The force behind an ascending star

Xia Jia, a science fiction writer and associate professor of Chinese literature at Xi'an Jiaotong University, says: "You can sense there is general anxiety about the future of humanity, but you could also say Chinese people are anxious about their own future. How will they survive the pressures of cutthroat competition? In Liu Cixin's rivalry between humans and aliens, some see another version of the competition between powerful countries. In this there is a feeling of crisis brought on by globalization."

In an essay titled "What makes Chinese science fiction Chinese?" Xia said "the crises of capitalist culture accompanied by the process of globalization are manifested in the daily lives of Chinese people".

China's society and economy have been transformed over the past 30 years or so, and many different aspects of this are reflected in science fiction stories, Xia tells China Daily.

"In these stories you can see that Chinese people are extremely anxious about the tensions between traditional China and the dream to be part of the modern world. You can see such anxieties in Liu Cixin's works and other short stories."