Hugos 2023: Galaxy Awards 1: Chinese Science Fiction Anthology

Galaxy Awards 1: Chinese Science Fiction Anthology
edited by Latssep and Francesco Verso

Before the Hugo voter's packet comes out, I do what I can to track down the works myself, so that I'm not dependent on the timing of the packet to do my reading. This year, I discovered that one of the Chinese finalists for Best Short Story, Channing Ren's "Resurrection," had been published in an anthology of sf translated from Chinese into English, so I picked it up. (Or, rather, I got my local library to buy a copy for its collection, and then borrowed it.) I liked "Resurrection" enough that when I finished my Hugo reading, I turned back to the anthology to read the other stories collected in it.

Collection published: 2022
Contents originally published: 2018-22
Read: October 2023

Galaxy Awards 1 collects eight pieces of short fiction published in the last five years; it isn't clearly indicated, but I believe they were all winners of the Chinese Galaxy Award for science fiction. Each story is included in both Chinese and English, and each is preceded by an illustration and a short note about the author.

Between this book and the stories that were Hugo finalists, my impression is that Chinese sf is a bit what an Anglophone sf reader might consider old-fashioned. Lots of scientists doing science things. Lots of what I think of as "invention stories"—stories that are set at the moment of the invention of a new technology, and so don't really explore the implications of it. The occasional twist ending that annoys more than delights. Other than "Resurrection" itself, which I enjoyed for its focus on a particular person confronting a strange new technology, the first five stories in this volume did little for me.

I think in theory both Lu Hang's "Tongji Bridge" and Hai Ya's "Fongon Temple Pagoda" could have been more interesting, as both are about how technology gets incorporated into a traditional Chinese institution, but in practice the stories were just not doing much: character decides to do this, they do it, the end. (I did think Hang's more interesting and character driven than Ya's, which I quickly began reading aggressively fast. Ya was also the author of the Hugo finalist "The Space-Time Painter," which I ended up not really evaluating because of translation issues.)

I found Jiang Bo's "Final Diagnosis" annoying—it has a super obvious twist at the end, but also does not lay the groundwork for its worldbuilding to convince, and its character work with the female lead is pretty poor. (Bo was the author of the Hugo finalist "On the Razor's Edge," which I also didn't care for.) "Turing Food Court" by Wang Nuonuo was interesting and well told, but again, the story is too much dependent on a final twist, and the details of the setting's technology seemed a bit too arbitrary. Why do robots need to be developed in pairs? Why does one need to destroy the other?

So five stories in, I was worried. But then I started Ben Lu's "Upstart" (this is the same author called "Lu Ban" on the Hugo ballot; he wrote "The White Cliff") and I ended up really enjoying it. This story was about a future where, in order to reduce overpopulation, people can voluntarily agree to have their lifespans shortened in exchange for a payout. The story focuses on one such "upstart," alternating between his original decision to undergo the procedure and his attempts decades later to have it undone. Neat worldbuilding, strong characterization, and a good twist at the end. Lu does a great job of thinking through how a world would be changed by a new technology, focusing not just on that initial moment of transition, but how it would look decades later. What kind of resistance to such an initiative would spring up? And then he goes ever further than that.

From the cheeseball title, I was dreading A Que's "2039: Era of Brain-Computer Interface" (and it really is a terrible title), but I ended up liking the story a lot. A man ends up in a car accident and needs an experimental brain-computer interface to escape paralysis; the story explores how it affects his relationship with his girlfriend, and most of the story is told from her perspective. Neat use of a new technology, good worldbuilding, and again, a good twist at the end. Not as strong as the story on either side of it, but still an enjoyable read.

Finally came what was my favorite story in the book, "Colour the World" by Congyun "Mu Ming" Gu. This is set in a future world where people can have their eyes enhanced to be more perceptive, seeing more gradations of color, and also interface with computers; the story focuses on a girl, who gets the new technology later than her peers but grows up to be a programmer for it, and her relationship with her mother, who never gets it at all. Great character focus, some beautiful writing that comes through in translation, neat exploration of how technology can literally give us new ways of seeing. Highly recommended, and it would be great story if you are interesting in explorations of the cyborg.

So, with four strong stories and four weak ones, it's certainly worth it as an anthology. That said, the book was for some reason released by an Italian press, and there are some irregularities in the proofing and layout; a character's name fluctuates in "Final Diagnosis," there are formatting errors in almost every author bio, the story titles are often inconsistent in different parts of the book, "2039" has random line breaks in the middle of paragraphs. Definitely the work of a small press.