International Comparative Literature
VOL.2 NO.4 (2019): 815–
ISSN 2096 –4897
Isaacson, Nathaniel. Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science
Fiction. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2017, 267 pp.
纳檀霭孙: 《天国:中国科幻小说的兴起》,米德尔敦:卫斯理大学出版社,
2017 年版,267 页。
*
820
T
he vague correlation between the popularity of a literary genre
and the age of human society becomes tangible when looking
retrospectively at the rise and the decline of a particular generic form
at a certain historical moment. Doubtlessly, science fiction has become
one of the most popular genres of today
’
s generation. No matter in
terms of what disciplinary field our times is defined
—
information era,
globalization, or the broad postmodernism
—
science fiction prevails
worldwide. The rise of Chinese science fiction in recent years, in
particular sci-fi realism, has been demonstrated by Chinese authors who
have gained international recognition and an on-going heated discussion
on Chinese social networks, raising questions about the origin of the
genre of science fiction, which has long been believed to be exclusively
Western. What is the original appearance of Chinese science fiction and
in what way is it generically different from the ghost and fantasy stories
in classical Chinese literature? As science fiction is widely accepted as a
genre of popular culture emerging in the progress of modern civilization,
is there any relation between it and the modern discourse of the nation-
state, and what is the role of Chinese science fiction in the discursive
construction of Chinese modernity in the early twentieth century? Why
has sci-fi realism, in particular, become an identifying writing style of
Chinese science fiction and how is it related to its original emergence in
late-Qing China, a particular historical moment when China was forced
to embrace modern progress and was going through tremendous social
transformation? Nathaniel Isaacson
’
s
Celestial Empire: The Emergence
of Chinese Science Fiction
seeks answers to these questions and further
invokes critical thinking about the contemporary worldwide popularity of
science fiction.
An interdisciplinary investigation of early Chinese science fiction
1
*
Submitted Date: Aug. 7, 2019; Accepted Date: Aug. 10, 2019.
DOI:10.19857/j.cnki.icl.2019.04.015816
国际比较文学
INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
2019 年第 2 卷第 4 期
writing,
Celestial Empire
provides a geopolitical reading of the emergence of this particular genre
in China at the turn of twentieth century. Isaacson believes the emergence of Chinese science
fiction is not an isolated literary phenomenon but a geopolitical demonstration of Tani Barlow
’
s
“
colonial modernity,
”
a product overdetermined by the imperialist expansion of empire, the
economic benefits from technological superiority in modern progress, and anxieties over cultural
identity among the colonized. Colonial modernity is the historical convergence of the East and the
West, of the European imperialist expansion and the struggles and anxieties it caused in the East,
and of the confrontation and the negotiation between the colonized and its own past. Isaacson
intends to map the emergence of early Chinese science fiction in the worldwide landscape of
global power relations.
Isaacson starts his discussion of science fiction with the most controversial issue of whether
or not it is a genre. In recent years, the notion of genre has been at the center of literary criticism,
and the origins of particular genres have been discussed in the framework of post colonial critique.
For example, in studies of melodrama in the East and the West, Zhang Zhen retraces the origin
of Chinese melodrama and raises the question of whether melodrama, which had been widely
believed to be an inherently Western category, actually has a history in the East that is parallel
to its exclusively Western tradition.
1
In his comparative study of the 1934 Chinese melodrama
The Goddess
, directed by Wu Yonggang and starring Ruan Lingyu, William Rothman points out
that the excellent mastery of the classic Hollywood style and the particular genre of melodrama,
combined with Wu
’
s own way of interpreting the genre culturally, indicate the international merit
of melodrama and the mutual influence in the development of the early film industry between the
East and the West.
2
The recognition of the emergence of science fiction is very similar to that of melodrama. As
Isaacson mentions, a number of science fiction studies have shown difficulties in how to define
science fiction as a genre. The previous absence of studies on early science fiction in the East has
led to a continuous misunderstanding that the genre is exclusively Western and therefore defined
by a linear history of development. Isaacson
’
s communication with recent scholarly studies
shows that a significant breakthrough of the genre problem of science fiction results from recent
reconfigurations of science fiction which have shifted from the attempts to define a fixed object
to understanding it as a cultural field in which
“
a convergence of media, genres, forms, or modes
”
has formed a ive tradition going beyond national borders in global exchange.
3
That is to say,
science fiction, rather than being recognized by a universal definition, has been regarded as a mode
that depends on how it is read and interpreted culturally in certain historical and social contexts.
Isaacson
’
s examination of early Chinese science fiction reveals that the role that science
fiction played in the construction of Chinese modernity is closely associated with and highly
similar to that of the vernacular; thus, the emergence of Chinese science fiction in the late Qing
period is more politically instrumental than literally imaginative. For late-Qing intellectuals, the
vernacular allowed literature to reach a wider range of audience so that literature could play a
larger role in invoking public awareness of the national crisis at that particular historical moment.
Even though it was minor in the landscape of popular culture, science fiction was seen by Chinese
1
Zhen Zhang,
“
Transplanting Melodrama: Observations on the Emergence of Early Chinese Narrative Film,
”
in
A
Companion to Chinese Cinema
, ed. Yingjin Zhang (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 26.
2
William Rothman,
The “I” of the Camera
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 55
-
56.
3
Nathaniel Isaacson,
Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction
(Middletown, Connecticut:
Wesleyan University Press, 2017), 29
-
30.书
评
Book Reviews
817
2019, Vol. 2, No. 4
intellectuals as a new generic form that might contribute to an awakening of the masses and
the consequent social change. This function was at the same time owing to the understanding
and the interpretation of the term
“
science.
”
In China at the turn of the twentieth century, with
the importing of the Western ideas of evolution and social Darwinism, the West was viewed
worldwide as the cutting edge of a universal progress of civilization. Science was regarded as a
body of knowledge equivalent to an objective understanding of the material world, which was
seen by many late-Qing Chinese intellectuals as a matter of historical fact and therefore of great
significance in nation building. Science fiction, together with a number of literary genres, was
believed to be and was used by Chinese intellectuals as a literary site to disseminate
“
knowledge.
”
In this sense, the term, a combination of
“
science
”
and
“
fiction,
”
became a perfect demonstration
of an objective delineation of the material world and the literary imagination of the social status
quo of China at the turn of the century.
Tracing the early history of science fiction in late imperial China, Isaacson
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