SFitze Chengdu issue 09 2023 part 3
-newSFplatter by ST-
SCIENCE FICTION LIBRARIES AND LONG-NECKED DINOS
Some of these highlights should be on anyone’s best of list of SF in China (and elsewhere in the multiverse!): the SFW HQ (and its roof!) and the Chengdu SF “Mamenchisaurus”-totemic animal Library and in particular its librarian 我是华文SFhuawen. Full support and total respect. It's essential to encourage such initiatives. Fantastic memories from the hot pot night with Tianluo Qi and talks about the speculative fervor in fundamental physics and being Lost in Math (and Beauty) while trying to steer clear of all that floating chili lava.
Also great to be with Xueyan aka Benzin and Zixuan 子旋, Wu and a young Billibilli virtual vlogger celeb, while perusing lavish Chinese translations of Stanislaw Lem in just one of the crazy new bookshops (including a Chinese copy of Blindsight by Peter Watts) and then wander along the humid and pitch dark riverside with bats swooping down to catch hatching insects.
THERE ARE BOOKS IN THE FUTURE
Again, I was reminded that Chengdu, while being a 21 million megalopolis at the forefront of China’s first-tier cities it still remains a man-made, people’s “park city” (but hey let’s not rank cities according to business attractiveness but SF attractiveness and the two are not always on the same page - for this see The Fermi Paradox is Our Business Model genius short story by Charlie Jane Anders first published on Tor.com in 2010). To Zixuan I am indebted for feeling a natural and integral part of the exoteric society of SF aficionados. I felt this especially while entering one of his favorite second-hand bookshops.
At this tiny second-hand bookshop I have found Vol 2 Three Body Problem first edition with a very young-looking Liu Cixin, and Momo by M. Ende translation in Chinese. I also held Order Out of Chaos – Man’s New Dialogue with Nature by Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine and philosopher Isabelle Stengers (probably translated at the same time it was translated in German and Romanian). So even if I only saw the full splendor of the Chengdu Public Library from the outside, I still got to scavenge this small and wonderful Chinese book(space)ship packed with both low brow & high brow greats (Hugo Gernsback would be proud!). Here the Communist Manifesto stood next to Deng Xiaoping’s tracts, or next to small towers of wonderfully illustrated pocket (collectible!) pulpy lianhuanhua Chinese comic books bordering Shakespeare in Chinese, Taoist literature classics and a translation of Art and Visual Perception by Rudolf Arnheim.
It felt encouraging that amid almost perfect public transportation (and in stark contrast with the Berlin situation), AliPay face-pay, stacks of charging power banks for rent, regulatory efforts at both AI, Big Tech and the fan economy, and being constantly bathed and scanning QR codes, there is still a lot of love for reading and books. Bibliophilia still runs deep in the country that invented paper and printing blocks, even after giving it to the world and embracing the digital. And of course publishing - here I would like to thank young 18 year old Comrade neo-Maoist Lv Sicen 吕思岑 (two mouths!) лв сицен for his help and gifts of LUOMANIYA 1961 Christmas issue and the lianhuanhua based in Romanian movies (never knew something like this existed! It's an honor to take them back home & give then to my comics collector friends). A truly incredible & stimulating Worldcon encounter with hour long discussions. Also much appreciation for his Serbo-croat dedication on his myrmeco- fiction debut book on warring ants Empires published as a 10 year old!
HYDRAULIC SCIENCE FICTION
All in all, in Chengdu, where I hope to return at some point, felt like making me ask the same questions like in Joan Slonczewski’s The Children Star about - who’s responsible for this, what are the forces and tremendous invisible efforts that made it all possible in one year? Symbiosis (or “we have never been individuals”) – the theme (“MEET THE FUTURE” slogan) of this Wordlcon, may mean many things to many people, but I was happy to go back to its bio-theoretical roots – happy to mention the SET (Serial Endosymbiosis Theory) proposed by Lynn Margulis so we could explain such levels of organization with recourse to unlikely events in deep time that impacted all our human and other-than-human branchings, nested in the history of life. Today the bacterial origins of chloroplasts and mitochondria feel like common knowledge.
During my stay in Chengdu I have been made aware of all this sustained and constant effort that has made, not just by unveiling of the SF Museum - the centerpiece of the 81st Wordlcon. From Brecht as well as Darko Suvin’s application of cognitive estrangement to SF, it is good to vary the distance, even if it is not easy to not get completely sucked in such a climatic moment with drone displays in sky. Of course, SF and its incommensurate pleasures has to be supported, encouraged and cared for, as much a work of maintenance as the world famous Dujiangyan Irrigation Project built in the late Qin Zhaowang (~256 BC - ~251 BC) that I haven’t been able to visit, but is celebrated here in Pidu in a monument btw the blocks. Dujiangyan is a sort of hydraulic SF (to expand on J. Needham’s organic and hydraulic civilization notion).
So I might be forgiven if the entire greenery behind the museum was even more spectacular to me than the architectonic centerpiece by Zaha Hadid Studios. What I only got a brief glimpse of – the plant nurseries, or the large planted tracts and continuous bicycle lanes felt much more impressive to me.
All the trees in large part mechanically planted (lots of gingko - the city tree of Chengdu!) with the help of machinery but also cared for and nourished by human hands with what looked like “IVs” in their bark, or the quiet parks with mah-jong playing citizens in gazebos in-between the tower-block, all tended by gardeners – I think such “green thumbs” merit all our attention. That was my Silent Running moment. This concerted and coordinated effort – possibly the only way to keep an entire city interlaced with living green areas, was maybe more SF than the Chengdu Wordlcon.
