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Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction
How colonialism profoundly influenced the emergence of Chinese science fiction
Challenging assumptions about science fiction's Western origins, Nathaniel Isaacson traces the development of the genre in China, from the late Qing Dynasty through the New Culture Movement. Through careful examination of a wide range of visual and print media--including historical accounts of the institutionalization of science, pictorial representations of technological innovations, and a number of novels and short stories--Isaacson makes a case for understanding Chinese science fiction as a product of colonial modernity. By situating the genre's emergence in the transnational traffic of ideas and material culture engendered by the presence of colonial powers in China's economic and political centers, Celestial Empires explores the relationship between science fiction and Orientalist discourse. In doing so it offers an innovative approach to the study of both vernacular writing in twentieth-century China and science fiction in a global context.
Challenging assumptions about science fiction's Western origins, Nathaniel Isaacson traces the development of the genre in China, from the late Qing Dynasty through the New Culture Movement. Through careful examination of a wide range of visual and print media--including historical accounts of the institutionalization of science, pictorial representations of technological innovations, and a number of novels and short stories--Isaacson makes a case for understanding Chinese science fiction as a product of colonial modernity. By situating the genre's emergence in the transnational traffic of ideas and material culture engendered by the presence of colonial powers in China's economic and political centers, Celestial Empires explores the relationship between science fiction and Orientalist discourse. In doing so it offers an innovative approach to the study of both vernacular writing in twentieth-century China and science fiction in a global context.
- GenresChinaScience Fiction
240 pages, ebook
Published February 7, 2017
75 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 13, 2022
So the non-fiction reviews are always a little shorter, but I wanted to highlight some cool things about this book, which appears to be a repurposed Ph.D. paper by author Nathaniel Isaacson. He was a guest on Dickheads once so link at the bottom of this review. I really think that is a great episode of the podcast.
So Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction is a great history of Chinese science fiction as was just starting to become a thing. From my interview with Isaacson I knew and understood that a huge part of the emergence of Chinese SF was the translation of Jules Verne books becoming domestic bestsellers. So it was interesting to hear about how the translation got an interesting Chinese spin. I didn’t really know what to expect from this book, thinking it might a history similar to Lee’s Astounding or Damon Knight’s Futurians. I am assuming that was pretty impossible.
One of the reasons we got such a cool and detailed history of the early sci-fi scenes like that was the fact that it was a scene. There were conventions, zines and ways that the history got documented. Chinese SF eventually had all those things but early SF in China doesn’t appear to be so organized.
Isaacson however does make an interesting claim 7 pages in. “An anomaly of the emergence of science fiction in China is that while the genre itself saw its beginning as a Western import through translation, the term “science fiction” (kexue xiaoshuo) began to appear regularly as a literary genre category associated with specific stories in a publication in China (c.1904) before it did in the English language.”
This is of course after H.G. Wells used the term Scientific Romances before Hugo Gernsback used the term Scientific fiction, and thirty-five years before Don Wollheim was the first to use the genre name on a book cover with the Pocket guide to Science Fiction. A bold claim, and one that prompted the most thought for me.
The book is less a history of the creators as many books on the history of most Western-based science fiction tend to be. Isaacson looks at the major themes and ideas of the major works including a few dystopias and one Mars colony novel. They all sound fascinating but the one that I was most interested in was Lao She’s City of Cats.
The impression one gets from this book is that there were not many works populating the Chinese bookshelves but that there were key works that were important not just to genre but all of the culture literature. That these works reflected the intense era of Late Qing dynasty, colonial change and revolution. Cool book, I am glad to have highlighted the heck out of it and it will have a valued spot on my Sci-fi non-fiction shelf.
The Dickheads episode on Asian SF in translation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCzOa...
https://soundcloud.com/dickheadspodca...
So Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction is a great history of Chinese science fiction as was just starting to become a thing. From my interview with Isaacson I knew and understood that a huge part of the emergence of Chinese SF was the translation of Jules Verne books becoming domestic bestsellers. So it was interesting to hear about how the translation got an interesting Chinese spin. I didn’t really know what to expect from this book, thinking it might a history similar to Lee’s Astounding or Damon Knight’s Futurians. I am assuming that was pretty impossible.
One of the reasons we got such a cool and detailed history of the early sci-fi scenes like that was the fact that it was a scene. There were conventions, zines and ways that the history got documented. Chinese SF eventually had all those things but early SF in China doesn’t appear to be so organized.
Isaacson however does make an interesting claim 7 pages in. “An anomaly of the emergence of science fiction in China is that while the genre itself saw its beginning as a Western import through translation, the term “science fiction” (kexue xiaoshuo) began to appear regularly as a literary genre category associated with specific stories in a publication in China (c.1904) before it did in the English language.”
This is of course after H.G. Wells used the term Scientific Romances before Hugo Gernsback used the term Scientific fiction, and thirty-five years before Don Wollheim was the first to use the genre name on a book cover with the Pocket guide to Science Fiction. A bold claim, and one that prompted the most thought for me.
The book is less a history of the creators as many books on the history of most Western-based science fiction tend to be. Isaacson looks at the major themes and ideas of the major works including a few dystopias and one Mars colony novel. They all sound fascinating but the one that I was most interested in was Lao She’s City of Cats.
The impression one gets from this book is that there were not many works populating the Chinese bookshelves but that there were key works that were important not just to genre but all of the culture literature. That these works reflected the intense era of Late Qing dynasty, colonial change and revolution. Cool book, I am glad to have highlighted the heck out of it and it will have a valued spot on my Sci-fi non-fiction shelf.
The Dickheads episode on Asian SF in translation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCzOa...
https://soundcloud.com/dickheadspodca...
October 15, 2019
interesting and overall pretty engaging, but felt simultaneously a little theoretically shallow (especially in its treatment of Orientalism) and light on actual textual analysis — a lot of medium-distant readings of plots without much by way of close reading, which I felt might have helped its engagement with the primary texts feel a little less cursory. still, I enjoyed it and found it interesting; I wish more of the primary texts he discusses were available in translation.
(I did also scream a little at the historiography of science fiction studies, which included the phrase “recent reconfigurations of genre theory have led to an approach regarding SF as a selective tradition best understood as a mode of reading and interpretation” but never once in the entire book mentioned Samuel Delany.)
(I did also scream a little at the historiography of science fiction studies, which included the phrase “recent reconfigurations of genre theory have led to an approach regarding SF as a selective tradition best understood as a mode of reading and interpretation” but never once in the entire book mentioned Samuel Delany.)
April 13, 2022
3.5, in realtà...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews