Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

There may be no more popular domestic science fiction than "three-body". Not long ago, overseas streaming giant Netflix released the first behind-the-scenes special of the drama version of "three-body", which set off a discussion about its film and television.

Leaving aside the praise and criticism of the adaptation of the play, there is no doubt about the literary status, cultural influence and commercial value of the "three bodies" in the world. At the same time, a practical problem has emerged: since the milestone of Chinese science fiction created by "three-body" at the 73rd World Science Fiction Congress in 2015, there has not been a domestic work comparable to its influence.

This is undoubtedly a regrettable thing. If you are looking for the next seed, it may be born in silk punk.

Silk punk was first proposed by science fiction writer Ken Liu Liu Yukun. He himself is also a translator of the English version of "three-body". On behalf of Liu Cixin, he once accepted the Hugo Award for Best novel. Originally, the concept of silk punk was a marketing concept that publishers forced Liu Yukun to come up with in order to make books easier to sell.

Unexpectedly, as soon as it was put forward, it received a wide response and welcome. Many works are classified as "silk punk" style. For example, Liu Yukun's dandelion dynasty series (Dandelion Dynasty), "Emerald City", "masked Throne", "Dr. Tea and Detective", some games are also considered silk punk, such as "OPUS:Echo of Starsong Dragon vein Song", "Okami God" and so on.

People may be familiar with science fiction genres such as cyberpunk, steampunk, diesel punk and biological punk, but what on earth does silk punk use to attract readers around the world?

XXpunk, a new member of the punk family, is a mainstream branch of science fiction. Due to the rebellious gene of "punk culture", "XXpunk" science fiction has a dystopian background. Cyberpunk can be regarded as the aesthetic pillar of "XXpunk", which is characterized by showing the dark future after the high development of information technology. On this basis, people began to imagine what the world would be like if it developed according to another technology tree, another timeline, and another culture.

Another kind of living environment, the emergence of ocean punk and desert punk. The former believes that humans live in the sea world at the end of the world, so it is full of mutated marine life, floating cities, and hybrids between humans and marine animals, probably just like Atlantis. In desert punk, the human living environment is not good, in the bad desert, civilians have to pick up trash for a living, "Crazy Max" is considered to be a desert punk movie.

Another technical route. Diesel punk Dieselpunk places the future in a world view of diesel power instead of electrification. Metal machines and billowing black smoke make diesel punk's visual art. Steampunk Steampunk writers continue to imagine the future "if steam power is the ultimate technology". The Victorian style of England continues, with scenes such as "Queen Victoria replaced by clones". Transistor punk and biological punk are also constructed on the basis of technology.

Another kind of cultural soil. When cyberpunk combines with different cultural matrixes, merging the cultural systems of various countries and regions into modern technology, it forms new aesthetic styles, such as bronze punk Bronzepunk, how ancient humans developed technology, prairie punk, African punk Afropunk, and what we want to talk about today-silk punk silkpunk.

("King's Grace") in 2015, science fiction writer Liu Yukun described his latest novel "King's Grace" as "silk punk", which has since become the "label" of many science fiction works and even games. As the inventor of the term Silkpunk, Liu Yukun gave a clear definition of it in his blog:

Silk punk is not "Asian steampunk" or "fantasy literature influenced by Asia", but a kind of technical aesthetics combined with ancient East Asian engineering and craftsmanship. Engineers solve some problems through creative combination of existing objects and technology, re-misappropriation and revival of tradition.

Compared with other "xx punks", the characteristics of silk punks are mainly shown in the following aspects:

1. The display of oriental traditional culture and Chinese aesthetic symbols.

Steampunk combines elements such as goths and rivets in Victorian art. Silk punk has also adopted and redesigned many Chinese aesthetic elements, such as bamboo, shells, corals, paper and, of course, silk.

In his works, Liu Yukun lets submarines adjust lift through the swim bladder to move in the water; duels fight in the air on kites, oars made of giant feathers push forward airships made of bamboo, and tunnel diggers reinforced with herbs.

Tea maker and Detective The tea master and the detective, who won the 2019 Star Cloud Award for best novelette, is also regarded as a representative of silk punk, which is full of Chinese elements, and one of the protagonists of the story is a female pharmacist who provides psychotropic drugs for space travelers.

Richard Garfunkel's Celestial matter Celestial Matters, published in 1996, is also regarded as a silk punk theme by Liu Yukun. The book presents a Ptolemaic version of the universe involving Aristotle's physics and China's theory of Qi. Neon Yang, a Singaporean writer, is also good at the "silk punk" style. "The Black Tides of Heaven," published under the name JY Young (JY Yang), was nominated for the 2018 Hugo Award for best novella, a series that contains a great deal of inspiration from ancient East Asia and an oncoming Chinese style on the cover.

two。 The expression of the core of Chinese culture.

If the Chinese aesthetic element is the "stack of form", then the infiltration of East Asian narrative style and Chinese philosophy is the source of oriental charm in silk punk works.

As a translator of Chinese science fiction, Liu Yukun is often asked about the difference between Chinese science fiction and western science fiction. He put forward the idea that Anglo-American science fiction is mainly written by those who share the views of colonists, while Chinese science fiction is often written by those who agree with post-colonial views. The work of Chinese science fiction lies not in which country it is written, but in that it is written for Chinese readers.

Lu Xun once described Chinese science fiction as "classics with science, weaving with human feelings" (Lu Xun: this is really what I said). It is not difficult to see that, in addition to scientific statements, rational analysis and profound theories, Chinese science fiction also needs the presentation of humanistic colors such as emotion and metaphor. And this is exactly what silk punk emphasizes.

Silk punk's worldview does not presuppose a power source such as steam engines, diesel engines, nuclear atoms, and so on. The Silk Road itself is a cultural concept used to describe the trade network between China and Europe. In a metaphorical way, based on the engineering traditions and technological miracles of East Asia, a new world is constructed for readers to explore.

According to Liu Yukun, "perhaps the greatest feature of science fiction is that it brings a sense of surprise that is common in classical science fiction." all the internal requirements or external manifestations of this "sense of surprise" reflect advanced economic, political, cultural, or understanding of the world from different angles.

Science fiction offers another imaginary possibility. For example, before the airship had faded out of the aviation field because of accidents, technology, energy efficiency and other reasons, Liu Yukun imagined an airship driven by huge feather oars in the dandelion dynasty series. this is regarded as an iconic image of silk punk aesthetics. Do you still remember how to describe the flight of the Chinese ancients in the songs of Chu? "is it completely different from the mechanical sense that the pier will come out to the east, I will help the mulberry, caress the horse, drive the horse, ride the thunder, carry the cloud flag, carry the snake", is it completely different from the mechanical sense?

For readers around the world, silk punk represents an opportunity to learn about new cultures and different philosophies, not just a glimpse of exoticism and a simple pile of exotic cultural elements.

3. Based on the imagination of the future of Chinese science and technology soil.

As mentioned earlier, the origin of "XXpunk" is still "punk". Just like steampunk fans don't care much about steam, what really fascinates them is the reflection and reconstruction of the current technological society and uncertainty in the punk spirit.

For a long time, all kinds of popular "xx punk" science fiction are based on western mainstream culture, whether it is cyber, steam age or futurism. Today, people all over the world may find that the modern western system, which emphasizes modernization, industrialization and developmentalism, has become powerless in the face of many problems, such as the damage of industrialization to the natural ecological environment, the exile and abandonment of human beings by modern science and technology, and in many "xx punk" works, the future is full of despair at the bottom, a large number of slums, and living in a bad environment.

Silk punk provides an oriental perspective, enabling people to seriously think about technology and more possibilities in the future from a different perspective, rather than immersing themselves in western narration.

As early as a hundred years ago, in the Story of the New Stone, Wu Jieren allowed Jia Baoyu to roam the civilized world, travel to Africa by car, and take a submarine to the South Pole. Biotechnology has also developed to the extreme, and everyone can live forever. This is not Chinese style? Isn't it silk? However, compared with the dystopian color of punk culture, Chinese writers obviously maintain a desire for the rejuvenation of their country and have great confidence in scientific and technological innovation, believing that the combination of traditional culture and advanced technology will create a more ideal living environment for human beings.

This cultural preference, or different mode of thinking, is a very different thing about Chinese science fiction. As the translator of the English version of the three-body, Liu Yukun believes that the three-body has an engineering-driven attitude and a unique Chinese perspective, and it is a story about the miracle of the universe.

Generally speaking, the essence of silk punk is to see the shining points of oriental engineering and technological system, and to wrap it with unique cultural aesthetics, providing a new imagination for technological, social, post-human and other issues.

But it should be emphasized that silk punk is still a weak branch of the science fiction school, and it is still evolving. There are three outstanding dilemmas in the creation of silk punk works:

First, China's historical and technological system, mythological system, aesthetic language and so on have not been systematically combed and fully explored. Science fiction carries people's desire for something new to be changed, and compared with prairie punk that expresses Mongolian culture, African punk that shows African style, and marine punk that does not exist like Atlantis, silk punk based on Chinese science and technology, engineering and craftsmanship, undoubtedly has more practical significance and development potential. However, the "silk punk" works created by some Chinese writers or foreign writers can easily become Orientalist aesthetics, and if the traditional elements of China, Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia and other places are mixed together, it will be difficult to arouse wide resonance among Chinese readers.

("Silk punk" works "on the way") second, Chinese science fiction works have not been given enough attention to go out. It is not difficult to see that, in fact, a large number of Chinese science fiction writers have created works similar to "silk punk" style, but the proportion of works that can be translated into the world is very small. The influence of "three-body" also benefits from being translated into many languages, and the translator Liu Yukun himself has both science fiction creative ability and high Chinese literacy, but there are still a large number of works with Chinese science fiction aesthetic implications that have not been effectively introduced and disseminated. To solve the problem of going out, silk punk has become one of the important schools in cyberpunk and even in the whole science fiction system, while Chinese writers and Chinese works will certainly be able to exert greater influence on a global scale.

The third is the realistic deficiency of Chinese film and television technology. Today, science fiction itself is undergoing a rapid iteration. With the decline of print media such as magazines, text novels also need the blessing of IP derivative works such as movies, television, games, audiobooks and so on. However, the adaptation of science fiction works needs a high-quality later stage. "Wu Mao Special effects" will greatly reduce the texture and attractiveness of a work, and compared with Hollywood's mature industrial chain and technology system, China still has more room for improvement in post-production. At present, in addition to "wandering the Earth", there are few sci-fi IP-changed films out of the circle, and the infant domestic film "three-body" has also caused a lot of book fans to worry about the effect of the film. On the one hand, film and television works can give more people intuitive contact with Chinese science fiction and be attracted; on the other hand, the film and television of Chinese science fiction will also give birth to the technological progress of the industrial chain. For example, after the exploration of "wandering the Earth", we ushered in domestic science fiction films such as "Walking alone on the Moon" and "Battle of tomorrow".

(game "Opus: Echo of Starsong") more than a hundred years ago, Lu Xun wrote in his translation of Verne's "from the Earth to the Moon" that Chinese science fiction "is as rare as unicorn horns. It somehow shows the intellectual poverty of our time."

Today's China is no longer barren in terms of intelligence and technology. Obviously, it is time to re-embed Chinese science fiction into the world's jigsaw puzzle. Silk punk, on the other hand, may be the clear road in the long journey.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: brain polar body (ID:unity007), author: Tibetan fox

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