Science fiction is best placed to discuss climate crisis, says Chen Qiufan, Chinese sci-fi author
- Chen Qiufan has consciously included topics such as environmental pollution, biodiversity, loss of indigenous culture in his science fiction writing
- His latest is a children’s book about carbon neutrality. Science fiction ‘can broaden the boundary of people’s understanding of the world’, he says
In Chinese science fiction writer Chen Qiufan’s new book Net Zero China, the protagonist travels through time to the year 2060 and sees a China in which President Xi Jinping’s net-zero pledge is made true. The author, also known as Stanley Chen, tells Karoline Kan “a crisis may be an opportunity in disguise”.
“Our world is full of urgent climate problems, and each one is hard to solve. I tried to seek answers in my science fiction writing, but the more I learn about it, the more difficult I find the questions are, and in the end I think we have to go back to imagination, love, and empathy sometimes.
“We need compassion to realise the urgency of the climate crisis and realise that all of us are victims of climate change. We need to unite and act up to make a change. Those can be the most powerful solutions.
“I have been a science fiction fan since I was a child. I started to watch the Star Wars series and Star Trek in kindergarten. So writing science fiction is a very natural choice for me. Then about 10 years ago, I wrote my first environment-related science fiction, Waste Tide (荒潮), which was a story addressing the problem of electronic waste, climate change and the environment.
“Although science fiction is popular today, at that time, when I wrote Waste Tide, few people in mainland China who have professions related to climate research talked about it. In the media, little attention was paid to climate change.
“People found it odd that I spent time on this literature genre. But in the past 10 years, it has changed so much. China has made various policies, and the most recent one is the pledge to reach carbon neutrality.
