issues—which is no more a secret due to his constant updates on Weibo—I maintain that this change has given rise to the fusion of the linguistically baroque with the dark and the Kafkaesque in his fictional world. The ever-increasing expansiveness of narration and diction engenders a form of run-on in the semantics, syntactics, and topoi so much so that a new analytical framework is required to make sense of these transformations. How to understand the texts of Han Song, which become increasingly convoluted or chaotic? How does one interpret the connections between the authors’ changing mental-physical conditions and the narrators’ voices that increasingly evince the feelings of the dark, the morbid, and the forlorn? Why does Han Song belie a sense of urgency in his authorial drive to write, almost at the expense of his own health, and how is this tension related to his literary creation? Why does one feel the narrators simply refuse to stop? I seek to shed light on these questions in this chapter by using Han Song’s cosmic hospital as a conceptual anchor. First, I borrow the notion of chaosmos from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to illuminate the chaotic and the cosmological aspects of Han Song’s work. Although the Whitehead-Deleuze-Guattari vein of speculative, realist metaphysics and Umberto Eco’s reading of chaosmos have been consulted, I do not rely upon their arguments. In his own right, Han Song performs a different thought process in his speculative fiction. Therefore, it would be limiting if we solely use speculative realist theories to understand fictional work or vice versa because they are on the same path leading to very different destinations. Second, I argue that illness and the narrative of the delirious, a carefully curated form of mad talk, should be perceived as a form of discursive power, helping the writer to negotiate the relationship between illness and illusion, history and fiction, and writing and cosmology in the chaosmos that he creates. Third, I focus on the polysemous meanings of virtual and the difficulty of ending in Han Song’s hospital trilogy. Here, the virtual does not bespeak that which is quasi-real, simulative, or potential. Rather, the illusions, parallel cosmos, the imbrication of historical-personal narratives, and the disjuncture between planes of meanings conveyed through irony or allegories all come to bear upon the virtual. To be exact, in the hospital trilogy, the virtual is bound up with a sense of Buddhist religiosity and concretized through the “immersive narrative therapy” (xushi dairu zhiliao 敘事代入治療). The virtual also signifies an excess that cannot be fully

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assimilated into the narrative structure. It is for this reason that the trilogy is confronted by the thorny problem of ending. Before we deal with the problems of ending, we shall first attempt to understand this literary universe, or chaosmos, as a structure in Han Song’s novels. It is at this moment that I turn to a significant episode in Hospital.

Topology and Chaosmology The hospital trilogy, which entertains the patients’ wildest fantasies and contains their worst nightmares, begins with the story of a humble civil servant Yang Wei, a homophone for impotence in Chinese. In the trilogy’s first installment Hospital, it is told that, for more than half of his life, Yang Wei has lived cautiously without trespassing any rules, and his favorite pastime is just to compose lyrics for songs. While being sent to the capital (C cheng) on a business trip, he drinks a bottle of mineral water, which causes him a severe stomachache, and he is rushed to the hospital. After numerous rounds of checkups, he realizes that he might be eternally trapped in the hospital. Eventually, Yang Wei is exposed to an even more haunting fact that “the entire city is a colossal hospital” (Han 2016a: 93). He is also informed by his fellow female patient Bai Dai (homophone for leukorrhea) that “this is our time—a time of medicine” (Han 2016a: 96). As Yang Wei’s journey reveals the internal structure of the entire hospital and its working mechanisms, the reader is confronted with a slew of paradoxes of reasons through un-reasons that govern the trilogy’s underlying logic. For instance, in this world, “to seek treatment or not is a matter of faith” (Han 2016a: 29), “to rebel against the hospital is tantamount to jesting about life and death” (Han 2016a: 56), and “health is a sickness, being sick is being healthy” (Han 2016a: 142), which all come to form the guiding principle of medical dialectics in the hospital world. Given the sheer length of the trilogy, it would be too confusing to recapitulate, all at once, the entire story, which contains a very expansive and elastic main narrative—concerning Yang Wei’s quest for the true nature of the cosmic hospital—intertwined by flights of minor plots which exhibit Neon Genesis Evangelion-like anime qualities. These minor plots range from the (dis) appearance of female patients and medics to the secrets of the doctors, from the governance of the hospital through algorithms to the everlasting struggles between patients and doctors. It can be stated that with the interwoven strands of main and minor plots, the hospital trilogy creates a form of chaosmology that reveals the chaotic aspects of the cosmos.

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The term chaosmology is used advisedly to illuminate the trilogies of Han Song. It is insufficient to use the chaotic to designate that which is structurally convoluted, linguistically dense, and intellectually demanding. My goal is to give a form to the chaotic by following the text’s attention to cosmology rather than defining the term itself. I argue that understanding Han Song’s work is not about handpicking astrophysical knowledge to adorn the readings of the fictional cosmos, which takes the form of a hospital in the trilogy. Rather, his gestures toward the practice of cosmology as a literary or even philosophical exercise. Particularly, I underscore the chaotic dimension of his literary cosmology as a method to explain the absence of a strong linear narrative, the expansive use of diction, and the illusory framework of meanings. My understanding of chaosmos comes from Umberto Eco’s reading of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939). The Wake and the chaosmos are complicated that no short descriptions do them justice, but for the sake of argument, we should accept that, at its most basic, Joyce’s original idea, as Alain Beaulieu argues, is to situate the disordered chaos and the ordered cosmos in a continuum where “every person, place and thing in the chaosmos of Alle anyway [are] connected” (Beaulieu 2016: 201; Joyce 1972: 118, 18–23). With this common denominator, the notion takes on two directions. First, bringing it to the field of literary analysis, Eco selects the suggestive notion of chaosmos to situate Joyce in “a moment of transition in contemporary culture” by surveying his entire oeuvre from Joyce’s early essays via Ulysses to Finnegans Wake (Eco 1982: 3). Eco maintains that, by the time it came to the Wake, Joyce had departed “from the ordered cosmos of scholasticism to the verbal image of an expanding universe … and that the Joycean dialectic, more than a mediation, offers us the development of a continuous polarity between Chaos and Cosmos, between disorder and order, liberty and rules, between the nostalgia of Middle Ages and the attempts to envisage a new order” (Eco 1982:  2–3). He also asserts that “Finnegans Wake … produces a crisis in the notions of time, identity and causal connections that suggests certain cosmological hypotheses that go beyond the theory of relativity itself” (Eco 1982: 74). Second, the idea of chaosmos takes on its philosophical significance via Deleuze’s dialogue between the Whiteheadian “complete cosmology” that unites “aesthetic, moral, and religious interests in relation with those concepts of the world which have their origin in natural science” (Deleuze 1991: xii) and the Joycean neologism chaosmos where unity is a symbiosis

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of order and disorder. The Deleuzian turn of chaosmos via Whitehead is then further developed in Guattari’s ethico-aesthetic paradigm Chaosmosis. I am fully aware of the complexities embedded in the Whitehead-­ Deleuze-­Guattari vein of chaosmology and Umberto Eco’s reading of chaosmos. I am also aware that whereas the ordered cosmos in Medieval scholasticism was based on a system of philosophy and religious principles taught in universities of the Middle Ages, to speak of the chaosmos is already tautological in the East Asian tradition, wherein the cosmos is always chaotic but not orderly. For instance, Girardot in his study of early Daoism states that “the logic of myth claims that there is always, no matter how it is disguised, qualified, or suppressed, a ‘hidden connection’ or ‘inner law’ linking chaos and cosmos, nature and culture” (Girardot 1988: 3). However, I do not dwell on the debates surrounding these arguments. Rather, I attend to the possible meanings of the chaosmological in the cosmic hospital by understanding it as a particular form of literary topology, hence opening pathways between topoi, chaos, and the cosmos. The understanding of Han Song’s literary topology begins with the structure of the trilogy. Although the hospital as a constructed fictional thing remains illusory in its shape, configuration, and boundary, the trilogy itself has a stable structure. For instance, besides having three volumes, each volume of the trilogy is subdivided into Parts I, II, and II, wherein chapter numbers regenerate themselves in each part. There is also a relatively short hyper-grand narrative, mainly delineated in the preface before Part I Chapter 1 of Hospital and the coda after Part III Chapter 8 of Revenant. It attempts to contain and encase the entire trilogy, resulting in a one–three–three structure. However, the crux of the issue is to understand the hospital as a high concept that undergoes multiple rounds of topological transformations across the three volumes rather than to merely perceive it as a structurally and spatially reified architecture which is the “hospital” understood in its most conventional sense. By topology, I do not mean the mathematical calculations concerning the surface quality of a given structure or entity. Rather, topological transformation suggests a form of qualitative change and discontinuity that forces the reader to abandon their previous conceptions of the hospital. Moreover, it should be differentiated from morphological change, because, in the trilogy, whereas the latter concerns physical shape and size, the former demands an appreciation and understanding of conceptual en-folding, extension, and convergence of various “hospitals” as one moves from one volume to the next. In my opinion, the topological

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transformations, often miraculous and absurd, are the key reasons behind the different levels of confusion that arise in the reading experience. To differentiate the topological from the morphological, some examples are in order. Morphologically, one sees a common technique that Han Song adopts in his oeuvre wherein he selects one spatially self-contained structure, such as a passenger flight, a hospital, or a tomb, and expands the conceptual boundary of such entities to the extent that the whole universe is included into its precinct, either conceptually or physically. As a result, one finds in “Tomb of the Universe” (“Yuzhou mubei” 宇宙墓碑, 1991), “To Escape Mt. You” (“Taochu you shan” 逃出憂山, 1997), “Spring Arrives Mt. Liang” (“Chundao liangshan” 春到梁山, 2000), “The Passengers and the Creator” (2006), and Hospital (2016a) that the world or the universe all have the tendency to be completely included in or subsumed under the conceptual and physical purviews of the tomb, Mt. You, Mt. Liang, the passenger flight, or the hospital. Rather than attributing the creation of a claustrophobic space to this technique, I believe more should be said about such framing. In fact, this technique of framing through the expansion of one concept, on the one hand, and the addition of another concept, on the other hand, can be discerned in the third part of Hospital. When the story comes to Chapters 18 to 27, Yang Wei is possessed by an unknown consciousness that resides inside him. Not only does this futi (lit. attached entity) help Yang Wei to escape the hellish hospital, but it also, at one time, guides him to glimpse into the holographic image of the whole cosmos. At this juncture, Yang Wei is told that the letter C in “C cheng” does not only mean Capital or City, but it stands for the word Cosmos, implying the whole universe is nothing but a hospital. An ironic distance is injected in the chapter title and the plot, wherein Yang Wei, probably assuming the role of a critical reader and an uncooperative protagonist, scoffs at such a revelation by commenting, “Please, don’t try to fool me. At first, some tried to connect the whole matter to the country and the nation, now you bring in the universe. Must everything be blown up to this scale?” (emphasis mine) (Han 2016a: 273–274). Such ironic distances often re-appear at critical narrative moments when transformations of “hospital” occur. For instance, in the last chapter of the final volume Revenant, the protagonist remarks that “the scale [of the novel or the hospital] has been stretched too far. This has surpassed my ability of imagination and interpretation” (Han 2018: 218). However, in the last part of Hospital, realizing the connection

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between the city, the capital, and the cosmos is still a morphological extension of the hospital’s scale and scope. Nevertheless, this framing technique is abandoned in the next two volumes. To make sense of the idea of the hospital in Exorcism and Revenant is to understand the entity’s topological transformations. Such critical moments often appear in transitional segments between volumes, such as in Chapters 32 and 33 in Part III of Hospital, Chapters 3 and 7 in Part I and Chapters 25 and 26 in Part III of Exorcism, and Chapters 5, 6, and 8 in Part I of Revenant. It is also in these transitional chapters—which are gateways and portals, tele-transporting readers from one literary universe to another—that one senses a sudden acceleration in the narrative, marked by clear teleological plot developments with heightened dramatic episodes fraught with actions. They are the engine chapters that propel the trilogy’s otherwise slow and haphazard progress. By slow, I simply mean that compared to the transitional chapters, their adjacent chapters usually contain more episodes that do not lead to a purposeful movement toward “meaning” or narrative advancement. Nor do they help with the understanding of the transformative processes of the hospital as a hyper-concept or hyper-­ object that is “massively distributed ‘in’ time and space in the most radical sense” (Morton 2013: 45). Topological transformations occur, for example, from Hospital to Exorcism, when Yang Wei thinks that he has escaped the hospital-city and boarded a ship that will sail to a new and healthy universe through the waters. Much to his astonishment, he observes that “[t]he ocean was a flesh-red solution, turbid and foamy, like the disinfectant in a ward. … This was rather a portrait of a sick universe” (Han 2016a: 312). And while standing on the deck of the ship, he further realizes that “between the sea and the sky and to the furthest point of his vision, there was nothing but giant [hospital] ships flying the red cross flag. The fleet was mighty, marching hand in hand with brilliance” (Han 2017: 5). Later in the story, Yang Wei, who attempts to drown himself by jumping the ship, is rescued by a female combat medic named Xia Quan (lit. summer spring) in Revenant. In this volume, Han Song chooses to do away with the protagonist’s name and switches to the second-person pronoun you. As the protagonist recovers from his coma, he is shown that the real form of the red sea is just a pool of medicinal liquid called “the pool of revenants” (wangling zhi chi 亡靈之池) (Han 2018: 22). It is explained by the doctor that in this pool of medical mucus, a vivid sense of “worldliness” (shijie gan 世界感) is generated, wherein all the previous stories of

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cities, ships, and the cosmos, as well as the patient’s pain, suffering, and a sense of looming disaster, are all created by his memories. Worlding in Han Song’s hospital cosmology is never realized, for that which is realized is immediately lost to inversion. Instead, it is actualized through the virtual, the pool of revenants, that does not depend on the imitation of what is experienced in the pool but on the creation of divergence that produces a new world, worldliness, and sense of reality albeit ever darker and more dystopic.2 What has been believed to be true is again rendered false, and the game of inversion undermines the slightest degree of reality. At this moment, the reader, who can no longer place even a modicum of faith in the untrustworthy and fickle-minded narrator, is thrust into another layer of reality. The medic Xia Quan guides the protagonist away from the pool of revenants, who are still in disbelief, and together they start to explore the “real world” (zhenshi de shijie 真實的世界). They realized that “[t]he whole hospital was built on an orange steep cliff, extending like barnacles. … Looking out, [the protagonists] saw a vast space, natural and artificial structures undulating under a giant hemispherical transparent dome, which almost covered the entire mountain. Sure enough, there was no drop of water and no sea. Outside the dome, the fiery red plateau stretched out endlessly as far as the eye could see, extending downwards into a plain” (Han 2018: 37). At this moment, one is suddenly being reminded of the scene described in the preface of the trilogy that the hospital is built on Pavonis Mons on the Tharsis Plateau in the western hemisphere of Mars (Han 2016a: 11). So far, I have laid out the transformations of the hospital across the body chapters of the long trilogy. We will include the final transformation of the hospital into the Mahamayuri Spaceship (kongque mingwang hao 孔雀明王號) in the final section of this chapter because of its complicated religious implications, but for now, one sees that clearly (1) the hospital first becomes the capital city, (2) then the cosmos. When Yang Wei escapes the city, (3) he boards a ship that is the hospital sailing on a red sea which later turns into the pool of revenants. (4) This pool is housed in a laboratory in the Mars Hospital, (5) which is described as a spaceship in the 2  Deleuze’s differentiation between realization and actualization is incorporated into my reading here. For Deleuze, “[R]ealization involves a limitation by which some possibles are supposed to be repulsed or thwarted, while others ‘pass’ into the real. The virtual, on the other hand, does not have to be realized, but rather actualized; and the rules of actualization are not those of resemblance and limitation, but those of difference or divergence and of creation” Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 96–97.

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preface and the coda. In total, we have the five-stage transformations of the hospital that Han Song created. Through these morphological and topological changes, the hospital trilogy produces a fundamental divergence in the treatment and understanding of architecture as a thing in relation to literature. Indeed, it is not unusual for contemporary writers to incorporate vibrant perspectives to delineate buildings in the sense that they become animate characters in the novels rather than simply being a narrative backdrop. However, as Han Song’s hospital repeatedly morphs shapes (city, cosmos, ship, spaceship) and changes locations (Earth, red sea, Mars), these topological changes obliterate the otherwise stable and conventional understanding of architectural structures through locales and measurements, enclosures and creation of spaces, and material reliability and its concomitant sense of reality. Whereas readers might take the buildings in conventional realist novels as anchors of realism where history and fiction are territorialized, the same anchors cannot be applied to Han Song’s hospital. The plane of reality in the trilogy is constructed and de-territorialized on the always illusory hyper-concept-object whose meanings, either allegorical or not, go through qualitative changes to the extent that it cannot be measured by a single form of realism or reality. In this sense, many readers—who are accustomed to the works of mimetic realism wherein two stable planes of existence are taken as a correlative given—might run into immense difficulty in reading Han Song, whose trilogy is all about negotiating myriad modes of realism(s) in a literary multiverse all at once. In a sense, the trilogy is not about how the author constructs a hospital within the novel. Rather, it is about how a novel can be constructed within the notion of a ceaselessly changing topology that Han Song calls the hospital. The hospital becomes a method to think about world creation and fiction writing. In this vein, the trilogy should not be read as how astrophysical knowledge is used by the writer to adorn the fictional cosmos, but instead, it concerns the practice of cosmology, or chaosmology, which becomes a literary or even philosophical exercise. In other words, Han Song’s hospital trilogy has re-imagined cosmology by creatively borrowing concepts from astrophysics. The author is interested in depicting a chaotic world of ceaseless transformations through the ironies of medical dialectics and the changing notions of the hospital. However, when we shift our focus from the trilogies’ style and form to the questions of sensibilities and structures of feelings, it can be observed that Han Song has revealed a peculiar attachment to the notions of illness and illusion.

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Illness and Illusion The hospital trilogy has been lauded as having ingeniously envisioned a sick cosmos that attempts to treat itself. If illness is a metaphor for imperfection or insufficiency, one only needs to turn to the well-known cosmogonic myth of Nüwa mending the heaven to realize that such an idea of a sick cosmos due to some form of original lack may not be that new at all. The novel aspect of the trilogy concerns recasting the topics of illusion and illness in the sci-fi genre. Nevertheless, to unveil the deeper meanings of illness, it is not sufficient to pinpoint sickness either as psychosomatic symptoms or as literary metaphors in Han Song’s work. Rather, I argue that illness and its concomitant narratives should be perceived as a form of discursive power, helping the writer to negotiate the relationship between illness and illusion, history and fiction, and writing and cosmology in the chaosmos that he creates. In these rich sci-fi texts where desire and fantasy find their presence in illusory realism, Han Song’s narratives manifest qualities of the delirious, a carefully curated form of mad talk, which constitute the discursive power in question. Not only does this power traverse the temporal and generic boundaries of literary texts of different periods and genres, but it also draws attention to the nodal connections between fiction, history, and cosmology. Not only does Han Song maintain, albeit ironically, that “the essence of medicine is not science but literature” (Han 2017: 140), but he also builds in Exorcism three mandalas, whose clinically healing effect on the unconscious has been extensively studied and practiced by Carl Jung, into the structure of the hospital ship by inversing the Buddhist thrice-folded cosmology (Jung 1969: 355–384; 1965: 195–197, 333–336, 396–397). The discursive power of illness emerges from all these loosely organized thematic strands that at first seem to be leading to nowhere, but they have, in the anti-­ teleological processes of writing and narrating, cryptically woven fiction into history and disrupted the foundations of an ordered realism based on the separation of the two. In this light, chaos does not mean random or illogical. Nor are the meanings of the delirious limited to pathological interpretations. In Félix Guattari’s study on the psychotic real in its clinical emergence, he does not trivialize the psychotic patients who are “incapable of a heterogenetic re-establishment,” for they do not “obviate the richness of ontological experimentation with which he is confronted despite himself” (Guattari 1995:  82). Although Guattari’s interest might be in the

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subjectivation process and the workings of the (un)consciousness in a particular schizoanalytical setting, he nevertheless reminds us something particularly poignant about the narrative power of the delirious: Thus, delirious narrativity, as a discursive power finalized by the crystallization of a universe of reference or of a non-discursive substance, constitutes the very paradigm of the construction of mythical, mystical, aesthetic and even scientific worlds. The existence of chaosmic stases is not the privilege of psychopathology at all. One might come across their presence in a philosophy like that of Pascal, or in the most rationalist of authors. (Guattari 1995: 83)

Reflecting upon Han Song’s literary trilogies through the lens of Guattarian analysis of the schizo-chaosmos, one can ascertain that the delirious engenders exactly the “mythical, mystical, aesthetic, and even scientific worlds” that the trilogy has created. When one abandons the pathological reading of the delirious and adopts this perspective to examine the notion of illness in general, one arrives at a broader understanding of the discourse of illness as a fictional power that opens gateways to history and fiction. In Han Song’s vein, the delirious, as a discursive power, is characterized by a narrative energy of restless propulsion trapped in a carnivalesque loop, actualized in the phantasmic illusions that reality fails to produce, and enmeshed in an ostensibly incoherent logic accounted by narrators with equivocal and fragmented subjectivity. Hence, as far as illness and illusion, as well as dreams and memories, are concerned, the search for the pathological cause in the trilogies might be a total distraction, whether deliberate or unintentional. The root cause of illness in Han Song’s hospital universe might not be as “congenital” as the text claims (Han 2016a: 283). Nor could it be due to “the pain” caused by the carefully schematized three reasons: “design logic,” “the theory of insufficiency,” and “propensity for inversion” (Han 2016a: 294). It may not even be attributed to revolutions and factional struggles waged between the patients and the doctors or the suicide of the governing AI Siming (lit. Master of fate) (Han 2017:  234). Additionally, it does not have to be the repeated eternal return in the abyss under the manhole cover where all life and death are reanimated (Han 2018: 222–229). The discursive power of the delirious and the sick—as the sickness of either the body or the mind—is set up as rhetorical strategies that initiate categorical crises into the literary genre that we call “Chinese” “sci-fi.”

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Whereas the discourse of illness generates dynamic inter- and intra-­ textual movements, it also creates a chaosmos of illusion where the narrator-­author fails to become a whole. The thorny issue of the failed individuation process and fragmented subjectivity is evident in Han Song’s work. For Han Song, the aporia of individuation is taken with a sense of irony, and this is apparent in the examples of the governing AI Siming and the protagonist Yang Wei. In the finale of Exorcism, Siming, who has gained control of the hospital ship, decides to commit suicide. The novel’s logic is that if treatment requires an understanding of the treated, then to cure patients requires Siming first to become a patient, thus, turning to cure others into curing itself. Established in this volume is that memories happen to be the root cause of illness, hence treatment requires total amnesia. Therefore, Siming decides to commit suicide by deleting itself, leaving only fragmented gibberish of a poetic sort in its system. Till this moment, the plot resembles an earlier short story “The Nature of the Universe” (“Yuzhou de benxing” 宇宙的本性 2013) that Han Song wrote (Han 2016b:  263–267). In the story, a super AI is left on earth to reboot and recreate, from its data, the human race who commits suicide every five hundred years due to ennui. The only difference is that this time the AI decides to delete the reboot program so that the humans will never return. Han Song recycled this idea in Exorcism but complicated the delirious logic with (quasi-)Buddhist philosophy for an ironic effect. In Exorcism, the narrator believes that one’s true nature is reflected in the Buddhist doctrine of “non-self” (wuwo, anātman), in this light, Siming’s suicide can only be treated as a symbolic or fake act, because if the subject (wo) of Siming does not exist at first place, how can it be killed? Therefore, Siming will ultimately reboot the whole hospital chaosmos and repeat everything for eternity (Han 2017: 246–247). Whereas the failure of individuation evinced by Siming is predicated on the ambiguous sense of selfhood, the protagonist Yang Wei becomes an increasingly fragmented narrator as the trilogy transitions from volume II to volume III. In fact, the narrator, as a dual consciousness of Yang Wei and an “attached body” (futi 附體), already emerges in volume I, but the transformation speed of (de)attachment and conjunctive symbiosis accelerates exponentially in the last part of volume III. By then, not only can the reader not establish a stable correlation between the protagonists You and Yang Wei, but You also transforms into a second consciousness attached to Summer Spring, who pushed You into the well of the abyss. In the narrator’s own words, this confusing chain of events can be briefly

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summarized as “she saved you only to kill you. Then she resurrected you before emerging with you” (Han 2018: 233). Since then, the character Summer Spring is only referred to as “the woman” (nüren 女人) who, in turn, is only referred to as She (ta 她), the final protagonist in the trilogy’s coda “The Other Shore” (hai nabian 海那邊). Gender, consciousness, and roles are all inversed through the total deconstruction and dispersal of the subjectivity of the You-narrator. And the confusion that arises from the reading experience is engendered by the tension between two modes of storytelling. Whereas the conventional realist novel often begins and ends with a trustworthy narrator with a stable sense of selfhood, Han Song experiments, through science fiction, with the question of how to tell a story with a fragmented conscious. In this sense, the hospital trilogy evinces a spirit of reaching reason through (non)rationality, producing enlightenment through delirium, and bringing about disenchantment through attachment. Besides resurrecting the time-honored literary notions of illusion and reality, truth and falsehood, human subjectivity and the boundaries of an objective world, the trilogy has promised so much that it poses considerable difficulties to the ending. How does the hospital trilogy close its overly expansive scope? To answer these questions, let us turn to the sense of religiosity and the meaning of the virtual.

The Mandala and the Virtual Han Song’s speculative fiction evinces myriad forms of the virtual, which is not necessarily the opposite of the real. In a sense, the illusions, parallels cosmos, and the disjuncture between planes of meanings conveyed through irony or allegories all come to bear upon the virtual to the extent that it is not too far-fetched to maintain that the hospital trilogy per se stands in for the virtual. In critical theory, Baudrillard’s simulacra and simulation, Auerbach’s mimesis, Bergson-Deleuze’s actual-virtual paradigm, and more shape our understanding of the virtual, but terms lose their efficacy when conceptual expansiveness dilutes their critical thrust. Thus, by taking fiction as a thought process and the practice of chaosmology, I intend to contextualize this polysemous notion in the trilogy itself. In the hospital trilogy, the virtual is bound up with a sense of Buddhist religiosity and concretized through the fictional technology of “immersive narrative therapy,” a virtual reality-like form of treatment that should not be confused with the narrative therapy in modern today clinical practice

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(Madigan 2019).3 The aim of finding the manifestations of the virtual ultimately illuminates how the virtual helps us to renegotiate the precarious relations between cosmology and literature. In this sense, the virtual emerges from the interstices of the real, the spiritual, and the speculative. It signifies an excess that cannot be fully assimilated into the narrative structure, and it is for this reason that the trilogy is confronted by the difficulty of ending. To appreciate the schematization of the virtual, one needs to turn to the implication between the macro- and micro-structures of the novel formed by the external narrative in the prelude and coda, on the one hand, and the mandala structure of an inversed Buddhist chaosmology in Exorcism, on the other hand. The motifs and references to Buddhism are ubiquitous throughout the trilogy. For instance, in Hospital, the hospital is likened to the Tapana Naraka (heating hell, jiaore diyu 焦熱地獄) (Han 2016a: 232), where the author writes, “[I]llness is everywhere, suffering is ubiquitous, and this is the true nature of rūpa (forms, se fa 色法) in the cosmos” (Han 2016a:  276) and “the description and analysis of birth, aging, illness, and death [of the four sufferings] is the fundamental law that governs the World of Great Sahasra” (Han 2016a: 279). Similarly, in Revenants, Mars is speculated to be the Buddhist hell and referred to as the “sphere of neither perception nor non-perception” (feixiang fei feixiang 非想非非想, Sanskrit, Naivasaṃ jñānāsaṃ jñāyatana), which is the fourth and the highest of the four levels of the immaterial realm (Han 2017: 38); there is also the chanting of The Engineering Principles of the Hospital (Yiyuan gongcheng xue yuanli 醫院工程學原理) in groups of thirty-three in a sutra-like manner (Han 2017: 94), let alone the numerous allusions to reincarnations and “the other shore.” These scattered allusions to Buddhist concepts become increasingly apparent whenever Han Song attempts to elucidate the cosmology of his hospital universe to the extent that one wonders if the reader should take the author’s engagement seriously as a form of religious discourse or just treat it as a rhetorical device. Nevertheless, these Buddhist allusions take on a different level of significance when they are interwoven into the narrative structure and framework of meanings in the second volume of the trilogy. 3  “Narrative therapy is founded on the idea that people are made up of interacting stories that comprise their sense of who they are, and that the issues they bring to therapy are not restricted to (or located) within the clients themselves, but are influenced and shaped by cultural discourses about identity and power.” Stephen Madigan, Narrative Therapy, Second edition., Theories of Psychotherapy Series (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2019).

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The mystic number “three,” which frequently appears in Exorcism, is replete with Buddhist significance such as the Three Refuges (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha; S. triśarana; fo fa seng 佛法僧), Three Bodies (S. trikaya, Nirmaṇakāya, ying shen 应身, Sambhogakāya, bao shen 报身, Dharmakāya, fa shen 法身), the Buddhas of Three Times (S. trikāla-buddha; sanshi fo 三 世佛), the Thrice-Thousandfold Great-Thousandfold World System (trichiliocosm, S. trisāhasramahāsāhasralokadhātu, sanqian daqian shijie 三千大千世界), Three Baskets (the basket of discourses, disciplinary texts, and “higher dharma” or “treatises”; S. tripitakan; san zang 三藏), and more, but it also takes on additional meanings in the structure of the hospital ship. At the outset of the second volume, it is disclosed that there are thirty-three floors on the ship, with the first floor for diagnosis, the second for operations, and the rest for inpatient residents. The total patient count, displayed through a digital monitor, only provides a vague yet suggestive estimate number ranging from 300,000 to 3 million, which could represent all sentient beings in the hospital chaosmos (Han 2017:  14–15). From there onward, the protagonist Yang Wei is led by eight male patients who are all assigned evocative, if not (anti-)allegorical, names, and together they embark on a journey that maps out the ship’s whole structure.4 The three mandalas (tancheng 坛城) in the novel are positioned bottom-­up from the ship’s deck extending all the way to a porcelain globe suspended high above the deck using magnetic energy. They are arranged in a reverse manner that begins with the “The Dreamland of the Third Mandala” (mengxiang tiandi di san tancheng 夢想天地第三壇城) that is located on the deck of the thirty-third floor of the hospital’s main building; it is a recreational center now turned into a symbiotic community with half-human and half-animal creatures. The area is given the name of the New District of Ying Zhou (yingzhou xinqu 瀛洲新區) which could refer to an imaginary land of immortals in Chinese myths or the four dvipa 4  The names, which are Lou Bi 瘺吡, Xuan Qin 痃嗪, Pang Ding 疣啶, Jing Pai 痙哌, Shan Sai 疝噻, Yong Duo 癰哚, Dan Ling 疸呤, and Gan Zuo 疳唑, contain a patterned duality that pits sickness against treatment. The first characters, which all contain the 疒radical, a graph appearing as early as the oracle bone script suggesting a bed or stretcher for the sick, denote illness. The second characters consist of selected words of chemical elements that are often used in the transliteration of the active ingredients in pharmaceutical products in China. When combined, they present the dialectics of illness and treatment that is situated squarely at the center of the trilogy. Moreover, the names can also indicate that these eight characters might be a form of sickness, virus, or bacteria itself that has accompanied Yang Wei on his adventures.

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(island or continent, buzhou 部洲) in Buddhist cosmology. “The Dreamland of the Second Mandala” is located in an unspecific part of the hospital, an engineering testing lab, called the New District of Abbots (fangzhang xinqu 方丈新區). The technology of cryonics and the body-­ migration function on the Buddhist logic of the transmigration of the soul and the scientific rules of cybernetics. Here, abandoning the corporeal dimension of life is perceived as guaranteeing a life without illness. However, the idea of the symbiosis of the human-nonhuman in the New District of Ying Zhou and the mind-body duality of the New District of Abbots need to be reconciled in the third mandala, whose descriptions cover the entire fourteen chapters constituting Part II “Death and Art” of the novel. It is here that one senses the novel’s clear acceleration of movements marked by dramatic actions, astonishing revelations, and heightened emotions. These fourteen chapters begin with the appearance of a group of lab monkeys at large which the narrator relates explicitly to The Journey to the West and the American sci-fi movie 12 Monkeys (1995, dir. Terry Gilliam), calling attention to the connection between the classical and the science fictional in his literary chaosmos (Han 2017: 93). The first and the last mandala are named the New District of Penglai (Penglai xinqu 蓬萊新區), referring to another immortal’s island in Chinese myths, and it is here that the ritual of exorcism is performed through betrayal and burning. Suspended in the air through magnetic technology is a porcelain globe of the size as a football field. It is, in fact, the hospital ship’s crematorium, aka The Cage of Samadhi (sanmei zhi long 三昧之籠), where the corpses of the dead or half-dead patients are delivered here to be obliterated. The globe is also an altar that contains eighty-one floors, the inversed number of eighteen floors of hell in Chinese popular beliefs. The fire imagery plays an important role in this mandala, for not only is the fire the element that smolders the corpses for the ship’s fuel, but it is also the fire that is planned to be stolen by one of the turncoat travelers Yong Duo, an anti-Promethean figure in a sense, to destroy the ship and the cosmos using the very same fire. Nevertheless, Yong Duo is thrown into the crematorium by the patient Gan Zuo, thus the plan is thwarted. Gan Zuo, then, remarks, “There is no peace in the Three Realms, which is nothing but a house on fire” (sanjie wuan youru huozhai 三界無安猶如火宅), a direct quote from the Lotus Sutra (Han 2017: 124). As Yong Duo’s body disappears in the fire, the narrator observes that the varicolored flame forms the shape of a cross, behind which numerous black circles appear “like the hole at the bottom of the universe” (Han

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2017: 124). Gan Zuo explains that the burning of the gravely sick compels the demons in their body to reveal themselves and the process produces black holes that are the tunnel to the heart of the universe. For Gan Zuo, burning is not destruction, but creation since the cosmos also begins with a great fire. At that moment, Yang Wei exclaims upon his epiphany that the unity of hell and heaven is the true nature of the mandala. To place a Buddhist cosmology inundated with religious terms at the center of the novel does not in itself suggest that Han Song, albeit an avid sutra reader, whole-heartedly agrees with the religion’s value systems and philosophical worldview.5 In fact, as the plot shows, whereas the basic idea of ceaseless birth and death, or neither being born nor perish, is present, the reader is made to take such notions and epiphanies with a sense of irony. The novel’s narrative vector in the form of a journey through the three mandalas seems to reconcile itself in the crematorium, but it is just a performance of exorcism which expels the demons in the patient’s heart in order to achieve a state of non-suffering and non-pain. The next level of exorcism lies in the “immersive narrative therapy” that Yang Wei is about to experience with the help of Dr. Wan Gu (immortality, lit. Ten-thousand generations, 萬古). In other words, the arrival of the virtual is only preceded by the mandala structure which is quasi-religious but not to be reconciled in it. The “immersive narrative therapy” is a form of virtual reality that nullifies all the events that occurred in the body chapters of the first volume Hospital excluding its prelude. The sophisticated technology is achieved as follows: With the help of the virtual holographic real-time environment of the wide area network, the cloud memory of patients, the Internet of Things connected to the nervous system of patients and deceased patients, and the cartoon multi-dimensional printing technology to connect with VR and AR, Professor Wan Gu has tailored a narrative immersion world of treatment for patients. (Han 2017: 144–145) 5  A quick survey into the Weibo postings of Han Song reveals that he is familiar with many popular Buddhist texts such as Mingchao Dabeizhou 明朝大悲咒 (Ming Dynasty Great Compassion Mantra) (2022. 9.23), Dizang Pusa Benyuan Jing 地藏菩薩本願經 (Sutra of the Fundamental Vows of the Bodhisattva Ks ị tigarbha) (2022.10.01), Tanjing 壇經 (The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch) (2022.9.21), Liaofan Sixun 了凡四訓 (Liaofan’s Four Lessons) (2022.9.232022.9.27), Yaoshi jing 藥師經 (2022.9.30) (The Sutra of Medicine Buddha), and Genesis (2022.10.01). Han, Song [@韓松] Weibo.

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The mouthful names of the speculative technology yet to be realized in the real world apart, the ultimate goal of this treatment is “to forget pain” so that “the internal demon can be exorcized” (Han 2017:  145). The protagonists realize at this juncture that all that has happened in Hospital is nothing but forty seconds of treatment in therapy, and when Yang Wei questions if it is a “dream,” the debunk came that “it is not dream, but cloud” (Han 2017: 146). Hence, the literary trope of dreams and illusions is replaced here by cloud and virtuality at the end of Part II of Exorcism. However, Yang Wei’s realization of illusion and virtuality does not lead to truth but a movement toward the next layer of illusion and virtuality. In Part III of the second volume, it is disclosed that although another world war, named War of Medicine, occurs, it is just another simulation performed by the ship’s governing AI Siming, introduced earlier in the chapter. Not only is it another virtuality, but it is also linked to the Congress of Exorcism (qumo dahui 驅魔大會) staged as the struggle over the control of the hospital ship between Dr. Wan Gu, the elected director, and the AI (Han 2017: 152). Ultimately, all these struggles and wars are eventually rendered futile in the pool of revenants which appears in the third volume. Therefore, according to the close readings of Exorcism, I maintain that the idea of the virtual speaks for the non-positivist and non-constructivist sense of a depth of meaning that is undergirded by a self-reflexive yet self-­ negative strand of quasi-Buddhist cosmology as it is performed through three enactments of exorcism. The first exorcism is represented in the first mandala of the crematorium where illness as the demon of the heart is expelled, the second exorcism is the immersive narrative therapy where treatment promises the eradication of pain, and the third exorcism is the congress staged as a power struggle. Ironically, whereas the ultimate goal of Buddhism is for one to be enlightened through journeys of trials and tribulations, the journey in Han Song’s trilogy starts with enchantment, provides a mirage of disenchantment along the way, and ends ironically with non-enlightenment. In this sense, the meanings of the virtual, albeit layered and imbricated, do not result in constructive accumulation of knowledge but myriad fascinations. This virtual runs up against itself so “the other shore” can never be reached. Along the way, it also engenders a narrative momentum that does not stop. Here, one almost feels the will of the text against that of the narrator. Despite the clear structure that Han Song imposes, the text refuses to be contained by it hence spilling over to a coda that further problematizes the trilogy. It is here that we turn to the difficulty with ending.

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Coda: The Peacock, the (Anti-)Goddess, and the Difficulty of Ending The conventional way to end a world of chaosmos might be to restore order, reinforce structures of meaning, and bring clarity to the elusive strands of narratives, but the coda of the hospital trilogy is interested in none of these. Instead, it propels the story into another layer of meaning by bringing the hospital’s four transformations (hospital-city-cosmos-­ship-pool of revenants on Mars) to its last stage: the enigmatic Mahamayuri Spaceship. In the Buddhist religion, the Sanskrit term Mahamayuri means Great Peacock, who is “one of the five female protectors (raksa) of Vajrayana Buddhism, who frequently appear in Mandalas. … She is green in color and is sometimes depicted holding a peacock feather. … She is considered the female emanation of the buddha Amoghasiddhi. Mahamayuri has long been associated with curing snakebites” (Lopez & Buswell 2013: 499). To forcefully impose a Buddhist reading of peacocks to the trilogy yields little results, since the novel can, in many ways, be interpreted as an anti-religious story of eternal un-enlightenment despite its ubiquitous evocation of religious symbols and scriptures. Nevertheless, one can discern a vague connection between the female gender of the goddess Mahamayuri and the female figures once present in all volumes of the trilogies. Starting from Jiang Jie in Hospital to Summer Spring in Revenant, the protagonist is consistently being guided, saved, and protected by women throughout his journey in the hospital cosmos or the literary mandala, so to speak. As I have noted in the story “Panda Yuyu” mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Han Song, since his first story, has displayed a peculiar penchant or complex for his characters to be saved by females, but how do we interpret the fact that almost all the female characters in the trilogy do not end well? The paradox is whether we see that Han Song treats his female characters—and by extension the issue of gender—as plot devices that only occupy a peripheral position in the grand scheme of things or we place faith in him and believe that the writer attempts to undo the male-­ female binary in a peculiar fashion. In my opinion, the duality of gender is reconciled, albeit partially, in the imagery of peacocks, particularly with the creation of an anti-goddess in the trilogy’s coda. The meaning of the peacock imagery is already revealed in the denouement of the first volume Hospital, when Yang Wei wonders if he can arrive at the other shore to see the peacocks; he refers to these avian creatures as “the animals that love to fly in the deepest corners of the

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hellish darkness” (Han 2016a: 315). Two volumes later, Yang Wei finally finds the peacocks when the protagonists look into the abyss. At this juncture, it is, however, the female character Summer Spring who animates the deep and summons groups of peacock-shaped creatures spiraling up from the bottom of the well (Han 2018:  226). The new protagonist who emerged in the coda through the killing of You also has a consciousness combining male, female, and peacocks (Han 2018: 230–234). The entire story in the coda happens on the Mahamayuri Spaceship, where all the characters in the trilogy who once lived 30,000 years ago are resurrected (Han 2018: 240). It is here that the new protagonist, who is partly male, partly female, and partly peacock, becomes venerated as the “heavenly person” (tianren 天人) or, in short, the goddess, who controls life and death. However, the goddess’s job is not to restore order or patch up the broken and dysfunctional cosmos. Rather, she is a helpless anti-­goddess who died with her suicidal son, probably a derivative of her too. The son’s rebellion against his mother, who wishes to save him, is abrupt; the only logical explanation that is revealed is that the son identifies the mother as a demon instead of a deity. Here, the entire trilogy is rather unsatisfactorily and hastily brought to an end when the two embrace each other and the cross pendant of the son’s necklace pierces through the mother’s throat. Despite unity between genders, the death of protagonists, and the recourse to the Mahamayuri Spaceship that appeared in the prelude, the finale brings about neither conciliation of meanings nor a sense of resolution. In short, too many loose strands are left untied. There is no salvation or ending in the trilogy, and one senses the writer’s last failed attempt to reign in the narrative momentum of the trilogy with this incomplete ending. The virtual manifests in this irresolution as an equivocal excess or surplus that is born at the end of the book. At last, the topological transformations of the hospital, the themes of illusions and illness, and the depth of the virtual all point toward the writer’s ambition to use science fiction as a genre to create an anti-mythology in the chaosmology that he brings into being. Not only do the (anti-)goddess and the female characters point toward the importance of gender in Chinese science fiction, but the creation of the chimeric being of male-­female-­animals in the coda also subverts many of the Chinese literary tradition of portraying goddesses, or women in general, as objects of desire, causes for personalnational cataclysm, restorers of the social-cosmic order, or even heroic or chastity martyrs. In the end, a new literary tradition is born where peacocks of different dimensions fly out of the dark chaosmic vibrations that demand the scholar’s continuous engagement to interpret their arrival.

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References Beaulieu, Alain. “Introduction to Gilles Deleuze’s Cosmological Sensibility.” Philosophy and Cosmology: The Journal of the International Society of Philosophy and Cosmology (ISPC) 16, no. 1 2016, pp. 199–210. Deleuze, Gilles. Bergsonism. New York: Zone Books, 1991. Eco, Umberto. The Aesthetics of Chaosmos: The Middle Ages of James Joyce. Tulsa, Okla.: University of Tulsa, 1982. Girardot, N.  J. Myth and Meaning in Early Taoism: The Theme of Chaos (Hun-­ Tun). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Guattari, Félix. Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Han, Song. “Kehuan de shisan ge guanjian ci 科幻的十三個關鍵詞 (The Thirteen Keywords of Sci-Fi).” Kepu chuangzuo, no. 4, December 2019, pp. 52–60. ———. Qumo 驅魔 (Exorcism). Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 2017. ———. Wangling 亡靈 (Revenant). Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 2018. ———. Yiyuan 醫院 (Hospital). Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 2016a. ———. “Yuzhou de benxing 宇宙的本性 (The Nature of the Universe).” In Zai sheng zhuan 再生磚 (Regenerated Bricks). Beijing: Beijing shiji wenjing wenhua chuanbo, 2016b, pp. 263-267. Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. New York: Viking Compass, 1972. Jung, C. G. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Vintage Books, 1965. ———. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Vol. 9, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969. Lopez, Donald S., and Robert E. Buswell. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013, pp. 499. Madigan, Stephen. Narrative Therapy. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2019. Morton, Timothy. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.

CHAPTER 11

Liu Cixin and the Cosmic Pastoral Gwennaël Gaffric

Introduction: The Pastoral Micro-universe It is in the micro-universe 647 (pronounced in Chinese liu/si/qi, which pronunciation is singularly reminiscent of the three syllables of the author’s own name—Liu Cixin) that the acclaimed trilogy of The Three-Body Problem (2006–2010) concludes. As a place situated outside our space-time reference frame, the reader understands that this micro-universe is an artificial creation made by the Chinese character Yun Tianming, probably with the help of aliens called “Trisolarans” who took his brain hostage. The micro-universe 647 is in fact a gift made by Yun Tianming, a man of our time (without being precise, we could situate the present of the story of the first volume in the years 2000), to a woman (Cheng Xin) with whom he is secretly in love since his teenage years. As a proof of this platonic and idealized love that

The author of this chapter thanks the editors Song Mingwei, Hua Li, and Nathaniel Isaacson for their patience and helpful suggestions.

G. Gaffric (*) University Jean Moulin Lyon 3, Lyon, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. Song et al. (eds.), Chinese Science Fiction, Studies in Global Science Fiction, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53541-3_11

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reminds an old-fashioned romanticism, Yun Tianming first offered a star, and then a parallel universe, where he will finally not even be able to join Cheng Xin. Despite the undoubtedly immeasurable technological proficiency that would have been necessary for the creation of this bubble-universe parallel to the macro-universe, it appears to be in three-dimensional dimension and represents a human, bucolic, and pastoral landscape. Here is the scene that Cheng Xin and his companion Guan Yifan are confronted with, once they cross the threshold of the micro-universe: The sun brightened. It did so very gradually: At first it was just a disk, and then the light began to unveil the world. It was like a song that began as barely audible notes, then grew and grew into a mighty chorus. A circle of blue appeared around the sun, expanded, and turned into a blue sky. Under the blue sky, a pastoral scene slowly took shape. There was an unplanted field with black soil; next to it was an exquisite white house. There were also a few trees that brought a hint of the exotic with their broad, strangely shaped leaves. As the sun continued to brighten, the peaceful scene appeared like a welcoming embrace. (Liu C. 2017, tr. Liu K.; Chinese Liu, C. 2011c: 538)

It is on this small piece of land, where time has just begun, that Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan will begin to cultivate the soil, albeit with the help of robots more sophisticated than those available to nineteenth-century farmers. After the annihilation of all the planets of the solar system, the micro-­ universe, suggests in the novel an ultimate refuge, is a last haven of peace in a collapsing universe whose laws are beyond the human characters. In this, the micro-universe is only one more variation of a long literary tradition, existing both in China and in the West: that of the pastoral utopia, be it Virgil’s Arcadia or Tao Yuanming’s peach blossom land. This rural and countrified dimension is not only symbolic here, for it is with the term “Tianyuan shidai” (田园时代) (the Era of the Garden of Eden) that the primordial state of the universe is designated (Liu C. 2011c: 538): a state in which it is still possible for the protagonists to “come back” after the physical death of the universe, for a new genesis and the beginning of a new cosmogony. Thus, here is the very nature of the pastoral utopia, being at the same time closed and fundamental: the Arcadian utopias are generally

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manifested by their idyllic character, an expressive nature that speaks to a more or less naive conscience in search for a sincere and primary simplicity which would be less to find in a wild and hostile nature than in a space where the man is supposed to cohabit harmoniously with the Nature and where he does remain the master and the observer of it. As such, the pastoral utopia makes us believe in a primitive and non-artificial state of the world on which time has no hold, and in which it would still be possible to pretend to ignore the great disturbances of History and the complications of urban/modern life (two characteristics which nevertheless lose all their meanings in the fictional context of Liu’s trilogy).

The SF and the Pastoral One might ask whether the pastoral aesthetics, in that it rejects or theoretically ignores the technologization of the world, scientific advances, and space exploration, in order to refocus on the simple, the local, and the low-tech, is not an anomaly or an exception, both in the work of Liu Cixin, for whom the exploration of the possibilities of technology and science is so important, and even in science fiction in general. To this question, we can bring three denials: first of all, the pastoral imaginary, as we will examine, is found in numerous works by Liu Cixin, whether or not the “rural” is idealized; second, there is a long history of the pastoral in science fiction, and in particular in American SF, of which the two main figures could undoubtedly be Clifford C. Simak or Ursula K.  Le Guin and, before them, in Europe, a writer like René Barjavel. Darko Suvin, a great theorist of the SF genre, affirms moreover that science fiction is in many ways indebted to the pastoral literary tradition, an analogy that Suvin even calls for in order to build a science fiction of superior quality: “[W]hen the pastoral escapes preciosity, its hope can fertilize the SF field as an antidote to pragmatism, commercialism, other-­ directedness and technocracy” (Suvin 1972: 372). What Suvin probably suggests here is that pastoral utopia is precisely an exercise of “cognitive estrangement” in the same way that science fiction is in its very essence: the pastoral, insofar as it reacts (and is by nature reactionary) to technological or political modernity, thus presents an alternative, which is also a shift from reality and the laws that constrain it. Nevertheless, it would probably be a bit too bold and over-­interpretative to draw a direct hereditary lineage between Tao Yuanming (365–427), especially since, as far as I have read, Liu Cixin has never claimed to be his

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heir or disciple. Certainly, it is not uncommon to find in the author’s literature traces of Chinese “pastoral” poets like Li Bai and Meng Haoran (especially in his short story “The Cloud of Poems” [诗云, 2003]) or with characters inspired by Taoist hermits who choose to leave the din of cities and courts to take refuge in bucolic settings to reflect on the meaning of life and the universe (as does the character Luo Ji in The Dark Forest, the second volume of Liu’s The Three-Body Problem trilogy). Although Liu Cixin often refers to the great Western authors of the science fiction genre (Jules Verne, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, or even George Orwell), Will Peyton rightly points to the way Liu Cixin also refers to Wang Meng’s Long Live Youth (青春万岁), which Liu cites as an “idealistic” influence on his writings and appears to be the only native Chinese work which Liu gives common reference to (Peyton 2021: 19). Peyton explains, citing a 2014 interview by Kun Kun with Liu Cixin, that Wang Meng’s novel can be read as a “simple idealism” which Liu opposes to contemporary children’s literature. As the author states, “[T]he novel is filled with sunlight and an idealistic mindset, its chief characteristic being purity. In my view, this characteristic is very close to science fiction” (quoted in Peyton 2021). Peyton even considers that the pastoral depiction of the 647 micro-universe as well as Planet Blue in the final novel of Liu’s trilogy is echoing with Wang Meng’s depictions of landscapes in Long Live Youth (Peyton 2021, 115). Written in 1953 and published in the newspaper Wen Hui Bao (文汇报) and then in book form after the Cultural Revolution in 1979, Long Live Youth is a characteristically peasant idealism novel of its time. While it does not overtly evoke the reciprocity of an appeased relationship between technology and rurality, it corresponds to a similar idealistic spirit during the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the period from the late 1970s and early 1980s in China. For example, Liu Xingshi’s “Northern Clouds” (北方的云, 1962) and Wang Guozhong’s ( 王国忠) “Reservoir in Air” (半空中的水库, 1963) both deal with artificial rainfall to benefit agricultural production; Jia You’s “Growing a House” ( 种房子, 1978) deals with eco-friendly construction material, and Zhang Yiwu’s (章以武) and Wei Liao’s (未燎) “The Blue Encirclement” (蓝色的 包围圈) are stories about using genetically modified hyacinth to reduce water pollution.1

1  I am extremely indebted to Professor Hua Li for sharing these bibliographical indications and for proposing such a comparison, which a more systematic study could make fruitful.

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It is also the same reconciliation between countryside and technology that is at the heart of the movie Ballad of the Ming Tombs Reservoir (十三 陵水庫暢想曲, 1958), one of the first Chinese SF movies, which features a “model” rural community on the example of the Dazhai commune, imbued with a futuristic technology serving the collective good, regardless of social class. In this, even if Liu Cixin has never really (to my knowledge) claimed the patronage of an idealistic Chinese science fiction of the rural world produced during 1950s or 1960s, he takes up great tropes already well known to Chinese readers of science fiction. Interestingly, it is precisely this period and the relationship of the society of that time to science in China, which are presented in the first pages of The Three-Body Problem. Born in 1963 during the period of the Cultural Revolution, Liu Cixin is most famous today, both in China and beyond, for his masterful The Three-Body Problem trilogy (which was already reaching tens of millions of readers a year after the first volume was published in English (Li 2016), and awaiting its upcoming adaptation on the Netflix platform). But Liu Cixin is also the author of more than forty short stories that, while less well known and less studied, demonstrate a thematic and aesthetic consistency within his work. Liu Cixin is moreover considered with his novel China 2185 (certainly the first Chinese cyberpunk novel, but only available online and never published), as the instigator of a new wave of Chinese science fiction that Song Mingwei describes as “sophisticated, reflective, and subversive in terms of mixed representations of hope and despair, utopianism and its dystopian reflection, and nationalism and cosmopolitanism” (Song 2015: 8). Liu Cixin’s exegetes more commonly present the author as a SF writer who explores the Kantian notion of sublime, that subjective feeling induced by something unlimited and therefore unrepresentable. Song Mingwei even speaks of a “transcendental” sublime, which breaks the established norms of the standard definition of realism (Song 2017: 95). It is undeniable that Liu Cixin offers readers an often-vertiginous scope and magnitude that is particularly evident in the Three-Body problem trilogy, both in its narrative and in the themes it proposes to explore. As such, Clémence Fady identifies in the whole trilogy a “repetition of ever larger patterns, constantly intersecting and detailing each other, spreading out in an uninterrupted manner and in a logic of movement”. This phenomenon recalls Fady fractals—“figures with coherent and dynamic patterns, where unfolding and folding merge in the same movement: they explore the depths of scalar variation in an impetus unifying the general and the detailed” (Fady 2022: 6–7).

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A large part of the peculiarity of Liu Cixin’s writing, and of his relationship with the pastoral, lies precisely in his variation of scale, which allows the author to oscillate between the cosmic sublime and the Arcadian nostalgia. According to the Kantian definition of the “sublime”, the beautiful is a judgment of form and the sublime is a judgment of the formless. The beautiful exists in the natural realm as opposed to the sublime which cannot exist in nature. Kant also makes a distinction between the mathematically sublime and the dynamically sublime. The difference is relative to the magnitude of the object creating the feeling of sublimity and the magnitude of the feeling created. The natural size of the object that creates the feeling refers to the numerical, mathematical sublime. As Kant ensures: “We call sublime what is absolutely large. To be large and to be a magnitude are quite different concepts (magnitudo and quantitas). Also, saying simply that something is large is quite different from saying that it is absolutely large. The latter is what is large beyond all comparison” (Kant 1987 [1790]: 103). Contrary to a certain pastoral tradition, Liu Cixin is interested in the pastoral beauty that emerges from the absolutely large, disrupting the scale (both temporal and spatial) commonly associated with pastoral literature. In philosophy as in literature, scale is the factor that allows one to experience the commensurability or lack of commensurability of a space-­ time context: scale poses the question of how to take the measure of the things of the world—whether material or conceptual. In that, it defines at the same time the condition of the experience, the frames of the perception, and the modes of knowledge. When reading the Three Bodies trilogy, one can witness the infinite expansion of the space and time of the plot, pushing to the limits of the universe and exceeding the limits of the speed of light and the three dimensionality of our reality. However, the story ends in a bucolic, narrow, low-tech space, with simple and passive human characters in front of the tumultuous parade of events of the Universe. This difference in scale between quasi-retrograde localism and extreme magnitude is a recurring motif in many of Liu Cixin’s works: the entire trilogy of The Three-Body Problem is a perfect illustration of this trend, as the author begins his story within Maoist production and construction corps in Inner Mongolia, before the plot gradually unfolds on a cosmic temporal and spatial scale, even beyond the fourth dimension. But this scalar variation is also present in many of his short stories.

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To mention only a few examples, we can mention “The Village Teacher” (乡村教师, 2001), where the reader follows a double storyline: that of a country schoolteacher fighting against a deadly disease with all his strength to teach his pupils the rudiments of knowledge in a remote village of the Barren Loess Plateau, and that of an intergalactic war between the Carbonaceous Galactic Federation and the Siliceous Empire, competing with equally destructive attacks on a cosmic scale. In the short story “On the Edge of the Microscopic” (微观尽头, 1999), renowned scientists perform an unprecedented experiment by breaking a quark, which will lead them to contemplate a “negative universe” in the middle of the Lob Nur desert. The short story “The Flutter of a Butterfly” (混沌蝴蝶, 2002), a variation on chaos theory (and the flight of the butterfly), is entirely centered around effects of scale and the connections between actions in the microscopic and macroscopic scale to prevent the war. In “Yuanyuan and the Soap Bubbles” (圆圆的肥皂泡, 2004), bubbles from a bottle of soap liquid blown into a dying city in the northwest of China are the source of a great scientific breakthrough. In “Caring for the Gods” (赡养上帝, 2005), a family in a small Chinese rural village welcomes a representative of a superior civilization of aliens who created humanity. However, beyond the alternation of scale, which amounts to oscillating between realistic and harsh writing, and even lyrical as the cosmic sublime is reached, what emerges from these texts is also the revealing nature of the local (of the pastoral) in the understanding of the laws of the world. In The Three-Body Problem (三体, 2006) it is in the midst of the pines of Manchuria that the main character Ye Wenjie experiences a deep aversion to a self-destructive and ecocidal humanity, which will precipitate her choice to want the Earth annihilated. In the second volume, The Dark Forest (黑暗森林, 2008), Luo Ji, an urban and decadent sociologist, retreats to a place reminiscent of the valley of the peach blossom spring, with its lakes and green forests, where the solution to Fermi’s famous paradox is revealed to him. In “The Village Teacher”, a story that is an uncompromising portrait of the harshness of peasant life, it is the children in the teacher’s class who, by reciting Newton’s three laws, just taught by their dying teacher, save the entire planet Earth. While in “On the Edge of the Microscopic”, it is a Kazakh shepherd named Didar, who, better than the great human scientific minds at his side, is able to express the truth of a physical phenomenon unseen in the whole history of humanity. Finally, in “The Cloud of Poems”, Li Bai (a humanoid avatar of a technologically advanced civilization) returns to a

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life of vagrancy in the countryside and succeeds in technologically solving the challenge he set himself: to write all the poems of the world, those that were and those to come. In Liu Cixin’s work, the solutions to the world’s riddles come from the brilliant minds of his characters (scientists, political leaders, military men, etc.) as well as from the naivety and simplicity of his pastoral heroes.

Time and the Pastoral One of the specificities of the pastoral aesthetic is to introduce the idea of an “a-historicized space” and to promote a “timeless spatiality”, although, as Sidonie Smith shows, the time of history actually functions as a subterranean subtext of pastoral and “undermines the pastoral vision, the very history from which the subject of pastoral would escape” (Smith 1993: 171). As Leo Marx also shows in the case of Thoreau’s famous Walden, the pastoral is “an ideal pasture, a real place which he [Thoreau] transforms into an unbounded, timeless landscape of the mind” (Marx 1964: 69). Any utopia is in some way out of step, or even in inadequacy with its historical situation, but if political utopias in science fiction are often desires projected in time (and for the most, in a future time), the pastoral utopia has in particular that it is projected out of time, and consequently out of history, understood as a symbol of a galloping progress dragging the world in its unbridled race toward a foretold collapse. Similarly, the micro-universe 647 of the last volume of the Three-Body Problem trilogy is itself “outside” of time, considered as the continuum that led the great Universe from its conception to its forthcoming death. We learn from the very beginning of the third volume that the entire history of humanity is told through the story told/written by Cheng Xin, from the distinct space-time frame of the parallel micro-universe. Here is what she writes in her preface to her A Past Outside of Time (时 间之外的往事): I suppose this ought to be called history; but since all I can rely on is my memory, it lacks the rigor of history. It is not even accurate to call it the past, for the events related in these pages didn’t occur in the past, aren’t taking place now, and will not happen in the future. I don’t want to record the details. Only a frame, for a history or an account of the past. The details that have been preserved are already abundant. Sealed in floating bottles, they will hopefully reach the new universe and endure there. So I’ve written only

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a frame; someday, the frame may make it easier to fill in all the specifics. Of course, that task won’t fall to us. I just hope such a day will come for someone. I regret that day didn’t exist in the past, doesn’t exist in the present, and will not exist in the future. I move the sun to the west, and as the angle of the light shifts, the dewdrops on the seedlings in the field glisten like countless eyes suddenly popping open. I dim the sun so that dusk arrives earlier; then I stare at the silhouette of myself on the distant horizon, in front of the setting sun. I wave at the silhouette; the silhouette waves back. Looking at the shadow of myself, I feel young again. This is a lovely time, just right for remembering. (Liu C. 2017, tr. Liu K.; Liu C. 2011c: 12)

We find in this excerpt the conception of both utopia and pastoral space as closed systems, situated in a space outside a certain form of reality. And yet, this is also to be understood as an effective component of the temporal present (if only because the “remembering” that Cheng Xin mentions already marks the trace of the past in this present) but also spatial as well, because the reader ends up learning that matter—even insignificant matter—removed in the macro-universe in order to build the micro-universe 647 represents a danger for the equilibrium of the Cosmos where Cheng Xin comes from (Liu, 553–556). The latter will even take the final decision to leave this universe without place and time, to give back its stability to the macro-universe. This final event of the novel appears to be another recurrent feature of Liu Cixin’s stories: the unveiling of time as a physical “matter”: taking up string theory, Liu Cixin considers temporality in spatial terms, reinforcing the idea of an Arcadian space where space and time were intertwined, both physically and ideologically.

The Pastoral and the Technology: Machines in the Garden At the time of the first offered descriptions of the micro-universe, the author specifies that it only supplies a “pile of simple, primitive farming tools: shovels, rakes, baskets, water pails, and so on. Although some of them were shaped a bit oddly, it was easy to tell their function by appearance” (Liu C. 2011c: 539). In other words, low-tech tools theoretically relying only on human manual use. However, Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan also notice the presence of robot farmers, whose mission is to help them in their cultivation and harvesting work. Later in the novel, when the matter of the micro-universe is “returned” to the great Universe, the

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micro-­universe 647 reveals its entire mechanism: under the strata of soil of this atemporal utopia are hidden complex technological devices that guarantee the existence of the micro-universe, as well as a spaceship that allows the characters to return back to the great universe from which they originate. The reader understands at the same time as Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan that the universe 647 was actually less an ancient and pre-modern Eden Garden than a very advanced technological creation unimaginable by the humans and that the narrator does not even try to explain. A kind of contradiction then emerges: while the pastoral is supposed to convey a concern for a world increasingly subjected to technology, or even downright technocratic, the pastoral ideal is supposed to extol the merits of a more sober Before, where labor and living take precedence over the convenience of scientific progress. However, in Liu Cixin’s many works, even in stories taking place in regions with hard natural and social conditions, technology ends up offering a hint of optimism, regardless of the losses incurred in the course of the historical process: it is particularly the case in the short story “Yuanyuan and the Soap Bubbles”, but also in the short story “The Fire of the Earth” (地火, 2000), which deals with the difficult conditions of coal miners in China, and where an initially frightening and catastrophic technology turns out to be able to positively transform the coal industry worldwide. Liu Cixin himself once said: “I am a crazy technophile, I personally think that technology can solve all problems” (Wang 2007: 96). One might therefore ask how pastoral aesthetics and thematics are ultimately soluble in a deeply technophile discourse. This is precisely the subject of Leo Marx’s book The Machine in the Garden, which focuses on the case of the literal pastoral tradition in the United States, and is useful to understand how technology and rurality do not appear in permanent opposition in pastoral fiction and poetry. Leo Marx shows how nineteenth-century American literature constantly appeals to the antithetical and complementary images of the pastoral and technological progress: he observes in the texts of Mark Twain, Herman Melville, or Nathaniel Hawthorne an unresolved contradiction between a bucolic imaginary and ambitions of modernity. Even if the machine can be described as a monster that breaks the bucolic harmony of a timeless landscape, it is also sometimes the one that integrates the natural and the wild into civilization. For Marx, the train, which represents the intrusion of a reality alien to the pastoral dream, namely, industrial technology, also represents in American pastoral imagination a technological progress that

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allows the colonization and the transformation of the wilderness into an agricultural (pastoral) paradise. Leo Marx underlines the existence of a permanent search, during the nineteenth century, for a compromise between the two images and imaginaries, a “middle landscape”, which is expressed in particular in the pictorial and literary aesthetics between the machine and the American pastoral. The goal is to find and represent in the mind of the reader a harmonious marriage between the two poles and thus to define the perfect hybrid civilization, which would allow the young American republic to reach a consensual and stable definition of itself. Marx shows the ideological importance of the natural environment and the pastoral ideal in the representations that American elites try to rescue technologies from the stigma assigned to them and reinvest them with a positive and progressive meaning. This reconciling vision of the industrial machine and the countryside, an ideal representation of a decentralized, domestic, and rural industrialization, is, in my opinion, as much to be understood in Liu Cixin’s biographical experience as in his literature. The Three-Body Problem trilogy begins with the killing of a scientist by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, and then the plot continues to develop far from the urban and modern centers of China at the time to remote and underdeveloped areas of the Chinese Northwest. Liu Cixin, born in 1963, belongs to the same generation as Chinese writers like Yu Hua, Mo Yan, Yan Lianke, or Su Tong, who lived through the Cultural Revolution in rural areas as children and make the event a fundamental pattern of their works. Although Liu’s approach and treatment is different than the scar literature movement (伤 痕文学运动), one can feel in Liu Cixin’s fiction a particular sense of the rural land, marked by history and that only technology and progress could save, not to make the pastoral place a high place of modernity, but to give it back its simplicity and innocence torn apart by the destructive ideologies of the twentieth century.

Pastoral SF: A Reactionary Science Fiction? Traditionally, the pastoral imaginary is perceived as being anti-progress and reactionary. Historically determined, it derives like any utopian project from a historical contingency and reacts against the movement of things, by undertaking to preserve a current state or to regenerate a past, by opposing the historical process in progress.

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Probably one of the most representative works of pastoral science fiction in the world is René Barjavel’s Ravage, a SF novel written in 1943. The author, also known for his masterpiece Le Voyageur imprudent (Future Times Three) (the first work of fiction to evoke the famous “grandfather paradox”), describes the sudden disorganization of society in 2052, largely based on the use of electric energy, when electricity mysteriously disappears. The author invites the reader to follow a group of survivors led by a charismatic patriarch on their long journey from Paris to the Rhone Valley in France, where they build a new, pastoral society in which any attempt to reintroduce technology or science is severely condemned. But in the context in which the novel is written (during the German occupation of France and the collaborationist Vichy government), this Arcadian utopia appears more like a Petainist patriarchal utopia (Sobanet 2007), where the values of work, family, homeland, and return to the soil were supposed to allow for the rebirth of the French nation in the face of the so-called decay of society, which Petain and his government blamed on the classic scapegoats represented by Jews, Protestants, foreigners, and Freemasons. The main character of Ravage corresponds perfectly to the definition of the “pastoral power” as envisaged by French philosopher Michel Foucault: a power of integral assumption by the shepherd, alone at the head of his flock, of the care of the life of the latter and whose goal is to feed, care, supervise and control the weaker people … and which constitutes according to Foucault the “prelude to governmentality” (Foucault 2004: 187). As we have seen, Liu Cixin’s pastoral stories do not particularly question or criticize technology, trying instead to reconcile the love of the soil with the scientific-technological development. However, Liu has often been criticized for his patriarchal ideology and his caricatured treatment of female characters in his novels, based on a vision of the “gentle” and “maternal” woman, so much so that the American editor of the novel felt the need to “edit” more than one thousand occurrences for gender discrimination (Wang A 2021: 129). This patriarchal view is, for example, evident in the description of the (futuristic) period in which Cheng Xin finds herself symbolically the “Sword-holder”, that is, responsible for maintaining a deterrent system against an alien threat, and whose supposed lack of courage causes the destruction of humanity. As Liu writes, “In Cheng Xin’s subconscious, she was a protector, not a destroyer; she was a woman, not a warrior” (Liu C. 2011c: 154–155). Even if reading Liu’s novel as anti-feministic is perhaps a bit too simplistic, it cannot be

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denied that Liu Cixin shares a relatively patriarchal vision of the relationship to the soil and to power, which indeed is not without evoking the pastoral conception of male/female relations.

From “Pastoral Dream” to “Chinese Dream”? In one of the few texts (in his entire bibliography) where Liu Cixin tries to imagine the culture of an extraterrestrial species, the author creates the character “Singer” (an individual sent in a spaceship far from his home world to collect data on foreign civilizations). This one will provoke, almost devoid of any emotion, the two-dimensionalization of the solar system. But a touch of nostalgic curiosity seizes Singer after having proceeded to this process of “cleansing” and reminds him of an ancient song, evoking a lost time and love: I see my love; I fly next to her; I present her with my gift, A small piece of solidified time. Lovely markings are carved into time As soft to the touch as the mud in shallow sea. (Liu C. 2017, tr. Liu K.)

The poem seems certainly abstruse, because we can suspect that the conception of the time by the civilization of the Singer is profoundly different from that of the human civilization, but we can detect nevertheless the melancholy of an age nourished by innocent and pure loves that would not disavow a pastoral poet. Beneath the veneer of technological advancement of the Singer’s civilization (allowing an average person to manipulate physical dimensions with great ease), there emerges the poetry of a simple and naive world (that of the Star-Pluckers humans, as seen by Singer). In a way, Singer appears as a metaphor of the science-fictional genre: a genre of the future and of technology par excellence, but that dreams of a pastoral poetics. If we enlarge the metaphor, and even if Liu Cixin probably did not have this idea in mind at all when writing his trilogy, one could also see in it the current echo of the “Chinese dream”, official rhetoric carried to high propaganda levels in China. At a time when Liu Cixin has become, perhaps in spite of himself, a major figure for Chinese cultural diplomacy, his writing, like his words, is

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being examined in light of a new political interpretation, of which his work has been little subject until recently. Indeed, on September 14, 2015—a few days after winning the Hugo award for the English translation of The Three-Body Problem—Li Yuanchao 李源潮, Vice President of the People’s Republic of China, met in Beijing with a delegation of science fiction writers, including Liu Cixin. On the occasion of this visit, Vice President Li calls on Chinese science fiction writers to “fuel their faith and the faith of young Chinese in realizing the Chinese dream” (Xinhuanet 2015). Far from being anecdotal, this episode is actually part of a current context where science fiction in China, both literature and cinema, are placed in the forefront of a nationalist project turned both inward and outward. In 2016, China’s State Council announced a four-year plan for promoting scientific literacy among its citizens, including a step-by-step process for popularizing science through the production of SF: writers in China are then encouraged to inspire teenagers with their quality writing and “to popularize scientific learning and to contribute to China’s status as a world technology power” (Chau 2018: 115). Since then, Liu Cixin himself has regularly taken on various symbolic missions of representation, for instance as ambassador for the Chinese program of exploration of the planet Mars or to give a speech for the inauguration of the construction site of the largest radio telescope in the world, intended to detect signs of extraterrestrial intelligence in the province of Guizhou—a techno-scientific program that is singularly reminiscent of that of the Red Coast base in the first volume of the Three Bodies trilogy (Gaffric 2019). However, can we affirm a correspondence between the “Chinese dream” project carried by the Chinese central government and Liu Cixin’s pastoral aesthetics? If we follow a strict and literal reading, we could note analogies between Liu’s techno-optimism of terroir (乡土) and the official vision of China as a modern country proud of its traditions and its cultural heritage where technology is called to serve a patriarchal and centralizing power.2 But this would be to disregard the contradictory and uncatchable nature of literature, and more particularly of science fiction, as a modality 2  For more on the “pastoral” symbolic of the CCP’s “Chinese Dream”: see Melissa Shani Brown and David O’Brien (2020), who borrow the Foucauldian concept of “pastoral power”.

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of complex exploration of reality. As Han Song (韩松), a Chinese science fiction writer and contemporary of Liu Cixin, perfectly expresses, the imagination and creativity of a genre like SF inherently escapes all kind of political recuperation by borrowing the Taoist notion of wuwei (無為): Science fiction is a literature of escapism. Science fiction is concerned with and affects reality through escapism. It is an unintended consequence, a byproduct, of what it means in practical terms, such as the invention of the submarine or the launch of the communications satellite. That is to say, science fiction writers do not imagine something in order to invent it. Science fiction is a literature of “non-action.” (無為) (Han 2000: 256–257)

References Brown, Melissa Shani and O’Brien, David. 2020. “Whose China Dream is it Anyway: Temporalities of ‘Ethnicity’ in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang” in Farley, James Farley and Johnson, Matthew D. (ed.). Redefining Propaganda in Modern China: The Mao Era and Its Legacies. London and New  York: Routledge, pp. 266–294. Chau, Angie. 2018. “From Nobel to Hugo: Reading Chinese Science Fiction as World Literature”. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, vol. 30, pp. 110–135. Fady, Clémence. 2022. “Le jour où les humanités s’éteindront: Approches poétiques et épistémologiques de la trilogie des Trois Corps” (MA Master, University of Lyon 3, not published). Foucault, Michel. 2004. Sécurité, territoire, population. Cours au Collège de France 1977–1978. Paris: Seuil. Gaffric, Gwennaël. 2019. “Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Trilogy and the Status of Science Fiction in Contemporary China”. Science Fiction Studies. tr. Will Peyton, Vol. 46, n°1, pp. 21–38. Han, Song 韩松. 2000. Xiangxiangli xuanyan 想象力宣言 (Manifesto on imagination). Chengdu: Sichuan Renmin. Kant, Immanuel. 1987 (1790). Critique of Judgment. tr. Werner S.  Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Li, Jane. 2016. “Awakening the force: former journalist aims to unleash China’s sci-fi potential Science fiction fan Ji Shaoting works with fellow enthusiasts to take local genre global”, South Morning China Post, https://www.scmp.com/ news/china/society/article/2026039/awakening-­force-­former-­journalist-­aimsunleash-­chinas-­sci-­fi

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Liu, Cixin 刘慈欣. 2011a (2006). Santi 三体 (The Three-Body Problem), Chongqing: Chongqing chubanshe. Liu, Cixin 刘慈欣. 2011b (2008). Hei’an senlin 黑暗森林 (The Dark Forest), Chongqing: Chongqing chubanshe. Liu, Cixin 刘慈欣. 2011c (2010). Sishen yongsheng 死神永生 (The Immortal Death), Taipei: Maotouying. Liu, Cixin. 2017. Death’s End. tr. Ken Liu. London: Head of Zeus Marx, Leo. 1964. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Peyton, Will. 2021. Chinese and Western Literary Influence in Liu Cixin’s Three Body Trilogy. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Smith, Sidonie. 1993. Subjectivity, Identity, and the Body: Women’s Autobiographical Practices in the Twentieth Century. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP. Song, Mingwei. 2017. “Les romans de science-fiction de Liu Cixin”. Monde Chinois. tr. Gwennaël Gaffric (trad.), n°51–52, pp. 89–98. Song, Mingwei. 2015. “After 1989: The New Wave of Chinese Science Fiction”. China Perspectives, vol.1, pp. 7–13. Sobanet, Andrew. 2007. “A Return to the Soil: René Barjavel’s Pétainist Utopia.” French Forum, vol. 32, n°1–2, pp. 171–188. Suvin, Darko. 1972. “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre”, College English, Vol. 34, n°3, pp. 372–382. Wang, Aiqing. 2021. “Feminist Discussions on The Remembrance of Earth’s Past Trilogy”. Humanus, vol.20, n°2, pp. 124–138. Wang, Weiying 王卫英. 2007. “Xu 序” (Foreword), in Wang, Weiying (ed.), Zhongguo kehuan de tansuozhe—Liu Cixin kehuan xiaoshuo jingping changxi 中 国科幻的探索者--刘慈欣科幻小说精品赏析 (The Explorer of Chinese Science Fiction—An Appreciation of Liu Cixin’s Science Fiction Novels), Beijing: Kepu wenxue chubanshe. Xinhuanet. 2015. « Xi: China to promote cultural soft power », Xinhuanet, 01.01.2014, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-­01/01/c_ 125941955.htm.

CHAPTER 12

Bodies in Transformation: The Politics of Post-80s Science Fiction Authors Chi Hui, Chen Qiufan, and Zhang Ran Frederike Schneider-Vielsäcker

Introduction The poetic connection of a character’s physical and mental condition with the socio-political reality was a common literary tool both in early twentieth-­ century Chinese realism and in science fiction (SF). Realist writer Lu Xun (鲁迅, 1881–1936) used the trope in his short story “Diary of a Madman” (Kuangren riji 狂人日记, 1918) to point out the moral degeneration of the society (Tambling 41). In the earliest Chinese SF story “Tales of the Moon Colony” (Yueqiu zhimindi xiaoshuo 月球殖民地 小说, 1904–1905) by Huangjiang Diaosou (荒江钓叟), the ailing protagonist epitomizes the weakening of Imperial China that was brought about by its semi-colonial subjugation to Western powers (Isaacson 43). Contemporary SF writers of the post-80s generation (balinghou 八零后) such as Chi Hui (迟卉, b. 1984), Chen Qiufan (陈楸帆, b. 1981), and

F. Schneider-Vielsäcker (*) Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. Song et al. (eds.), Chinese Science Fiction, Studies in Global Science Fiction, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53541-3_12

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Zhang Ran (张冉, b. 1981) are reinterpreting this allegorical meaning of the body. This generation has unique characteristics due to the introduction of the one-child policy (yihai zhengce 一孩政策) in 1979 and the liberalization processes of the 1980s. Chinese people born in the 1980s experienced the far-reaching economic and social changes of the reform period. As China’s first generation of only children, they grew up with unprecedented possibilities, and at the same time, they have overly high expectations that oftentimes clash with reality. Still, this generation bears a heavy burden as they are their age groups’ sole member in their family and their parents’ only hope of providing for them in old age (Bao and Haas 291). Renowned SF author Han Song (韩松, b. 1965) has dubbed this cohort the “torn generation” (silie de yidai 撕裂的一代), referring to Chinese born after China’s opening up in 1978. He considers them to be young people who have been grouped into one generation based on their birth dates, but who hold completely different values and lead divergent lifestyles (Chen, “The Torn” 370). In a nutshell, the heterogeneous balinghou cohort can be divided into two groups: Those whose parents benefited from the economic reforms (the privileged daughters and sons of government or military officials, party members, and celebrities) and those whose families did not have a share in the nation’s prosperity (Kan 68). Contrary to the descendants of the nouveau riche, the majority of the balinghou has to work hard to achieve success in life. Although in many cases this is not very promising as the Chinese education system denies them equal opportunities by imposing high tuition fees (67). The “torn generation” is not only torn because of social disparity, this characteristic also stems from the tightrope of traditional cultural values and newly introduced Western concepts they have to walk on. Born in times of ideological crisis brought about by the cultural shift during the reform period (from communalism to individualism, from togetherness to antagonism, and from altruism to consumerism), this generation had to learn how to navigate this unfamiliar terrain (Bao and Haas 290). While the collectivist principles and norms of the previous socialist era were losing influence, they experienced a growing influence of a new value system from the Western world at a young age. The impact of China’s dramatic transformations on the balinghou becomes apparent in adulthood by way of disorientation in light of their newfound personal freedoms and the lack of clear and consistent values to guide them on their life paths (291). Post-80s SF author Chen Qiufan (“The Torn” 373) not only observes his

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generation’s deep frustration with the unpredictability of their social environment and prospects, but also reflects their complex emotions in his literary works: […] what I sense in them [Chinese born after 1985 and after 1990] above all is a feeling of exhaustion about life and anxiety for success. They worry about skyrocketing real estate prices, pollution, education for their young children, medical care for their aging parents, growth and career opportunities—they are concerned that as the productivity gains brought about by China’s vast population have all but been consumed by the generation born during the 1950s–1970s, they are left with a China plagued by a falling birthrate and an aging population […].

Post-80s literature (balinghou wenxue 八零后文学) represents an important part of contemporary Chinese literature (dangdai wenxue 当代 文学) that manifests this generation’s complexity in a wide variety of expressions and perspectives (Gao 110). Despite the different directions and genres of post-80s literature, according to Song and Yang (vii), its decisive characteristic is that “[…] post-’80s writing has been highly political from the outset. It is the product of a transitional era and is in keeping with the tumultuous capitalist transformation of Chinese society at the turn of the century.” In contrast to the writers born in the 1950s and 1960s who address the country life in their works, the post-80s literary polyphony demonstrates a multicultural and global environment (Zimmer 302). This is particularly true for post-80s SF.  Post-80s authors write about the city, explore the “lonely self” in urban space, “[…] and in most cases the feeling of not fitting into the world is mixed with adolescent emotional frustrations” (Song and Yang ix). This can be explained by the fact that large-scale urbanization processes began in the 1990s when they were growing up. Their works depict this generation’s urban lifestyle that is characterized by consumption, hedonism, and the pursuit of a cosmopolitan identity (ix). In terms of subject matter, SF clearly stands out from the mainstream of post-80s literature. Popular mainstream authors such as Zhang Yueran (张悦然, b. 1982), Han Han (韩寒, b. 1982) and Guo Jingming (郭敬明, b. 1983) focus on romantic love stories with characters who embody the “Chinese Dream” (Zhongguo Meng 中国梦) and act as role models for young readers: they own a car, an apartment, a degree from a renowned university, pursue a job in an international company, and

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are “moderately well-off”1 in political terms (Zimmer 311–312). By contrast, post-80s SF mainly depicts ordinary people, those who fail in realizing the “Chinese Dream.” One common feature, however, is a sense of loneliness, the expression of deep fears, dissatisfaction, and the difficulty of adapting to the rapid changes of their social and urban environment. These are the emotions that trouble the post-80s generation. This chapter examines the body trope in contemporary Chinese SF through a close reading of three short stories: “Nest of Insects” (Chongchao 虫巢, 2008) by Chi Hui, “The Flower of Shazui” (Shazui zhi hua 沙嘴 之 花, 2012) by Chen Qiufan, and “Ether” (Yitai 以太, 2012) by Zhang Ran. I argue that the three post-80s authors use the body to articulate only children’s feelings of disorientation, meaninglessness, and existential concerns in the face of rapid economic growth and social transformations in postmodern China. My analysis further suggests that the body trope provides a micro perspective on socio-political discourses. The aesthetic engagement with these discourses can be read as a critique of the absoluteness of the state’s metanarrative, as social criticism, and a critique of capitalism. Recent scholarship highlights the cultural and political implications of contemporary Chinese SF (Healey; Li; Song; Wang, “National Allegory”). Among these, few studies look at gendered bodies (Schneider-Vielsäcker, “From Sexual Desire”). Scholars have mostly focused on the works of the “Big Three” of the so-called “Chinese New Wave” writers, namely Liu Cixin (刘慈欣, b. 1963), Han Song, and Wang Jinkang (王晋康, b. 1948). However, an exclusive study of their works simply cannot do justice to the diversity of contemporary Chinese SF. My analysis builds on this scholarship to shed light on the politics of a new generation of Chinese SF writers that is younger than the “Big Three” authors. Their writings are induced by their unique experiences of growing up during China’s dramatic changes in the 1980s and 1990s, thus bringing out a new force in Chinese SF.  This chapter aims at closing this research gap and broaden the understanding of contemporary Chinese SF by focusing on the allegoric meaning of literary bodies in the works of post-80s writers. 1  Since 2006, the political goal was to build a “moderately well-of society” (xiaokang shehui 小康社会) by equally distributing the economic benefits and by prioritizing underprivileged social groups, especially rural peasants and laid-off workers, and underdeveloped regions. This concept continued to be part of Xi Jinping’s (习近平, b. 1953) political program.

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Metamorphic Human-Animal Bodies in “Nest of Insects” By envisioning a female-dominated world in the vastness of the universe, Chi Hui’s “Nest of Insects” explores the conservative gender roles in Chinese society.2 The story’s rich symbolism provides multiple different perspectives and thus many opportunities for interpretation. Beyond the feminist perspective, the story allows for a reading as a critique of the social and parental pressure only children suffer from due to the one-­ child policy. Consisting of two storylines, the plot depicts a peaceful matriarchal society on the fictional planet Tantatula, where the female protagonist Yi’ansa lives. She belongs to an ancient species called Tanla that solely gives birth to female children. Only she knows all the secret paths to the mysterious nest located at the planet’s core. Soon, human colonizers disturb the harmony. The first storyline describes an encounter between Yi’ansa and the human Chen Qingyan, who is sent by his government to search for his missing compatriot Sun Zhanmusi, and introduces the Tanla society with their customs. The subplot tells us how the malicious Zhanmusi holds a young Tanla couple hostage and forces them to guide him through the nest into its center. To impress his father, he plans to wipe out the planet’s entire population by ambushing them during a ceremonial gathering. The Tanla are a symbol for growing up under the one-child policy, which is characterized by strict etiquette and great parental pressure. Although the Tanla society seems very happy, their social conventions prove to be extremely challenging for the youth. Young Tanla have to follow many rules and make sacrifices. Their life cycle is predetermined and consists of three phases, so-called seasons: in infancy they learn and grow, during childhood they give birth to their offspring, and when they reach adulthood they must go to the nest inside the planet and transform into a giant beetle (Chi 46). This predefined path through life is a metaphor for the reality in China, where academic achievement and higher education have been the basic premise for social advancement since the 1980s. Only elite jobs can ensure that a couple without any siblings will be able to care for their elderly parents, parents-in-law and, as the case may be, 2  In December 2008, “Nest of Insects” first appeared in China’s leading SF magazine Kehuan shijie (科幻世界, SF World); thus far, it is still to be translated into English.

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grandparents on both sides (Fong 28). Consequently, the norm of expectation in Chinese society shapes adolescents’ careers. The only children Fong interviewed in her study have described this phenomenon as the “one road that everyone is trying to squeeze onto” (179). However, since the 1990s, as education levels have developed faster than economic growth due to government support of the education system, there are not enough elite jobs for all of those who are qualified for them (88, 90). Thus, “the one road” often leads to frustration and unhappiness. The Tanla’s transformation in the last phase of their life signifies their entry into the adult world. Young Tanla must study for hundreds of years to survive there. If, however, they were forced to enter the “third season” with the “mind of a child”—in other words reaching adulthood too early—they can either make their way or die (Chi 46–48). Death as a result of failure in the adult world reflects that in reality some only children cannot withstand the social and parental pressure. The heavy burden of living up to their parents’ high expectations results in the adolescents’ exhaustion and dissatisfaction with their own life (Bao and Haas 291). In some cases, the immense pressure to perform causes severe psychological problems such as depression and anxiety, which can be accompanied by sleep disorders (Quach et al. 113). The fictional world of Tantatula may be so far removed from China’s reality and yet shows numerous parallels. Through an increasing cognitive detachment from the empirical reality of the implied reader, the story conveys a sense of not belonging. Born in the 1980s, social alienation seems not unfamiliar to Chi Hui: “I am one of those people who often feel out of place in their environment” (Dubro et al. 58).3 In an interview with Kapsel, she explains that, like much of the Chinese born in the 1980s or later, she has struggled with the challenges resulting from social change induced by economic reforms and the one-child policy: My family is a very traditional intellectual family. In other words, I had to study, go to university, and be vastly superior to the others. I had to be obedient as well as gentle and also treat everyone well. The only problem, however, is that a part of me does not feel that way at all. (56)

As the Tanla’s metamorphosis into giant beetles represents a transformation of a human-like body into a “non-human” (59), the narrative  All translations of Chinese primary texts are my own.

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highlights the alienation—even dehumanization—of the balinghou generation (those born in 1980 or after) caused by growing up under high social pressure. The motif of the metamorphosis into a beetle is reminiscent of the German classic The Metamorphosis (1915) by Franz Kafka (1883–1924). Kafka’s story describes how the protagonist Gregor Samsa transforms into a bug and how his family members react to this transformation. By juxtaposing the everyday reality of that time with an absurd and surreal world, the text conveys a sense of loneliness (Gauler). In the progress of the metamorphosis, the protagonist becomes alienated from his surroundings (Zhou 127). Kafka’s characteristic motifs of Metamorphosis such as alienation, loneliness, and absurdity can all be found in “Nest of Insects.” Considering Kafka’s influence on major contemporary Chinese writers such as Yu Hua (余华, b. 1960), Yan Lianke (阎连科, b. 1958), and Can Xue (残雪, b. 1953) (Gauler), Chi Hui’s story was presumably also inspired by his work. In a personal conversation on October 19, 2019, Chi Hui confirmed having read Kafka. She explained the difference in the beetle’s depiction: Kafka’s story describes the bug as despicable, whereas in Chi Hui’s text, the insects appear peaceful and in a positive light. Despite this contrast, there is a connection between the two stories in terms of the effect the metamorphosis has on the characters. In “Nest of Insects,” the giant beetles’ struggle for survival in the adult world symbolizes that Chinese only children are victims of the economic reforms and the one-­ child policy. In Metamorphosis, according to Zhou (116), the transformation into an insect is an allegory for the loss of individual freedom and human dignity. Both Kafka and Chi Hui use the metaphor of dehumanization (the transformation into a non-human body) as a critique of social alienation in a capitalist society. In Metamorphosis, the protagonist’s failed attempt to integrate himself as an insect into the human world illustrates the individual experience of alienation (127). In “Nest of Insects,” the Tanla live in an inhumane achievement-oriented society, which exposes the individuals to a high degree of stress due to the restrictive conventions. This social system demands a great deal of willingness to make sacrifices. Akin to Kafka’s protagonist, in their insect form, Chi Hui’s Tanla are supposed to integrate themselves into the adult world, however, they can only succeed with difficulties. Using the trope of the non-human body, Chi Hui’s text visualizes the psychological condition of the Chinese only children and the effect of the high pressure on their mental health. The

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physical transformation into an insect also reveals the personal processes of alienation that already took place before this metamorphosis. Through the human-animal metamorphosis, “Nest of Insects” continues the long history of stories about animal transformations in Chinese literature. One of its most famous examples is the shape-shifting monkey king Sun Wukong (孙悟空) in the Chinese classic The Journey to the West (Xi you ji 西游记, late sixteenth century) by Wu Cheng’en (吴承恩, ca. 1500–1582). In contrast to Kafka’s narrative and to the occidental hierarchization of humans and animals, transformations in premodern Chinese literature are less associated with suffering and human’s loss of value, but are instead related to joy and happiness (Zhou 125). “Nest of Insects” echoes Pu Songling’s (蒲松龄, 1640–1715) satire “The Fighting Cricket” (Cuzhi 促织, seventeenth/eighteenth century). In this story, the animal character is used to reflect real conditions in seventeenth-century China such as the repression of the Chinese people through additional taxes (127). The protagonist’s son commits suicide by jumping into a well, whereupon his metamorphosis into a fighting cricket is initiated (130). Similarly, Chi Hui’s text implies the motif of suicide followed by a metamorphosis in a scene where the young Tanla couple that is held hostage transforms into a giant beetle before it reaches maturity (Chi 26). This can be understood as a suicide since the immature couple is very likely to die in the adult world. “Nest of Insects” clearly features characteristics of both Kafka’s and Pu’s works. The analysis shows that, comparable to Metamorphosis, “Nest of Insects” primarily illuminates the characters’ inner selves and, figuratively, the psyche of the Chinese only children. In both Kafka’s and Chi Hui’s story, the death of the human/humanoid being in the form of an insect caused by social alienation and dehumanizationis an allegory for a profit-oriented and performance-oriented society (like the Chinese one) that has the tendency to gradually destroy itself.

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Modified Cybernetic Bodies in “The Flower of Shazui” Chen Qiufan’s near-future story “The Flower of Shazui” critically reflects on China’s large-scale urbanization, taking the Special Economic Zone (jingji tequ 经济特区, SEZ) of Shenzhen as an example.4 The city itself is an emblem of the gap between rich and poor that is omnipresent in post-­ reform Chinese society. The story’s portrayal of the real developments in Shenzhen since the 1980s is enriched with fictional elements to point out the negative developments that reality could possibly lead to. Focusing on low-income earners, Chen’s story gives voice to those unheard by the official narrative. The main characters are mostly ordinary people living in Shazui (沙嘴), a former village that is part of Shenzhen’s urban area. The unnamed first-person male narrator is a former engineer with a secret past who sells the latest technology. Readers become acquainted with his landlady Miss Shen (沈) who, like many people in Shazui, depends on working multiple jobs to be able to afford the basic standard of living. The narrator’s neighbor and love interest, Snow Lotus (Xuelian 雪莲), is a sex worker. The body trope conveys the impact of China’s modernization and rapid economic growth on Chinese people. Body modifications are used to visualize society’s corruption by the increasing commercialization and emergence of consumerism. Shenzhen’s residents all aspire to earn a lot of money, and the display of social status has become street culture. Using the latest technology of “body films” (renti tiemo 人体贴膜) applied to their skin, the wearers are able to show off their personality, daring, and sex appeal to others (Chen, “Shazui” 26). By projecting the current tendencies of self-expression on the internet to the real world, the text raises this phenomenon to a new level and casts a critical eye on it. The metaphor of “body films” illustrates that for Chinese people commercialization and consumerism became ingrained, thus impacting their bodies (and souls). The protagonist was once like these attention-seeking citizens, but the disenchantment of reality made him open his eyes to the bleak truth that consumption is not equivalent to having freedom of choice nor does 4  In 2012, “The Flower of Shazui” was first published in the anthology ZUINK 2 shaoshupai baogao (ZUINK 2 少数派报告, ZUINK 2 Minority Report). Soon afterwards, Ken Liu’s English translation appeared in Interzone and was later included in his 2016 anthology Invisible Planets (Chen, “Flower” [Head of Zeus]). A bilingual reprint was issued online in Strange Horizons in 2017 (Chen, “Flower” [Strange Horizons]).

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it lead to real happiness. Realizing this leaves him with a feeling of emptiness: “my heart is like a dead pool of water” (32). The Chinese idiom yitan sishui (一潭死水), literally “a pond full of dead water,” describes a stagnant or depressing condition. Here, it refers not only to the protagonist’s state of mind but figuratively to the lived experience of ordinary urbanites in China. Similarly, Chen’s “The Fish of Lijiang” (Lijiang de yu’ermen 丽江的鱼儿们, 2006) metaphorically uses body modifications to address the negative developments in conjunction with the increasing commercialization. In this short story, some people have tiny LCDs implanted into their skin on their foreheads and chests, whereby they show advertising to make money. The criticism of capitalism culminates at the end of “The Flower of Shazui.” The text uses the trope of the gendered body to illustrate a need for fundamental changes both in terms of the effects of the capitalist economic and social order, particularly the institutional disadvantage of marginalized social groups, as well as of patriarchal structures. Considering that the expansion of the sex industry is a by-product of China’s economic reforms in the 1980s, which was favored by the introduction of the market economy and the emergence of a wealth gap (Evans 167), it seems relevant that the figure of the sex worker is used as the female protagonist to convey a critique of capitalism. Snow Lotus is afraid to tell her husband that she is pregnant because he might beat her like he did in the past. Both Miss Shen and the narrator encourage her. For her safety, the narrator provides Snow Lotus with wireless earphones, augmented reality contact lenses, and a suit made of special fiber that changes its surface through electrical charging and becomes bulletproof (Chen, “Shazui” 32). With this suit, the protagonist is able to control her body’s movements remotely in order for her not to be defenseless in case of emergency. Based on the description of the suit as a “puppet garment” (kuilei fu 傀儡服), and on how it functions, it is a metaphor for male dominance over female bodies in the patriarchal Chinese society. Not believing that the child is his, the husband threatens Snow Lotus with a knife. As a result of lifelong unhappiness, she eventually kills her furious husband in an act of despair and attempts suicide. According to Luo Xiaoming, descriptions of the city in contemporary Chinese SF, in this case Shenzhen, “bring to light harbored feelings of helplessness, cynicism and even self-justification upon realization that their ideas and/or opinions cannot be realized and that, ultimately, they cannot change the status-quo” (595). Chinese women’s subordinate position that

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becomes apparent in public and within the family circle results in very complex motives for female suicide: despair, anger, the feeling of being wronged, revenge (on certain people who caused their misery), or even rebellion (against an unjust situation) (Liu 300; Pearson and Liu 355). The main reasons for Chinese women to take their lives are family conflicts (with husband, parents, in-laws, or siblings), but also poverty, physical and mental illness, and cultural aspects (Liu 300). The story reflects that, in most cases, these women were abused by a close person (301) and ultimately directed the violence inflicted on them against themselves. Eventually, Snow Lotus rebels against being controlled by others—her husband, the protagonist, and social norms—even if it means her death. Both in fiction and reality, female suicide becomes a woman’s act of reclaiming her agency: “It can be assumed that in a patriarchal society, suicide is not only ‘the last resort’ for the person who is suffering, but also a threat to others. By committing suicide, women fight against their oppressors and achieve goals that were unattainable in their lifetime” (308). However, with the help of the special suit, the narrator intervenes before Snow Lotus could throw her body from the balcony. This illustrates that she cannot even decide over the end of her life, which again highlights male superiority in Chinese society. In “The Flower of Shazui,” cybernetic body modifications take on multiple meanings. On the one hand, they symbolize a degenerated, consumption-­driven society full of self-absorbed individuals. On the other hand, the modified gendered body points to the deep-rooted patriarchal structures of Chinese society.

Rebellious Pathologized Bodies in “Ether” Zhang Ran’s dystopia “Ether” portrays a grim future in which censorship has become omnipresent, exercised by mass deception through the technology-­enhanced production of misinformation.5 Through nanoparticles floating in the air, a filter technology scans all forms of conversation—written and oral—and replaces “menacing” language with “harmless” language without the transmitting person’s notice. As a result, 5  In September 2012, “Ether” first appeared in Kehuan shijie. An English translation by Carmen Yiling Yan and Ken Liu was published in Clarkesworld in January 2015 (Zhang, “Ether” [Clarkesworld]). A bilingual reprint was issued in Neil Clarke’s 2017 anthology Touchable Unreality (Zhang, “Ether” [Jixie gongye chubanshe]).

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internet forums, conversations on the street, and even demonstrations now revolve only around trivial issues. Fed up with their dull lives, an underground group gathers regularly for “finger talking” (shouzhi liaotian 手指聊天聚会), a way of exchanging thoughts freely by writing Chinese characters into other members’ palms as a form of silent resistance. The story is set in a near future where automation has advanced to the point that machines have almost entirely replaced human labor. As a result, the unnamed first-person narrator only works four hours, three days a week at the Social Security Administration where his human emotions are needed. Although the setting is not specified, there are several hints that point to the US: the mentioning of NASA, Steve Jobs, American bands, and the US constitution. Characters also have English names. One of the common methods of Chinese SF to assess sensitive topics that are targeted by Chinese censors such as the topic of state control, is a setting in a dystopian future version of the US to distract from the intended critical reflection of present-day China. In the history of Chinese SF, voicing criticism by means of changing the setting from China to another country or planet has been a conventional literary practice. A prominent example is the 1932 novel Cat Country (Maochengji 猫城记) by Lao She (老舍, 1899–1966), in which a society of feline people on Mars satirizes the Chinese nation’s decay at the turn of the twentieth century. A more recent example by another post-80s writer is Ma Boyong’s (马伯庸, b. 1980) “City of Silence” (Jijing zhi cheng 寂静之城, 2005) that can be read as a homage to George Orwell’s SF classic 1984. It goes without saying that in the case of “Ether,” the text also implicitly comments on the US. Zhang’s story uses the narrator’s weakened body as a trope to visualize the negative effects censorship has on individuals. Missing the stimulating social engagements from the past, the protagonist resorts to alcoholism to better endure the monotony and emptiness of his life. He thinks the meaningless messages online are causing his headache, whereupon he turns off the computer: “This boring life is killing my brain cells” (Zhang, “Yitai” 2–3). Although these headaches are most likely induced by his excessive drinking, his pain can be seen as a critique of censorship. This poetic link between the weak bodily constitution of literary characters and the socio-political conditions traces back to the Han dynasty (Hanchao 汉 朝, 206 BC–220 AD): “Social critique and the prospects of national salvation are expressed in terms of physical and mental illness, and writing is seen as both a cause and possible cure” (Isaacson 44). At the start of the twentieth century, the trope reached its peak as a site for social critique in

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both Chinese realism and SF. “Ether” is an example that the trope of the weak body is still relevant for contemporary Chinese SF writers. Yet even the protagonist cannot escape the monotony that is impairing him. Every day he follows a routine: he eats dinner in the same restaurant and wears an unchanging haircut. As if in trance (fadai 发呆), his torpid body moves about the city from one familiar place to another (16). This indicates that the protagonist perceives the changes but takes them for granted. In the course of the story, however, his role changes. According to Healey (516, 519), he embodies one of the “light sleepers” of Lu Xun’s iron house parable in the preface to Call to Arms (Nahan 呐喊, 1923), who are about to be enlightened and awakened to their terrifying reality. A contrasting character is the protagonist’s netpal Roy who is uncritical and accepts censorship due to the official legitimization as a means of maintaining security, stability, and harmony. Thus, he stands for the deluded masses of the iron house parable. This also applies to the figure of the psychiatrist whom the protagonist saw for his depression years ago. The protagonist recalls a conversation with his therapist in which the motif of death as a critique of censorship reappears: With interest, the psychiatrist leaned forward and said, “Tell me about these changes you are talking about.” “Something is dying.” I looked left and right, I continued in a low voice, “Don’t you smell the odor of decomposition? The commentators on TV, the columnists in the newspapers and in the online forums—the spirit of freedom is dying. It is like the mass extinction of mosquitoes who were exposed to DDT.” (Zhang, “Yitai” 28)

The graphic description affects the readers’ visual imagination and verbally stimulates their sense of smell. In this way, the text makes the readership explicitly aware of the negative effects of state control. Metaphorically, censorship is not only killing brain cells and the spirit of freedom, ultimately, it causes the death of the thinker. Through the trope of the protagonist’s pathologized body the story indicates what happens to those who think critically of censorship. When the “light sleeping” narrator laments about the frightening changes the psychiatrist responds with propaganda: “‘What I see is the progress of society and democracy. Has it ever occurred to you that your suspicion towards everything was caused by some kind of mental disorder that induces conspiracy theories?’” (28). As the protagonist remembers this

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phrase at the end of the story (36), the text emphasizes the effectiveness of political ideologies. Those who resist are pathologized, considered to be mentally ill, and treated with medication. This treatment of critical individuals in Zhang’s fiction is reminiscent of an approach from China’s history, when oppositionists (including people from science and education, artists and writers, thinkers and inconvenient politicians) were denounced as “counterrevolutionists” (fandong fenzi 反动分子) under Mao Zedong, especially during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Healey (521) suggests that the motif of pathologizing the protagonist, who wants to uncover the repressive structures, is a metatextual reference to Lu Xun’s “Diary of a Madman” (1918). The motif of “pills for harmony” can not only be found in Zhang’s story to criticize state control, but also in other works of contemporary Chinese SF such as the novel “The Fat Years” (Shengshi: Zhongguo, 2013 nian 盛世:中国, 2013年, 2009) by Chan Koonchung (陈冠中, b. 1952) and in the short story “The Lost Paradise” (Shileyuan 失乐园, 2019) by Regina Kanyu Wang (王侃瑜, b. 1990). In “Ether,” the psychiatrist personifies the government’s social control as he silences the protagonist and prescribes the pills before the latter could voice further disruptive concerns and possibly influence others: The psychiatrist put on his glasses, opened his notebook, and cut me off with a hand gesture before I could burst into an argument. […] The treatment was effective. Gradually, I got used to the dull TV programs and online forums. I got used to the quiet, simple, happy, and indifferent society. (Zhang, “Yitai” 28)

In this passage, the language used to describe the future society deserves a closer look. Two of the adjectives, “quiet” (pingjing 平静) and “indifferent” (pingyong 平庸), comprise the character 平 (ping, engl.: flat; calm; peaceful) which is also included in the characters for peace (ping’an 平安). At the same time, it is contained in 平叛 (pingpan) which means “suppress a rebellion.” With this wordplay, the story sharply criticizes and draws attention to the fact that in the Chinese context, peace and harmony are congruent with state surveillance and oppression. In contrast to the weakened and pathologized body, the story also presents the body as a form of resistance. Eventually, the underground “finger-­ talking” group decides to hold their first gathering in public. The narrator observes how more and more members join and “[…] silently [form] a continuously expanding circle” (29) until it holds over a hundred people.

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By meeting in the town square, they make their protest visible: “Hand in hand, the members of the finger-talking gathering form an irregular circle that resembles a silent wall” (31). Both the images of the circle closed by joining hands and of the human “silent wall” (chenmo de qiang 沉默的墙) symbolize the strength of resistance. Although the “finger-talkers” do not pose any real threat, they soon get arrested. When the police approaches the peaceful group, the members pass the characters 自由 (ziyou, freedom) through the circle: Freedom. Many fingers write quickly and forcefully into the center of many palms. Freedom. Everyone’s eyes are open and their mouths shut tight. Freedom. We shout silently at the top of our lungs to the black state machinery. (32)

The resistance group’s silent outcry (wusheng nahan 无声呐喊) puts the story in a metatextual relation to Lu Xun’s short story volume Call to Arms since this oxymoron consists of the collection’s title characters 呐喊 (nahan, to shout out loud; to shout). In his 1922 preface, Lu Xun declares that his stories are battle cries “[…] for those who are still fighting through their loneliness […]” and “[…] to alleviate their fear of the struggles ahead” (Lu 20). Consequently, the scene from “Ether” described above can be read as a call to action for the freedom of speech. “Ether” demonstrates that when something is or must be left out due to censorship, it is still present and sometimes the void is even more forceful than words because the blank spaces in the story are very telling. The pathologized bodies underline the story’s message that although state control is tight and harmful to individuals living under these conditions, there are still ways to resist in Chinese society.

Coda: The Politics of Post-80s Science Fiction My analysis suggests that Chinese post-80s SF authors like Chi Hui, Chen Qiufan, and Zhang Ran reinterpret the Chinese literary convention of the body as a site for social critique. Their narratives use the body trope in the most varied of ways. Hybrid bodies appear as human-animals (“Nest of Insects”) and human-machines (“The Flower of Shazui”). Gendered bodies illustrate the need for social and institutional changes in all three stories.

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In “Nest of Insects,” the body is used as a trope to discuss that China’s only children suffer from high parental and social pressure affecting their life choices (the transformation into non-human bodies). Through the gendered body, both “Nest of Insects” and “The Flower of Shazui” comment on the traditional, heterosexist norms that are increasingly restraining female bodies in twenty-first-century China (the bodily limitations of the alien males who depend on their female partners and the protagonist’s remote control over the female body). In its reinterpretation of the body trope, “The Flower of Shazui” further combines the literary tool of modern Chinese realism with elements of cyberpunk, a subgenre of Western SF (the engineered body modifications). The cyborg body is used to reveal the impact of modernization, commercialization, and consumer culture on individuals, and to criticize the moral degeneration of postmodern Chinese society. “Ether” endows the weakened and pathologized body with a double meaning of both being the victim of those in power (the depressed protagonist) and possessing the power to topple their system (the resistance group). The trope conveys a critical stance toward censorship and a call to action. The examples from the texts demonstrate that the post-80s writers contribute to the exceptional features of Chinese SF using a creative visual language, literary expression, rich imagination, and a seemingly inexhaustible ingenuity. In terms of both content and style, this generation of writers is outstanding for their multifacetedness. Even though the influence of the older “Big Three” authors Liu Cixin, Han Song, and Wang Jinkang is evident in the works of the post-80s generation, they clearly distinguish themselves by worldbuilding and the hero/heroine image. Liu Cixin and his peers create large-scale universes that depict the world from a macro perspective and their stories emphasize the preservation of the entire human race (Wang “‘Xin qingnian’”). In contrast, most stories written by post-80s writers are set in urban China such as Chen Qiufan’s “The Flower of Shazui” and Zhang Ran’s “Ether.” Another striking example is Hao Jingfang’s (郝景芳, b. 1984) award-winning novelette “Folding Beijing” (Beijing zhedie 北京折叠, 2014), a story that draws attention to social and spatial disparities in China. In these stories, the chronotope of the city expresses discomfort with China’s rapid transformations and the powerlessness of the individual (Schneider-Vielsäcker, “Spatiotemporal Explorations” 60). Similar to the body trope, the city in post-80s SF can

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thus be regarded as a microcosm to reflect individual feelings and perspectives concerning socio-political discourses in contemporary China. The differences between the author generations can also be illustrated by the hero/heroine figure. Apart from Han Song, who confronts his protagonists with hopeless situations, the authors of the older generation entrust their heroes with the responsibility of maintaining humanity’s continuity (Wang, “National Allegory” 73–74). Consequently, the hero feels a sense of duty to the collective destiny and acts as a leader or savior (72). Whereas the stories discussed in this chapter show that post-80s SF writers turn away from these classical heroic protagonists and instead, either present anti-heroes or entirely erase the hero/heroine from their narratives. The latter are then replaced by ordinary people or characters from marginalized social groups who must fight for their survival, thereby raising voices unheard in the official discourse. In this way, post-80s writers bring out a new literary force in Chinese SF that sheds light on the lived realities of underprivileged groups and the oppressive power structures in Chinese society. The self-perception of their non-heroic protagonists often reflects the so-called diaosi (屌丝, internet slang: loser)6 identity, which some Chinese born in or after 1980 adopt out of frustration over the unjust social reality. Since their efforts in achieving a solid career remain without success due to institutionalized disparities, they see themselves as “losers” (diaosi) (Kan 67–68). It is only Chi Hui who follows the tradition of the older author generation, albeit breaking with their gendered hero image and introducing female protagonists. Her heroines are willing to sacrifice themselves to save the world as they have the big picture in mind. Since all main characters of the analyzed stories are represented as alienated bodies, Chinese SF written by the post-80s generation allows readers to grasp the serious existential concern of the Chinese about the rapid and unsustainable economic growth, and the increasing social insecurities in twenty-first-century China. The narratives also reveal the expanding isolation of the individual in China’s postmodern society. These conveyed feelings of disorientation and meaninglessness that are experienced by China’s only children are the thematic link between all three discussed stories written by post-80s SF authors. At the same time, the post-80s writers’ stories respond to global challenges, which further highlights the relevance of this generation. 6  Diaosi is a cultural phenomenon that has emerged in an environment of increasing social inequality and status orientation, and that has spread rapidly on the Chinese internet since 2010 (Kan 67).

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CHAPTER 13

The Posthuman and the Neo-Baroque in Taiwan Science Fiction Mingwei Song

“Zhilishu” 支離疏, a phrase which literally means a body with broken limbs and deformed torso, first appears in “In the World of Men” 人間世, a chapter of Zhuangzi 莊子 (fourth century BCE), as a survivor exempted from military drafting and labor due to his deformity (Chen 138). This name reappears in the short story “Those Who Mourn” 傷逝者 (1984) by Chang Ta-chun 張大春 (b. 1957). Zhilishu is one of those “mutants” 畸 人who have survived three nuclear wars. Their life has mutated into a torturing existence: with their bodies broken, they are living in an everlasting trauma but can never die. Unlike Zhuangzi’s Taoist freeman, Zhilishu, as a character in Chang’s story, is drafted to serve in the military, as a moving target, shot again and again, never killed. Like in Zhuangzi, he lives as a queer creature in the world of men, but he yearns for death. Chang Ta-chun, a prolific novelist, wrote only a couple of science fiction stories and never assumed a fixed identity as a genre writer. His position is shared by other authors who wrote some of the most important

M. Song (*) Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. Song et al. (eds.), Chinese Science Fiction, Studies in Global Science Fiction, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53541-3_13

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science fiction stories and novels in Taiwan between the 1960s and the beginning of the twenty-first century. As Lin Jianqun points out, science fiction has arguably been part of the mainstream literature in Taiwan since its inception in the late 1960s (Lin 1–8). This situation differs from what has happened in the People’s Republic of China, where science fiction has always been conceptualized as a genre, sometimes a popular genre, with its targeted readership as young adults. Since the late 1990s, a Chinese new wave has gained momentum and, after the phenomenal success of Liu Cixin’s 劉慈欣 (b. 1963) The Three-Body Problem 三體 (2007), made a deep impact on the field of contemporary Chinese literature (Song 2016 546–547). What I have recognized as science fictionality has begun to emerge in many different branches and genres of Chinese literature. In comparison, the new wave brand of science fiction emerged much earlier in Taiwan, at about the same time when the Anglo-American New Wave began to make an impact on the global subculture of the late 1960s. Science fiction in Taiwan did not suffer a setback as it did in China, after being attacked during the 1983 campaign against the spiritual pollution. In Taiwan, the genre has sustained a longer and continuous development, and science fictionality has prevailed as a more popular literary element in contemporary Taiwan literature. The genre’s strong self-conscious literary newness, combined with its visionary reconfiguration of alternative identities, societies, and futures, has given it a sharp edge to engage both social criticism and textual fabulations. While Chang Ta-chun’s “Those Who Mourn” has perhaps been an isolated case among the author’s oeuvres, a rare experiment which has been largely forgotten by contemporary readers and critics, Zhilishu should be rescued from oblivion and recast as a mythological figure that, as I try to suggest in this chapter, attains a symbolic centrality in relation to Taiwan science fiction’s uniqueness, queerness, and posthuman tendencies. Representing the absurdities of the existentialist crises on both individual and national levels, Zhilishu should have not existed as he is if our society were an ideal world. He should either live freely as human as possible, or just perish as the dispensable expense of human struggle. But his destiny as a posthuman anomaly enables him to bear witness to history—a history filled with more violence and treachery than we see on the surface. Zhilishu’s grotesque and incomplete body testifies to an apocalyptic uncertainty that unsettles everything we take for granted. In Chang’s story, Zhilishu is a new species that adapts to a deteriorating post-­ apocalyptic world. He both embodies the world’s aggravating inhuman

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conditions and demonstrates a posthuman fluidity, an in-between status, a defiance of the either-or scenario, and a deferral to the inevitability. Zhilishu lives as a queer creature that has no belonging, no kinship, but he remembers all that has happened, his own body a vivid shape of Taiwan’s atrocious history. The year 1984 when Chang Ta-chun wrote “Those Who Mourn” is a significant year in the alternative history of Orwell’s dystopian fiction. Contrary to the Orwellian prophecy, the world in 1984 was embracing a “new hope,” like in Star Wars (1977), when Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Deng Xiaoping, and Chiang Ching-kuo were all making certain changes to avoid an inevitable endgame. Three years before Taiwan’s lift of the Martial Law (1987), 1984 saw the joint declaration of the United Kingdom and PRC on the handover of Hong Kong. The 1980s was a relatively more hopeful decade in East Asia, Eastern Europe, and pro-democracy movements flourished in nations around the globe. By the end of the decade, Francis Fukuyama’s wishful hope that history had ended in a global triumph of the free-market-oriented liberalism seemed to have given the twentieth century a rational finale. This illusive sense of ending has been fermented during the 1960–1980s, even before the end of the Cold War, which was also a time period when science fiction, a literature of future, was becoming increasingly popular around the world. But Zhilishu’s deformed body and unsatisfied yearning for death cast a dark shadow over this hope. In 1984, before freedom came to Taiwan, Chang Ta-chun’s story uncannily predicted a sophisticated network of conspiracies, corruptions, and coercions that might have all started with the best intention to bring a new hope to the world. Only Zhilishu, the queer posthuman outcast, sees the invisible darkness of history, knows that there is no redemption at any point of the so-called human progress, which never brings a peaceful end to struggles but keeps dramatizing the plots of human tragicomedies in every tiny step, decision, and subconscious gesture of those Machiavellians who are making and remaking the world a new Leviathan, with brawls and tricks hidden beneath a shining, orderly stage displaying slogans of peace and justice. Did Chang Ta-chun, a sharp social critic and political analytic, predict Taiwan’s future in “Those Who Mourn”—such as the bipartisan politics that would rise soon and grow into a frenzy of deception and conspiracy, which is not unlike what is described in Chang’s story? Perhaps that does not matter. What matters is that his science fiction has crystalized the melancholia of history in the posthuman image of Zhilishu, who illuminates

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what is hidden in the dark unknown, the chaos and destinies yet to come. I take Zhilishu as a prototype in Taiwan science fiction. He is not the only one as his name suggests but reappears in different forms in a long list of science fiction stories and novels that Taiwan writers would produce in the next several decades. The later works were perhaps not directly inspired by Chang Ta-chun’s story, but they shared the same acute political sensitivities and aesthetic sensibilities, with their world-building centering on the queer, the nonbinary, the posthuman being. Far ahead of the PRC new wave science fiction, Taiwan writers, since the 1960s, have created the posthuman imagery with references to the prevailing or impending crises, ranging from the political to environmental, from the technological to the ethical. Under heavy influences from Western literature, including the Anglo-American New Wave science fiction and the literary experimentalists who borrowed motifs from the genre, two or three generations of Taiwan modernist and postmodern writers confronted global events like their Western counterparts. In Taiwan, they faced the uncertainties of the Cold War, the unbridled market economy, drastic reshuffling of political powers, and the increasingly complicated identity confusion. They lived through a sequence of landmark historical events: Taiwan’s loss of its seat in the United Nation in 1971; Nixon’s visit to China in 1972; the death of Chiang Kai-shek in 1975; PRC’s opening and reform in 1979; and Chiang Ching-kuo’s own reform and policy change, which led to the tolerance for political dissidents, allowance for free press, rapid democratization in politics, and the rise of the opposition party—the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 1986, the first direct presidential election in 1996, and DPP’s victory in the presidential election in 2000. During these unsettling time periods, science fiction kept a strong position in Taiwan literature, with several generations of writers devoted to experimenting with the genre. Through science fictional visions, they explored the uncertainties of the nation’s future, amplified the inner tensions and quarrels in the bipartisan politics, vitalized the queerness of Taiwan as a territory without a proper sovereign right, outlined the impending doomsday scenario with China’s threat with military invasion, and contributed to the complexity of Taiwan’s localizing culture which mingled cosmopolitanism with decolonization. Over the past five decades, the posthuman has remained a dominant theme and literary trope in Taiwan’s science fiction. The posthuman edge radicalizes questions concerning gender, sexuality, ethnicity, ecology, and the fundamental binary

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differences between the human subjectivity and the nonhuman otherness. The political, ethical, environmental, and ethnic questions have been transformed into speculative puzzles and posthuman wonders in science fiction. This chapter can best serve to outline a brief history of the posthuman in Taiwan’s science fiction, with a view toward appreciating how this literary image ushers us to a Neo-Baroque epoch, an era of cultural abundance, with its own aesthetics of multiplicity that resists any effort of imposing a sense of singularity to contemporary Taiwan.

The Superman and the Mutant Science fiction, as a serious literary genre, landed in Taiwan in 1968, against the global backdrop of the prevailing protest toward the old-school humanist tradition. The first two well-known science fiction works published in Taiwan both feature the posthuman as a central figure. Chang Hsiao-feng’s 張曉風 (b. 1941) “Pandora” 潘渡娜 (1968) reminds of Frankenstein, centering on a female protagonist who is the product of genetic engineering. The story posits the ethical question concerning the woman’s human identity and suggests that she is human because of her self-conscious inquiry of her own identity. The author, a woman, clearly shows compassion toward Pandora and confirms that this posthuman creature, even though without being granted a human identity, should be granted the equal “human” right. Soon after, Chang Hsi-kuo 張系國 (b. 1944), arguably the father of Taiwan science fiction, published a novella, “Biography of the Superman” 超人列傳 (1968). This second science fiction made in Taiwan has a much larger scope than Chang Hsiao-feng’s story. Also published in 1968, this second story shares a similar posthuman motif. Chang’s novella predicts a future when posthuman transformation has been widely accepted by the social elites. A scientist voluntarily turns himself into a cyborg, transplanting his brain into a metallic body, so that he can live longer, freer, better devoted to scientific research. He is not the first to do so; actually, he is the 126th Superman (Chang H. 2002, 99). When the smartest of the human race all choose to become Supermen, their cyberized consciousness contributes to the evolution of the artificial intelligence, which eventually leads to a decision that the organic human race, now considered inferior to the Supermen, must be terminated. The novella injects a dose of Nietzschean transhumanism into the cold rationalism underlining the Superman Project. A Japanese scientist tells

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the protagonist: “You must abandon those human-centric ideas” (Chang H. 2002, 107). Nevertheless, Chang’s protagonist, a Chinese scientist, like the I-narrator in “Pandora,” chooses heart over mind. Superman No. 126, knowing that the doomsday for humans is coming, takes a boy and a girl, his Adam and Eve, into deep space, rebuilding a Garden of Eden on a habitable planet, from where the human civilization is restarted. Chang’s narrative leaves a key question unanswered regarding whether the Superman evolution is morally justified or not—as the ending of the novella shows that this new civilization, which is “human, all too human,” proves once again the imperfection and fallacy of humanity, repeating the same history of degenerating, sinning, killing, and self-destroying. The Superman-God abandons them to their own self-destruction. Chang Hsi-kuo’s science fiction assumed two levels of universalism: treating human race as a whole; seeking a universal symbolism of the Chineseness. The first universalism is perhaps the hallmark of the genre after two World Wars. For the second universalism, Chang does not differentiate Taiwan and China in a story about the human fate. This second idea is particularly reflected in his magnum opus The City Trilogy 城三部 曲 (1983–1991). By the time when he was immersed in a systematic world building in The City Trilogy with an allegorical rewriting of Chinese history, a young generation of writers emerged in the field, whose attention was more closely focused on Taiwan instead of a universal Chinese civilization. In addition to Chang Ta-chun, these new writers include Huang Fan 黃凡 (b. 1950), Yeh Yen-tu 葉言都 (b. 1949), Sung Tse-lai 宋澤萊 (b. 1952), Ping Lu 平路 (b. 1953), Ho Ching-pin 賀景濱 (b. 1958), and Lin Yao-te 林耀德 (1962–1996). Like Chang Ta-chun, the other writers were not exclusively devoted to writing science fiction but versatile with both realism and genre fiction. In 1981, Huang Fan published two novellas to wide acclaims, the realistic “The Great Time” 大時代 and the post-apocalyptic “Zero” 零. Both works present a postmodern reflection on the treacherous, dark sides of a seemingly hopeful or utopian society. When the protagonist of “Zero” comes near the truth of his world, he realizes that even the rebellion he joins has also been under the control of the authorities, designed and created for the purpose of better controlling the population’s “rebellious” impulses (Huang 2011, 149). The same logic is presented in “The Great Time” that more lucidly presents the defeat of idealism in a cold capitalist society where everyone is driven by dark desires while guessing the others’ hidden motivations, but all are under control of the inhuman capitals

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(Huang 1989, 27–57). Science fiction and critical realism form a mutual illumination in Huang Fan’s writings. For the generation of Huang Fan and Chang Ta-chun, the Superman, whether it stands for Nietzsche or Einstein, is no more. The authorities are no longer the embodiment of power. In Chang Ta-chun’s famous short story “Lucky Worries about His Country” 四喜憂國 (1987), the President has died, but Lucky Zhu is obsessed with writing “Proclamations to All Soldiers, Civilians, and Countrymen” to keep alive the political legacy of the great dictator (Chang T. 1988, 125–145). Furthermore, in the writings of this generation, as seen in either Huang Fan’s or Chang Ta-chun’s political fiction, the great men are often revealed to be no more than petty conspirators, whose heart of darkness is thinly veiled by their self-invented political mythologies. “Those Who Mourn” can also be read as a political story. The focus of its surface plotline is the impending presidential election between the “Loving-People Party” 愛民黨 (LPP) and the “Assisting-­ People Party” 助民黨 (APP). The main plot of the story unfolds after the assassination of Lu Zhi 盧稚, an ambassador who originally was the lover of the founding chairperson of the APP, Li Hailun 黎海倫, and now represented the LPP to visit his home state, a key swing state, called Bulong 布龍 autonomous state. Agent Ontario 安大略, also originally a native of this state, comes to investigate the case days before the election and detests a secretive connection between the suicidal assassin, a military staff member named Ge Minlang 葛敏郎, and his live target from thirteen years ago, that unique mutant called by the strange name, Zhilishu. Even though the assassination has been widely believed to be a political conspiracy, which could frame the establishment of the LPP to assist the APP, or do the reverse, helping reduce the popularity of the APP if the LPP propaganda could make it look like that the APP was staging this tragedy purposefully—killing off the party chief’s ex-lover to frame the rival so as to win the election—which would be scandalous enough to ruin Li Hailun’s reputation as a benevolent, loving woman leader—even so, Ontario decides to take a personal travel to go deep into the forbidden territory called Tianwei Province 天尾州. Tianwei Province has exactly the size of the People’s Republic of China minus Taiwan—9.56 million square kilometers (Chang 1989, 140)—which is 9.6 million minus 0.04 million, while Taiwan’s size is 0.0359  million square kilometers. Three nuclear wars all happened in Tianwei Province. The once highly civilized Tianwei Province has become a total wasteland inhabited by only two surviving species: the mutants and cockroaches. “According to legend, the mutants

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are the only surviving prehistoric humans in the world after the third nuclear war. Many of them live together with a large variety of cockroaches in the Tianwei Province preservation area in the southern frontier of the autonomous state. While cockroaches can reproduce, mutants cannot; however, cockroaches eventually die while mutants are immortal. Mutants have strange features, with their facial features pointing upward and consisting of various small tubes with the function of eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. They have large humps on their shoulders, which are believed to be able to store a large amount of nutrients and water, making their shoulders much higher than their heads. Their long arms hang all the way down to the ground, and their only leg is usually kept short, but can spring up hundreds of meters when running or jumping, moving faster than sound.” (Chang 1989, 121; translation is mine). As noted earlier in this chapter, Zhilishu is a name borrowed from Zhuangzi, in which those whose forms are twisted and whose bodies are deformed are yet able to support themselves and live out their days in the natural course (Chen 138). In Chang’s version, Zhilishu is a grotesque undead, living in eternal hell. He seeks death but cannot die. So, he tries to make sense of his life. He cannot forget anything, and he connects many things. Thus, Zhilishu becomes a witness to all the human and inhuman sufferings, political conspiracies, and power struggles among the ambitious Machiavellians. However, Zhilishu does not find the meaning of his life in all these, but when he serves as a practice target for soldiers to shoot, he finds the meaning of life through an unusual cross-species encounter, communication, and friendship with Ge Minlang, who later becomes the assassin. When Ontario finds Zhilishu to make investigation about the motivation of Ge Minlang’s suicidal assassination, Zhilishu tells him that thirteen years ago when he served as the life target for Ge to shoot, they appeared in each other’s dreams and gradually developed genuine concern for each other. Ge Minlang hoped that Zhilishu could die as he wished; Zhilishu hoped that Ge could focus on shooting without being distracted by his care for his life target. When Ge Minlang said that “death can also be a beautiful beginning” (Chang 1989, 145) upon Zhilishu’s departure after completing his five-year service, Zhilishu began to worry for Ge Minlang. When Ge returned to Tianwei a few days ago to bid farewell to Zhilishu, it became clear that what he planned to do had nothing to do with a political conspiracy. He only wanted to help Zhilishu. Decades ago, when Li Hailun and Lu Zhi were hiding in the wasteland of Tianwei Province,

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Zhilishu kept them safe and saw them making love, which he considered to be more beautiful than the mating of cockroaches. The idealism of the two lovers gave Zhilishu a hope with the first understanding of what life meant to the new human beings born after the nuclear wars. As a token of thanks to Zhilishu, Li Hailun offered her promise to nuke the wasteland all over again to give all the mutants a real death. Ge Minlang assassinated Lu Zhi, the ambassador for the LPP, with a naïve belief that this would give Li Hailun a chance to be elected as the president so she would cash her promise. Ontario, who had been neutralized in order to be a totally disciplined agent, shares Zhilishu’s posthuman incompleteness and understands all that Zhilishu says. After unraveling Ge Minlang’s plot of assassination, Ontario mourns those who are dead, and he fully understands what Zhilishu said many years ago to Ge Minlang: mourning is nothing but self-pity (Chang 1989, 145). Ontario, a seasoned agent, pities both Zhilishu and himself. He is not as naïve as Ge Minlang, knowing only too well that both the ruling party and the opposition party rely on lies to gain public support. Zhilishu’s pleading for a real death and Li Hailun’s promise are meaningless in this political game confused by an accidental assassination. Facing Zhilishu on the wasteland, surrounded by piles of cockroach corpses, Ontario does not have the heart to tell this mutant the ugly truth of the human world, which is: nobody is honest; no real life is worth a real death. In 1968, Chang Hsi-kuo created the image of the Superman who transcends the human mortality and fragility but still falls prey to the human emotion; Chang Ta-chun, in 1984, created the posthuman image of Zhilishu, whose immortality becomes a curse, and through his friendship with the human soldier Ge Minlang, Chang described a trans-species love that occurs in the act of killing. The neutralized Federal Agent Ontario, whose sadness envelopes the entire narrative, sees in Zhilishu, this uncategorizable anomaly, not only his own melancholia, but also the bleak tragedy of the entire human race. In Zhilishu, Chang Ta-chun illuminates the true, innocent meaning of life, no matter how grotesque and horrible Zhilishu’s body appears to be. It is the innate compassion that animals and humans share, the liquid love in a “moral party of two” (Bauman 82) that breaks down all the boundaries. Zhilishu, who is not a complete human, is symbolic of the absence of totality and completeness, the absence of solution and determination, the missing of a human-centric piece which makes its posthuman shape estranging and queer. At the same time, Zhilishu, who witness and absorbs all, is also the very piece that makes

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itself a whole, a whole of baroque that does not need to bend to any standard rule, submit to the authority of any category, or lose its queerness to the totality and completeness. In Zhilishu, a Neo-Baroque world that is not built upon straight lines of progress but folds upon folds emerges. The last human visitor who meets Zhilishu, Ontario knows nobody holds onto memories like Zhilishu, a moving reminder of war and torture, and nothing holds its integrity like this broken creature that has no shape. It is the different that differences. In Zhilishu, a new world begins.

The Queer and the Cyborg When Lee Teng-hui won the first direct presidential election in 1996, a writer who was a decade younger than Chang Ta-chun published his most important science fiction novella, The Membranes 膜. By that time, this writer, Chi Ta-wei 紀大偉 (b. 1972), had established his identity as a queer science fiction writer of Taiwan. Ten years later, Chi, after completing his Ph.D. study at UCLA, created his own equation: Taiwan Queer Science Fiction is a chimera consisting of three parts that are not only compatible but also equal in definition, which makes Taiwan a queer in science fiction, or science fiction a queer manifestation of Taiwaneseness, or the queer essential to Taiwanese science fiction (Chi 2006, 19). It suggests a big jump to say that all the three terms are interchangeable: Taiwan is equal to the queer, which is equal to science fiction—the order of the identities overcome differentiation. Chi’s equation is metaphorical, and what is hidden at the center of this metaphor is perhaps a Zhilishu, even though it is only my speculation that Chang Ta-chun’s story and Chi Ta-wei’s theory are entangled. Chi Ta-wei and Hung Ling 洪凌 (b. 1971), another queer writer of a variety of genres including science fiction, fantasy, and vampire story, were perhaps the first two self-conscious writers who created the posthuman images in Taiwan literature. Their two long treatises on the erotic utopia (Chi 2006, 17–48) and the fantastic cityscape and monstrous cyborg (Hung, 49–78) laid the foundation for the posthuman studies in Taiwan. Both articles were published in Chung Wai Literature 中外文學: a 2006 special issue with a thematic focus on the Taiwan Science Fiction Studies. Their queer perspective on science fiction’s transgression and transfiguration in relation to the mushrooming of Taiwan’s independence-oriented political consciousness was synchronized with the rise of the queer literature, represented by Chiu Miao-chin 邱妙津 (1969–1995) whose suicide

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in Paris sharpened the edge of a subversive literary force that empties the foundation of all that is solid in the old-fashioned literary establishment. A queer revolution brought Taiwan to the forefront of a futuristic vision of the posthuman. The posthuman theories began to emerge in the 1980s–1990s in the Western academic world, as represented by theorists such as Donna J. Haraway, Rosi Bradotti, and N. Katherine Hayles, who all took over the deconstructionism from Foucault and Deleuze and amplified a force of liberation, which shattered the core system of modernity: the Enlightenment, human-centric historiography, and reason and rationalism. The posthuman is symbolic of difference, a newness that has not been defined. Often represented in monstrosity, alienness, transgression, metamorphosis, trans-anthropo-centric vision, and cybernetic fabrication, the posthuman image heightens the awareness of inclusive otherness. It implies constructing alternatives to the conventional image of humanity, and diverse cultural representations of the posthuman dismantle the commonly accepted identities of race, gender, sexuality, class, and other social constructs of the self. In terms of cultural politics, the posthuman both evokes a recognition of difference and inspires a nonbinary tolerance to accept difference as essential to a posthuman consciousness. This attitude, which is closer to a posthumanism, prevailed among writers in Taiwan after the lift of the Martial Law. Its inception can be traceable to Chu T’ien-wen’s 朱天文 (b. 1956) short story “Fin-de-Siècle Splendor” 世紀末的華麗 (1990) and novel Notes of a Desolate Man 荒人 手記 (1994), both of which present a nonbinary notion of gender, love, and utopia, from where a decadent aesthetics counterbalance the gravitational pull centering on an orderly humanist world. The young woman who rebuilds the world from ashes with memories of colors and smells in “Fin-de-Siècle Splendor” (Zhu 402) and the gay man in Notes of a Desolate Man who is envisioning an erotic utopia, where desolation can become a foundation of a new civilization that replaces our ruined old system (Chu 46)—these two images created by Chu T’ien-wen completely changed the literary landscape of the post-Martial Law Taiwan. They open to a fluid, diverse, nonbinary literary universe, which transcends the twentieth century, a century of modernity defined by dichotomy and dualistic thinking, filled with wars and atrocities, and ushers us into a brave new century, a world of the Neo-Baroque. The term “Neo-Baroque” has appeared in many areas—architecture, fine art, cinema—such as Raúl Ruiz’s “dark and oceanic” Neo-Baroque

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poetics of film—and philosophy—such as Gilles Deleuze’s elucidations of the Leibnizian (and Foucauldian) fold in science, epistemology and aesthetics—and culture in general—such as Omar Calabrese’s interpretation of the “Neo-Baroque” as a sign of the instability, virtuosity, changeability, polydimensionality of the entire contemporary culture. Even though named “Neo-Baroque,” it does not signify a simple return to the age of Baroque (1600–1750), but a sweeping epistemological shift like what happened when Galileo found Jupiter’s four satellites. Like what the Baroque brought out, it suggests a restlessness that takes many forms in scientific and cultural changes, which pushes toward a new departure from all that has been solid, established and essentialized. Unlike the popular term “postmodern,” Neo-Baroque gives up the linear image of time, suggesting a curve, a labyrinth, and a fold in space, movement, and time, which cannot be straightened or abstracted, and which is the opposite to the totalistic tendency of understanding the world with a view toward appreciating a (failed) ideology, an (abandoned) theory of everything, or a futile reaffirmation of the binary thinking. Deleuze says: “The Baroque refers not to an essence but rather to an operative function, to a trait. It endlessly produces folds … The Baroque fold unfurls all the way to infinity” (Deleuze 3). Calabrese considers the Neo-Baroque “a spirit of age” “that pervades many of today’s cultural phenomena in all fields of knowledge,” which he uses to “associate certain current scientific theories (catastrophe, fractals, dissipative structures, theories of chaos and complexity, and so on) with certain forms of art, literature, philosophy, and even cultural consumption” (Calabrese, xii). The Neo-Baroque is like a grand theory that unites all human knowledges and arts, but it does not unify them, but rather gives each position an entire universe filled with infinite folds. I have identified the Neo-Baroque in contemporary Chinese nonbinary science fiction in the very recent years (Song 2023), but looking back at the history of Taiwan literature, the Neo-Baroque as a motion that highlighted its fluidity and infinite folds appeared in the late twentieth century—“Fin-de-Siècle Splendor” has already opened to a new century. Even though “Fin-de-Siècle Splendor” is not a science fiction story, it takes a futuristic narrative form, telling the story of the last decade from the year of 2000 instead of 1990, which was the actual year when the story was composed. This story increased the dimensions of the post-Martial Law Taiwan literature to such an extent that it created a mega-text for the later Taiwan literature, including science fiction. It was remarkable that Chu T’ian-wen wrote her story at the same historical moment when

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Deleuze and Calabrese first conceived the philosophy of the Neo-Baroque, and when the two Chilean exiles in Iberian Peninsula, Raúl Ruiz and Roberto Bolaño, were creating the Neo-Baroque cinema and the Neo-­ Baroque novel for the twenty-first century. Chu was very likely not aware of her European contemporaries. But the same structure of feeling, the same way of seeing, and the similar epistemological paradigm connected Taiwan and Iberia. A story about the decadence and splendor of the “new humankind” 新人類, Chu’s story features abundant metaphors, multilayered narratives, erotica and nihilism, which conclude in an apocalyptic revelation: “The abyssal blue of the lake tells her that the world men have built with theories and systems will collapse, and she with her memory of smells and colors will survive and rebuild the world from here” (Zhu 402). Smells and colors are positioned to challenge theories and systems, which open to the hidden folds that bypass the checkpoints of reason and rationality. With a rather modest scope, Chu’s story is an ambitious sketch of a new world, a prelude to a new literary epoch. Notes of A Desolate Man offered a fuller, more acute sense of queerness, which was picked up by a homosexual writer, Chi Ta-wei. His science fiction world-building is grounded upon Chu T’ien-wen’s Neo-Baroque style and increased the density of the linguistic folds in his experiments with literary style and identity fluidity. Chi’s short story, “Beneath His Eyes, In Your Palm, a Red Rose Is About to Bloom” 他的眼底，你的掌心，即將綻放一朵紅玫瑰 (1994), which the author claims to be unfinished, presents an infinitely folded Baroque labyrinth in its extremely complex narrative. The short story creates an abyssal fold in its textuality: the narrator’s posthuman identity is split infinitely into a series of phantom-like entities engaged in an endless conversation, which is also a conversation between the author and the text, or the text and the reader (I and you, Maker and the posthuman being, the original and the cloned copy): You are just like an intriguing story. And I am reading you. In your ever-­ turning pages, I discover loose threads and flaws. Me reading you like this, is it an intrusion? You should be able to sympathize. Because this is necessary for understanding you. Don’t forget: we are of the same body, we have to live together; I have to get to know you well. Now you are feeling drowsy, and can’t pay any mind to my reading. In that case, have a good sleep, I’m a quiet reader; this time, let me accompany you quietly, protect you serenely. (Chi 2011, 194; translation is Nathaniel Isaacson’s)

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In Chi’s story, a gay couple’s experiment with genetics leads to infinitely cloned posthuman “self” that goes through an apocalyptic split into endless personifications, which all blend in a dream where there is no way to tell what is true and what is illusive (Chi 2011, 193–234). Chi’s narrative has a chilling, desperate beauty in its depiction of the infinitely folded darkness in a plotline that combines the atmosphere of Film Noir and the bleak style of the cult Sci-fi classic Blade Runner (1982). The textuality is like Chang Ta-chun’s Zhilishu, an absurd anomaly, whose inclusiveness and shapelessness makes any cognitive clarity impossible. Without any allusion to Chang’s “Those Who Mourn,” Chi’s story is also about espionage and political struggles in a futuristic setting. The narrative presents a conspiracy that involves everyone in the story, including “you” and “me,” (the story or reader and the I-narrator or author) who are all products of a pair of homosexual “daddies” self-replicating their own clones capable of changing genders. A voice speaks to “you,” reading your history and sending “you” (or “I”?) to investigate a program called “Mirror of the Underworld” 冥鏡 produced by the SM company. SM stands for SIMULATE MIRACLES. “You” are tempted by Feifei but have a physical relationship with Theseus, who seems to be Feifei’s brother. “You” are indulged in the illusions created by the Mirror of the Underworld, imagining the ecstasy of the incestuous intimacy with “your” sister Alicia in the Mediterranean. But Feifei suddenly breaks into “your” illusion, and her henchmen tear Alicia into pieces. “You” take out a gun, which turns into a rose that Theseus has given to “you.” The truth beneath all these illusions emerges: a pair of gay lovers, Rick Deckard and Roy Baty, transform sperm into egg and conceive a life, a male child. The two lovers eventually break up, and Deckard continues to work for SM, while Baty switches to work for SM’s rival EMPIRE. Deckard continues to create 24 children with his own sperm and eggs, each named with a letter, including Feifei and Theseus. Baty invents the hallucinogen “Mirror of the Underworld” and keeps changing the gender of their child. The child has repeatedly changed gender and has a history of addiction to hallucinogens. A hundred years later, EMPIRE implants new memories into the child and sends him to investigate the “Mirror of the Underworld” produced by SM. Now the child’s consciousness has invaded Deckard’s body, and the latter is reading the child’s history. In the end, the child takes the gun from the right hand controlled by Deckard’s consciousness with the left hand controlled by the boy’s consciousness, and he is about to shoot, a rose is about to bloom in the palm of Deckard’s right hand. By the end of the narrative,

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it is clear that the narrator “I” is Deckard, and “you” is the child, but at the very last moment of the narrative, the child becomes “I” who has the agency now and shoots “you” (the creator Deckard). However, by this moment, “you” are inside “my” body, so your palm is also my palm. There is no difference between “you” and “I,” the human creator and the posthuman creature, the original and the cloned copy, the author and the reader, and the text and the world. All blend into one consciousness before a red, red rose blooms, a consciousness that has no differentiation from its own replica. Chi Ta-wei’s career as a science fiction writer was very short, but he left a number of excellent works whose literary values are unrivaled in the entire Sinophone science fiction world. The best example is his novella, The Membranes, a classic that appeared far ahead of the current new wave SF in China and has recently been translated into English. This novella creates a dazzling multiplicity in its narrative design: there are multiple versions of truths, which are programmed to hide the singular truth. The title links four layers of meaning: the protagonist Momo, the Japanese prototype of the protagonist’s name after the fruit peach, memory, and membrane as a medium. The story takes place in the twenty-first century when the ozone layer ruptures, and the waterproof membrane is created to protect humans living in underwater bubble world distanced from the heavily polluted surface land. The membrane, as a medium, refers to the interface between the human haven and the hazardous outside reality, but it also refers to the technology of skin memory. Momo believes that she is a beautician specializing in skin membranes. The novella gradually reveals multiple versions of truth beneath this futuristic illusion, as Momo’s experiences are presented as a series of folds in the text. The Neo-Baroque wonders of Momo’s world consist of multilayered realities and unrealities: in the first layer of reality, Momo is a beautician who repairs and massages the bodies of clients; in the second layer of reality, Momo is a biochemical cyborg used by the ISM system to repair combat biochemical robots—the pastoral underwater bubble is an illusion while the reality unfolds as endless warfare; in the third layer of reality, it is revealed that Momo’s memories are implanted by her mother. Momo is a test-tube baby born to a lesbian couple, but she is unexpectedly born male and suffers from the LOGO disease. At the age of ten, she undergoes surgery to change her gender, but when her disease aggravates, her mother hands Momo over to the ISM company, which saves her brain. In despair, her mother agrees to let ISM company experiment with Momo’s cyborgian existence: her

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biochemical body works on the war robots, and her consciousness is immersed in a simulated underwater environment where she believes she is a beautician specializing in skin membranes. In reality, the extraction of skin memory from the skin membrane conceals the extraction of military information. Momo’s story hides three levels of memories: the memory implanted by her mother, the virtual memory installed by ISM, and Momo’s residual memory as a human being. Thus, as a posthuman being, Momo is only a memory that is being installed in a cyborgian body while her function is actually to mend the war machines in an arsenal. The story continues Chi’s extremely dense aestheticism in his earlier story. Chi’s most important science fiction work, The Membranes remains a unique alterity in terms of genre-crossing and gender reflexivity. Chi’s beautiful, mesmerizing, provocative narrative creates a splendid labyrinth of metaphors and significances that leads to a revelation about the posthuman changeability in a matrix of monotonous inhumanity. Chi Ta-wei’s science fiction has strong political implications about Taiwan’s queer status as a democracy born of an old dictatorship and constantly facing the danger of another dictatorship’s military invasion, but his stories also have a transcendental, metaphysical strength in its inventiveness in language, narrative, and world building. A decade after Chi stopped publishing science fiction stories, another Taiwan writer, Egoyan 伊格言 (b. 1977), who wrote science fiction novels at the same time when the Chinese new wave emerged, revived Chi Ta-wei’s dream narrative and created an entire dream universe in his novels. Egoyan’s The Dream Devourers 噬夢人 (2010) is a posthuman epic about the century-long espionage war between humans and cyborgs in the twenty-third century. K, the protagonist and an agent serving the human side, who hunts down many cyborgs pretending to be human (a clear allusion to Deckard, the borrowed character in Chi Ta-wei’s short story, who is actually the bounty hunter in Blade Runner or Philip K. Dick’s original novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). In Egoyan’s posthuman epic, K eventually comes to a poignant realization that he too is a cyborg but programmed to believe he is a human. Such a difficult posthuman self-knowledge, enforced by his own epiphany about his overcomplicated identity, not only gives K a deeper understanding of the artificiality in the two opposing identities but also enlightens readers to dismantle the distinctions across those assumed binary categories. As a character says in the novel: “Since her teenage days, she has firmly believed that there should not be any discrimination between humans and cyborgs” (Egoyan 2010, 238). When

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situated in Taiwan’s own political context, these certainly include discriminations in identities, ethnicities, and ideologies. When situated in the context involving Taiwan and China, interpretations of the dream have become a political weapon in Egoyan’s narrative to resist the oversimplification of a singular form of dream. Egoyan’s novel is presented as a dream narrative that invites multiple interpretations, with his own text designed as a future product filled with annotations, a text that is becoming. Its scope and complexity are unrivaled as a posthuman epic as well as a handbook of the posthuman knowledge. Ten years after the publication of The Dream Devourer, Egoyan’s Zero Degree of Separation 零度分離 (2021) added more complexities to the TDD universe. A novel consisting of six chapters, it is a text whose biggest mystery is about its authorship. Is the author human or a cyborg, or something else, certainly posthuman? This is the ultimate question that flows throughout the text. The appendix to the novel is an interview conducted by a character from The Dream Devourer with the author who has been assigned a female name. But who is she? There is no certain answer. The novel, published during the pandemic when separation and isolation are routines, is about intimacy, love, and complete identification. The first story, “Say I Love You Once More” 再說一次我愛你, presents the clearest interpretation of love, which transcends species; the mother in the story, distanced from her son due to her devotion to the study of the language of whales, utters a sentence to him at last, which he understands years later after she died: “I Love You,” said in the language of whales (Egoyan 2021, 42). Zero Degree of Separation represents a great effort to break down barriers between genders, species, and between the human and posthuman. It converges in a new dreamscape in which all are equal with zero degree of separation. Both works by Egoyan, The Dream Devourer and Zero Degree of Separation, exhibit the complexity of the Neo-Baroque posthuman narrative. At the core of both novels is the revelation about the reconciliation transcending all boundaries, between sexes, races, classes, species, human and machine, and even between the text and its readers. What is the ultimate meaning of “Zero Degree of Separation” for a novel that has so many unsolved puzzles? In terms of textual politics, it signifies the dissolution of boundaries between the author’s vision and the text that is being written as well as the reader’s understanding and the text that is being read. “Me reading you like this, is it an intrusion?”

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Tomorrow and Endgame Perhaps the most important novelist of the post-Martial Law generation, Lo Yi-chin 駱以軍 (b. 1967), has consciously integrated science fiction elements into his experimentalist narratives over the past decade. References to Chinese new wave science fictional images and motifs have particularly filled three novels he wrote in the second decade of the twenty-­ first century, Daughter 女兒 (2013), Superman Kuang 匡超人 (2017), and Mingchao 明朝 (2019). All three make refer to science fiction for world building against Taiwan’s political reality and China’s historical past. In line of his most famous novel Xixia Hotel 西夏旅館 (2008), Lo’s labyrinthine narratives all present a heterotopia, an imaginary realm of speculations, metaphors, dismemberments, remembrances, and reconstructions of the “other” space in terms of identity, sexual transgression, diasporic experience, literary reference, and historical consciousness. A chapter from Daughter, titled “Science Fiction” 科幻小說, can be read as a meta-text that attempts to create a literary experiment with the genre conventions of science fiction (Lo 2018, 174–196). However, Lo’s world building is not aimed at creating estranging mutation or queerness, as we have seen in Chang Ta-chun and Chi Ta-wei, but rather is a literary self-­ conscious effort to render the narrative itself into a posthuman spectacle. Superman Kuang borrows the mythical image of Monkey King to depict a strong sense of being excluded from history: the monkey is cut off from his original story, displaced and exiled to an endless sequence of meaningless actions in the contemporary or future worlds, just like the I-narrator finds himself dislodged from his immediate reality and exiled as a stranger in his own home city, Taipei. What is worse is that he is troubled by an unspeakable agony: there is a hole opening up on the skin of his genitals. To him, this hole in his body becomes a black hole that absorbs all his attention, his energies, worries, and visions. The hole becomes a heterotopia to the world where he is: not only a metaphor for the darkness of the world surrounding him and his contemporaries but also a virtual form for him to explore an infinitely enlarged space that contains more possibilities than reality allows. It stands for the portal through which to enter a mythical world. The black hole corresponds to the apocalyptic moment: “those demons sleeping in the nightmares of the world are released when the sky showers burning bombs and hell erupts in fire.” “This moment dislodged from the flux of time turns into an enormous hole whose immensity and magnitude are beyond grasp” (Lo 2018, 284;

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translation is mine). The hole in the superman’s body opens the gate to the darkness and stops time from flowing; yet, devouring time, it also creates an infinite delay in face of the impending apocalypse. The novel refers to the superman, which is truly the opposite to Chang Hsi-kuo’s Superman, or the Superman who has fallen, like Monkey King exiled in the timelessness in this novel, who has nowhere to settle with his pains and fears but hides in the dark, black hole. If Chang’s Superman represents the sublime Space Opera, all that is splendid and sublime has now collapsed into this unspeakable hole in the superman’s genitals. With this hidden hole, he is no longer completely human. He has become a sort of Zhilishu too, a posthuman being who loses his human integrity. However, it is also in this hole where Lo’s wildest literary imagination begins to explode, which creates a verbal heterotopia that gives form to all the shapeless, invisible demonic forces. The novel does not have a consistent plotline, but the narrative renders itself into the spectacle, like a black hole. A self-­ consciously built virtual universe, a heterotopia that makes us see what lies in the dark in the realm of humans, Lo Yi-chin’s “hole” becomes a posthuman singularity. In Mingchao, Lo Yi-chin directly engages in dialogue with Liu Cixin. He borrows from the “Three-Body” trilogy, the plot about the two-­ dimensional universe (Liu 474). The novel is loosely based on a world setting that suggests an impending endgame for the solar system. Scientists begin to train robots, preparing to launch them into deep space, with a hope that one day the robots will rebuild human civilization. The I-narrator is an engineer programming his robot with an entire Ming Dynasty design. The novel is mainly focused on the detailed depictions of Ming literati culture, the knowledge and history of the Ming Dynasty, all explained to the robot, in parallel to the I-narrator’s life in contemporary Taiwan. The distinction between reality and illusion often disappears, and the detailed stories about the Ming Dynasty are mingled with apocalyptic scenes. Nothing but narrative is the central event in Mingchao: what the I-narrator is telling his robot is all that matters in this novel. It consists of repeated stories, extended storytelling about ill-fated writers, artists, emperors, and fictive characters. All the storytelling, in defiance of the endgame, creates an immense surface world, a virtual world that does not have its depth in reality. It is best represented in the patterns on the surface of Ming porcelain: the splendid, decadent, exotic, and erotic images point to a surface prosperity that hovers above an abysmal deep of emptiness.

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Lo’s novel presents a counterimage to Liu Cixin’s sublime aesthetics. The infinite immensity of the universe is not the gravitational center of Lo Yi-chin’s narrative. Lo’s storytelling is characterized by an obsession with the surface where the sublime collapses into decadence. Science fiction is appropriated as a device to postpone the arrival of the sublime, and its significance is heightened as storytelling is the only thing to delay the endgame. Instead of building a speculative world, Lo’s narrative has become a spectacle itself. If Liu Cixin creates speculative wonders through storytelling, Lo Yi-chin renders storytelling into a verbal wonder. Mingchao, which denotes both a past dynasty and “tomorrow,” becomes a heterotopian space that conceives more timelines than a predetermined. Mingchao is also the ultimate heterotopia to today’s world. Written by a writer residing in Taiwan but dreaming of the Ming Dynasty, Mingchao connects China’s past, Taiwan’s today, and the entire world’s tomorrow to the fundamental question about what is contemporary. There is a moment that clearly marks a temporal consciousness of the contemporary: We have entered it without realizing it, the strange loop of time, and have been living in a world where “time stagnates,” like a malfunctioning watch’s second hand, trembling, unable to advance to the next mark on the dial. We have been living in that loop, where time is compressed to an extreme thinness. It is like the day when all hippos on Earth become extinct. “What day is it today?” (Lo 2019, 210; translation is mine)

What day is it today—the question resonates with Chu T’ien-wen’s “Fin-­ de-­Siècle Splendor,” but in Lo’s case, this moment is not the future, but has already arrived. What is contemporary? It is the moment that knows the stagnation of time flow, when teleology of history has melted into thin air. The contemporary is the moment that is cut off from the flux of history, without a future but an endgame in sight, and time stands still. If this is contemporary, this is also eternal. Lo’s robot is the offspring of humans, the posthuman heirs to our civilizations. But for whatever reasons—Ming Dynasty’s political darkness and hopeless corruption, or the senselessness of all the historical repetitions that lose any meanings—the robot commits suicide. The I-narrator has to carry the dead body of the robot to continue his mission: telling stories to a dead robot. All the sadness is distilled into a posthumous

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posthuman without any hope for redemption. What day is it today? It is the day when human, all too human has become impossible, while the posthuman is a dead dream. It is the day when time stands still, with the endgame in sight but forever delayed and deferred in Lo’s storytelling. Among all writers in contemporary Sinophone literary world, Lo Yi-chin is the one with the clearest self-conscious use of the Neo-Baroque style. The entire narrative of Mingchao is a Neo-Baroque virtual wonderland. It is a world of flatness, two-dimensional, post-apocalyptic; the plot has been borrowed from Liu Cixin. In Liu’s Death’s End 死神永生 (2010), a mysterious higher intelligent creature patrolling the universe throws a device into the solar system which begins to turn two-dimensional. That is the climax of Liu’s “Three-Body” trilogy. “The entire solar system begins to fall into an infinitely large flat picture: planet by planet, object by object, molecule by molecule, the Sun, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars, the Earth and all humanity turn two-dimensional” (Song 2016, 558). Lo Yi-chin sees in this moment all the despairful meanings of the contemporary: we are living in a world whose dimensions have been reduced, and thus we are stuck in the extreme thinness of the time that has stopped moving. While detailing all the splendors of the decadent late Ming culture, he is warning us of the inevitable decline of this elegant culture. The reduction of dimensions is a huge astronomical event that cuts off the flow of time, when all matter, energy, life and consciousness are sealed off in a flat moment. But the same moment is also the opening of the Neo-­ Baroque: in a blink, the endgame opens everything that was closed, covered, enveloped, and hidden in all those folds, dimensions, and differentiations. Now everything, ranging from planets to molecules, from mountains to water droplets, from brains to limbs, is developed into an enormous picture. The process of opening, which is exactly the process of writing or storytelling, captures all that has always been fleeing and flowing and unfolds the world in its boundless visibility. Turning the solar system into two dimensions means that the solar system will forever disappear in the conventional three-dimensional universe, but it also marks the explosion of literary imagination, the birth of a new literature. With each of the multitude of details that are now flattened to become visible, the ephemeral, elusive train of time has reached its terminal. Lo Yi-chin ends his novel with a magic moment. He witnesses the famous painting of beauties by the Ming literati Qiu Ying 仇英 (1494–1552) flying into the space, which is already a flat two-dimensional

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capturing of an ancient moment, now entering into the enormous image of the solar system on astronomical scale: It is absolute silence, but he seems to have heard the sounds of the collapsing of planets, collective explosions like distant thunders; spooked out of his mind, he sees this picture Beauties of Qiu Ying floating into the deep space, surrounded by those coordinates, with those beautiful ladies half smiling, so elegant, so glamorous, so thin as if prayer flags swinging in the wind, seeing him off into the endless darkness. (Lo 2019, 348; translation is mine)

In Mingchao, Lo Yi-chin uses science fiction as a method to create a Neo-­ Baroque literary universe. Storytelling is the wonder. He borrows the techniques of the New Wave Science Fiction to unfold the invisible and unpack the secretive time-space structure, and he shows to us that the contemporary, when time has stopped, is Mingchao. The Ming Dynasty and tomorrow have become one; tomorrow and endgame has zero degree of separation. We are all like the Monkey King, the depleted superman, stuck in the surface of the Ming porcelain, an eternal moment of the contemporary that prisons all of us. But in terms of fictional writing, only at the end of the ending is the beginning of the beginning (Yang 184); the infinitely folded narrative labyrinth conceives all the trajectories of runaway, not into history, but into the divine comedy that has come alive with the eternal motion of the Neo-Baroque. The two-dimensional universe is the endgame to reality, but it is the beginning of the verbal wonderland. Lo Yi-chin delivers the flat images of those Ming ladies into the flattened universe, a posthuman desolate time-space continuum. If we read Mingchao as the Book of Revelation for Taiwan, it remains a mystery whether the child of men, the robot-son of Lo Yi-chin, a member of the second generation of mainlanders living in Taiwan, will remember what has been dictated to him and continues to tell the same story. Will it become a Zhilishu, floating alone in the enormous darkness of the universe, with a broken body, or maybe also a broken heart, dead already but never dying again? To whom will it tell the story of what it has witnessed? After humans, what story will be told? Lo Yi-chin refuses the singularity of Taiwan’s fate being decided and its future being predetermined. He overlaps the past and future, projects the phantom smile of the ancient beauty to the ruinous scene of the post-apocalyptic world, and keeps us in a loop of time, when storytelling never ends. As a writer, he takes that courageous step to transform himself into the Monkey King, the posthuman

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creature, the wandering robot—an old soul lives on in an infinitude of folds and dimensions of a world in becoming. Ultimately, all these characters that Lo Yi-chin has created are all Zhilishu.

References Bauman, Zygmund. 1993. Postmodern Ethics (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing). Calabrese, Omar. 1992. Neo-Baroque: A Sign of the Times. Translated by Charles Lambert (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Chang Hsi-kuo 張系國. 2002. “Chaoren liezhuan” 超人列傳. Chang, Di 地 (Taipei: Hongfan shudian), 85–148. Chang Hsi-kuo 張系國. 2003. The City Trilogy. Translated by John Balcom (New York, NY: Columbia University Press). Chang Ta-chun 張大春. 1988. “Sixi youguo” 四喜憂國. Chang, Sixi youguo 四喜 憂國 (Taipei: Yuanliu chuban gongsi), 125–145. Chang Ta-chun 張大春. 1989. “Shangshizhe” 傷逝者. Huang Fan 黃凡 and Lin Yao-te 林耀德 eds. Xinshidai xiaoshuo daxi: kehuan juan 新世代小說大系:科幻 卷 (Taipei: Xidai chuban youxian gongsi). Chen Ku-ying 陳鼓應. 1983. Zhuangzi jinzhu jinyi 莊子今注今譯 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju). Chi Ta-wei 紀大偉. 2006. “Seqing wutuobang: kehuan, Taiwan, tongxinglian” 色 情烏托邦:科幻，台灣，同性戀. Chung Wai Literary Monthly 中外文學 35.3: 17–48. Chi Ta-wei 紀大偉. 2011. Ganguan shijie 感官世界. Taipei: Lianhe wenxue. Chi Ta-wei 紀大偉. 2021. The Membranes. Translated by Ari Larissa Heinrich (New York, NY: Columbia University Press). Chu T’ien-wen (Zhu Tianwen). 1995. “Fin de Siècle Splendor.” Joseph S.M. Lau and Howard Goldblatt eds. The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature (New York, NY: Columbia University Press), 444–459. Chu T’ien-wen. 1999. Notes of a Desolate Man. Translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin (New York, NY: Columbia University Press). Deleuze, Gilles. 1993. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. Translated by Tom Conley (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press). Egoyan 伊格言. 2010. Shimengren 噬夢人 (Taipei: Lianhe wenxue). Egoyan 伊格言. 2021. Lingdu fenli 零度分離 (Taipei: Ryefield). Huang Fan 黃凡. 1989. “Dashidai” 大時代. Du Yuanming 杜元明 ed. Chongjingchuan: Taigang wenxue xinchao xuancui 憧憬船:台港文學新潮選萃 (Beijing: Beijing shifan daxue chubanshe), 27–57. Huang Fan. 2011. “Zero.” Huang. Zero and Other Stories. Translated by John Balcom (New York, NY: Columbia University Press), 53–152.

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Hung Ling 洪凌. 2006. “Huanyi zhi cheng, yuzhou zhi yan, wangliang shengti: fenxi shubu Taiwan kehuan xiaoshuo de huanxiang dijing yu yiduan roushen” 幻異之城⋅宇宙之眼⋅魍魎生體:分析數部台灣科幻小說的幻象地景與異端肉身. Chung Wai Literary Monthly 中外文學 35.3: 49–78. Lin Jianqun 林建群. 2006. “Taiwan zhuliu kehuan lunshu pingxi” 台灣主流科幻 論述評析. Lin ed., Zai “jingdian” yu “renlei” de pangbian 在經典與人類的旁 邊 (Fuzhou: Fujian shaonian ertong chubanshe), 1–41. Liu Cixin. 2016. Death’s End. Translated by Ken Liu (New York: Tor). Lo Yichin 駱以軍. 2014. Nü’er 女兒 (Taipei: Ink). Lo Yichin 駱以軍. 2018. Kuang chaoren 匡超人 (Taipei: Rye Field). Lo Yichin 駱以軍. 2019. Mingchao 明朝 (Taipei: Jingwenxue). Lo Yichun. 2018. “Science Fiction” (A Chapter of Daughter). Translated by Thomas Moran and Jingling Chen. Mingwei Song and Theodore Huters eds. The Reincarnated Giant (New York: Columbia University Press), 174–196. Song, Mingwei. 2016. “Representations of the Invisible: Chinese Science Fiction in the Twenty-first Century.” Carlos Rojas and Andrea Bachner eds. The Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literatures (New York: Oxford University Press), 546–565. Song, Mingwei 宋明煒. 2023. “Zaixian bukejian de shixue: cong wenlei de xianfengxing dao wenxue de dangdaixing” 再現「不可見」的詩學:從文類的先鋒 性到文學的當代. Xiaoshuo pinglun 小說評論 1: 32–40. Yang Kai-lin 楊凱麟. 2021. Chengwei shuxie de ren 成為書寫的人 (Taipei: Shibao wenhua).

Index1

A Adaptation, 6, 8, 9, 19, 24, 68, 193, 239 Affordances, 35, 43 Agency, 186, 195, 205, 261, 285 Agrarian society, 153, 155, 156 Agriculture, 11, 16, 105, 131, 136, 148 Alienation, 149, 256–258 Allegory, 10, 55, 215, 226, 257, 258 Alternate dimension, 195, 197 See also Dimensionality Angie Chau, 100 Anglo-American New Wave, 272, 274 Animal magnetism, 63, 65, 67 Animal transformation, 258 Anthropocene, 27, 49 Anthropocentrism, 47, 162 Anti-goddess, 232–233 Anxiety, 30, 37, 45, 91, 108, 130, 133, 159, 170, 188, 253, 256

Apocalypse, 289 Arcadia, 236 Artificial intelligence (AI), 24, 171, 175, 177, 178, 181, 188, 224, 225, 231, 275 Authenticity cultivation, 168, 170, 173, 182 B Bacon, Francis, 85–87, 85n1 Balinghou, 251–253, 257 Bao Tianxiao, 8, 36, 37, 50, 62, 65 Bauman, Zygmund, 279 Beaulieu, Alain, 217 Bellamy, Edward, 5, 38, 71 Biheguan zhuren, 7, 8, 71, 91, 92 “Bing shi leng meng ji,” 132 “Biography of the Superman,” 275 Bioinformatics, 171 Biomedia, 172, 173

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. Song et al. (eds.), Chinese Science Fiction, Studies in Global Science Fiction, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53541-3

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INDEX

Biotech, 170–173, 187, 193 Blade Runner, 284 Bloch, Ernst, 42 Blue Marble, 49 Body, 4, 7, 12, 28, 29, 47–50, 55–59, 61–64, 66–69, 70n17, 72–76, 133, 147, 161, 167–188, 195, 197, 199, 201, 221, 224, 229, 230, 251–267, 271–273, 275, 278, 279, 283–286, 288–290, 292 Book of the Heavens, 28, 35–50 Brain, 48, 60, 61, 64, 64n9, 65, 67–69, 72, 74, 89, 171, 175–177, 191–205, 235, 262, 263, 275, 285, 291 Brain electricity, 7, 68, 76 Brain hole, 191–205 Brain washing, 76 Breaking with the Old Ideas, 29, 146, 147, 151–156, 160, 162, 163 Buddha, 75, 228, 232 Buddhism, 227, 231, 232 Buddhist, 7, 9, 47n42, 63, 201, 215, 223, 225–230, 230n5, 232 C Cai Yuanpei, 8, 63, 66, 66n13, 95 Calabrese, Omar, 282, 283 Call to Arms, 170, 263, 265 Capital, 86, 96, 128, 133, 216, 219–221, 276 Capitalist society, 257, 276 Cat Country, 262 Censorship, 20, 169, 261–263, 265, 266 Chang Hsiao-feng, 275 Chang Hsi-kuo, 275, 276, 279, 289 Chang Ta-chun, 271–274, 276, 277, 279, 280, 284, 288 Chaos, 10, 19, 217, 218, 223, 241, 274, 282

Chaosmology, 216–222, 226, 227, 233 Chaosmos, 29, 215–218, 223, 225, 228, 229, 232 Chaosmosis, 218 Chaotic, 215–218, 222 Chen, Duxiu, 9, 101, 103, 107 Chen, Qiufan, 26, 30, 116, 192n2, 251–267 Chenxing LL, 198n6 Chi, Hui, 26, 30, 251–267 Chi Ta-wei, 27, 280, 283, 285, 286, 288 Chiang Ching-kuo, 273, 274 Chiang Kai-shek, 274 Chimera, 22, 26, 280 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 107, 110, 111, 146, 149, 150, 150n2, 155, 248n2 Chinese Dream, 3, 30, 247–249, 248n2, 253, 254 Chineseness, 43, 50, 99, 100, 117, 276 Chinese New Wave, 3, 20, 21, 254, 272, 286, 288 Chow, Rey, 102, 102n2, 117, 117n6 Chuanyue, see Spacetime travel Chu T’ien-wen, 281, 283, 290 City, 10, 56n2, 65, 85, 89, 131, 150, 159, 194, 216, 219–222, 238, 241, 253, 259, 260, 263, 266, 288 “City of Silence,” 262 City Trilogy, 276 Civilization, 42, 46, 48, 49, 84, 109, 169, 175, 176, 179–181, 183, 184, 194, 241, 244, 245, 247, 276, 281, 289, 290 Cognition, 42, 46, 104, 184, 187 Cognitive estrangement, 39, 198, 237 Cold War, 2, 273, 274 Colonial modernity, 106, 150

 INDEX 

Commercialization, 259, 260, 266 Communism, 111 Consumer culture, 28, 266 Contemporary, 3, 6, 8, 9, 15, 20–23, 28–30, 55, 57–62, 67, 74, 75, 100, 101, 104, 106, 110n5, 112, 115, 116, 129, 130, 139, 140, 168–172, 177, 184, 187, 193, 200, 203, 217, 222, 238, 249, 251, 253, 254, 257, 260, 263, 264, 267, 272, 275, 282, 283, 288–292 Cosmogramma, 45 Cosmology, 28, 40, 215, 217, 221–223, 227, 229–231 Cosmopolitanism, 103, 158, 239, 274 Cosmos, 45, 173, 201, 215–223, 226, 227, 229, 230, 232, 233, 243 Creating humanity, 59, 62 Creative industries, 193 Cuimianshu, see Hypnotism Cultural Revolution, 14, 20, 115, 146, 147, 149, 151–153, 156, 159, 162n5, 163, 238, 239, 245, 264 Cybernetics, 19, 74, 171, 229, 259–261, 281 Cyber novel, 29, 167–188 Cyberpunk, 193, 200, 239, 266 Cyborg, 22, 266, 275, 280–287 D Daoism, 218 Datong, 8, 39 Datong shu, 38, 39, 50, 71 De Mille, James, 36 Death Ray on a Coral Island, 18, 19, 29, 146, 148, 151, 156–158, 163 Death’s End, 23, 24, 291 Deckard, Rick, 284–286 Degrees of freedom, 204, 205 Dehumanization, 257, 258

297

Deleuze, Giles, 217, 221n2, 281–283 Delirious, 29, 215, 223–225 Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), 274 Deng, Xiaoping, 14, 19, 147, 155, 163, 273 Depression, 256, 263 Depth, 64, 67, 205, 231, 233, 239, 289 Di Baoxian, 129 Dian shijie, see Electric World Dianshizhai Pictorial, 59, 72 “Diary of a Madman,” 43, 251, 264 Dick, Philip K., 214, 286 Dimension (physics), 25, 29 Dimensionality, 240 Dirlik, Arif, 156 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, 286 Domination of nature, 157, 161, 162 Dream, 8, 22, 25, 60, 61, 88n2, 89, 91, 115, 133, 148, 149, 156, 163, 193, 195, 224, 231, 244, 247–249, 278, 284, 286, 287, 291 Dream Devourers, The, 286, 287 Dun Wang, 102 Dung Kai-cheung, 27 Dystopia, 205, 261 Dystopianism, see Dystopia E Earth, 7, 13, 24, 39, 42n27, 46–50, 74, 88, 94, 96, 154, 179–181, 197, 213, 214, 222, 225, 241, 290, 291 Eco, Umberto, 215, 217, 218 Ecology, 29, 145–163, 274 Economic growth, 254, 256, 259, 267 Economic reforms, 252, 256, 257, 260

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INDEX

Ecosystem, 99, 151, 153, 156, 160 Egoyan Zheng, 27, 286, 287 Electricity, 66, 68–76, 84, 93, 94, 246 Electric World, 71 Electrotherapy, 70, 71 Elman, Benjamin, 105, 106 Endgame, 273, 288–293 Ending, 133, 162, 215, 216, 226, 227, 231–233, 273, 276, 292 Enlightenment, 22, 109, 185, 226, 281 Enlightenment humanism, 170, 185, 187 Estrangement, 44, 46, 198 Europe, 8, 40, 58, 70, 89–91, 96, 97, 106, 237 Europeans, 4, 36, 48n46, 63, 89–94, 96, 97, 103, 106, 109, 283 Evolution, 5, 56n1, 74, 102, 109, 168, 172, 174, 177, 179, 185–188, 194, 275, 276 Exorcism, 214, 220, 223–225, 227, 228, 230, 231 Experiential learning, 149 Experimental fiction, 23, 288 Extropianism, 186 Extropy, 185 F Female suicide, 261 Feng Zikai, 138 Fiction, 2, 3, 5–7, 9, 12, 15, 16, 18, 20, 27–29, 35–37, 56, 57, 61, 65, 66, 73, 76, 83–85, 87, 88, 99–117, 124, 126–130, 127n4, 139, 140, 168, 169, 172n1, 184, 192–195, 199–202, 204, 215, 222–224, 226, 244–246, 261, 264, 273, 276, 277 “Fighting Cricket, The,” 258 “Fin-de-siècle Splendor,” 281, 282, 290

Finnegans Wake, 215, 217 Flatness, 203, 291 Fold, 50, 93, 280, 282, 283, 285, 291, 293 Forty Millennia of Authenticity Cultivation, 29, 167–188 Futi, 219, 225 Future, 6, 8, 11, 14, 15, 18, 20, 30, 39, 42, 44, 49, 59, 71, 76, 84, 101–113, 115, 124, 126–130, 133, 137, 138, 140, 141, 145, 147, 148, 153, 155, 156, 159, 163, 168–171, 173, 176–178, 185–188, 185n2, 196, 201, 202, 242, 243, 247, 261, 262, 264, 272, 273, 275, 287, 288, 290, 292 Future of New China, the, 6, 84, 105–107, 123, 126, 128–130 Futurology, 19, 41 G Gao Xingjian, 124–126, 130–135, 140 Gender, 2, 22, 26, 27, 29, 226, 232, 233, 246, 255, 274, 281, 284–287 Genre, 1–6, 9, 11, 12, 14–16, 18–21, 23–30, 35–38, 42–44, 46, 97, 99–101, 107, 110–112, 110n5, 114–116, 127–130, 134, 137, 147, 157, 161, 169, 191–194, 192n1, 199, 201, 204, 223, 224, 233, 237, 238, 247, 249, 253, 271, 272, 274–276, 280, 288 Gernsback, Hugo, 36 Gewu, 104 Gewu zhizhi, 45, 88 Gezhi, 3, 37, 45, 104–106, 109 Girardot, N. J., 218 Goddess, 232, 233 “Great Time, The,” 276

 INDEX 

Great Unity (Datong), 8, 93, 94 Gu Junzheng, 10, 11, 14, 124–126, 135–141 Guattari, Félix, 218, 223 H Haiguo tuzhi, 38 Han Song, 19–23, 25, 26, 29, 116, 213–233, 249, 252, 254, 266, 267 Hard science fiction, 192 Heart-mind, 62–63, 74 Heart washing, 56, 57, 59, 76 Heavenlings, 47, 49 Hell, 197, 205, 227, 229, 230, 278, 288 Herschel, John F. W., 39 Heterotopia, 22, 29, 30, 288–290 High concept, 218 Hinton, C. H., 36 Ho, Ching-pin, 27, 276 Hong Kong, 2, 3, 27, 38, 70, 116, 273 Hospital, 29, 214, 216, 218–221, 224, 227, 230–232 Huang, Fan, 276, 277 Huang Zunxian, 129 Huangjiang Diaosou, 7, 49, 49n51, 56, 57, 251 Huangjin shijie, see World of Gold Huanyou diqiu xin lu, 38 Hugo Award, 24, 99, 192n2, 248 Human body, 57, 58, 64, 68, 70n17, 72, 74, 167, 168, 170–174, 176, 177, 184, 187, 188 Humanism, 29, 167–188 Hun, 73 Hygiene, 56–62, 75 Hypnotism, 7, 28, 62–68, 63n8, 65n11, 73, 75, 76

299

I Il’in, Mikhail, 12 Illness, 29, 61, 71, 75, 153, 213–233, 261, 262 Illusion, 29, 213–233, 284, 285, 289 Imagination, 4, 5, 20, 23, 25, 26, 29, 48, 55–76, 84, 87, 89, 93, 96, 97, 110n5, 111, 112, 124, 128, 129, 140, 148, 193, 195, 199, 219, 244, 249, 263, 266, 289, 291 Immortality, 167, 168, 173, 175, 176, 181, 182, 201, 230, 279 Informatic essentialism, 172, 173 Informatics, 19, 170–173, 176, 177, 179 Information civilization, 179, 181 Intellectual Property (IP), 193 Intellectuals, 3, 5, 8, 9, 12, 14, 21, 36, 38, 44, 55–76, 84, 97, 104, 106, 109, 113, 138, 140, 146, 147, 149, 150, 153, 155, 156, 185, 256 Intrusion fantasy, 199 Invisibility/invisible, 3, 20–24, 30, 43, 73, 114, 203, 273, 289, 292 Iron house parable, 263 Irony, 215, 222, 225, 226, 230 Isaacson, Nathaniel, 5, 14, 106, 109, 110, 140, 157, 251, 262, 283 J Japan, 6, 28, 36, 63, 70, 73, 86, 105n3, 106, 127, 127n3, 192, 194, 200 Journey to the West, The, 8, 9, 229, 258 Joyce, James, 215, 217 Jung, Carl, 223

300 

INDEX

K Kagaku, 106 Kaiming Bookstore, 138, 139n18 Kang Youwei, 28, 35–50, 71, 107 Kant, Immanuel, 240 Kexue, 9, 36, 37, 103, 104, 106, 109 Kexue huabao, 130 Kexue quwei, 135 Kexue shijie, 131 Kexue wenyi, 11, 12, 14–16 Kexue xiaoshuo, see Science fiction (SF) Kexue xiuzhen, 168 King of Electricity, 71 Knowledge production, 103, 106, 112, 116, 140, 146, 149–151, 153, 154, 157, 162, 163 Kongzi gaizhi kao, 39 “Kuangren riji,” 43, 251

Lin Yao-te, 276 Liu Cixin, 19–21, 23–26, 50, 99, 169, 183, 194, 214, 235–249, 254, 266, 272, 289–291 Liu Wenyang, 26, 169–170, 180 Liu Zhenhan, 136 Liuhe congtan, 39 Liulang diqiu, 24, 50 Lixiang kaocheng, 40 Lo Yi-chin, 27, 288–293 Looking Backward, 5, 38, 71 Lu Shi’e, 8, 38, 89, 90, 96, 97, 129 Lu Xun, 36, 37, 43, 62, 84, 95, 101, 102, 102n2, 105, 107–109, 112, 113, 170, 251, 263–265 “Lucky Worries about His Country,” 277 “Lundun qiyi,” 135

L Landscape, 9, 93, 152, 153, 158–160, 193, 198, 236, 238, 242, 244, 281 Lao She, 10, 262 Late Qing, 2, 3, 5–11, 20, 28, 36, 45, 55–76, 83–97, 102, 106, 108–110, 123–141 Leishu, 40 Les Cinq cents millions de la Bégum, 37, 87 Li Gui, 38 Li Yao, 169, 172–174, 176, 179–184, 186–188 “Li yun,” 39 Li Zunquan, 136 Liang Qichao, 6, 7, 25, 36–38, 41, 56, 63, 84, 101–109, 113, 123–130, 123n1, 124n2, 140 Lianhuanhua, 18 Liji, 39 Linghun, see Soul

M Ma Boyong, 26, 194, 262 Machine, 55–76, 186, 187, 194, 243–245, 262, 286, 287 Mahamayuri, 221, 232 Mandala, 223, 226–232 Mao Zedong, 11, 20, 264 Mars, 10, 15, 40, 48, 49, 196, 221, 222, 227, 232, 242, 262, 291 Martians, 46, 48, 50 Marxism, 111 Materiality, 148, 171, 172, 184, 203, 204 May Fourth era, 2, 89 Medicine, 56–59, 68, 70, 75, 91, 102n2, 131, 136, 167, 173, 174, 186 Mega-text, 282 Meiji restoration, 106 Membranes, The, 280, 285, 286 Mental health, 257

 INDEX 

301

Mesmerism, 7, 28, 29, 63n8, 64, 65n11 Metamorphosis, 28, 194, 256–258, 281 Meta-text, 288 Micro-universe, 235–238, 242–244 Mimesis, 43, 226 Mind-uploading, 171, 173 Mingchao, 288–292 Ming Dynasty, 9, 289, 290, 292 Modernism, 158n3 Modernity, 2, 5, 6, 22, 27, 44, 101, 102, 105–110, 149–152, 150n2, 154, 155, 157, 158, 237, 244, 245, 281 Modernization, 11, 14, 15, 107, 108, 110, 116, 128, 146, 147, 156, 259, 266 Montage, 152, 153, 158–160 “Moral party of two,” 279 Multiverses, 22, 169, 180, 198, 202, 222

New Wave, 2, 3, 19–27, 239, 272, 274, 285, 286, 288 New Youth Magazine, 9, 107 Non-human, 76, 256, 257, 266 Non-perception, 227 Non-self, 225 North Pole, 94 Notes of a Desolate Man, 281, 283 Novum, 46, 46n40, 107, 133

N Nationalism, 29, 89, 94, 97, 125, 239 Neo-Baroque, 22, 30, 271–293 New Citizen, 6, 7 New Culture Movement, 102, 103, 111 New Era, The, 7, 8, 61n6, 71, 84, 89, 90, 92, 96 New Fiction, 6, 36, 38n11, 56, 123, 124, 126–128, 127n4, 129n5, 129n6, 130 New Ramblings of the Rustic Elder, 8, 84, 89, 95 New Story of the Stone, 8, 50, 50n52, 84, 91, 91n4, 92, 130n7 “New Tales of Mr. Braggadocio,” 7, 49, 59, 65, 65n12, 67, 73, 129n6

P Pan Junmian, 41 Panda, 213 “Pandora,” 275, 276 Parallel worlds, 198, 204 Paraspace, 199, 200n8, 202 Pastoral, 30, 152, 153, 235–249, 285 Peacock, 232–233 Peasantry, 150, 150n2, 152–156, 162, 163 People’s Literature, 23 People’s Republic of China, 110, 248, 272, 277 Perception, 20, 75, 138n15, 158, 227, 240 Physical reality, 171, 175–177, 180 Physiology, 56, 61, 63, 64n9, 137 Ping Lu, 276

O One-child policy, 252, 255–257 Ontological separation, 168, 170, 184–188 Opium War, 5, 44, 89 Organ transplantation, 12, 13, 168 Outer space, 8, 28, 74, 96, 97, 169, 179–180, 183, 184, 196 Outlines of Astronomy, 39 Overpopulation, 71, 95, 96

302 

INDEX

Planet, 46–48, 48n46, 49n49, 50, 50n52, 57, 74, 88n2, 94–97, 173, 179, 196–198, 236, 241, 255, 262, 276, 291, 292 Pocket dimensions, 201, 201n9, 204, 205 Portal quest fantasy, 198 Post-80s generation, 30, 251, 254, 266, 267 Posthuman, 21, 22, 26, 30, 168, 170, 171, 173, 177, 181, 184–188, 272–275, 279–281, 283–292 Posthumanism, 27, 29, 170, 185, 185n2, 281 Post-Martial Law, 281 PRC, 3, 4, 11–15, 17–19, 30, 43, 101, 111, 168, 273, 274 Propaganda, 4, 11, 20, 21, 247, 263, 277 Psychology, 25, 62, 64, 72, 75, 131 Pu Songling, 57, 57n3, 58, 258 Q Qian Jiang, 109 Qidian zhongwenwang, 168 Qing Dynasty, 2, 4, 66, 104, 109 Qiongli zhixue, 104 Qiu Ying, 291 Quotidian utopia, 115 Quwei, 135, 137, 138, 138n15 R Race, 22, 50, 56, 74, 89, 91, 94, 225, 242, 266, 275, 276, 279, 281, 287 Rational methodology or technique, 45 Real, 2, 5, 20–23, 25, 43, 59, 97, 145, 172, 179, 191, 200, 204, 220,

221n2, 223, 226, 227, 231, 242, 253, 258–260, 265, 279 Realism, 12, 20, 21, 101, 112, 133, 147, 148, 151, 214, 222, 223, 239, 251, 263, 266, 276, 277 Realm of Civilization, 91 Red and expert knowledge system, 149–158, 163 Reform and Opening, 15, 146 Regenerative medicine, 173, 174, 186 René, Barjavel, 237, 246 Republican (era), 2, 8, 10, 29, 130, 135 Revenants, 214, 218–221, 224, 226, 227, 232, 233 Richard, Timothy, 5, 38 Rieder, John, 4, 114, 192n1 Robot(s), 12, 13, 15, 160, 170, 236, 243, 285, 286, 289, 290, 293 Rūpa, 227 Rural, 150–157, 236, 237, 239, 241, 245, 254n1 S Samadhi, 229 Scale, 39, 49, 50, 147, 148, 219, 220, 240, 241, 292 Schiaparelli, Giovanni, 48, 48n46 Science, 2, 3, 5–7, 35–50, 61, 62, 67, 83–97, 99–117, 123–141, 145–163, 168, 170, 171, 191–205, 223, 226, 237, 245–247, 251–267, 271–293 Science fantasy, 3, 192 Science fiction (SF), 1–7, 9–20, 24, 27–30, 35–50, 60, 61, 67, 83, 84, 99–117, 123–141, 127n4, 129n6, 146, 147, 168, 169, 191–205, 226, 233, 237–242, 251–267, 271–293

 INDEX 

Science-fictional sublime, 43, 46 Science phantasy, 110, 114 Scientific authenticity cultivation fiction, 168 Scientific development, 38, 85, 111, 114, 126, 131, 139, 146, 147, 156, 159, 160, 163, 246 Scientific romances, 36 Scientifiction, 36 Sci-fi realism, 192, 192n2 Sf cinema, 157, 161, 163 Shanghai, 11, 38, 63–65, 70, 90, 127, 127n3, 130n7, 136, 138, 195 Shenbao, 69, 70, 70n17 Shijie mori ji, 50 Ship, 86, 89, 91, 94–97, 196, 213, 220–223, 225, 228, 229, 231 Shore, 232 Shu, 45 Siming, 225 Singularity, 22, 23, 171–180, 187, 275, 289, 292 Sinophone, 27, 29, 100, 116, 192, 285, 291 Social change, 252, 256 Socialism, 149 Socialist era, 148, 252 Social pressure, 257, 266 Soft power, 116 Song Mingwei, 114, 239 Soul, 7, 39, 59, 62, 64, 66–76, 188, 229, 259, 293 South Pole, 93, 94 Spaceship, 24, 27, 196, 199, 221, 222, 244, 247 Space-time compression, 159, 198 Spacetime travel, 19, 194, 195, 198, 199, 204, 229 Spatiality, 192n2 Special effects, 161–163 Speculative writing, 37, 116

303

Spirit, 5, 22, 41, 55, 56, 60, 62, 63, 67, 68, 72–76, 88, 95, 111, 152, 174, 182, 226, 238, 263 Spiritism, 67 Spiritual pollution, 272 Sublime, 21, 22, 43, 46, 47, 152, 160, 161, 163, 239–241, 289, 290 Suehiro Tetcho, 128 Suicidal ideation, 225 Sun Junjie, 168 Sung Tse-lai, 276 Superman Kuang, 288 Suvin, Darko, 25, 46n40, 133, 237 T Taiwan, 2, 3, 27, 30, 116, 271–293 “Tales of the Moon Colony,” 7, 49, 56, 56n2, 251 Tan Sitong, 8, 69, 74, 75 Taoism, see Daosim Tao Yuanming, 236, 237 Technology, 2, 4, 6, 7, 11–16, 23, 27, 29, 30, 43–45, 59, 60, 62, 76, 83–97, 102, 109, 114–116, 128–130, 133, 136, 149, 156, 158, 161, 162, 168–170, 173, 177–181, 183–188, 185n2, 194, 195, 200, 203, 205n11, 226, 229–231, 237–239, 243–248, 259, 261, 285 Techno-optimism, 248 Teleology, 290 Therapy, 226, 227n3, 231 “Those Who Mourn,” 271–273, 277, 284 Three-Body Problem, 24, 25, 99, 169, 183, 214, 235, 238–242, 245, 248, 272 Three-Body Trilogy, 21, 23, 26, 289, 291

304 

INDEX

Time, 1, 3–5, 20, 24, 36, 41, 44, 49, 56, 57, 67, 72, 74, 84, 87, 96, 101–103, 107, 108, 110, 124, 124n2, 125, 130n7, 133, 137, 138n16, 145, 151, 159, 160, 162, 168, 169, 173, 178, 180–183, 186, 193, 194, 198–200, 203, 203n10, 204, 216, 217, 219, 220, 225, 235–240, 242–243, 245, 247, 257, 272–274, 276, 282, 283, 288–292 Time travel, see Spacetime travel Tong Enzheng, 13, 15, 16, 18, 114, 214 Topology, 195, 216–222 Transformative works, 193 Transhuman, 185 Transhumanism, 170, 171, 184–187, 185n2, 275 Translation, 3, 5–7, 9, 10, 19, 24, 28, 36–39, 38n14, 40n20, 45n36, 48, 49n51, 56, 59, 61, 62, 65–67, 75n20, 85n1, 91n4, 95, 99–117, 132, 135, 139n18, 248, 256n3, 259n4, 261n5, 278, 283, 289, 290, 292 Transliteration, 228n4 Transmigration, see Spacetime travel Trichiliocosm, 228 Trilogy, 23, 24, 29, 214–218, 220–227, 228n4, 231–233, 235, 237–240, 242, 245, 247, 248, 289, 291 Two-dimension, 291 U Unequal treaties, 89, 105, 105n3 Untranslatability, 100 Urban China, 266 USSR/Soviet Russia, 12, 111

Utopia, 6, 8, 25, 83, 84, 87, 88n2, 89, 129, 145, 146, 148, 153, 163, 171, 236, 237, 242–244, 246, 280, 281 Utopianism, 87, 239 V Verne, Jules, 5, 9, 17, 36, 37, 87, 95, 113, 129n6, 238 Videogames, 193 Virtual, 22, 29, 76, 169, 171, 174–177, 180–182, 185–187, 196, 199, 201, 202, 204, 205, 215, 221, 221n2, 226–231, 233, 286, 288, 289, 291 Virtuality, 231 Virtual reality, 169, 171, 175, 176, 180, 187, 202, 230 W Wagner, Rudolf, 110n5, 111, 147, 157 Wang, David Der-wei, 23, 109, 130 Wang, Hui, 45, 104, 108 Wang Meng, 238 “War against nature,” 148 Weapon, 9, 89, 96, 135, 179, 287 Wei Yahua, 15, 16 Wei Yu, 38 Weilai kongxi ji, 134 Wen, 37, 41 Wenming guo, 50, 50n52 Western astronomy, 28, 46 Western knowledge, 3, 8, 62, 69, 75 Wilson, William, 35 Wissenschaft, 106 Woman, 8, 26, 60, 66, 160, 195, 196, 200, 201, 205, 226, 232, 233, 235, 246, 260, 261, 275, 277, 281

 INDEX 

Woniu Zhenren, 168, 172, 173, 175, 179–184, 188 World-building, 22, 266, 274, 276, 283, 286, 288 World-establishing sequences, 159, 160 Worldliness, 220, 221 World literature, 3, 4, 26, 100, 100n1, 117 World of Gold, 92 World order, 8, 37, 39, 83–97 World-picture, 49, 49n49 Wu, Dingbo, 16, 115 Wu Cheng’en, 8, 9, 258 Wu Jianren, 7, 38, 49, 50n52, 84, 91, 91n4, 124, 130n7 Wu Xianzi, 41, 42, 42n27 Wu Yan, 5, 111, 124 X Xiao Jianheng, 13, 15, 16, 114, 168 Xiao Zhu, 124, 125, 134 Xiaoshuo, 3, 36, 37, 50, 76 “Xin faluo xiansheng tan”, see “New Tales of Mr. Braggadocio” “Xingbian,” 135 Xin jiyuan, see New Era, The Xin shitou ji, see New Story of the Stone Xin xiaoshuo, see New Fiction Xin yesou puyan, see New Ramblings of the Rustic Elder Xin Zhongguo weilai ji, see Future of New China, the Xinmin congbao, 6, 36, 36n3, 63, 69, 127 Xiong’er Nüshi, 198n6 Xiuzhen siwan nian, 168 Xiuzhen/xiuxian fantasy, 169, 182, 183 Xu Jiyu, 38 Xu Nianci, 7, 49, 59, 60, 65, 67, 68, 74, 124

305

Xu Zhiyan, 84, 87, 92, 97, 129 Xu, Tingwen, 100 Xuwei juquan, 198n6 Y Yan Fu, 44 Yan Geng, 112 Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art, 111 Yangwu (Foreign Affairs), 5 Ye Yonglie, 14–16, 18, 101, 112–114, 116, 168, 214 Ye Zhishan, 13, 124, 140 Yeh Yen-tu, 276 Yinghuan zhilüe, 38 Yishu, 135 Yizhu, 135 Yu Zaixue, 136 Yueqiu zhimindi xiaoshuo, 7, 49, 49n51, 56, 251 Yueyue xiaoshuo, 36, 127 YY or yiyin, 192 Z “Zero,” 276 Zero Degree of Separation, 287 Zhang Ran, 12, 26, 30, 251–267 Zheng Wenguang, 12–16, 101, 112–114, 116, 124, 140, 214 Zhengzhi xiaoshuo, 38n11, 127n4, 128 Zhilishu, 271–274, 277–280, 284, 289, 292, 293 Zhongguo kexue she, 130 Zhonghua ziran kexue she, 131 Zhongxuesheng, 138 Zhou Zuoren, 138, 138n15 Zhoubi, 40, 40n21 Zhu Binghai, 132 Zhuangzi, 41, 271, 278 Zhutian jiang, 37, 40n20 Zhutian shu, 37