SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

would love more tips.
I have read broken stars and invisible planets short story collections too, and loved them immensely.
really want to read more chinese scifi but it seems like it's so obscure/hard to find books, not many translated?

To confirm, you're looking for books written by Chinese nationals in Chinese that are translated?

Or are books by people with Chinese heritage or books by people who lived in China about Chinese-inspired topics also acceptable?

Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan, of course!

Short stories published separately (may have also been included in what you've read, not sure): A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight, The Cartographer Wasps and he Anarchist Bee, and The Time Invariance of Snow.

And if you're okay with fantasy instead of scifi, try A Hero Born which sold almost as many copies as Harry Potter there. The translation can't compare to Ken Liu's masterful prose style, though.

You can also give Ken Liu's The Grace of Kings series a try, I've heard it's wonderful and has a Chinese-inspired fantasy setting. He lives in the States, though, in case that bothers you.

If, however, you'd also be happy with a very Chinese/Asian setting or American Chinese authors for SF or fantasy, try China Mountain Zhang, The Black Tides of Heaven or other books by J.Y. Yang, The Tea Master and the Detective and other books in the Universe of Xuya : https://www.goodreads.com/series/1325.... Also The Girl with Ghost Eyes, Descendant of the Crane, The Poppy War, The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, An Excess Male, Want, Rebel Seoul (Korean), Exo and Jade City.

But usually, it's American authors, translated works are still rare. If you speak Italian, you may find new stories in SHI KONG: 时空 China Futures. Finally, there's a goodreads list, but it has many untranslated works: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/9...

Yang is from Singapore and de Bodard from Vietnam/France so neither is Chinese, but they do write excellent SFF.

Anna wrote: "Yang is from Singapore and de Bodard from Vietnam/France so neither is Chinese, but they do write excellent SFF."

De Bodard's Xuya sci-fi universe is quite deep and wide-ranging. I'm waiting for its first full-length novel treatment.

Anna wrote: "Yang is from Singapore and de Bodard from Vietnam/France so neither is Chinese, but they do write excellent SFF."

Yes, that's why I said Chinese/Asian setting when mentioning them - because I was widening the net in that paragraph and including a wider range that may also appeal to the OP.

I think the two collections you mentioned are already a good start. Most authors in there, like Xia Jia, have been published regularly in online magazines like Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Galaxy's Edge, etc, and I have read many other Chinese SFF authors there too with their translated works featured so you might want to check those websites.

I just heard about Vagabonds, by Hao Jingfang, one of the authors featured in Invisible Planets and Broken Stars, and also translated by Ken Liu. It's coming out in April of this year.

With things like this I search for translators rather than original authors. Unfortunately in this case, the most prolific is Ken Liu who you already know about.

I don't have any Chinese Sci-fi authors to recommend that haven't already been mentioned, but if you go into some detail about what it is you like about Cixin Liu's work we could possibly recommend authors whose stories are similar rather than their nationality/ethnicity.

Hello! I thank you all for your recommendations.
Kind of just ordered most of your recommendations, and I'm okay with fantasy too.
That being said, I was looking for scifi based in china, not necessarily written by chinese natives but you get more of an accurate glimpse of chinese culture through authors based there.

Based in China by ppl who should know, by OwnVoices if possible... that might open it up a bit.

If you really want to read widely, there are fantasies for young teens that draw in historical cultural elements, Grace Lin's Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and sequels.