Invisible Planets: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese SF in Translation

by Ken Liu

Besides writing fiction, Xia Jia is also a brilliant translator from English into Chinese. Her translations, like her own writing, are lucid, elegant, and graceful. Her translation of my novella, “The Man Who Ended History,” is in many ways an improvement on the original. In 2014, Xia Jia became the first Ph.D. in China with a specialization in science fiction. Her academic work on Chinese science fiction has been called groundbreaking, and she has presented her results in China as well as abroad. The critical essay she provided at the end of this book tries to tackle the question of what makes Chinese science fiction Chinese. (Most of her academic work is published under the name “Wang Yao,” as “Xia Jia” is a pen name used mainly for fiction.)