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Voices from the Cybernetic House

It is only in the last decade that even Chinese literature scholars have become cognizant of the literary significance of China’s science fiction tradition, as Jia Liyuan notes in his essay in this special section on the subject. Yet, it should come as little surprise that Chinese science fiction is enjoying a moment of prominence in popular and academic culture. As China invests political and physical capital in becoming a leader in global trade, politics, and research, and the United States retreats from its Cold War-era leadership role, twentieth century clichés about sleeping giants and dragons waking and shaking the world are coming to pass. In their essay featured in this special section, Wu Yan and Yao Jianbin ask us to consider that the seeds of science fiction were present in early Chinese works contemplating man’s relationship with nature, though these seeds did not fully take root. The two authors then offer a concise history of the political and cultural role of science fiction in twentieth century China. The bewildering onslaught of rapid modernization and constant transformation has produced a host of contradictions, giving rise to a second cliché: that in the past thirty years, China’s reality has surpassed fiction. Identifying Hao Jingfang’s “Folding Beijing” as an example of “SF Realism,” Ren Dongmei elucidates the thin line between science fiction and realism. In a similar vein of social critique, Ning Ken has posited that “if Magical Realism was the way in which Latin American authors presented their view of their reality, then Ultra-Unreal Realism should be our name for the literature through which the Chinese regard their reality.”1 Ning Ken’s definition of emergent work describing the quotidian-surreal of contemporary China calls to mind Seo-young Chu’s definition of science fiction as a Chinese Science Fiction Voices from the Cybernetic House