“Unmasking a universally accepted lie or overturning an irreplaceable idol will produce something akin to a mental collapse.”In the seventy sixth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are hitting Zero (零 / líng). Joining me on deck are The Hugonauts, as we navigate a dystopian world that might be a postmodern riff on 1984 by amorphous author Huang Fan, or might be something far more sinister. All seasoned rebels know: sometimes you crash the system, and sometimes the system crashes you.-// NEWS ITEMS //READ: Cao Kou’s The Wall Builder, translated by a pair of familiar namesCan Xue’s Mystery Train now available for preorder in the USYan Ge nears the end of draft 1 of a new (in a sense) Chinese language novelSFRA publishes Xi Liu’s Stories on Sexual Violence as “Thought Experiments”: Post-1990s Chinese Science Fiction as an ExampleEast Asian astroturf: a flood of “books” on Taiwan, China, and Nancy Pelosi hits Amazon-// WORD OF THE DAY //(理 - lǐ - reason)-// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //Angus’ musical pairing: Way out of Here by Porcupine TreeThe ‘four industrial revolutions’ theoryThe PRC’s blocking of Wikipedia and efforts to ‘delete’ Tiananmen 1989 from collective memoryPostwar Taiwan as a US-backed, far-right dictatorshipHao Jingfang’s Folding Beijing and its win at The Hugo Awards

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

Transcript

Related