#xia jia

[anjo-by-the-sea]

- Goodnight, Meloncoly. Xia Jia, 2016.

[mykingdomforapen]

I love this art of Cheng Xiaoshi so, so dearly because it's adorable and I love stuffies and I love CXS but also because it reminds me of this short story: "Goodnight, Melancholy" by Xia Jia (English translation by Ken Liu)

cw: deals very intimately with deep depression, including references to suicide, but is ultimately a story that is about beginning to heal. Also, it's a story about robots, souls, and learning to be kind to yourself as you would a child.

[photomatt]

I believe that cognition relies on quantum effects, like tossing dice. I believe that before machines have learned to write poetry, each word written by an author is still meaningful. I believe that above the abyss, we can hold tightly onto each other and stride from the long winter into bright summer.

Xia Jia story Goodnight, Melancholy

[silkpunk]

Alan: Dear Christopher, do you know what I'm most afraid of?

Christopher [an A.I.] : What are you most afraid of?

Alan: I'm afraid that there will come a day when they'll summarize my life with a syllogism: 1. Turing believes machines think 2. Turing lies with men 3. Therefore machines do not think

Christopher: I'm sorry, Alan, I'm afraid I don't understand. 

Alan: Do you know what a syllogism is?

Christopher: What is a syllogism?

Alan: A syllogism consists of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion deduced from the two.

Christopher: A conclusion?

Alan: Aristotle gave a classic example: 1. All men are mortal 2. Socrates is a man 3. Therefore Socrates is mortal

Christopher: Socrates is mortal?

Alan: Socrates has been dead for more than two millennia!

Christopher: Oh, I'm sorry, Alan. That makes me sad.

Alan: Do you know who Socrates was?

Christopher: Yes, you've told me. Socrates was Plato's teacher, and Plato was Aristotle's teacher.

Alan: That's right. Do you know how he died?

Christopher: Who?

Alan: How did Socrates die?

Christopher: I'm sorry, Alan. I don't know.

Alan: He drank hemlock after his trial.

Christopher: After his trial?

Alan: Yes. The Athenians decided that he was a criminal, though now we know they were wrong.

Christopher: They were wrong?

Alan: Just as they think Turing is a criminal because Turing lies with men.

Christopher: A criminal?

Alan: I've been convicted.

Christopher: Oh, I'm sorry, Alan. That makes me sad.

  — Xia Jia, “Goodnight, Melancholy”, Broken Stars (edited and translated by Ken Liu)

[ordinaryrealities]

The dreams and myths of this land were his original seed.

“Night Journey of the Dragon-Horse” from Invisible Planets, trans. and ed. by Ken Liu, author Xia Jia

[fragments-of-a-hologram-dystopia]

Review: Nebula (Short story collection)

Authors: Xia Jia, Liu Cixin, Chen Qiufan, Wu Yan

Genre: sci-fi

Year: 2017

Notes: this is a collection of short stories recently published by Future Fiction. It’s quite a special project since it’s a bilingual (chinese / italian) anthology. Read this review in Italian here.

The collection contains four stories, and I already wrote in the past about two of them. I told you about Chen Qiufan’s The Coming of Light here, a story that I translated from Ken Liu’s english translation into italian: what happens if a marketing expert is asked to work on a strategy to sell a new app, and he contributes to the creation of Buddhagram, which has some unexpected side effects? I reviewed a collection of Xia Jia’s stories here, and the one who was chosen for the Nebula collection is Tongtong’s Summer, the story of a young girl, her grandpa and the android that has to take care of him.

Another story you can read here is Yuanyuan’s Bubbles by Liu Cixin (yes, the author of The Three-Body Problem), the story of Yuanyuan, who grows up in a small town in a constant drought and loves blowing bubbles. When she first saw bubbles, as a little kid, she fell in love with it and she kept blowing bubbles all her life, from her school years through her years as a grown up woman who has founded a successful company, which will help her find a practical use for her little obsession.

Then there’s Wu Yan’s To Print a New World, the story of an university that risks getting closed so everyone working there decides to work hard to make it absolutely necessary and irreplaceable. It works, but with some surprising side effects.

What do all these stories have in common? Many things, of course, but what struck me most was how modern they all felt. Sure, Chen Qiufan is nicknamed the William Gibson of China, but he doesn’t stop at old timey cyberpunk, no, he focuses on smartphones and apps (at least in this story), because that’s what the readers experience right now. Xia Jia writes about old people and the need to care for them, an issue that is strictly a contemporary one, since the number of elderly grows and the number of children is getting lower. Liu Cixin’s story deals with droughts and, indirectly, with climate change. Wu Yan’s tale focuses on modern universities and the problem of pollution.

From an Italian point of view, it’s great to have such a collection since we do not get much in terms of new sci-fi (besides maybe The Expanse series), let alone sci-fi that doesn’t come from english-speaking countries, and the vast majority of the readers have to rely on translated material since they can’t read english. Collections like this one are a great way to start exploring new realities in terms of sci-fi, and the book as an object is not only well made, but it contains a foreword by Wu Yan and an afterword by Takihara Tōya, a japanese university professor that explains an interesting concept about the two kinds of science-related fiction styles in China.

All these stories are a good way to demonstrate that, no, science fiction doesn’t have to stop at rockets or glittering cyberspace cities, it can actually go further and be inspired by the issues of our time. After all science fiction never was about the future, it has always been about the fears and hopes of the time in which the stories were written.

[fullibooked]

The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories is a collection of translated stories, and essays, by women and non-binary writer. My most recent jaunt into the ever-broadening literary world that is Chinese speculative fiction. And it's an awesome one. These science-fiction and fantasy stories range from myth retellings and reimaginings, to brand new tales of love, wonder, and weirdness.

This collection is wicked! The stories are wild, beautiful, sad, creepy and all different. The essays are interesting, leaving one to ponder gender, modern spec fic, and translation itself.

My favourites were The Stars We Raised by Xiu Xinyu, What Does The Fox Say by Xia Jia and A Saccharophilic Earthworm by BaiFanRuShuang. (If someone could now tell me how to pronounce Saccharophilic that would be grand). I've included a little rose just for the Earthworm story, but many of these stories felt like they belonged nestled beside one's indoor plants.

[hikari-chan21]

"Fingir que lo falso es real solo sirve para que lo real parezca falso".

Cientos de fantasmas desfilan esta noche

Xia Jia