The troubled universe of Chinese sci-fi

Yao Haijun says that in the US, science fiction has managed to cross breed, building a strong presence in books, magazines, movies and video games, but in China it is stuck in the first phase.

Yao refers to the environment for science fiction in China as "half seawater, half fire". Although "Liu Cixin has single-handedly made Chinese science fiction world class", the market still lacks quality writing because of the lack of a reader base.

Since 2011, when Liu's trilogy became popular, science fiction has become a magnet for publishers in China, even if it is still not highly bankable. The following year 175 science fiction titles were published, the most in five years, and more than 100 titles a year were published over the next three years. However, the number of new science titles published continued to compare unfavorably with imported books or republished editions of old novels.

This year, no novel was deemed good enough to win the Galaxy Award, the country's highest award for science fiction, and which Liu has won 10 times, again suggesting that Liu is out there on his own.

Yao says young writers produce high-quality short stories and novellas but come up with few good science fiction novels.

"In some ways, short stories are easier to pull off than novels because science fiction demands a lot of creativity. One idea is enough to support a short story," Liu says.

Each year more than 2,000 science fiction titles are published in the United States, compared with fewer than 100 in China, Yao says, adding that the Chinese numbers even include works by the likes of Jules Verne and H G Wells.

He dismisses the notion that there is a gap between the top US science fiction writers and their Chinese counterparts. "Our top works can match the works of any first-class US science fiction writers."

However, he has a rider to that: "There is indeed an obvious gap in terms of writers and writing generally".

The World Science Fiction Convention at which the Hugo Awards are announced, and which was held in Spokane, Washington state, this year, is attended by up to 8,000 people, whereas the Galaxy Awards conference usually attracts fewer than 1,000 people, of whom only a very small proportion are writers.

"Science fiction publishing is on a small scale, and the output is too meager to support more professional writers," Liu says

In June he attended the Nebula Award ceremony put on by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and says he was surprised to find that half the more than 1,000 attendees were professional writers.

"Many science fiction writers start creating stories simply out of their passion for sci-fi. However, usually only 6,000 to 7,000 copies are sold of a science fiction novel in China. Writers need to put a lot of energy into what they create, but there is hardly any money in it."

Four of the most important science fiction writers in China attended a science fiction forum in Beijing organized by People's Literature Publishing House last month, including the older-generation Liu and Wang Jinkang and the younger-generation Bao Shu and Zhang Ran.

Bao Shu, whose real name is Li Jun, took up science fiction writing after Science Fiction World published Three Body X, his sequel to Liu Cixin's Three Body III. When he wrote the book he was studying philosophy in Belgium and posted the novel online, after which it was recommended to Yao Haijun. It was published in May 2011.

Last year Bao Shu's novel Ruins of Time won the Global Chinese Sci-fi Nebula Awards gold prize, and this year his work Everyone Loves Charles won the Galaxy Award for best novella, together with Zhang's The Year of Famine.

On the paucity of professional science fiction writers in China, Bao Shu says the genre remains a minority interest, so the market is limited. Liu, on the other hand, looks beyond the shortage of writers and says the country needs more mature publishers and better distribution and marketing.

However, even if, for the moment, science fiction aficionados are ensconced in a fantasy world that few of their fellow citizens appreciate or even know about, the masters of the craft see no need for gloom.

"Reading science fiction gives you the impulse to explore, to look at the world anew, to see beauty, new opportunities and new ways of doing things," Wu Yan says. "There are new perspectives in learning about society that help us to grow. It's part of the evolution of a social mind."

Zhang Ran, who belongs to the younger generation writers, believes that some day Chinese science fiction will once again, alongside Liu Cixin, find its place in the sun.

"Give Chinese science fiction enough time and you will see some great works coming out," he says.

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