Regina Kanyu Wang: The Globalized Chinese Science Fiction

What are the latest trends in Chinese science fiction, and why has the genre been so popular globally in recent years? Meet writer and researcher Regina Kanyu Wang, who will take you through this and more!

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Chinese science fiction has become a cultural phenomenon sweeping around the whole world in recent years. With the huge success of Liu Cixin’s The Three Body Trilogy, both domestic and international attention has been drawn to this genre, which used to be “a hidden lonely army”.

In this talk, Regina Kanyu Wang provides you with a “Chinese Science Fiction 101”, going through its history and introducing the names that you should know. She will also focuse on translation, and provide an overview of how Chinese science fiction goes abroad and what’s available in English.

Finally, she will analyze why Chinese science fiction has been so popular globally in recent years, looking at not only the literature but also the whole eco-system. Her argument is that  combined efforts from various cultural forces have shaped Chinese science fiction as it is today, and that understanding the globalization of Chinese science fiction is as important as understanding its “Chinesesness”.

Regina Kanyu Wang is a a writer, researcher, and editor, currently pursuing her PhD under the CoFUTURES project at the University of Oslo. She writes science fiction, nonfiction and academic essays in both Chinese and English.

She has won multiple Xingyun Awards for Global Chinese SF (Chinese Nebula), SF Comet International Writing Competition, Annual Best Works of Shanghai Writers’ Association and more. Her stories can be found in her individual collections Of Cloud and Mist 2.2 and The Seafood Restaurant, various magazines, and anthologies. Her critical works can be found in Vector, Modern Chinese Literature Criticism, Wenyi Daily, and forthcoming in Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms. She has co-editor the Chinese SF special issue of Vector, The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories, New Voices in Chinese Science Fiction, and the English version of The Making of The Wandering Earth: A Film Production Handbook.

Litteratursalongen is located in the basement of the library in Georg Sverdrups hus.

The event will also be streamed on Zoom.