Chinese Science Fiction

"The collection, a first-of-its-kind project in English-language scholarship, heralds a kind of Chinese sf studies 2.0, emphasizing the multiple points of origin and the sheer diversity of the histories, cultures, aesthetic expressions, and transmedial forms that together make up the sprawling field of “Chinese science fiction.” —Veronica Hollinger, co-editor, Science Fiction Studies This volume brings together emerging approaches and addresses shifting paradigms in Chinese science fiction studies, offering a window on fan cultures, internet fiction, gender, eco-criticism, post-humanism and biomedical discourse. These studies present a “second wave” of Chinese science fiction studies, re-evaluating the canon of Chinese science fiction print and cinematic production, and expand the range of critical approaches to the subject. These studies also demonstrate that Chinese science fiction 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. Chinese science fiction speaks to both 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. Mingwei Song is Professor of Modern Chinese Literature at Wellesley College. He is the author of numerous books and research articles, including Young China: National Rejuvenation and the Bildungsroman, 1900–1959 (2015) and Fear of Seeing: A Poetics of Chinese Science Fiction (2023). Nathaniel Isaacson is Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Literature in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at North Carolina State University. He is the author of Celestial Empire: the Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction (2017). Hua Li is Professor of Chinese in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Montana State University. She has published Contemporary Chinese Fiction by Su Tong and Yu Hua: Coming of Age in Troubled Times (2011) and Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw (2021).