Clarkesworld has announced a new, no longer secret project:
I am pleased to announce that Clarkesworld has entered into an agreement with Storycom International Culture Communication Co., Ltd. to showcase a short story originally published in Chinese in every issue. Each month, an all-star team of professionals intricately familiar with Chinese short fiction will be recommending stories for this special feature and I’ll select which ones get translated and published in each issue. This team includes:
- Liu Cixin—the most-famous science fiction writer in China and author of the THREE BODY TRILOGY
- Yao Haijun—Editor-in-Chief of Science Fiction World
- Zhang Zhilu—Scriptwriter at the China Film Group Corporation and one of the pioneering scriptwriters of science fiction movies in China
- Wu Yan—a Doctoral Supervisor for the Science Fiction Literature major at Beijing Normal University and President of World Chinese Science Fiction Association
- Ken Liu—Award-winning American science fiction writer
This is such a good idea I immediately subscribed. If we as a science fiction community want to see more diversity, more attention paid to non-English language science fiction, we need initiatives like this. If this is successfull I hope Clarkesworld also looks at other parts of the world: I’d love to see selections of Brazilian or Indian or Nigerian science fiction or …
I also hope this initiative inspires other magazines to up their game and pay more attention to science fiction written in other languages than English.
Of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating and a lot will depend on the stories chosen and the quality of the translation, but just having a well established magazine like Clarkesworld take on this project is a good thing.
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