scholarly journals Taoist Philosophy in Chinese Science Fiction: A Comparison between Zhuangzi and Broken Stars

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 237
Author(s):  
Aiqing Wang
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Chinese Science ◽  
Warring States ◽  
Taoist Philosophy

Chinese science fiction has been attaining global visibility since Liu Cixin’s trilogy entitled Remembrance of Earth’s Past. The trilogy’s English translator Liu Yukun has edited and rendered a science-fiction anthology that comprises sixteen novellas composed by fourteen Chinese novelists. Apart from a fecundity of imagination and richness of imagery-evoking depictions, narratives compiled in the anthology also epitomise Taoist philosophy conveyed in Zhuangzi, a Warring States (475-221 BC) treatise ascribed to an illustrious philosopher Zhuangzi. Philosophical constructs in the anthology can be exemplified by quintessential construals such as ‘non-action’, ‘resting in destiny’ and ‘self-so’, as well as mindset appertaining to temporal and aesthetic issues.  

scholarly journals Humanity in Science Fiction Movies: A Comparative Analysis of Wandering Earth, The Martian and Interstellar

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 210-214
Author(s):  
Ma Xinyi ◽  
Hua Jing
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Hard Core ◽  
Women In Science ◽  
Cultural Communication ◽  
Chinese Science ◽  
Domestic Science ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
Artistic Values ◽  
Organic Combination ◽  
Natural Way

Wandering Earth, released in 2019, is regarded as a phenomenal film that opens the door to Chinese science fiction movies. The Chinese story in the film has aroused the resonance of domestic audiences, but failed to get high marks on foreign film review websites. In contrast, in recent years, science fiction films in European and American countries are still loved by audiences at home and abroad, such as The Martian and Interstellar, which have both commercial and artistic values. It can be seen that the cultural communication of western science fiction movies is more successful than that of China. Taking the above three works as examples, this paper analyzes the doomsday plot, the beauty of returning home and the role shaping of scientific women in science fiction movies from the perspective of the organic combination of “hard-core elements of science fiction” and “soft value in humanity”, in an attempt to help the foreign cultural communication of domestic science fiction movies. As an attempt to facilitate the global development of Chinese science fiction, this paper concludes that certain Chinese traditional cultural spirit needs further spreading, that Chinese science fiction and humanity should be combined in a more natural way, and that in particular, female character need in depth and multi-dimensional interpretation.

Representations of the Invisible

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mingwei Song
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Social Awareness ◽  
Literary Realism ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Chinese Science ◽  
The Invisible ◽  
Changing World

The marginalized genre of science fiction has experienced an unprecedented boom in China in recent years, a “new wave” of writing that reinvents the genre by infusing it with a new literary self-consciousness and a new social awareness and by representing the complex realities and fantasies of a changing China and a changing world. The discussion of Chinese science fiction in this chapter, with a focus on works by Han Song and Liu Cixin, centers on the representation of the invisible: science fiction as an invisible genre, the new wave’s representation of the “invisible” reality of China, and tropes of invisibility in the texts themselves. By working with and through invisibility, these texts transgress mainstream literary realism and official political discourse. The chapter ends with a coda featuring a brief discussion of the invisible “posthumans” among China’s migrant workers as featured in Chen Qiufan’s novelThe Waste Tide.

Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Trilogy

2018 ◽  
pp. 107-128
Author(s):  
Mingwei Song
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Main Part ◽  
First Century ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Chinese Science ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Three Body ◽  
Fiction Writer

This chapter introduces the life and work of Liu Cixin, a Chinese science-fiction writer who has played a major role in reviving the genre in twenty-first-century China. The chapter discusses Liu’s work in the context of the genre’s history in China. Liu and other writers belonging to the same generation have created a new wave, in which the genre has gained unprecedented popularity in China. The main part of the chapter analyzes several major works by Liu and attempts to theorize the aesthetics and politics of the new wave as represented in Liu’s stories and novels. The new wave makes visible the hidden dimensions of Chinese science fiction, together with the darker side of reality that it speaks to.

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