Chinese Science Fiction Concepts, Forms, and Histories

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 sf studies, re-evaluating the canon of Chinese sf print and cinematic production, and expand the range of critical approaches to the subject. The structure of the volume is both chronological and theme-focused. 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.  

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Kang Youwei’s Book of the Heavens and the Porous Epistemological Grounds of Early-modern Chinese Science Fiction.- Chapter 3. Intelligent Humanoid Machines: Imaginations of Physical and Mental Transformation in late Qing Literature and Their Intellectual Origins.- Chapter 4. The King of Electricity from China: Science, Technology, and the Vision of World Order in Late Qing China.- Chapter 5. Formal Fictions: “Chinese” “Science” “Fiction” in Translation.- Chapter 6. The Writing Editors: Late Qing and Republican Media Professionals as Authors of Science Fiction.- Chapter 7.  Projecting Eco-Futures: Cinematic Visions of Utopian Science and Ecology from the Mao Era to the Deng Era.- Chapter 8. Information, the Body, and Humanism in the Chinese Cyber Novel Forty Millennia of Authenticity Cultivation.- Chapter 9. Open Up Your Brain Hole: Spatial Imaginaries in Chinese Online Science Fiction.- Chapter 10. Of Illness and Illusion: The Chaosmology of Han Song’s Hospital Trilogy.- Chapter 11. Liu Cixin and the Cosmic Pastoral.- Chapter 12. Bodies in Transformation: The Politics of Post-80s Science Fiction Authors Chi Hui, Chen Qiufan, and Zhang Ran.- Chapter 13. The Posthuman and the Neo-Baroque in Taiwan Science Fiction