The U.S. fleet stationed in the Persian Gulf hadn’t had time to react. Now it, too, was in flames.
In the eighty sixth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, we are committing Quantum Genocide. Granting our 2019 chat a sequel, Chen Qiufan & I discuss the demonic wildcard of his 10 stories in AI 2041 (an idiosyncratic blend of fictional and non-fictional speculation co-authored alongside tech god Kai-fu Lee). California burns, the 1% are slaughtered like dogs, and a new dark age commences. Boot up, log in, and accelerate.
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// NEWS ITEMS //
- Read: How does Chinese science fiction tell China’s global strategy? Analysis by LSE China Foresight
- Read: Matt Turner’s preface to his translation of Lu Xun’s Weeds: what is the advantage of another translation?
- Listen: John Minford on four classics of Chinese literature that he believes best reveal the old civilisation and the heart & spirit of Chinese people today.
- Read: Emily Xueni Jin reviews the development of sci-fi in China and how a new generation of authors is domesticating the genre by focusing on traditions
- Event: Online book club meeting on Cherries on a Pomegranate Tree, written by Li Er and translated by Dave Haysom (& to be published on 27th February)
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// WORD OF THE DAY //
(缠 – chán – to be haunted/to be entangled)
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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //
- Accelerationism – both as a political idea and a business philosophy
- Apophenia and overfitting
- The mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto
- The Guilty (2021) – a film set during (but not about) wildfire in California
- MIT Press’ Twelve Tomorrows series
- James Lovelock’s Gaia Theory
- When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut
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The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast 