Rebecca F. Kuang: evaluation

Transcript context

…When I read “Folding Beijing,” I was amazed. “This is incredible. I need to read more Chinese science fiction,” was my immediate response. If I had to send a person to one place to learn Chinese science fiction, assuming they’re not going to read three volumes or Three-Body Problem, I’d send them to “Folding Beijing.” Where would you send them? Someone wants to start. What do you tell them? “Folding Beijing” is a fine place to start. I do really like that story, so I’m not registering shock that you call it important. I will say, there’s also an interesting way in which what is canonical or what is deserving of critical acclaim or what gets the anglophone audience really relies on the role of the translator and the venue and the literary economics of it all. When we talk about Liu Cixin and Hao Jingfang and their work, we can’t leave out of the picture Ken Liu, who is both a critically acclaimed writer of science fiction and fantasy in English and a critically acclaimed translator. There’s a lot of ink spilled on this already, so I’ll just direct readers to go look up his work. I think a lot of this Chinese-language science fiction comes to us mediated by what Ken has decided is interesting, and it occupies that platform and gains an audience — rightfully deserved — because Ken has decided to introduce it to that audience. I’m thinking a lot about the economics of how texts travel and what gets platformed and what doesn’t. Without arguing that I don’t think that these works are interesting or important or innovative, I think we also have to consider, why is it these authors that have been put in front of us? Why do you think that is?…

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