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Catch up on a previous newsletter with our 1st birthday round-up here.
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Upcoming: August session
'Through the Fog, a Distant Land Appears' /《雾中袭来的远方》
by Wanxiang Fengnian / 万象峰年 and translated by Nathan Faries
Video call with the author Wanxiang Fengnian and the London Chinese Science Fiction Group
Sunday 30th August - London: 14:00 = Beijing 21:00, lasting about 1hr30
Online: Zoom - reply to this email with "Count me in for LCSFG's August meeting!" and we'll send you a video call link and password a day before the session.
"The last shadowy figure had disappeared from the village. At first Gu Huilan thought that someone from the outside would certainly come, or maybe someone like her, returning home from work or travel, and bring back with them some news. She thought the electricity would eventually cut out. But it never did. Even the signal on her cell phone remained strong. Everything was just like normal, except without the people."
In 'Through the Fog, a Distant Land Appears', Gu Huilan looks after her two children, Qingtian and Dandan, with the youngest suspected as fatally ill. Over a few days, the inhabitants of the entire village suddenly disappear, and soon, so do her two children.
The villagers reappear as electrified shadows, but Qingtian and Dandan are yet to return. Wanxiang Fengnian illustrates the village through a diseased filter of withering yellows, and an eerie almost-silence that murmurs an anxious, voltaic undercurrent. The short story is mundane in tone, as we endure alongside Gu Huilan in her isolating wait.
Throughout the story, small triggers remind the mother how her children yearned for her return from working in the city. Her grief and regret intercepts her with her confusion over the disappearances. Her perseverance to await Qingtian and Dandan's reappearance is met with a very strange development...
Wanxiang Fengnian articulates the desperate, endless longing that a generation of Chinese 'left-behind' children - and their parents - experience today, as the adults are forced to migrate from rural areas to work in the cities, and are rarely able to reunite with their children.
Here are some themes that may guide your reading for our discussion:
- loneliness and family
- left-behind children and migrant labour in China's industrial boom
- waiting and reunion
Please read ahead for this month's online video call session, but if you don't get a chance to do so, you are still warmly welcome to join in. Share your thoughts and questions, engage with others, and chat with us and Wanxiang Fengnian about the story in this upcoming session!
'Through the Fog, a Distant Land Appears' /《雾中袭来的远方》by Wanxiang Fengnian / 万象峰年 can be found in its English translation by Nathan Faries in Future Science Fiction Digest, Issue 4, October 2019 here. For its original Chinese, please email us for an e-copy with the author's permission.
Wanxiang Fengnian is a Chinese science fiction author signed with the Future Affairs Administration. His novel The Post-Glacier Times Chronicle has won the 2008 Galaxy Reader’s Choice Award. His novel Three Realms won the Silver Prize for the Best Chinese Science Fiction Novel of the Second Chinese Science Fiction Nebula Award. His fiction has been translated into various languages such as Tibetan and English.
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Also upcoming: LSFRC Conference - “Beyond Borders: Empires, Bodies, Science Fictions”
'Beyond Borders: Empires, Bodies, Science Fictions' will take place online from Thursday 10th to Saturday 12th September. It is organised by the London Science Fiction Research Community, alongside members of Science Fiction Beyond the West and our London Chinese Science Fiction Group's Lyu Guangzhao.
"For our 2020 conference, the LSFRC invites papers exploring borders in SF. We understand this theme broadly but are particularly interested in papers which address borders as politicised tools used to uphold empires, divide communities and police the bodies of those most marginalised. Our understanding of SF is likewise broad, and we in no way intend to use the traditionally acknowledged borders to the genre to exclude those whose work cannot be neatly defined by the term ‘science fiction."
As part of the Chinese SF stream, translator Emily X. Jin and author Chen Qiufan will be participating guests, and we'll hear the many amazing papers from our peers! Our LCSFG's Angela Chan will also present a paper on climate change SF and chair the Creator Roundtable for Chen Qiufan, Linda Stupart and Larissa Sansour.
Registration is now open and more details can be found here!
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Previously: July session
'Wu Ding's Journey to the West'《无定西行记》by Tang Fei / 糖匪, translated by Andy Dudak
Video call with the author, translator and the London Chinese Science Fiction Group, Sunday 26th July
A write up of this event is available on our WeChat account here!
"The Second Law of Thermodynamics: In the natural course of things, the chaos (or “entropy”) of a closed system can only decrease. Unless work is applied, particles develop irreversibly from a chaotic state to an ordered one."
"The vehicle’s main fuel was people’s exhaled breath, mixed with some other gases that weren’t so reactive. This mix automatically condensed in the tank, actuating pistons that provided the vehicle’s motive force, while generating diesel oil that drained through a tube into a vat."
Tang Fei's speculative short story 'Wu Ding's Journey to the West'《无定西行记》imagines a world of "counter-entropy". Here, infrastructure, technological advancements, perhaps even societal developments, all suddenly appear miraculously without any prior groundwork. For this to happen, all anyone needs to do is simply wait for an unknown duration.
With this, there is a disconnect between the protagonists' determination to innovate and pave their own path (quite literally, a Trans-Siberian road), and their society's overwhelming attitude of complacency, which just sits back and awaits its prescribed future.
In a world where cause and effect are sequentially reversed, what actions can one meaningfully take to prompt desired states of change? What if ambitions are nullified to a multi-generational waiting game?
'Wu Ding's Journey to the West'《无定西行记》by Tang Fei / 糖匪 can be found in its English translation by Andy Dudak for Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 154, July 2019 here, and in its original Chinese please email us for an e-copy.
Tang Fei is a speculative fiction writer whose fiction has been featured (under various pen names) in magazines in China such as Science Fiction World, Jiuzhou Fantasy, and Fantasy Old and New. She has published a short story collection, The Person Who Saw Cetus, and a novel, Nameless Feast. She has written fantasy, science fiction, fairy tales, and wuxia (martial arts fantasy), but prefers to write in a way that straddles or stretches genre boundaries. She is also a genre critic, and her critical essays have been published in The Economic Observer. In English, her works have appeared in Clarkesworld, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014 Edition, The Apex Book of World SF 4, SQ, and Paper Republic.
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Bibliography
We are gathering our primary titles together with collectively suggested ones on an online database here.
If you mentioned a reference like a book, article, film or podcast during our session, please navigate the tabs at the bottom of the link page to add your suggestion to the relevant month's reading.
You may add to this at any time to enhance our engagement with the stories' themes and the wider literary and cultural analyses.
Alternatively, if you cannot make our meetings, you are also welcome to add your recommendations and catch up with the reading offered.
We hope for this to be a useful and informative documentation of our activity, as well as a resource for everyone involved!
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