For a few days in October 2023, the capital of the science fiction world was Chengdu, China. Fans traveled from around the world as Worldcon, sci-fi ’s biggest annual event, was held in the country for the first time.
A man looks at copies of The Three-Body Problem on display at a bookstore in Beijing on Monday, February 19, 2024. The series, written by former engineer Liu Cixin, helped Chinese science fiction break through internationally, winning awards and making it onto the reading lists of the likes of former US President Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg.
The event embodied the contradictions that Chinese science fiction has faced for decades. In 40 years, it’s gone from a politically suspect niche to one of China’s most successful cultural exports, with author Liu Cixin gaining an international following that includes fans like Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg. But it’s had to overcome obstacles created by geopolitics for just as long.
Science Fiction World planned to host a writers’ conference in the city, known for its panda sanctuary and countercultural bend, in 1991. But as news of the brutal crackdown on student protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square circled the globe in 1989, foreign speakers were dropping out.
Sci-fi saw a resurgence as China began opening to the world after the Mao era in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Authors like Zheng Wenguang and Ye Yonglie wrote stories about traveling into space, while China’s nascent space program launched its first satellites into orbit. Regional magazines such as Chengdu’s Science Fiction World mushroomed.
But The Three-Body Problem, first serialized by Science Fiction World in 2006, reached a level of popularity unseen by other Chinese works, says Yao, who edited the novel. The translations were intended from the start as “a big cultural export from China to the world, something very highly visible,” says Joel Martinsen, who translated The Dark Forest. But no one could have anticipated the critical and popular success: In 2015, Liu became the first Asian author to win a Hugo Award for a novel.
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