Sci-fi made in China

This is the time of year when people wrap up the last 12 months and look to the future, when pundits and strategists predict what China or the world will become over the next year or the next decade. But a brave few souls go much further and depict all types of future imaginable for humanity, if not the entire universe.

Science fiction, despite remaining a marginal genre here, is slowly making a comeback in China. Long considered a branch of children's literature, science fiction today has been maturing. The rise of China and the problems caused by its rapid development provide ample materials for science fiction writers to feed their imaginations.

Science fiction as a genre is closely related to the progress of science and technology. Many scholars have pointed out that it's no coincidence that the first science fiction novel was published in industrial-era Britain.

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Scholars and sci-fi writers point out that China has seen three booms of sci-fi texts. At the turn of the last century translations of writers such as Jules Verne had a major influence on late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) writers. However, this movement did not survive the ensuing wars and revolutions.

The late 1970s and early 1980s, the early years of reform and opening-up, saw another boom in sci-fi stories, though some of them were written much earlier than their publication dates would suggest.

Ye Yonglie, one of the earliest sci-fi writers in China, wrote a novel in 1961, which presented a technology-enabled future of convenience. But his story wasn't published until 1978, after the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).

Stories like Ye's are representative of the imagination and mind-set of an era where the country was very much focused on modernization through science and technology. Most science fiction stories then talked about the bright future science would bring. There was also an obvious influence from the Soviet Union.

But this nascent sci-fi scene didn't last long. In 1983, the government launched a campaign to eradicate the "pollution" of Western thoughts and lifestyles that were flourishing as the country opened its doors to the world. Science fiction was targeted as being unrealistic, fantastical and useless.

After going through the wilderness, it wasn't until the last decade that science fiction underwent a third wind. Liu Cixin is one of the best known sci-fi writers in China. His acclaimed Three Body trilogy has sold at least 400,000 copies and is about to be translated into English.

Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans its invasion of Earth, while on Earth, people form into different camps to either welcome the superior beings to take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.

Heavily influenced by science fiction legend Arthur C. Clarke, Liu's novels place more on technical and scientific explanations than on characters or plot. The basis of Three Body, which took him over five years to finish, is the "three-body problem" where a system with three interacting objects is highly unpredictable. Its technical depictions can make the books seem cold and detached, but they still depict a grand imagination and draw readers into a different world.

A computer engineer by day, Liu, 49, started out as a sci-fi fan and began writing part time in his early 20s. He published his first short story in 1999. He said he is more conscious of the common themes of the genre, which treat humanity as a whole and dwell upon ultimate questions such as the future of civilization or life itself.

Liu admits that there aren't as many heavy sci-fi works as in the genre's post-war golden age. "Perhaps the rapid development of science has made it less magical as in the past, and there is now more emphasis on the negative impact of science," said Liu.

What Liu loves most about science fiction is creating a whole new world. "It's also a way of thinking and looking at things," said Liu. "It shows you all the different possibilities of the future."