Abstract
Science fiction has often been thought of as a Western genre, and in many ways that is (still) the case. This article suggests though that with new movements such as Asian Futurism, Sinofuturism, Afrofuturism, or Gulf Futurism, one can observe a new multilateralism in the description of the future. Especially with Sinofuturism, things become more complex. One of its forerunners, Cyberpunk, in the 1980s introduced a changing power differential between the East (Japan at the time) and the West, retiring older orientalist colonial dreams of dominating Asia. This was especially evident in William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) or Alexander Besher’s Virtual Reality Trilogy (Rim (1994), Mir (1998), Chi (1999), demonstrating the superiority of Japanese design and, implicitly, its society. By the 2010s, Japanese leadership in technology had been replaced by China with its world leadership in day-to-day digital technologies. This article suggests that this changing power differential can be read via the rise of Sinofuturism and that it is an important socio-political phenomenon to study Asian-Western interactions for times to come.
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Notes
Especially in relation to the chances and limitations of Said’s approach, see the very helpful discussion on Sen and Said in Gupta (2022).
For a more detailed discussion of Mao and utopianism, see Meisner (1982).
See the discussion of this revealingly quote in Webb (2000, pp. 19–21).
It also won the 2017 Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis for Best Foreign SF work, the 2017 Premio Ignotus Award for Best Foreign Novel, the 2018 Premio Italia Award for Best International Novel, the 2018 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, and several others, an unprecedented haul.
See https://en.chengduworldcon.com/news3_35_95_32_66_76_50/100.html. Accessed October 15, 2023.
Nevins (2011) sees this serialized novel as one of the early precursors to steampunk.
See the discussion of this event in Dunn (2019).
http://www.sarft.gov.cn/articles/2011/03/31/20110331140820680073.html (at the moment not accessible), cited in https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/weird/china-bans-time-travel-on-tv/67-387813348.
https://www.himalaya.com/courses/new-books-in-science-fiction-481915. The app can also be found in the usual app stores.
Conn also goes on to also separate (Western) Sinofuturism from the view of 1980s Japan, eulogized in the Cyberpunk movement, and claims its difference once again. I am convinced that there exists that much difference, as both visions are described as dystopic in the end, and were both (partly) created out of a Western inferiority complex towards Japan and China respectively.
“Immiscible” might be a slightly problematic term here, as it suggests a certain kind of essentialism; a more relational descriptor might be better, perhaps along the lines of a Derridean différance or his notion of the supplement.
Ganser also negatively compares Astrofuturism with Afrofuturism and Astrofeminism which according to Ganser do not commit the former’s mistakes: “As opposed to afrofuturism and what one might call astrofeminism, astrofuturists unwittingly reproduce the past and present in their designs of future planetary exodus and have not addressed why and how power/knowledge hierarchies and socio-political inequalities would simply disappear beyond Earth on the basis of a shared faith, as they often assume” (Ganser 2019, p. 41).
Cf. here also Freedman (2000) who argues that due to its filiation, for most of its history, traditional SF is involved in creating reactionary worlds and emits “historicizing literary tendencies” (54). This would only change with a new batch of SF writers in the second half of the twentieth century and he singles out the revolutionary work of Stanislaw Lem, Ursula LeGuin, Joanna Russ, Samuel Delany, and Philip K. Dick as examples of this new kind of writing.
http://www.sigmaforum.org/; see also Gould (2019, p. 261); Auerbach (2017); Luckhurst (2005, p. 200).
See also a much more positive reading of the film by Chris Berry (2020).
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Briel, H. Asian futures: the case of Sinofuturism. Int. Commun. Chin. Cult (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40636-024-00284-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40636-024-00284-0