What does it mean for the "Queen of Reasoning" to write science fiction across borders?

Miyuki Miyabe's science fiction novel Descendants of poseidon pays homage to Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the originator of science fiction and a female writer. The picture shows stills from the Japanese drama "No Name Poison" (2013), based on Miyuki Miyabe's mystery novel of the same name. (Infographic/Figure)

Miyuki Miyabe, a Japanese writer with many titles and labels - "Queen of Japanese Mystery Literature", "Japan's Most Popular Female Writer", "Miracle in the History of Japanese Literature", "Heisei National Writer", "Daughter of Kiyoharu Matsumoto", etc. Such an aura will naturally make people look forward to her new work. Miyuki Miyabe's 2022 short story collection "Descendants of the Sea God" was somewhat unexpected. The seven novels in this short story collection are neither speculative novels in the traditional sense, nor are they era novels or strange novels that Miyuki Miyabe often dabbles in, but very orthodox and "authentic" science fiction novels. In these stories, there are no common cases, detectives, reasoning, case solving and other elements in speculative fiction, nor do they strangely talk about various supernatural phenomena and gods and monsters commonly found in novels. Instead, there are classic themes and themes in science fiction, such as robots ("The Farewell Ceremony"), aliens ("Wish to the Stars", "Warrior"), artificial humans ("Sheriff's Tomorrow"), and so on. The short story of the same name in this collection of novels, "Descendants of the Sea God", is a direct tribute to "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley, the originator of science fiction and a female writer.

Although some speculative fiction novels will have science fiction elements in them, and science fiction novels with reasoning elements such as "case" and "investigation" have been common since Asimov's time, it is rare for "intrinsic" science fiction novels created by speculative writers and without speculative elements at all, such as "Descendants of poseidon".

This is especially true in the domestic science fiction circle. Searching the annual anthologies of various types of literature published in China every year, it will be found that in the anthologies of reasoning and suspense, there will still be a very small number of cross-border martial arts novels or science fiction novels, but in the science fiction anthologies, all of them are science fiction novels written by science fiction authors.

In recent years, under the influence of science fiction novels and movies such as "The Three-Body Problem" and "The Wandering Earth", science fiction has reached an unprecedented popularity in China. Since then, the number of "cross-border" science fiction novels created by authors outside the domestic science fiction circle has gradually increased. However, such works have almost no heat and discussion in the domestic science fiction circle, and are completely in the state of "blossoming outside the wall and incense outside the wall".

So, what does this cross-border mean?

"Xenophobic" science fiction

Those "crossover" science fiction novels do seem to be subtly different from the "orthodox" science fiction novels we are familiar with in many places. These differences may seem inconspicuous at first glance, but they cannot be ignored, just like the birds darwin saw in the Galapagos Islands, which are obviously a species, generally similar in shape, but the body size is different, the size and shape of the beak are even more different, and even some populations have been separated from reproduction.

This "estrangement" did not exist in the first place. Like all genre literature as we now know it, science fiction began as a derivation from the matrix of popular literature. Tracing back to the source, science fiction and speculative fiction in the modern sense are almost in the same vein. The first science fiction novel, Frankenstein, and the first speculative novel, The Murder on Morg Street, were both published in the first half of the 19th century, and both had the gothic, horror, and thriller elements that were customary in popular fiction at the time. Not only that, but the science fiction of that period, such as many of the novels of Verne, the "father of science fiction", was not much different from the popular novels of his contemporaries. The "science fiction elements" or "science fiction settings" in it are just a simple imagination of the existing scientific phenomena at that time. According to the current evaluation standards of science fiction, the science fiction novels of that period were just popular novels with scientific elements.

Just like all children grow up and develop their own personalities. Genres such as science fiction, reasoning, and horror have also embarked on their own paths of development, and have formed unique stylistic standards and evaluation systems. Among all the genres of literature, science fiction can be said to be the most special, but also the most explicit category, even to the extent of some "exclusivity".

The reason is that science fiction, as genre literature, has a very special attribute. Speculative fiction can be without the process of detective investigation and reasoning, or even without cases in the traditional sense. In martial arts novels, the protagonist can be completely ignorant of martial arts, and even the entire novel can be completely devoid of fighting with martial arts. However, science fiction must have science fiction content. When introducing or discussing science fiction, the first thing that will be mentioned is not what story the science fiction novel tells, but what the setting of this science fiction is. To use almost nonsense: science fiction must first be science fiction.

This draws a natural boundary for science fiction, and also circles the scope of science fiction, that is, based on the reasonable imagination of existing science. This common source of creative foundation makes science fiction a large number of works of the same genre.

On the other hand, just as Benguet reasoning places a lot of emphasis on the innovation of puzzles, science fiction also places a lot of emphasis on setting, or how to use the novel's innovation. In other words, new science fiction works need to have their own groundbreaking.

These two contradictory needs make the direction of science fiction more introverted and deep. Therefore, in the development process of science fiction for more than a hundred years, the writers in the circle have continuously explored various classic themes, including their content, ideological connotations and various possibilities of storytelling.

For example, aliens, one of the classic themes of science fiction, the earliest is the simple and straightforward story of aliens driving a spaceship to invade the earth, or humans encountering aliens outside the earth. Later, he developed profound works such as "Solaris Star" that deeply explored the nature of existence and wisdom, the limitations of human cognition, and the magnificent masterpieces about the fate of mankind as a whole in space, such as "The Three-Body Problem", which spanned light years in space, up to the entire universe, hundreds of years before and after time, and until the end of the universe.

It is this continuous and in-depth exploration that makes science fiction gradually become a unique trait and charm of the genre. Now people's habitual impressions of science fiction, such as "fantasy", "future", "technology", "change", "curiosity", "curiosity", etc., most of them originate from this.

110 years before Miyuki Miyabe wrote science fiction, mystery writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the science fiction novel The Lost World. Such cross-borders are very rare. The picture shows a still from the Japanese drama "Twilight Photo Studio" (2013), based on Miyuki Miyabe's mystery novel of the same name. (Infographic/Figure)

The hidden worries of the small circle

The birds of the Galapagos Islands, which have produced different characteristics in a small environment of long isolation, eventually become completely different subspecies. Science fiction has also gradually formed its own characteristics over the past hundred years, so that it has formed a completely independent literary category.

If you look back at the history of science fiction, you will find that there is exactly one "Benge" science fiction novel created by a famous mystery writer, which can be read in contrast with Miyuki Miyabe's "Descendants of the Sea God" and visually perceive this process of change. That was The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of The Sherlock Holmes Detective Collection, in 1912. In this science fiction novel, an expedition discovers prehistoric dinosaurs in an isolated plateau in South America— seemingly similar to that of their contemporaries Verne, H. Schmidt. The science fiction works of G. Wells and others are not significantly different.

At the author level, the development trend of science fiction, which forms its own literary characteristics, is to a large extent conducive to the development of science fiction. At the reader level, science fiction also hatches a small circle of subcultures, and at this end, the situation is more complicated.

As with all subcultures, the fundamental factor that limits the development of science fiction into a true mass culture is precisely the characteristics that make science fiction a science fiction. These qualities give science fiction a unique charm, but also lead to a threshold not only for creating science fiction, but also for reading and appreciating science fiction.

Science fiction is based on literary forms of "imagination" and "science". Science fiction becomes science fiction because the author creates imaginary worlds that are very different from our real lives. Reading science fiction is a decompilation process, which requires readers to use their imagination to restore the world imagined by the author through the words in the novel.

The vast majority of science fiction is written in a way that is not friendly to readers who have never been exposed to science fiction. Magicians don't recite the principles of magic as scripted before the performance begins; mature science fiction writers don't list the settings in the novel in explanatory words at the beginning of the novel. These settings are presented little by little through various details in the novel, like pieces of a puzzle. Therefore, reading science fiction novels has one more task than ordinary popular novels, in addition to restoring the plot and characters in the reading process, but also paying attention to various abnormalities and unknown details in the novel, to restore the appearance of the world conceived by the author.

In "The Three-Body Problem", Liu Cixin spent several chapters describing Wang Miao's participation in the "three-body game". At first glance, these contents not only seem to be outside of Wang Miao's life, but also the content of the game that Wang Miao participates in each time is completely different. For readers who do not understand science fiction, it is likely to be confused when they first read this. However, readers who know something about science fiction will understand that these seemingly unrelated contents must have the author's intentions. Only by patiently reading the first part of "The Three-Body Problem" can we put together all the puzzles and understand that all these irrational places are actually extended from the core settings of the novel, such as the Three-Body Starman and the Earth Three-Body Organization. This sense of surprise is the charm of science fiction.

Obviously, this kind of pleasure that requires giving and delaying gratification will dissuade many readers in itself. Because of this, the science fiction enthusiast group has become a circle that needs to cross a threshold to enter.

Domestically, the circle is even smaller. This is determined by the current situation of domestic science fiction creation and introduction. After the founding of New China, science fiction had several twists and turns in its development. Today's domestic science fiction can be considered to have started in the 1980s. For a long time, whether it is the imported foreign science fiction classics or domestic original science fiction, there is almost only one style and mode, that is, the science fiction of the "golden age".

This style of science fiction has shaped the cognition and aesthetics of many science fiction fans on science fiction. Many domestic debates about science fiction, such as the dispute between "soft science fiction" and "hard science fiction", whether science fiction should be based on scientific settings or stories, etc., are basically related to this cognition and aesthetics.

This kind of small circle at the reader level is not conducive to the development of domestic science fiction. After all, science fiction, as a market-oriented type of literature, must have enough audiences to develop healthily. For developing domestic original science fiction, it is inevitable that more styles and types of science fiction works will appear. To exclude "new faces" simply because they don't look like the kind of science fiction we're familiar with is a loss to anyone.

After all, the essence of reading a novel is a leisure and entertainment. And what initially attracted us to pick up a science fiction book was that the book was interesting enough, not because it was the kind of science fiction we knew.

From this point of view, Miyuki Miyabe's "Descendants of the Sea God" is a science fiction novel worth reading. After all, at the level of fiction, it's mature and interesting. And there are some subtle differences with the kind of science fiction written by science fiction writers.

Southern Weekend Contributing Writer Seaman