The Uninhabitable Earth

Before us stood the long abandoned skyscrapers of Manhattan, the Sun's weak light casting their long shadows across the quiet ice of the New York Harbor. In my tipsy haze, tears began to gush down my cheeks.

In the sixty second episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are setting sail on The Wandering Earth (流浪地球 / Liúlàng Dìqiú), drawn up and captained by Liu Cixin himself. Calling into the show from the Peruvian Engine Bunker is Jairo Morales. We get deep into postnationalism, censorship, cultural transmission, and the sublime spectacle of the utter annihilation of our planet’s fragile surface. Goodbye solarpunk, hello solardoom.

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// NEWS ITEMS //

• The Tyranny of Neutrality - Virginia L Conn reviews AI 2041

• TrChFic Meta News: The Leeds Centre Taiwan Literature Symposium

• HKKH interviews Dorothy Tse

• Announced by Tweet: Amazon Crossing will publish a translation of Han Song’s Hospital Trilogy

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(短暂的 - Duǎnzànde - ephemeral/efimero)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Jairo’s musical pairings: Gymnopédie No 1 by Erik Satie & 消愁 - Xiao Chou (Drown One's Sorrows) by Mao Buyi 毛不易

• Angus’ musical pairing: Black Light Machine by Frost

• Magical realism from Latin America

• The Emerging Japanese Superstate by Herman Kahn - 70s think tank guy does a yellow peril, history buries him

• Chuang article: The Wandering Earth: A Reflection of the Chinese New Right

• 200 Drones Fall Out Of The Sky In China’s Zhengzhou

• Ken Liu’s anthology of Chinese sci-fi: Invisible Planets

• The Cultural Revolution as ‘partially denouncable’