Over the last few years I’ve got back into reading and sci-fi books – mostly through translated and non-western lenses. The last time I did a book post was 2018, and a lot has happened since then… [Some edits in 2025 to add more]

As a sci-fi and fantasy fan as a kid (mostly Pratchett), I’d slipped over the years, getting bored with same-old stories. Then a bit of headspace and a tweet from Saladin Ahmed in 2016 sent me down a new rabbit hole of nonwestern scifi, and I loved it. Ken Liu, Sabaa Tahir, Nnedi Okorafor, Cadwell Turnbull and many others opened up my worldview.

Nnedi Okorafor’s talks and writing about africanfuturism & africanjujuism made me think about stories in which time, place and culture are central to a sci-fi story; a story that is unique to place and people, and not a simple transplant of western tropes in a ‘new’ place. After this, I was seeking out interesting novels and novellas from diverse writers, and thinking about how much there was to learn. At the same time, more and more great writers are being published and schools like ours are trying to diversify their offerings, providing windows, mirrors and sliding glass doors to their students. Nadine Bailey always had great recommendations.

2018-2022 life and work got super intense. My reading slowed down. New place, new roles, Covid-19 intensity and exhaustion all got in the way. I tried to keep it up. I tried audiobooks, and am getting used to them, especially when read by the author or talented voice actors.

Then late 2021, I read Kai-Fu Lee & Chen Quifan’s AI2041 and got inspired again. Last summer, still stuck in China with Hesty away, and a bit of down time, I started again.

Recently I’ve been picking up lots of translated Chinese sci-fi, novels and books by diaspora writers. Now in our fifth eighth year here in Beijing, I’ve been interested in how contemporary Chinese writers project the future, blending cultural elements with technological innovations, and how identity evolves. I came across them through personal or Twitter recommendations, following ‘for you’ recommendations on Kindle and through looking up the authors and translators of various collections.

Here are a few that I’ve loved, and you might too. Links in titles go to their GoodReads pages.

Sci-Fi

AI2041: Ten Visions For Our Future, by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen QiuFan

Short story collection of speculative fiction, giving a mostly optimisitic projection of how AI might affect life in 2041, with explainers afterwards. Kai Fu Lee is a world leader in the field of AI, and Chen Qiufan is a high-profile Chinese scifi writer. 10 stories, 10 industries, 10 regions. Some of the translators are diaspora, translating from the perspective of the place the story is set (e.g. Chinese-Australian). Here’s our Libguide page with chapter summaries and resources.

Sinopticon, edited by Xueting Christine Ni

A very diverse set of scifi stories from Chinese writers. Her intro into how she curated and translated the texts is a really interesting insight into the process, and how modern translation captures the essence of the text without diluting its meaning. I’ve posted some links and she has shared chapter teasers here.

New Voices in Chinese Science Fiction, from Clarkesworld

Curated by Neil Clarke, Xia Jia and Regina Kanyu Wang. A great collection of eight stories from authors previously unpublished in English, ranging from futuristic to reflective. Similar to Sinopticon, Xia Jia’s introduction is fascinating in itself. The header image of this post is a MidJourney creation inspired by Old Tang, the master bamboo weaver, from Congyun “Mu Ming” Gu’s “By Those Hands”.

The Way Spring Arrives And Other Stories, edited by Yu Chen & Regina Kanyu Wang

“Written, edited, and translated by a female and non-binary team, these stories have never before been published in English and represent both the richly complicated past and the vivid future of Chinese science fiction and fantasy.” A really interesting collection of sci-fi, fantasy and contemporary stories and essays, finishing with a fantastic short essay by R.F. Kuang, Writing And Translation: A Hundred Technical Tricks. Jing Tsu, author of the essay on The Futures of Genders in Chinese Science Fiction, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, for her book Kingdom of Characters (below).

Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction In Translation, Edited by Ken Liu.

Another great collection of translated works, including some big-name authors and more essays on the evolution and translation of Chinese sci-fi. Published in 2016, this is pre-AI, and you can see the influence of some of these writers on those more recent. Liu is known as the translator of Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem, as well as his own Dandelion Dynasty series. His 2019 collection, Broken Stars is also excellent and features many authors from this list.

Waste Tide, by Chen Qiufan

Translated by Ken Liu, this is a sci-fi story inspired by Chen Qiufan’s childhood growing up near eWaste dumps in China, and was the Guardian’s sci-fi book of the year in 2019. The Verge has a good review. Probably the closest to YA sci-fi on this list.

Babel, an Arcane History, by R.F. Kuang

What if translation was a magical power that could be used to drive innovation and empire? Interesting and fast-paced re-imagining of industrial revolution Oxford, empire and the effects of colonisation, bringing contemporary issues into a sci-fi/fantasy setting. Check out Yellowface and The Poppy War series too.

I Am AI, by Ai Jiang

A really interesting novella, I Am AI is the story of a young writer who, piece-by-piece, gives up her humanity for the sake of her work. Read it! Her 2023 short story collection, Smol Tales From Between Worlds is great. Linghu is a thoughtful, creepy horror novella, reflecting on grief and migration. I re-read the final few chapters a couple of times.

Not Sci-Fi, but I loved them…

A Single Swallow, by Zhang Ling

A really beautiful book, an “epic and intimate novel about the devastation of war, forgiveness, redemption, and the enduring power of love” that tells the story of ‘Swallow’, a girl who is known by three very different men over the course of her life. Set in the years after WWII, when Japan was still in China, this story spans about 70 years.

Land of Big Numbers, by Te Ping Chen

Written in English, by a Wall Street Journal writer. Thought-provoking vignettes of ordinary lives, with some fantasy elements in some stories. Review here.

Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern, by Jing Tsu. I loved this. “Characters” represents both the evolutions and revolutions of the formation of modern Chinese and the series of characters along the hundred-year journey. From creating new scripts to working out how to make it all work in the age of typewriters, then telegrams, then computers and mobile technologies, this is a fascinating tale.

Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu

Winner of 2020 National Book Award, written as a screenplay in second-person. Spans a generation through the eyes of the character Willis Wu, or “Generic AsianMan”, who aspires to be “Kung Fu Guy”. Pretty funny, with some confronting and sad parts, and cuts into stereotypes of Asia in the west. Good review in the NY Times here. I thought this would be unfilmable, but the 2024 series with Jimmy O. Yang works well.

The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI, by Fei Fei Li

AI legend Dr. Fei Fei Li’s book is a “memoir of a scientist coming of age as an immigrant in America who finds her calling at the forefront of the AI revolution.” From Beijing to Chengdu, to the rest of the world, this is a really great reflection on growing up between worlds and having a huge impact.

Indonesian

I’ve also recently been looking up Indonesian writers, trying to reconnect with that time in our life. Our family is UK-Indonesia mixed, with both kids born in Indonesia.

I really enjoyed Dewi ‘Dee’ Lestari’s Perahu Kertas (Paper Boats), especially as it was set in Bandung with characters a similar age at a similar time to us when we lived there. Some of Eka Kurniawan‘s stories have been translated into English as well. More recently, Netflix released a really beautiful series Cigarette Girl (Gadis Kretek), which takes Ratih Kumala’s short novel and really makes something special.

Eventually, I’ll do a K-Drama post…