“A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight” was the first story by you to appear in English (Clarkesworld, February 2012; originally published in Chinese in Science Fiction World, August 2010). Lois Tilton described it as “literary science fiction . . . where exceptional prose mingles the tropes of SF and fantasy and inform us that such distinctions are not so important.” It seems that the debate over genre boundaries is universal (though the debate also seems to me useless). What are some other ways that critics have described your work?
Besides “porridge SF,” my work is frequently described as typical “girlish soft SF,” which brings me biting comments and attacks from those who believe women are never qualified enough to write “hard SF” but can only make up watered-down love stories (I have noticed that many of those critics are also women).
I really appreciate Tilton’s remark, and I agree with you that the perennial debate over the distinction of hard SF from soft SF is most of the time pointless, which is why I have resisted further elaboration of the definition of “porridge SF.” I mean, it is not a slogan or manifesto, but only an attempt to give a name to something nameless wandering in the twilight zone. Likewise, “female SF” is another phrase I feel is tough to define. It is not my purpose to prove “female SF” can be as hard as “male SF/core SF,” or that “the soft” deserves higher evaluation than “the hard.” All I have been trying to do is to follow my instinct to explore the frontier between “the core” and “the fringe,” the known and the unknown. It is perhaps the most exciting experience that science fiction can bring us.
Speaking of “hard SF,” you actually studied at the School of Physics, Peking University, as an undergraduate (and you’ve helped me to get the science in my stories right). How (if at all) has your training and background in science affected your approach to literary analysis and fiction writing?
The science training has been useful both for my studies and my writing. If I have any question about a science topic, I can search for published papers instead of relying on media reports by journalists. It’s not boring; instead, the work will drive you to know this world better and love it more.
To give you a specific example, recently I gave a lecture on time travel where, using the “butterfly effect,” I explained that we cannot predict the weather or one’s trajectory in life accurately. Every second in our past matters equally.
It has taken all the moments of my life for me to become who I am today. Life is such a beautiful gift that no matter how carefully you measure it out it will seem like a waste. So don’t panic, and there’s time enough for love.
Your story, “Tongtong’s Summer” (Upgraded, edited by Neil Clarke, 2014; Chinese publication in ZUI Fiction, March 2014), offered a positive future of cyborgs and robots in contrast to many of the other stories in the anthology. Is this optimism something new in your recent work? Where does it come from?
That’s an interesting observation. I still remember when I was a little girl, most of the western science fiction stories I read involved dystopias where lives are dark and depressing. People struggle but fail, and come to a totally hopeless, nihilistic end. I used to be fascinated by those visions of the future.
However, I couldn’t help wondering whether there truly is no escape or if we are just unable to imagine it because of some mental constraints. Probably because I was taught from a young age that history is a process of endless struggle, and humanity, as a historical subject, should bring its creative spirit into play.
About “Tongtong’s Summer” in particular: I have aging grandparents who require care and have tried to do some of the nursing work myself. The work was exhausting, but I also found the personal connection in nursing to be a meaningful and irreplaceable element. This inspired me to come up with the remote-controlled elder care aide.
The story is also dedicated to my departed grandfather. A revolutionary hero, he was an energetic man until a brain tumor struck him down. I imagined an alternative future, where Grandpa raged against the bonds placed on him by his disease and changed his own predicament—and the world—from his wheelchair. It is only an imagined solace, of course, but one that has the possibility to be realized someday.
This possibility depends on us, on the courage and love inside every ordinary, mortal individual.
A lot of your work draws on Chinese traditions and customs, showing how they retain their essence in the face of technological and social change. But you’ve also told me that you’re not deeply attached to traditional Chinese culture. Can you reconcile these two sentiments for me?
Honestly, to answer this question you must reconsider “what is traditional Chinese culture” first. Since China has been experiencing great transformations in the process of modernization—“all that is solid melts into air”—one can hardly say such cultural attachment is a natural feeling or a historical construction. I appreciate classical Chinese literature as well as you or any other contemporary reader, but I cannot imagine that on some future day we would dig out certain “traditional wisdom” from ancient books to defend against high-tech space invaders. [KL: hey, that gives me an idea for a story . . .]
Traditions are always changing over time. It is we, the present generation living on the frontier between tradition and modernity, present and future, who struggle for our self-affirmation, not some “tradition” that retains its own self-evident essence.
Readers are sometimes curious about how I’ve changed your stories in the process of translation. Can you talk a bit about that?
I remember in the draft translation of “Spring Festival: Happiness, Anger, Love, Sorrow, Joy” (Clarkesworld, September 2014; originally published in Chinese in Science Fiction World, June 2013), you provided a few delicate adjustments, which made me smile. For example, in “New Year’s Eve,” you inserted a few words that the Spring Festival Gala used to be “singing, dancing, a few stupid jokes and it’s over” to explain the program for American readers. And my reaction was “Oh yeah, you know about that!” Similarly in “Matchmaking,” when the manager advised Xiao Li to ask for her mother’s help on those virtual dates, you added an interpretation that “after all, marriage is about two families coming together.” That was very helpful, otherwise American readers might find the whole “mommy counselor” thing totally incomprehensible.
The most obvious change is your recommendation to excise the “Valentine” segment to shorten the story in order to make it easier to sell. Also, you wanted a new title instead of translating it literally as “Old Memories of Spring Festival in 2044.” We argued about this over email and finally reached a consensus: the mini-stories focused on complicated emotions in a changing world, not precise predictions of the future. I really enjoy such discussions. It feels like, well, in your story “The Shape of Thought,” the children of humans and aliens weaving their fingers together and trying to understand this world in a new, strange way.
Can you tell us about the longest film you’ve made so far: Parapax?
Parapax was initially inspired by Alan Brennert’s short story “Echoes,” which depicts a woman’s quantum lives proliferating from her various decisions and possibilities. I shared this idea with my friend Wang Yao, who suggested we try to tell a similar story visually. I wrote the script.
In the film, a young woman majoring in physics wakes up one day to find herself the heroine of a science fiction story. Meanwhile, an author is composing this story in another world where she suddenly meets a mysterious man in black who is a character from her story. In yet a third world, a scriptwriter is talking about science fiction and film with the director.
I had to play all three characters myself because Xia Jia A, B and C are different images of me. Centered on “parallel worlds,” “multiple reality” and “crossover,” the film is also “meta-SF” or “meta-cinema.” The title “Parapax” combines “parallel” and “K-pax” (Gene Brewer’s SF novel and Iain Softley’s film). We loved this name because its pronunciation sounded cool.
You’re involved in so many pursuits: artistic, academic, and literary. How do you balance it all?
I don’t know. Most of time I’m just fascinated by something and let myself be pulled in like an addict.
For example, when Ray Bradbury passed away in June 2014, I felt I had to do something as a tribute to his memory. So I spent two weeks translating seven short stories from The Illustrated Man before I had to stop to get ready for Chicon 7. When I went to the U.S. Embassy to apply for my visa—a rather stressful process in which applicants are often denied—the visa officer asked me: “So you are going to take part in a SF Convention? Who’s your favorite SF writer? Tell me your favorite works.” I answered: “Ray Bradbury! Blahblahblah . . . ” Then he passed me a yellow note: “Cool! Have a nice day!”
I rushed out. Standing in the street and looking up into the sky, I said: “Thanks, Ray!”
So I guess maybe there is no balance in my life, just “let it go!” and beautiful adventures that follow.
What’s next?
Preparing for a great SF course in Xi’an Jiaotong University where I’m teaching. Creating a great SF novel, and a SF film if I’m lucky. Staying healthy and waiting for my opportunity to travel to space (I’m not kidding).
About the Author
Ken Liu is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards, he has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among other places. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.
Ken’s debut novel, The Grace of Kings, the first in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, will be published by Saga Press, Simon & Schuster’s new genre fiction imprint, in April 2015. Saga will also publish a collection of his short stories.
Another Word:
#PurpleSF
Cat Rambo
The recent bizarre events of Gamergate have had me musing about feminism a lot in the past few months. (If you’re unfamiliar with the Gamergate phenomenon, it’s a recent controversy among video gamers that different sides have said is about different things, but which, no matter what you believe, seems to involve a great deal of harassment and threats aimed almost entirely against women.) Feminists are one of Gamergate’s favorite targets—in attacks that have included “doxxing” (publishing personal information) and death threats.
Tremendous amounts of vitriol, bile, and verbal spewing of the sort that only the Internet + anonymity can produce have been emitted on Gamergate’s behalf. For me, it has been unfortunately familiar. As a longtime gamer and sometimes game administrator who is female, I’ve seen horrible things that include harassment, being discredited on the basis of gender, and psychological attacks.
So much of it seems to center on the validity of concepts such as feminism, racism, privilege, etc. And that becomes a wearying point to start from over and over again, to have to constantly argue not just one’s critique of something, but the tools one is using.
It’s overlapped, time and time again, with some of the discussion that I’ve seen in fantasy and science fiction circles. And in both cases, I’m glad to see a lot of this discussion taking place, because it’s long overdue. However, I’m dismayed by displays of misogyny and hatred as well as the lack of attempt at communication between groups whose members are, in the vast majority, well-intentioned and reasonable human beings.
I’m willing to acknowledge that in the past there have been problems in SFF that were a result of the times, of a lack of education, or other mitigating features. I call these folks causing those problems “Team Clueless,” and one thing characterizing them is that they simply haven’t had access to some of the concepts that have been integrated into the general vocabulary in the last couple of centuries: racism, sexism, feminism, privilege, etc.
The important thing to remember is that while problems in the community continue nowadays, it’s increasingly hard to have a valid membership on Team Clueless, particularly when so many of these discussions provide resources with which to understand the concepts in use.
When I edited the Women Destroy Fantasy special issue of Fantasy Magazine, I wrote in the accompanying editorial, “Sexism in genre literature has been documented to the point where it seems silly to question its existence.” And I stand by that.
We can pay attention to the underrepresentation of women that’s documented in the Vida Count Report, for one. We can examine the multiple studies that show that blind submissions to periodicals have different results than situations in which the gender of the submitter is known, and that those differences are skewed along gender lines. We can examine a multitude of manifestations of Helen Lewis’s law: “The comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.”
Or we could believe the many, many, many women who have spoken about being harassed, belittled, silenced, or even attacked in the genre community.
I was reminded of this earlier in the year. Over the course of an interview, the male interviewer pressed me for examples of sexism occurring in our genre that had happened to me personally, or failing that, to tell stories I’d heard from other women. I demurred, because for me the discussion’s tone set my teeth on edge.
Do we really have to start the conversation from that point each time? I’d said what I did in the essay because I’d like to move us past that “let us produce samples of sexism and dissect them to determine their validity” approach. If we could dispense with that discussion, maybe we could get to the point where we start talking about how to change things, rather than just about how shitty they are. Because they are infuriatingly, stiflingly shitty.
If you truly doubt that men and women have limiting gender roles imposed on them by the world, then go to a toy store, walk through the aisles and look at how early in life the pink/blue divide occurs and what gets put on either side of it.
Recently Anita Sarkeesian, a favorite Gamergate target, spoke at XOXO, an arts and technology festival in Portland, about how to support women online. She ended her talk by saying, “One of the most radical things you can do is to actually believe women when they talk about their experiences.”
Yup.
Beyond all of that, the eagerness to find offenders made me uncomfortable. One reason I find listing names an ineffective approach is that if you’re going to hunt for past examples in order to punish the offenders, no wonder those folks have a stake in rejecting the overall concept of their actions or words being offensive. You’re going to have a hard time finding common ground with someone when that territory’s got a set of stocks with their name on it.
Sometimes, admittedly, this punitive angle is self-imposed by those who identify with Team Clueless. For example, look at the furor that’s been generated by Daniel Jose Older’s suggestion that the World Fantasy Award bust no longer be of H.P. Lovecraft, but a writer more indicative of the genre’s current nature. This got turned into “Lovecraft was just a product of his times and you want to erase him from fantasy!”
Which isn’t, as far as I can tell, what anyone was proposing. A lot of fantasy writers acknowledge that Lovecraft’s been a long and strong influence. What they don’t sometimes acknowledge is that the man also did things like write an eight-line, horribly racist poem called “On the Creation of Niggers” and that therefore maybe he’s not the one we all want to be identifying with today, particularly when a) there’s an awful lot of other equally amazing but less problematic writers out there and b) it doesn’t need to be a bust of a person at all.
My favorite counter-proposal is a winged cat, but if you wanted something more writerly, you could go with a winged cup of coffee. In short, one can still like Lovecraft and yet feel that maybe he’s not the best representative of the modern fantasy genre.
There’s a lot of this you-are-with-us-or-you-are-against-us feeling in these discussions, and that’s a shame. It leads to phenomena like the SJW (Social Justice Warrior) label, which is us
ed as a weapon to invalidate any protest or objection. The label overlooks the fact that while online trolls do exist, most of us don’t really like stirring up dissension. A useful analogy is comparing being offensive to stepping on someone’s foot—it is more reasonable to apologize and get off their foot than to deny stepping on it or accusing them of trying to trip you.
I find the negativity attached to the SJW label bewildering, perhaps because I came from a campus where the Center for Social Concerns is an accepted institution, offering classes that focus on how to help people. Built into the SJW stereotype as constructed by their opponents is an eagerness to be outraged that doesn’t exist except in a few crazy cases on every side of things. Lunatics are a fact of life, and judging any group by its outliers is a mistake at the least, and an ethically bankrupt rhetorical strategy.
Another bone of contention is that the term “diversity” appears in these struggles and, somewhat unsurprisingly, encompasses a great many things. As with Gamergate, to some it seems an effort to shove them out of the clubhouse, while to others, it’s asking that there be a little bit more room in the clubhouse so they can get in.
My identity as a writer/editor/reader shapes my opinion of the word. I’m on the side that sees diversity as celebrating different voices, while the other side perceives it as being about stifling theirs. But as writers, as people interested in writing about our world, whether we disguise it with three moons or a population of sentient unicorns, shouldn’t we be valuing the approach that privileges a multitude of possible voices, rather than sticking to a particular and circumscribed one?
Science fiction is, at the heart of it, a way of writing about our world, which is one that is diverse and multifaceted, a world made of millions of POVs. Readers don’t mind a protagonist unlike themself, but we want a few that are, that show us another vision of ourselves, from time to time.
Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 100 Page 23
