Stuck in oblivion for such a long time, Chinese science fiction and its core group of writers are now increasingly concerned with the reception of books overseas. Proving that the genre does indeed have a far-reaching market, a special issue on Chinese sci-fi is being released with the March issue of Science Fiction Studies (SFS), a leading academic journal on the subject published three times a year by DePauw University in the US.

The special issue includes 10 articles of studies and reviews on Chinese sci-fi from the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) period until now by both Chinese and foreign researchers. It took three years to prepare and offers a sound perspective for foreign readers to learn about the development of Chinese science fiction.

"In its 40 years of publishing (It was founded in 1973.), SFS has only released special issues on four countries and regions including Britain, France, Japan and Latin America. China is the 5th," said Wu Yan, president of World Chinese Science Fiction Association who wrote the preface for the special issue.

Overseas exposure

With two leading Chinese writers' (Liu Cixin and Han Song) observations on the domestic sci-fi scene and seven research papers on its development in different historic periods, Chinese sci-fi writers and films, as well as its translation overseas, the special issue "is of landmark significance to the international clout of Chinese science fiction," Wu said.

In fact, the release of the special issue in SFS is only one of the examples that Chinese sci-fi is increasingly sought after among foreign readers and researchers. On November 30 last year, Renditions, a Chinese literature translation magazine (Chinese to English) published by Chinese University of Hong Kong since 1973, published a special issue on Chinese sci-fi to introduce it globally.

Also in November of last year, the most well-known work of Chinese sci-fi, Three Body Trilogy written by Liu Cixin, officially kicked off its translation work overseas (including English, Korean and Japanese languages). The Korean version is expected to be published within the year, according to Yao Haijun, managing editor of Science Fiction World magazine (SFW), the most important domestic sci-fi magazine founded in 1978.

"It used to be that people in foreign countries rarely paid attention to Chinese sci-fi," Yao told the Global Times, "but recently under the influence of the Three Body Trilogy, and with more and more quality sci-fi works emerging like The Subway by Han Song and We, Together by Wang Jinkang, as well as its availability on the Internet, Chinese sci-fi is getting more overseas exposure."

A good start toward the West

Compared to the relatively recent collective exposure overseas, Chinese sci-fi has long been out of Western readers' sight. Up to now, except for the 1989 translation work Science Fiction from China (a collection of domestic short sci-fi stories from the 1970s and 1980s compiled and translated mainly by professor Wu Dingbai), introduction of domestic sci-fi to foreign countries has been fragmented and scattered.

"We have been cooperating with publishers in Japan and Italy to translate domestic sci-fi works, but overall the current exposure overseas is just a good start. Whether there will be more works introduced and how they will be accepted among foreign readers needs time to tell," said Yao.

In his view, the increasing attention from the West is partly attributed to the country's economic achievement in those years.