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October 21, 2018

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East meets West in sci-fi kingdom

THE world discovered Liu Cixin and “The Three-Body Problem” in 2015, when Liu became the first Chinese science fiction writer to receive the Hugo Award. Three years later, the fandom in China has also found its international ways, from attending the World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon) to organizing its own in China.

This year, the fandom community started the Shimmer Program to support veteran fans and writers from both sides to visit each other’s community. Pablo M.A Vazquez, chairman of the 12th North American Science Fiction Convention, is the first to visit his Chinese peers, who also share the same passion for the genre. He talks with Shanghai Daily regarding trends in the genre, what is special about science fiction conventions, what Chinese fans share with those in the rest of the world and what they have uniquely.

 

Q: Is Liu Cixin and “The Three-Body Problem” a starting point for Western sci-fi fans to know about Chinese sci-fi?

A: Yes. In 2013, if you ask the Western fans how Chinese fandom or what Chinese science fiction was like, they would know nothing about it. But nowadays a lot of Western fans are very interested in Chinese science fiction. You also see a lot more Chinese fans attending the WorldCon and fans from other places have got quite used to it.

 

Q: How did you know about the Shimmer Program and why did you apply to come to China?

A: There is a big tradition in sci-fi fandom to bring fans that are not connected geographically, with the two biggest ones between Europe and the US, and Australia with the US.

I have been wanting to see what the fandom was like in Asia for a while, and in particular the two places I am most interested in establishing fandom connections with is China and India.

 

Q: So what have you discovered on this trip?

A: The Shanghai city-scape is very familiar to Americans, an image of future cities. In this city, you can go somewhere really traditional for food and also experience unbelievable technological wonders at the same time.

And in Beijing, I passed by a place that had robotic hands cutting slices of pork. In the US we are still thinking about stuff like this, but here in China it is already in action.

And that’s also why I find Chinese science fiction fascinating, a sort of mixing of traditional and the futurists in one.

 

Q: So have you read a lot of Chinese science fiction? Are there a lot more translated than before?

A: Yes, definitely a lot more than before, because before, it was just very difficult to find any. But now many Chinese ones have been translated, by organizations or publishers, slowly but surely.

Of all global communities producing science fiction today, Chinese is a particular big interest to Western readers. Amazon has bought the right of “The Three-Body Problem,” which is about to become even more influential.

 

Q: You have met the sci-fi community here in China, do they read the same kind of fiction and talk about the same trends in science?

A: The fans here seem to be reading a lot of the same stuff that we are reading, both the classics and new stuff, and are well-informed of the latest trends in western science fiction.

Science fiction fans everywhere always discuss aliens and artificial intelligence, until one day in the future we eventually meet aliens.

Today, we want to read about how technology will develop, and what kind of freedom or oppression that would come with these technologies, and how much power the corporations will get.

Our Internet is getting faster, and we are becoming more and more connected as nations, not only through Internet or high-speed travel, but we are beginning to understand each other a lot more, through translators or even translation tools on cell phones, which would have been an element of science fiction only 10 or 20 years ago.




 

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