Chinese SF
http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gifon Chinese sf" />the_flea_king posted this on his blog a while back:

Who knows anything about the science fiction scene in China? Why aren't we all making it a goal to break into the Chinese markets? Even if the percentage of readers is small (relative to population), I could imagine that their magazine circulation numbers are still better than Asimov's, F&SF, and Analog combined. I had a blog about China and SF I was reading for a while, but I think it went away because I no longer get updates from it. Anyone have any thoughts?

I was going to reply at more length then, but didn't have the time. I hope this blog entry might serve as my reply.

Having been to China in 2000, I still keep in contact with people there, particularly my friend Wu Yan, a noted Chinese SF critic, editor and author (mainly of YA novels). I had 2-3 stories published over there, and have written a little on Chinese SF. These writings include the essay Science Fiction, Globalization, and the People's Republic of China (first published in Foundation, reprinted in several places including Hebrew and Italian translations), and my in-depth interview with Wu Yan, A Bull in a China Shop on the Moon.

I think these writings, as meagre as they are, can give a better idea of what I know of Chinese SF than a blog entry. SF is alive and well in China, with the space programme encouraging interest in SF (after its own mini cultural-revolution in the 80s). The Chinese SF World is the world's biggest SF magazine, with an estimated 1.5 milion readers (and 300,000-400,000 copies per issue). Unfortunately, the only English-language SF anthology ever published to my knowledge is Science Fiction from China, edited by Wu Dingbo and Patrick Murphy, which was published in 1989 and can not be seen (atl east, not any more) as representative of modern Chinese SF. This anthology was also translated into Italian, with my article included.

The Chinese have their own Best Of... anthologies, which I think is really cool. Makes you wish someone would translate them! They give out SF awards - The Milky Way Awards - but can not have organised fan conventions. The International SF magazine Internova published one story by Wu Yan in its first issue - there are plans to turn Internova into a rather sophisticated webzine which will reprint that story and publish others, but that's still on the way.

Two useful web sites on Chinese SF are this blog (no longer updated) , which was written by an American student in Beijing (one of Wuyan's), and Wuyan's own web site, which is exhustive in Chinese but also has this English section.

Finally, I'll mention that SF World is hosting a pre-Worldcon conference in Chengdu next year, for which they hope Westerners might come before going to Japan. There was an announcement in Locus, but I can't find the details at the moment. I'll ask Wuyan to come over to this post. I'd highly recommend going - sadly, I don't think I'll be able to attend the Asian Worldcon next year despite my earlier plans to do so. It's going to be difficult to get to anywhere from Vanuatu...