SINOFUTURISM: THE NEXT BIG THING
New
Instagram society are at the heart of Hao Jingfang’s Folding Beijing, which won the prestigious Hugo Award this year (she beat out Stephen King int hPe in sta em re est category ). In Hao’s web novel, first published in a Chinese online sci-fi message board, China’ s cap tit wail tc tie ty rb ta et ct lo em es a‘ folded’ metropolis, wit J ho th sr heiens’ eJ po as ra h tie, parallel social classes occupying the same space,
Looks like Bigg Boss fans are but never interacting or acknowledging the
confusing TV actor Rohan presence of the other.
Mehra with comedian Rohan LBinokethdIHn ao and Liu feature in a new compilation
Joshi. Sick of being Tweeted at, of Chinese sci-fi stories, Invisible Planets,
Joshi at first asked people to released a few months ago by Tor Books.
rectify their error. When that f20s1t6yles and settings are audacious:
didn’t work, Joshi decided to from Ma Boyong’s City of Silence,
embrace his newfound fame which updates Orwell’s 1984 to contend with as a reality TV star, and started asking people to vote for him.
Instagram odern China is so crazy it needs a new literary genre.” The Chinese writer Ning Ken, in an essay published online Pin terese tar lier this year, calls it“ultra Fa-u c en breooaklfi ct ion” F, ace book heady mix of sci-fi, speculative future-gazing and downright surreal narratives that attempt to somehow capture the absuWrdh ia tit esp aenrc dec no tn a-ge tr a dictions of Chinese society t mode any. aN nodww,fo i-men nally, the rest of the world can guest tahsets ee osfo itc.
Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem hits Indian LinkedIn bookshelves this month, in a translation
Twitter by Ken Liu. A sensation in China, the Hugo-award winning novel is being adapted into a big-budget epic due for release in 2017.
The Three-Body Problem is a novel of first-contact, of encountering an alien species. But it takes this well-worn formula to bold, dizzying new places. Starting from China’s Cultural New Lyrics, Same Policy Revolution in the 1960s, it spans galaxies A.R. Rahman’sand virtual recent realities, performance covering everything from of his secretold Tamil governmenthit, ‘Urvasi’, was projectsjust a to China’s raucous, bit different. murkyOver 6 million ‘deep have web’. seenIn sweep and grandness his performanceof idea,on MTVit recalls Unplugged,the best of Isaac Asimov with crowdsourcedand Arthur C. lyrics Clarke.like ‘If Yet the it is unmistakably 500 rupee Chinese. note The gets demonetised.’Asnovel manages to capture the always, curiousthe lyrics contradictionwere followed at by thethe heart of 21st century familiar refrain: China, ‘...takeof a it radicaleasy policy.’ modernism coexisting
Salt Seller with radical traditionalism. One of the novel’s
A video making Donald Trump’s protagonists witnesses the death oTf he rwpebh’ysslai-test sensation knows his ,TtuorkCishen
hand gestures look like he’s playing cist father at the hands of ideo logic baulf ta ch near taicnsd, chef N us retGökçe charm te ad kt eh seagl jo ab be aw th C eh nina’ s
an accordion made 30 million laugh and carries that wariness of the stat aevwi diet oh oh fe h rim delicately but deftly sp rinks lion mg se ag lt eon ea tic ally-engineered even as she becomes a scientist hersstealfk, twreonrdke-d online. He is now referred toAans ing on secret government projects. B Lei kt everyone want sap inch of that. Clarke and Asimov, Liu is more interested in a science show-and-tell than with deep characters, but enough social commentary filters through to make The Three-Body PTro obMlemis sa es ObaAmnovaelette compelling work of 21st century contempo-
A letter from the daughters of rary fiction, rather than a novel of sci-fi ideas.
former US president George Mum’ s T th he eseWc on rd tr ad ic tory layers of Chinese
W. Bush to the daughters of Lesbian couple Dominique and Crissy, outgoing president Barack with a million-plus YouTube subscribers, Obama is being widely shared announced they were expecting. Trolls online. “Explore your passions. swiftly appeared, saying Dominique was Learn who you are. Make mistakes—you than‘too masculine’a hundredto carry pagesa baby; for but the the authors to get to the China in the debate of how to confront India’s biggest foreign are allowed to,” questionladies shot is back,a pity. saying (At they 418 were pages, both the book could have done policy challenge. It delivers a sharp reality check and
wrote Jenna and Barbara Bush with women tighterand the editingchoice was that theirs. would have better presented its stark warnings at a time the government has begun
to Sasha and Malia Obama. well-argued thesis, as well as with simpler organisation, speaking of India’s ambitions to take on a more prominent rather than the leaps in chapters from China to Pakistan to global role as a “leading power”. “The world listens India’ s options, before returning to Kashmir and Tibet and to President Xi Jinping not J ba em ce asuC so er doefnh’ si sp soko if ll so a asp ao np era, anothwehr reforms .) Duo book ole rt a st yo oru,”s wt hi tech authors remind Del whit,h“Kb aunt y eb We ce a stu ly srei cC shin in pl a’ c se of
As India grapples you’re withup. It the only challengegoes off of a deepenib negtwe en ann aet-iboo noakla pnod witser is extraordinarilydipalotgeune,t.w”oWwehdiocvhe,r i5n00th,0e00 Chin Aap- pP aAk lei sr tan ne ax fut esr,y to hue pb lao yo akgi as mae welcome inter vent iaoun di over sf io nnasl ea an male lyssliys, is all that matters.
MTwitter always-on social networks and restless netimzeants. Qiufan’s Year of the Rat, which degree mills and throws super rats. d‘Sia tl’t sBn aoet.’ just books that are reflecting the ultra-unreal. ClvbZvkvnft, a new album by Shanghai’s influential indie band Duck Fight Goose has an entire cyber-punk narrative on a futuristic Chinese nightclub and is presented live with CGIs of surreal cityscapes. One reviewer called it a work of ‘Sinofuturism’. In China, many of these fut Ouv re rs a am re ill a io lr new a ad ty chee dr eth.e se three newscaste—rKs their wardrobes—on live TV @lkummi