Invisible Twins: The British SF Boom and the Chinese SF New Wave

LYU Guangzhao

doi:10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20258305

Volume 8 Issue 3

Oct. 2025

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LYU Guangzhao. Invisible Twins: The British SF Boom and the Chinese SF New Wave[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2025, 8(3): 81-100. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20258305

Citation:

LYU Guangzhao. Invisible Twins: The British SF Boom and the Chinese SF New Wave[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2025, 8(3): 81-100. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20258305

LYU Guangzhao. Invisible Twins: The British SF Boom and the Chinese SF New Wave[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2025, 8(3): 81-100. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20258305

Citation:

LYU Guangzhao. Invisible Twins: The British SF Boom and the Chinese SF New Wave[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2025, 8(3): 81-100. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20258305

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Invisible Twins: The British SF Boom and the Chinese SF New Wave

doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20258305

LYU Guangzhao^,

Fudan University

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Author Bio:
LYU Guangzhao is an associate professor of English and Comparative Literature at Fudan University, Shanghai. He completed his PhD in Comparative Literature at University College London and received the“Support a New Scholar”Grant（2021-2022）sponsored by Science Fiction Research Association（SFRA）.
Received Date: 2025-01-27
Accepted Date: 2025-04-25

Abstract

Abstract

Since the late 1980s, simultaneous science fiction movements have emerged in both China and the UK, known as the “British SF Boom” and the “Chinese SF New Wave,” yet they remained almost invisible to each other. This article examines their political and economic backgrounds, arguing that the British SF Boom offered a “political high ground” for left-wing intellectuals during the UK’s neoliberal transformation, making post-Thatcherite or even postcapitalist utopias possible. Meanwhile, in China, the 1980s’ “top-down” elitist discourse lost appeal in the 1990s, replaced by a “bottom-up” mass culture driven by the socialist market economy, giving rise to the Chinese SF New Wave. Although the booms did not influence each other directly, they are connected to the late 20th-century global political and economic changes, and in this way develop a poetics and historiography of science fiction based on “local” experiences in understanding “world science fiction.”
- The British SF Boom,
- The Chinese SF New Wave,
- Thatcherism,
- socialist market economy

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References(64)

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