
Bringing Chinese Science Fiction to the West - another
http://www.newsweek.com/man-bringing-chinese-science-fiction-west-514893
======
whack
Great timing. I literally just 2 hours ago finished reading _Three Body
Problem_ , a sci-fi book mentioned in the article. The description of sci-fi
books, not as predictions about the future, but as allegories for the present,
is dead on. As someone who virtually always reads western books by western
authors, Three Body Problem was one of the best books I've read this year. It
was gripping, suspenseful, intelligent, and most interestingly, offered a
perspective of the world that differs dramatically from that found in western
books.

I think a truly global literary scene, featuring writers, ideas and
perspectives from all over the world, has the potential to usher in the next
golden age of literature.

~~~
pigscantfly
If you enjoy allegorical, non-Western sci-fi, I would highly recommend the
work of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, two prolific brothers who collaborated on
a wide range of largely science-fictional material during Soviet times. Most
of their work was heavily censored for allegorical references to the
contemporary Soviet society and ideology; unredacted English translations have
been published over the past fifteen years or so with epilogues written by
Boris covering the censorship process. I would recommend beginning with "The
Dead Mountaineer's Inn," which I started with, although "Hard to be a God" and
"Monday Begins on Saturday" are more strongly allegorical. I read their entire
catalogue after reading a book review last year and becoming (mildly)
obsessed.

~~~
PerfectDlite
Strugatsky are hardly a sci-fi. Soviet (and post-Soviet) fiction writers are
surprisingly bad at sci-fi.

For a decent sci-fi I'd recommend to check Stanislaw Lem, especially 'The
Invincible' and 'The Futurological Congress'.

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d0100
Absolute travesty that the immense amateur translation scene wasn't mentioned
in the article. Chinese web novels that are 1000+ chapters long, with around
2000 characters per chapter, are being actively translated by a growing
translation community.

If you like flat characters and lot's of humor and adventure, you should check
out /r/noveltranslations

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andrewfong
Did anyone else not enjoy the actual writing in _Three Body Problem_? I
enjoyed the book from a speculative science and "well this is different"
perspective, but the writing style and plotting were very difficult to parse
through.

"Show-not-tell" isn't much followed. Character development is light, to say
the least. Most of the story takes place from the perspective of one of two
characters, but then there's one incredibly jarring chapter where the author
goes, "Oh by the way, I'm sharing a bunch of classified documents with the
reader that neither character has ever seen." And apart from scenes with a
single non-viewpoint character (the cop), most of the dialogue sounds more
like a post-modern philosophy lecture than actual conversation between real
people.

Some of this could just be cultural differences between Western and Chinese
writing styles, or maybe things got lost in translation. I haven't read enough
Chinese literature to say though. For those who have read more, would you say
Three Body Problem is typical of modern Chinese writing, or Chinese science
fiction?

~~~
hackuser
I read the English translation and felt the writing ranged from adequate to
tedious, and conveyed little beyond the literal meaning of the words.
Certainly some was due to skill composing English, which I assume is due to
the translator. But at times there were long, dull tangents, especially (IIRC)
into personal histories of characters, that had no impact on the story. I
started skipping paragraphs and pages, and it took an effort to reach the end.
The Cultural Revolution scenes at the beginning, however, were powerful and
left a deep impression.

After that, I picked up a book by Nadine Gordimer, the Nobel Prize winning
author from South Africa. What a relief and pleasure - both books used the
same language but entirely differently, hers was crafted so beautifully and
with so much more meaning in the same number of characters.

Tom Stoppard (whose embrace of serious science should make him HN's favorite
playwright - for example, one famous play turns on the Second Law of
Thermodynamics), describes the difference between the highly skilled and
everyday writer in his play, The Real Thing:

 _HENRY [holding a cricket bat]: Shut up and listen. This thing here, which
looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood
cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung,
like a dance floor. It’s for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right,
the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you’ve
done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it
makes a noise like a trout taking a fly... (He clucks his tongue to make the
noise.) What we’re trying to do is to write cricket bats, so that when we
throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might... travel... (He clucks
his tongue again and picks up the script.) Now, what we’ve got here is a lump
of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a
ball with it, the ball will travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat
and dance about shouting ‘Ouch!’ with your hands stuck into your armpits.
(indicating the cricket bat) This isn’t better because someone says it’s
better, or because there’s a conspiracy by the MCC to keep cudgels out of
Lords. It’s better because it’s better. You don’t believe me, so I suggest you
go out to bat with this [hack script] and see how you get on. ‘You’re a
strange boy, Billy, how old are you?’ ‘Twenty, but I’ve lived more than you’ll
ever live.’ Ooh, ouch! He drops the script and hops about with his hands in
his armpits ... ‘Ouch!’_

~~~
vorg
> The Cultural Revolution scenes at the beginning, however, were powerful and
> left a deep impression

I guess they're put at the beginning in the English translation to achieve
that "Here's a foreign culture" effect. The Chinese language edition orders
the chapters differently, so that those first 3 chapters on the Cultural
revolution come in the middle of chapter 9 when Wang Miao talks to the
astrophysicist. The Chinese edition more clearly unfolds the events as they're
found out by certain main characters.

The Jackie Chan movie "Who am I?" film was similarly butchered for Western
audiences. The Asian edition has his character waking up with amnesia in
Africa, and we spend the movie identifying with him as he finds out how he got
there, via memories returning and clues. The American edition, however, begins
by showing all the forgotten memories, taking away the mystery for the viewer.

~~~
hackuser
Very interesting.

> I guess they're put at the beginning in the English translation to achieve
> that "Here's a foreign culture" effect.

I wouldn't assume the motive, however. Perhaps they thought English-speaking
audiences are much less familiar with the abuses of the Cultural Revolution
and needed more context. Perhaps they thought the scenes wouldn't pass Chinese
censors or would attract too much negative attention if those scenes were
featured so prominently. Perhaps ...

------
russnewcomer
The City Trilogy ( [https://www.amazon.com/Trilogy-Modern-Chinese-Literature-
Tai...](https://www.amazon.com/Trilogy-Modern-Chinese-Literature-
Taiwan/dp/0231128525) ) is my personal favorite Chinese/Taiwanese SF story.
Some people I've recommended it to pass on it because of some of the
translation issues[0], but if you read Romance of the Three Kingdoms and
you've read a decent amount of translated work already[1], The City Trilogy is
a work on that can be enjoyed on levels like Star Wars or Dune. (and I make
that broad comparison intentionally)

[0]A couple of key word choices, most prominently galaxies instead of what
should really be systems or planets. the translator made can really pop
literal minded people out of the story, and I think that you have to have the
mindset that the composition of language is better and more evocative in the
original than the translation.

[1] I've found, totally anecdotally, that a few of my Christian friends who
have spent a good chunk of their reading time reading translations are able to
enjoy translated works better than those who have not. I've also found, again
anecdotally, that few people like the first few translated works they read,
and enjoy the later ones better.

~~~
JadeNB
> [1] I've found, totally anecdotally, that a few of my Christian friends who
> have spent a good chunk of their reading time reading translations are able
> to enjoy translated works better than those who have not.

I don't mean to be overly PC or anything, but the word 'Christian' seems to
have nothing to do with the rest of the sentence. Is it just a true
characterisation that has no effect on their enjoyment, or do Christians
somehow have more (or less) difficulty with translated works than non-
Christians? (Or was it maybe a typo?)

~~~
dmreedy
I believe this was an allusion to most Christians' experiences with the Bible
being compiled through several translations of Hebrew, Koine Greek, and Latin,
depending on the version and books.

~~~
JadeNB
Thank you. That was the context I was missing.

------
Hates_
I can't recommend The Third-Body problem enough. Definitely worth reading.

~~~
Paul_S
I want to offer a differing opinion. I found the writing terrible which is
excused on account of being a translation. The alien parts are quite
imaginative but the rest of the action was just too surreal to stomach. The
characters are cartoonishly flat or maybe China is more alien to me than I can
handle.

~~~
girzel
Flat characters, unfortunately, are a regular feature of Chinese fiction, and
not just sci-fi (though worse in sci-fi). In fact, most of the complaints
about Three Body on this page (weird story structuring, awkward language, huge
plot twists in the space of one or two sentences) are broadly applicable to
contemporary Chinese fiction in general.

If anyone's interested in more Chinese sci-fi, Clarkesworld has been
mentioned. I also produce a literary journal of Chinese fiction in
translation, called _Pathlight_ , and we did one issue based on sci-fi, with I
think some really excellent stories in it. I wonder if posting a link to what
is essentially my own product is frowned upon here... Well, hell with it.
Here's the ebook if anyone's interested:

[https://www.amazon.com/Pathlight-Spring-2013-Alice-Xin-
ebook...](https://www.amazon.com/Pathlight-Spring-2013-Alice-Xin-
ebook/dp/B00D1X7F38/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2)

~~~
jessaustin
Flat characters are also a regular feature of sci-fi, so Chinese sci-fi may be
getting the a double dose of flat...

For example, read most things by Asimov or Herbert. Although I enjoy good
characterization, lots of sci-fi works fine without it.

~~~
zem
agreed. i found liu cixin very reminiscent of arthur c clarke, both the good
parts and the bad.

------
searine
I really enjoyed The Three-Body Problem/The Dark Forest/Death's End and highly
recommend them because of their unusual ideas.

It was also refreshing to read a book coming from totally different cultural
mindset that goes after familiar sci-fi goals.

We all have biases and failures in our perspective, and it was interesting
read a novel where the authors biases were so different from my own. Liu
seemed bipolar in his treatment of women for example. Half the women presented
felt vibrant (Ye Wenjie for example) while others, such as Luo Ji's perfect
wife were fanfiction quality.

Overall, the ideas presented in The Three Body Problem and The Dark Forest are
thought-provoking enough to recommend these books. Death's End on the other
hand, was mediocre but worth a read just to finish the series.

------
jordache
Am I the only one who was wholeheartedly underwhelmed by the Three Body
Problem? I did get through it but I consider it a waste of my time. The only
good part of the story was the mysterious count down timer.

------
arbitrage
Warning, autoplaying video

~~~
e40
You need uBlock Origin & uMatrix.

~~~
0xffff2
Specifically, you need uMatrix. I use uBlock Origin, and it doesn't block the
video at all.

------
boznz
The poor Chinese seem to be the protagonists in a lot of recent American
Authored SciFi, maybe there will be some pay back :-)

I Personally find big corporation baddies more believable and readable.

~~~
guyzero
I think you mean antagonists? And yes, but the few ones I've read are pretty
heavy-handed and it's pretty terribly done.

------
hijonathan
The characters may seem flat, but that's just one perspective. I recently
finished all three books and can attest that more nuanced, multi-dimensional
characters do appear later in the series, though there are also even flatter
ones as well, so perhaps it's a wash.

Highly recommend the audio book versions on Audible. Great narration.

~~~
akozak
I think it's cultural, not a matter of translation. Readers in the west will
have less access to stereotypes and tropes that all authors rely on, to some
extent.

------
pmontra
The collection includes Folding Beijing. It won the Hugo award this year and
it's available freely online at [http://uncannymagazine.com/article/folding-
beijing-2/](http://uncannymagazine.com/article/folding-beijing-2/)

------
crimsonalucard
Chinese wuxia (kung fu mythology) is already a hugely interesting genre that
many westerners miss out on.

------
Dowwie
If you are going to read one sci-fi book this year, read "Ready Player One" or
"The Martian". Don't waste your hours on Cixin Liu. :)

