Spectology: The Science Fiction Book Club Podcast

Happy New Year, Spectologists!

Late in 2019, Matt sat down with Chen Qiufan / Stanley Chan, the author of Waste Tide, to discuss the book, the process of translating & editing it for an American audience, the importance of prose in genre fiction, how science fiction & startup culture interact in China, some of his favorite upcoming authors, and much much more. 

The conversation took place in English, although the conversation took place while Stanley was calling from the Hong Kong airport between flights so the audio is a bit more rough than usual. However, the conversation they had should more than make up for that.

If you enjoy this interview, make sure to check out our episodes on Stanley's book (18.1 & 18.2), as well as our discussion of the mentioned Ning Ken essay on the Ultra Unreal. You can find many of Stanley's stories at Clarkesworld, and follow Clarkesworld generally for many other translated Chinese SF stories. 

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As always, we'd love to hear from you! Chat with us on twitter at @spectologypod, send us an email at mailbox@spectology.com, or submit the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment.

And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends!

Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.

We're back for our post-read discussion of Waste Tide by Stanley Chan / Chen Qiufan! (https://amzn.to/2njvSFr)

We had mixed but ultimately positive feelings about this book. It's been a great experience to read and talk about—rarely does a book present such a breadth of topics for us to cover. Matt read it in Chinese while Adrian read it in English, so we discuss the mechanics of the translation in depth, as well as how even small changes can have large effects on the over-all tone of the book. 

However, it've also a book that deals with very dark subject matters, and handles some of those elements better than others. Heed our content warnings on this one. We discuss the problematic elements explored by the book in depth. 

Some related works & links (if the links don't show up, they will be available in the show notes at spectology.com )

Non-fiction books about living in China:

* The Corpse Walker by Liao Yiwu (https://amzn.to/2o7yBSl)

* Factory Girls by Leslie T. Chang (https://amzn.to/2msDvci)

* China Candid, edited by Sang Ye (https://amzn.to/2myPgy4)

Three links about Guiyu, the real-life inspiration behind Silicon Isle. 

* https://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/campaigns/toxics/problems/e-waste/guiyu/

* https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2112226/chinas-most-notorious-e-waste-dumping-ground-now-cleaner-poorer

* https://www.revealnews.org/article/looks-are-deceiving-in-chinese-town-that-was-us-e-waste-dumping-site/

Notice the date published & publisher for each of the above when reading, these are not without agenda. 

Yaz Minsky on Cyberpunk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ8S1CV3JwA  

Hedy Lamarr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr 

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As always, we'd love to hear from you! Chat with us on twitter at @spectologypod, send us an email at mailbox@spectology.com, or submit the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment.

And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends!

Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.

For today's episode, Matt & Adrian read an essay about Chinese Science Fiction by Chinese SF author Ning Ken, and talk about it. The essay, published as "Modern China is So Crazy It Needs a New Literary Genre" on LitHub (https://lithub.com/modern-china-is-so-crazy-it-needs-a-new-literary-genre/), outlines a subgenre of SF that (supposedly) doesn't exist in English, and discusses why it's so important in China.

We take the conversation far afield pretty quickly, asking what makes a genre, whether Ultra Unreal works exist in English, how relevant these works actually are in Chinese SF, and who ultimately gets to define genre. Adrian rants a little about one particular author who annoys him online when he talks about genre, and Matt has very reasoned and smart things to say about whether it's even a good idea to argue about genre in the first place.

As always, the essay is an interesting one, and we hope you'll read it in addition to listening to us argue about it. In addition, here are some other related works to the conversation:

- Follow-up essay by Josh Feola & Michael Pettis
- "Folding Beijing" by Hao Jingfang
- Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan (see also the 18.x episodes of this podcast)
- The New & Improved Romie Futch by Julia Elliott (see also our 4.x episodes)
- Sorry to Bother You, dir. Boots Riley
- "Welcome to the Future Nauseous" by Venkatesh Rao

As always, links at spectology.com if they don't show up in your podcatcher.

We'll be back next week (Oct 1st) for our Waste Tide post-read, then October 8th we'll have the post-read for our horror-themed October novel.

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As always, we'd love to hear from you! Chat with us on twitter at @spectologypod, send us an email at mailbox@spectology.com, or submit the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment.

And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends!

Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.

It's finally happening! We're diving fully into one of Matt's areas of expertise, Chinese Literature. This month we're reading Waste Tide (https://amzn.to/2N4K80g), the first novel by Chinese science fiction author Chen Qiufan (known as Stanley Chan in English), translated by Ken Liu. 

The book is new to both of us, so in addition to the usual bookfacts, this episode starts with a short introduction to the sociolinguistics of the Chinese language. From there we learn about the history of modern Chinese literature w/ a focus on how speculative fiction has been received over the last century, from the earliest Chinese translations of Jules Verne to the modern resurgence of SF & Fantasy movies coming out of China, and how that relates to other literary & political movements. 

Some of the works we discuss include:

* Invisible Planets, edited & translated by Ken Liu

* Chen Qiufan's stories at Clarkesworld (includes audio versions)

* Clarkesworld Podcast

* "Flower of Shazui" (set in the same world as Waste Tide) 

* The Paper Menagerie & Other Stories by Ken Liu

* The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

(Links in the shownotes at spectology.com if they don't show up in your podcatcher)

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As always, we'd love to hear from you! Chat with us on twitter at @spectologypod, send us an email at mailbox@spectology.com, or submit the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment.

And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends!

Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.