Yao Haijun (Nong Jian, Liang Shuyi/Photo)
"I was 'carried away' by science fiction." Looking back on the "science fiction life" of the past 40 years, Yao Haijun, president of the Chengdu Science Fiction Association and deputy editor-in-chief of Science Fiction World magazine, sighed so much.
He was a village child in Yichun Forest District, Heilongjiang, was attracted by a story of "Strange Robot Dog" and began to imagine the future and the universe; a technical school teenager and forest worker organized the "China Science Fiction Enthusiasts Association" and founded "Nebula", China's first science fiction enthusiast magazine; a young editor, trekked to Chengdu, joined the "Science Fiction World" magazine, and discovered a group of "science fiction stars" such as Liu Cixin; a middle-aged president, regaining the dreams of generations of science fiction people. Determined to bring the WorldCon to China.
As the "World Expo" in the hearts of global science fiction fans, the World Science Fiction Convention enjoys a lofty status in the science fiction industry, and the "Hugo Award" awarded every year is the oldest and most important award in the field of global science fiction literature.
"Bidding for the World Science Fiction Convention" was one of the most important decisions in Yao Haijun's life. In 1991, the annual meeting of the World Science Fiction Association (WSF) was held in Chengdu, and Yao Haijun was unable to make the trip due to limited travel expenses. Six years later, when the "Beijing International Science Fiction Convention" was held, it was the science fiction friends who had never met in the country who had paid for it. At the Science and Technology Convention Center, at the food stalls, in the basement, they talked about the future of Chinese science fiction, and they were so excited that they couldn't sleep.
After that, Yao Haijun went abroad to participate in four World Science Fiction Conventions. Like a carnival and a super-large "party", the conference can accommodate various forms such as film and television drama, music and dance, speech art exhibitions and so on. Writers, artists, musicians, and science fiction fans come together to participate in events and set the topic. "A lot of people are paying attention to what the future is outlined by China's most imaginative people, including international relations, cosmic relations, and the relationship between people and people."
Yao Haijun told Southern Weekend Reporter: "To develop science fiction culture, it needs a ceremony or festival. The World Science Fiction Convention is a legend. As a science fiction fan, I also hope that there is such a legend in China, and there has always been such a seed in my heart. ”
On December 18, 2021, Beijing time, Chengdu, China, was successfully realized, and the long-cherished wishes of several generations of Chinese science fiction fans came true.
The following is An oral account of Yao Haijun.
"Our world needs science fiction"
Looking back on 2021, my work has three parts. The first part, the work in Science Fiction World magazine, mainly book publishing, hopes to show more of the achievements of Chinese science fiction writers. The second part invites well-known foreign science fiction writers to come to China for exchanges and introduce more excellent foreign science fiction works. The third part is the preparation of the science fiction conference, the organizational structure, government coordination, social resource support, the organization of science fiction fans, etc., all of which cost a lot of energy. Fortunately, the Chengdu Science Fiction Association is a powerful team that gathers a large number of science fiction fans and professionals from home and abroad.
The World Science Fiction Convention is a conference in which science fiction enthusiasts and people in the science fiction community participate together, emphasizing participation and diversity, absorbing the cultures of different countries and entering the big world. In the past, we have also organized some international conferences, but the multicultural presentation and the participation of science fiction fans are still relatively limited. This is a new subject for us.
On August 16, 2018, at the 76th World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, USA, Wei Yingxue and I officially announced Chengdu's bid to host the 2023 World Science Fiction Convention on behalf of the Science Fiction Alliance. In fact, on the flight to the United States, we were not so clear. After arriving at the conference, after in-depth understanding and feelings, with the support of the leaders of the provincial and municipal science and technology associations, we finally made such a decision.
I think there are two reasons, one is that the development of Chinese science fiction in the past seventy years has provided a realistic foundation. In the far side, in 1991, the annual meeting of the World Science Fiction Association was held in Chengdu, which opened the vision of Chinese science fiction; in the near future, "Three-Body" won the Hugo Award in 2015, which brought Chinese science fiction into the international vision and won wide acclaim. Chinese science fiction should have more international exchanges and deepen foreign understanding of Chinese science fiction. At the San Jose Congress, this exchange is still limited, and although there are award-winning writers such as Liu Cixin and Hao Jingfang, there are still a large number of excellent writers and works that should be known and read by the international community.
On the other hand, I have participated in many domestic science fiction conventions, and there are not many conferences in which all science fiction fans can deeply participate, and they have not fully mobilized everyone's enthusiasm and felt the happiness brought by science fiction. After all, there are a few people who can go to the United States or other countries to participate in the conference, and if the conference can come to China, all Chinese science fiction fans can personally participate and feel, it will be a beautiful thing.
After choosing Shen Fantasy, we actually never considered options such as "giving up" and "postponing", which is the wish of generations of science fiction people after all. The Chinese science fiction community is strongly looking forward to the World Science Fiction Convention coming to China, which has become an important driving force for Shen Fantasy. On the other hand, many countries hope that China will be able to bid for the conference on behalf of Asia. After I contacted the Japanese science fiction community, the Korean science fiction community, the Indian science fiction community, etc., I found that they all had such expectations, and we even thought of establishing an Asian science fiction association to promote a fantasy alliance.
Today's world is becoming more and more chaotic, is in a process of tearing, science fiction is the best glue in this world, science fiction can make our world more united. Because we are all exploring many possible futures in science fiction, and together we seek a better future that everyone expects. From this point of view, our world needs science fiction very much, and it needs science fiction conventions even more.
In Chengdu, there is not only a landmark platform of Chinese science fiction such as "Science Fiction World" magazine, but also many enterprises containing science fiction genes and a large number of science fiction fans, which makes us directly feel the enthusiasm of the fire. In the process of applying for the illusion, I can feel that my emotions are constantly being infected and warmed.
The success of Chengdu Shen fantasy means that the real challenge has just begun, and things are complicated. 2022 is going to be a very critical year and most of my energy will be spent on the conference.
"Chinese science fiction can get to where it is today is the result of choice"
I was "carried away" by science fiction. From the beginning of his love of science fiction literature to the beginning of the magazine in the late 1980s, he never considered any trade-offs. I love science fiction, so I want to do something, it's a natural process. For me, science fiction is like a stargate, and the world becomes vast. I'm very lucky that not all sci-fi enthusiasts can become sci-fi workers.
Many people ask why they should pay attention to the sky and the universe. Reality is tedious, and we are faced with all kinds of trivialities every day, and we are often confused and self-doubtful. At this time, if we look at the distant starry sky, do not dwell on reality, but think about the meaning of life and the universe, and in turn put some of our small choices under a big proposition to rethink, this is helpful for our lives.
The fact that Chinese science fiction has been able to get to where it is today is the result of choice. In 1983, Chinese science fiction entered a low ebb, although before that, there were many popular science magazines in China that were keen to publish science fiction, and even some quasi-science fiction magazines were born, but in 1983, everyone had to make a new choice, like "Science Fiction Ocean" and "Science Fiction Weekly" were suspended, when everyone was facing huge pressure, science fiction was seriously misread.
The choice of the predecessors of "Science Fiction World" was admirable, they did not choose to give up, insisted on publishing some science fiction novels, and finally chose to run a pure, real science fiction magazine in 1991. Another popular science magazine that also published more science fiction novels that year, "Science Age", was renamed "Family Life Guide", choosing a direction that may seem more marketable at the time. Later, Chengdu, where "Science Fiction World" is located, naturally became the center of Chinese science fiction.
People mentioned that some friends in the science fiction industry called me "science fiction gold digger" and "China's Campbell", which are all praise. It's not that I found Liu Cixin and Wang Jinkang, but that Science Fiction World is there, which is the author's choice of magazine. Before Liu Cixin submitted "The Three-Body Problem", he had submitted a large number of short stories to "Science Fiction World", and he was already the brightest science fiction star of that era. All I've done is adapt our publishing model to the growth of writers.
Can science fiction writers stay with magazines forever? I've been thinking about this. If the writer only seeks living space in the magazine, then the value created is very limited, and the space given to the writer by the magazine is also limited. Therefore, I am determined to advance Chinese science fiction from the era of magazines to the era of bestsellers, only in this way can the space for writers expand and make the genre of science fiction more socially acceptable. Entering the era of bestsellers will open up more possibilities, and the era of science fiction industrialization will surely come.
After the award of "Three-Body Problem", there is a saying: Liu Cixin created a breakthrough for Chinese science fiction, allowing science fiction to enter the wider world, but when he looked back, he found that there were few teams behind him. In the past two years, we have found some potential writers, who have a lot of room to grow, but in terms of overall scale, the number of people and works is still limited. The good news is that every year a large number of new people enter the industry, and this vigorous vitality is encouraging; at the same time, the overall atmosphere has also spawned more science fiction activities and science fiction awards. This is the reality of Chinese science fiction at present.
Science fiction is an inclusive literary genre that encourages everyone to participate in the future of creativity. These futures seem to be conflicting with each other, but being able to coexist and accept each other is the most valuable place of science fiction. Some people choose the more macroscopic universe, and some choose the microscopic world, focusing on a certain aspect of human life. A new generation of writers may choose to pay attention to the correlation between the future and reality, and speculate on the possibilities of the future from the perspective of reality, and writers like Liu Cixin who like "ethereal" are becoming more and more rare.
The international science fiction trend is also constantly changing, from the history, from space opera to cyberpunk, etc., the mainstream is constantly changing, the biggest feature of the current world science fiction is to care for the reality infiltrated by science and technology from a transcendent dimension, trying to establish a closer relationship between reality and fantasy. This international trend has many echoes at home. For example, in the last two years, many authors have written science fiction novels in linguistics. This kind of novel is very difficult to write, and you probably know the most successful linguistic science fiction adaptation of the film "Arrival". Now there are more such themes, in fact, it is related to the changes in our world. Can we truly understand each other? A real problem is that we are increasingly skeptical about truly understanding each other. The spirit of realism in science fiction today is stronger.
Southern Weekend reporter Zhang Rui
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