Award-winning Chinese sci-fi trilogy aims to impress West

Writer Liu Cixin is a household name among Chinese science fiction fans. By publishing a series of works including The Wandering Earth, The Three Body, Devourer, and The Micro-Age, Liu has become famous for his luxuriant imagination and stories that feature scientific beauty as well as a humane perspective.

The 49-year-old part-time writer, whose full-time occupation is a computer engineer, has also earned a strong fan base overseas due to several short fictions that have been translated. That list includes: The Wandering Earth; Mountain; Of Ants and Dinosaurs; Sun of China; and The Micro-Age.

Now that his most popular work, The Three Body trilogy, has taken its next major step toward the West by announcing last week who the translators would be, Chinese science fiction is hoping to make a global impression on a genre that has long been dominated by the US and other Western countries.

Anticipation

"The English copyright of The Three Body trilogy has been sold to China Educational Publication Import and Export Corporation (CEPIEC)," said Yao Haijun, deputy editor-in-chief of Science Fiction World, a monthly magazine that owns the copyright of the Chinese version of The Three Body.

"Not only will they be translated into English, but into other languages such as Korean and Japanese," according to Yao. He said the English version will be completed in phases by 2013 and 2014, while the Korean version will meet the public by the middle of next year.

"Though we have introduced some Chinese science fiction works such as those of Wu Yan, Chen Qiufan and Liu Cixin over the years, they are all short and sporadic stories, unlike The Three Body, which is a long three-part saga," Yao told the Global Times.

"When a Chinese writer wanted to publish his book overseas, it used to be that they would sell the copyright to a foreign publisher, which would then be responsible for the entire process from translation to publication," said Li Yun, general manager of CEPIEC.

"But this time it's different, because we will secure the best translators and publishers overseas: It's a new model for Chinese literature going abroad," Li told the Global Times.

"The first two parts of the trilogy will be finished by the first half of next year, and the last part is expected by 2014," Li said, adding that both paper and digital versions of the English translation will be available for Western readers.

"Sci-fi works are easier to enter foreign markets because there is less difference in culture and ideology," said Li. "Of course in this process the role of translators is paramount, because with science fiction translation, the best translators (linguistically) are not necessarily the most appropriate," he noted.

"Science fiction translation is different from that of other literary forms. It requires the translator to possess a broader scope of knowledge. He must have an understanding about science as well as Chinese culture and history," according to Li.

Translators secured

According to Li, the three translators in charge of the three parts of the trilogy will be Ken Liu, Joel Martinsen, and Eric Abrahamsen. Translating the first part is Ken Liu (or Liu Yukun), a name already familiar to Chinese readers due to his American-Chinese identity and winning of two sci-fi awards this year, the Nebula Award and Hugo Award, both for his work The Paper Menagerie.

"Ken Liu is also a writer for our magazine," said Yao, "his language is an art of delicacy and he is good at integrating the beauty of the East into his science fiction." His sensitivity to cultural issues is evident in The Paper Menagerie, which reflects the emotional estrangement between the first-generation Chinese emigrants and their offspring.

"Joe Martinsen is a super fan of science fiction, especially those by Chinese writers," said Li, "he has read all of Liu's works and has translated excerpts of Ball Lightning by Liu, publishing at Words Without Borders." He also translated other Chinese works for the literature magazines Pathlight and Chutzpah!, the English versions of two leading Chinese literature magazines.

"I started reading Chinese science fiction in 2004," said Martinsen, "but in foreign countries, people don't know about Chinese sci-fi. So, I think I must participate in this translation of The Three Body trilogy."

"Eric Abrahamsen has been studying and living in China for over 10 years," Li said. In 2007 he and other Chinese-English translators set up a professional website, paper-republic.org, with the goal of introducing Chinese literature to the world. "He has translated many well-known Chinese writers' works including Su Tong, Bi Feiyu and Xu Zecheng," Li added.

"Science fiction has certain things in common in different countries," said Abrahamsen, "readers expect stories about aliens, so I think sci-fi readers will be interested in that kind of book from a Chinese writer," he said.

The mysterious Three Body

The Three Body trilogy - composed of The Three Body, Dark Forest and Dead End - was published between 2008 and 2010 as single volumes. Having won multiple domestic awards as works of Chinese science fiction, the books have thus far recorded sales of 400,000 copies.

The story depicts a Chinese military project seeking alien civilizations during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) by sending signals into space. When the signal is picked up by an alien race that lives in The Three Body star system (an extremely unstable living environment), great turmoil is unleashed.

"The Three Body trilogy is not like those Hollywood blockbusters that we've known," said Liu Cixin, "I'm not sure how foreign readers will react since Chinese sci-fi works have never actually gone abroad."

"However, one thing that differentiates sci-fi works from other types of literature is that they normally take humankind as a whole entity, exploring our common curiosity and imagination," Liu continued, saying, "from this perspective, sci-fi works are more easily to be accepted by readers in different countries."

For a long time, like other literature schools, Chinese sci-fi works experienced a cultural deficit. "We have imported many more sci-fi works than those exported because domestic writing failed to meet market demand," said Yao.

"However, the quality of domestic popular sci-fi works are in fact on par with their foreign counterparts," Yao said, "but our obvious shortcoming is the scale and number of regular writers, which amounts to no more than 100 people in the country now."