Crossing the Boundaries: Welcome to Invisible Chinese Science Fiction

Invisible to most of the world in the past century, Chinese science fiction is now rising dramatically. Professor Wang Yao (award-winning SF writer Xia Jia) will briefly introduce the history of Chinese science fiction and share her personal experience: how she witnessed the Chinese science fiction develop in the past 30 years, how she became a science fiction fan, then a science fiction writer, then a science fiction researcher, and how science fiction became a way of life, a way of crossing the boundaries for her.

WANG Yao is Professor and Head of Chinese Literature Department, Xi ‘an Jiaotong University, visiting scholar at University of California, Riverside. Her research interests includes contemporary Chinese science fiction and its overseas communication. Her academic collection Coordinates of the Future: Discussions on Chinese Science Fiction in the Age of Globalization was published in 2019. She has been publishing speculative fiction since college with the pen name Xia Jia. Seven of her stories have won the Galaxy Award, China’s most prestigious science fiction award. So far she has published a fantasy novel Odyssey of China Fantasy: On the Road (2010), as well as three science fiction collections The Demon Enslaving Flask (2012), A Time Beyond Your Reach (2017) and Xi’an City Is Falling Down (2018). Recently she has been working on a science fiction fix-up, entitled Chinese Encyclopedia. In English translation, she has been published in Clarkesworld and other venues. Her first flash story written in English, “Let’s Have a Talk,” was published in Nature in 2015. Her first English collection A Summer Beyond Your Reach: Stories was published in 2020. She is also engaged in other science fiction related works, including academic research, translation, screenwriting, editing and creative writing teaching.

Register to join the webinar by clicking this link. We will host a viewing party at Epilogue BookCafe (109 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill), where recent major works of Chinese science fiction will also be available for purchase.