吴岩介绍中国科幻

2009-07-01 16:39:09 来自: Onion(最疲惫生活的梦想英雄)

原文链接 http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2009/07/mind-meld-guide-to-international-sff-part-ii/

Yan Wu
Yan Wu is an associate professor of Beijing Normal University. He began sf writing and publishing in 1979. Now he is the only one teaching sf as literature in a university that has a Master's program on sf criticism. My short story "Mouse Pad" has been translated into English and published in Internova I.

I think that Chinese science fiction comes inevitably under three influences. First of all, it has been shaped by the Anglophone science fictions, with characteristics quite familiar to western readers. Secondly, it has been intensively influenced by local traditional culture. Thirdly, it reflects the specific demand of a certain era. As a result, it would be quite interesting to read Chinese science fiction from these three perspectives.

On the one hand, Chinese science fiction has a very strong proximity to the Chinese fairy tale, fable, folk tale, and the historical story. Intertextuality also frequently occurs between science fiction and Chinese folk tales. For instance, Pan Hai-tian's story "Legend of Yanshi" is closely associated with some tales in the Spring-Autumn and Warrior State periods as well as Chinese values and ideas on authority, family, and technology. In addition to that, a great number of works convey a strong message of Chinese attitudes towards nature, like the reflections on Taoism's value of the "harmonious relation between humans and nature". In Han Song's novelette "Escape from the Sorrow Mountain," it is not impossible to imagine the occurrence of spiritual communication between Buddha and humans in Chinese culture. Likewise, most of Wang Jinkang's works have been focused on taking over the position of rationality by Chinese harmonious ideas. The distinctive example is his novel Balance between life and death.

On the other hand, the dominant characteristics of specific eras show up in the Chinese science fiction of that era. Specifically, the early Chinese science fictions in the later-Qing era put great emphasis on the advocacy of building a wealthy and powerful nation. After the foundation of the People Republic of China, Chinese science fiction then shifted its focus on exalting communist ideals. With the dismantling of the Gang of Four, the lament on what was destroyed by the Great Cultural Revolution was the main theme in Chinese science fiction. Now prospects on China's future have become the popular topic in Chinese science fiction. What does China's future look like? Han Song's Red Ocean and Liu Cixing's Three Bodies and it sequel The Black Forests provided us their different insights on this issue. The former portrays the inescapable fate of China as one of the nations eventually declining due to environment degradation and destroyed by the inhumanity inflicted on the oceans. The latter, in an optimistic way, describes the leading role played by China in the world resistance movement in facing the invasion of a devil alien civilization. The two novels represent the top achievements of contemporary Chinese science fiction.