Studies of Chinese science fiction in the English-speaking world have generated many excellent works about two periods: the turn of the 20th century and the past two decades. The former shows science fiction's deep entanglement with the nationalist project of a suffering old empire, and the latter links the genre to the growingly modernized and marketized China, whose complexity is augmented by the global flow of information, materials and people. Less attention has been paid to the second half of the 20th century, especially the 1950s to 1960s, and the late 1970s to early 1980s, two periods that witnessed lively scenes of science fiction.
One reason that may have led to this paucity lies in a stereotyped understanding: science fiction in these periods suffer from a heavy ideological tone and straightforward literary presentation. In her solid work, Hua Li establishes the complexity and significance of Chinese science fiction in the post-Mao period. Making a significant contribution to this field, Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw centres on the transitional feature of the science fiction scene between 1978 and 1983 or the “thaw” era. During that time, like many other literary genres, Chinese science fiction resurrected from its absence in the previous decade and set out on a new track.
The overarching argument of the work is that in the thaw era, Chinese science fiction went beyond its existing conventions formed mainly in the 1950s and 1960s, gained the cultural capital as a legitimate subgenre of popular literature, and paved the way for the New Wave science fiction which would flourish in the coming decades. Specifically, Li highlights the concept of tech-SF (jishu kehuan), a “subgenre of SF” that “focuses on technological innovations” (p. 115). It originated from the spirit of the times and has fostered some of the most well-known Chinese science fiction works today.
Starting from such a historical vision, Li explores science fiction texts and their authors, along with information about their political, commercial and cultural environment. Examining not only the texts themselves, but their production, circulation and presentation in different media (Ken Gelder's “quasi-academic or para-academic reading” method), Li uses rich historical materials, including contemporary literary criticism, fanzines, memoirs, official documents and publication data to reconstruct a vivid literary scene that was exciting to Chinese readers.
The book is organized into eight chapters. Referring to Pierre Bourdieu's theory of cultural production, chapter one provides a general introduction to the literary field of Chinese science fiction in the cultural thaw. The four following chapters are thematic readings of works by representative authors: Zheng Wenguang (1929–2003), Ye Yonglie (1940–2020), Tong Enzheng (1935–1997) and Xiao Jianheng (b. 1930). Chapter six examines the origin of the “tech-SF,” tracing it back to the encouragement generated in the national Four Modernizations project. Chapter seven argues that the multi-media adaptation of science fiction works helped Chinese science fiction move into a broader popular cultural field. The conclusive chapter underscores Chinese science fiction's creative exploration to go beyond social realism, a huge legacy that was shared by mainstream literature. The chapter also put the whole work in dialogue with world science fiction studies in general, and the study of Chinese science fiction.
Several features render this book a worthy read. Having done serious work on contemporary Chinese literary fiction, the author is familiar with the literary environment from which science fiction carved out room for itself. She makes clear the different presentations of shared socio-political concerns of two distinctive groups of authors, the ideologically engaging “literary” writers and the science fiction authors who were on the “popular” side. This reference helps the author to coordinate science fiction in a broader literary scene.
Treating Chinese science fiction as a part of world literature, the author devotes considerable discussions to the influence of foreign science fiction on Chinese works, especially that from the social realism of the Soviet Union, and the rich imagination of technological wonders from the United States. The study confirms the universal attraction of certain classical themes to peoples of different cultures, while also addressing the unique unfolding of such stories in the setting of thaw-era China.
The book adopts an interdisciplinary perspective throughout, and this is most evident in the chapter on the “fledging media convergence.” Looking at the multi-media involvement of science fiction in Chinese cultural forms, including literary magazines, newspapers, illustrated story books (lianhuanhua), TV dramas, radio plays and films, among others, the chapter shows that science fiction served as an active element in the emerging popular cultural scene. In the discussions, Li provides a brief introduction of the general situation for each cultural form, and this is enormously helpful, especially to non-experts.
A slight drawback here seems to be how effectively Henry Jenkins's and Mark Sternberg's theories apply to the situation in thaw-era China, since the “multimedia flow of content” (p. 164) at that time was occasional and one-directional, from literary texts to other media, and because this flow was driven by a non-market force. A simpler analysis of the case might have served the purpose.
This is a solid, rich and inspiring book that complements existing literature in many ways. It is recommended to readers with interests in 20th-century Chinese literature and popular culture, as well as students of world science fiction.
