Sinopticon

New Chinese Science Fiction

by

608 pages

English language

Published Jan. 21, 2021 by Black Library, The.

ISBN:
978-1-78108-852-4
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(2 reviews)

This celebration of Chinese Science Fiction — thirteen stories, all translated for the first time into English — represents a unique exploration of the nation’s speculative fiction from the late 20th Century onwards, curated and translated by critically acclaimed writer and essayist Xueting Christine Ni.

From the renowned Jiang Bo’s ‘Starship: Library' to Regina Kanyu Wang’s ‘The Tide of Moon City, and Anna Wu’s ‘Meisje met de Parel', this is a collection for all fans of great fiction.

Award winners, bestsellers, screenwriters, playwrights, philosophers, university lecturers and computer programmers, these thirteen writers represent the breadth of Chinese SF, from new to old: Gu Shi, Han Song, Hao Jingfang, Nian Yu, Wang Jinkang, Zhao Haihong, Tang Fei, Ma Boyong, Anna Wu, A Que, Bao Shu, Regina Kanyu Wang and Jiang Bo.

1 edition

reviewed Sinopticon by Xueting Christine Ni

The Last Save (Gu Shi)

No rating

This is a fun one, in a way, but I'm not sure I'd call it good? There's a fun idea (a videogame-like "save and reload" function for real life, introduced by an all-powerful company) and what I think is a fun if somewhat obvious message (sth like "aim at making the right choices, but don't obsess about past wrong choices, and have the confidence to do so")

Or at least, I can only really read it as a metaphor; I had real trouble suspending disbelief enough to accept that this world would work as the story requires it to — it feels like a morality tale ruminating on what makes a (single) person good, and less like a sf story exploring how the ostensible premise (i.e. the save-and-reload technology) would shape the society within which it exists.