My personal recommendations of Chinese SF-related work published in 2023

INTRO TO COME...

Notes and caveats

Fan Writing

SF Light Year (科幻光年) *

General links

Specific examples of fanwriting

SF Light Year's Weibo account is (IMHO) the first place to look if you want to know what's happening in the Chinese SF scene, and/or if you want to know what happenings in international SF are being discussed in China. Without his posts, the Chengdu Worldcon coverage I wrote up for File 770 would have been much sparser and less well-informed.

Zimozi Natsuco (子墨子夏子) *

General links

Specific examples of fanwriting

Arthur Liu (aka HeavenDuke (天爵) aka Yang Feng (杨枫)) *

Please be aware that Arthur is a member of the 2024 Hugo Awards Eligibility Research Team, and per WSFS rule 3.13, is not eligible for those awards.

General links

Examples of fanwriting

RiverFlow (河流) *

General links

Examples of fanwriting

Xerosoul (aka Xerobot)

General links

Examples of fanwriting

Xerosoul's Weibo contains lots of posts about upcoming SFF publications in China, including comics and manga. Every month they publish a roundup of all the books and comics released that month, with statistics of how many books each publisher issued, how many works were translated, etc. They also published a big end-of-year roundup summarizing everything.

Whilst this information may be of minimal interest to non-Chinese readers, it is clearly and invaluable source of information for those who are.

Zionius

General links

Examples of fanwriting

Fanzines

News and Newspapers Summary on Science Fiction (科幻新闻和报纸摘要; Kēhuàn xīnwén hé bàozhǐ zhāiyào) *

General links

Specific issues

Zero Gravity Newspaper (零重力报; Líng zhònglì bào) *

General links

Specific issues/links

Fan Art

Wu Miao (吴淼, Wú Miǎo)

General links

Specific issues/links

Wu Miao is a professional artist, but this recommendation is for their fan art produced at the Chengdu Worldcon, and reprinted (in part?) in Zero Gravity Newspaper issues 14-16. A small sampling of that art is shown below, but see those issues of Zero Gravity for many more.

Cartoon of Hugo winner RiverFlow by Wu Miao, taken from Zero Gravity Newspaper issue 15 Cartoon of Hugo finalist Regina Kanyu Wang by Wu Miao, taken from Zero Gravity Newspaper issue 15 Cartoon of Kormo/Kemeng and Glasgow 2024 by Wu Miao, taken from Zero Gravity Newspaper issue 14

Gong Keke (宫可可; Gōng Kěkě)

General links

Specific issues/links

Their bio on their Weibo profile says that they are a a contract artist for SF World, but here I'm highlighting the caricatures/cartoons they drew of various well-known figures in the Chinese SF scene. A couple are shown here, but see the linked issue of Zero Gravity Newspaper for the full (?) set of eleven.

Cartoon of Hugo winner Ling Shizhen by Gong Keke, taken from Zero Gravity Newspaper issue 16 Cartoon of Hugo finalist Lu Ban by Gong Keke, taken from Zero Gravity Newspaper issue 16

Non-Fiction

Chinese Science Fiction: An Oral History - Volumes 2 and 3 (中国科幻口述史:第二卷, 第三卷; Zhōngguó kēhuàn kǒushù shǐ: Dì èr juǎn / Dì sān juǎn)

Links

The concept behind these two volumes should be relatively familiar to Western audiences, as the first volume of this trilogy was a 2023 Hugo Best Related Work finalist, and the 2023 Hugo Voter Packet included both the full Chinese text and a short English language extract.

Imagining Science: Excerpts from Classics of Science Fiction Literature (想象科学:科幻文学经典撷英; Xiǎngxiàng kēxué: Kēhuàn wénxué jīngdiǎn xié yīng)

Links

The (machine translated) title is a bit misleading; the chapters in this book aren't excerpts from classic works of SF, but essays about those works by a number of notable figures in Chinese SF, including Cixin Liu, Han Song, Chen Quifan/Stanley Chen and many others.