Female writers are taking the Chinese science fiction scene by storm, with their increasing prominence one of the genre’s most noticeable trends, according to participants at a major convention in Chengdu this week.
The World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) — the world’s oldest and most influential sci-fi gathering — started in China on Wednesday for the first time, drawing hordes of eager local fans of all genders. It ends today.
China can still be a relatively socially conservative country, and under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) the space for the expression of feminism has shrunk even further over the past decade.
Photo: AFP
However, in science fiction, the number of female authors has rocketed in the past few years, said Regina Kanyu Wang (王侃瑜), a writer and editor nominated for two prestigious Hugo Awards at Worldcon this year.
More women are now realizing “it’s not only this nerdy, geeky style of science fiction that can be published, or that can be regarded as science fiction,” she said. “Liu Cixin [劉慈欣, the author of the world-famous The Three-Body Problem series] is great, we all love him, but there’s so much more outside of the Liu Cixin style.”
The good news is that once women do get their start as writers, they do not tend to feel they are treated unequally, Wang said.
The market and readers are demanding new perspectives, she said.
“Nowadays, a lot of Chinese female sci-fi writers pay attention to the problems women face that men might not feel,” said Zhou Danxue (周旦雪), a literature academic at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. “The writers can use their own methods to reflect uniquely female feelings.”
In the past two years, there have been four anthologies published that were made up of only female or nonbinary authors, Wang said.
Previously, there was not even one all-women collection, and before the 1990s, there were few prominent female authors at all.
The Way Spring Arrives, one of the anthologies that Wang coedited, includes an essay pinpointing the Internet as a nurturing ground for women and queer talent.
Its widespread use “not only brought people a new sense of community, but ... removed a lot of trade-based and societal barriers to authorship, especially for non-male writers,” author Ni Xueting (倪雪亭) said.
Monet, a 21-year-old visiting the convention on Friday, said she had sometimes felt isolated in her fandom.
“It’s hard to share my interests with people who don’t understand. They would ask why a girl liked sci-fi,” she said.
She was optimistic those attitudes could change, pointing out the schoolchildren roaming excitedly around the convention center.
“I think [interest in] Chinese science fiction must be cultivated from childhood,” she said. “I don’t think we had this kind of opportunity when we were young... I really envy them, to be honest.”
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