China’s Sci-Fi Images: Constructing Alternate Technological Futures

Imagens de ficção científica da China: construindo futuros tecnológicos alternativos

Abstract

How does science fiction from the Global South contribute to the construction of alternative technological futures? In light of this question, we argue that, as a constitutive component of visions of the future, science fiction can support alternate and critical sociotechnical imaginaries, challenging modern technology’s hegemonic discourse. Our argument is based on the Science and Technology Studies (STS) literature that understands technology as a central dimension for the analysis of international dynamics by the way it intertwines and shapes the system and its units in dense sociotechnical systems, in addition to being concomitantly shaped by them. However, not very common in this literature are analytical categories that situate technologies in materially, morally, and socially integrated frameworks, as is abundantly offered by science fiction. Through utopias and dystopias, we understand that science fiction literature formulates and offers sociotechnical imaginaries that codify our worldview on technological changes and ways of social organization. With this in mind, we mobilize the concept of technodiversity, as well as Chinese science fiction works – by authors such as Han Song, Hao Jingfang and Liu Cixin – in order to rearticulate the issue of technology and identify a multiplicity of cosmotechnics. Given the crises produced by the cosmovision of technology as an exclusively productive force and capitalist mechanism, it is necessary to contemplate the existence of alternative technological futures under different cosmotechnical conceptions.

Keywords
Sociotechnical imaginaries; technology; Global South; science fiction; Future Studies

Resumo

 Como a ficção científica do Sul Global contribui para a construção de futuros tecnológicos alternativos? À luz dessa questão, argumentamos que, como um componente constitutivo das visões do futuro, a ficção científica pode apoiar imaginários sociotécnicos alternativos e críticos, desafiando o discurso hegemônico da tecnologia moderna. Nosso argumento baseia-se na literatura dos Estudos de Ciência e Tecnologia (STS), que entende a tecnologia como uma dimensão central para a análise da dinâmica internacional pela maneira como ela entrelaça e molda o sistema e suas unidades em sistemas sociotécnicos densos, além de ser concomitantemente moldada por eles. No entanto, não são muito comuns nessa literatura as categorias analíticas que situam as tecnologias em estruturas material, moral e socialmente integradas, como é abundantemente oferecido pela ficção científica. Por meio de utopias e distopias, entendemos que a literatura de ficção científica formula e oferece imaginários sociotécnicos que codificam nossa visão de mundo sobre mudanças tecnológicas e formas de organização social. Com isso em mente, mobilizamos o conceito de tecnodiversidade, bem como as obras de ficção científica chinesas - de autores como Han Song, Hao Jingfang e Liu Cixin - a fim de rearticular a questão da tecnologia e identificar uma multiplicidade de cosmotécnicas. Dadas as crises produzidas pela cosmovisão da tecnologia como uma força exclusivamente produtiva e um mecanismo capitalista, é necessário contemplar a existência de futuros tecnológicos alternativos sob diferentes concepções cosmotécnicas.

Palavras-chave
Imaginários sociotécnicos; Tecnologia; Sul global; Ficção científica; Estudos do futuro

Introduction

Imaginaries are visions constructed from specific social contexts and shape a society’s plans for the future, impacting its understanding of the present and how it (re)writes its history. In these terms, the imaginary is a way of building the world that encompasses narratives, characters, places, practices, and technologies (Death 2022: 240). From an analytical point of view, imaginaries allow us to identify and envision alternative or subjugated elements of the imagined past, present, and future. This emphasizes the possibilities of change and transformation.

We understand that the notion of the future manifests itself as an object of political contestation in the sphere of international relations. As Hausstein and Lösch (2020: 84) indicate, by supporting different epistemological foundations and marginalizing alternative visions as undesirable and unattainable, visions have the capacity to cause political clashes. Under this reading, imaginaries represent a means of politicizing and disputing the future. Normative visions of the actors regarding what the future should be like are inscribed in these imaginaries; in these terms, they reflect the political and economic expectations of these actors.

We are particularly interested in imaginary futures that mobilize and relate to technology. In this way, we understand the concept of the sociotechnical imaginary, presented by Jasanoff and Kim (2015), as a key instrument for the development of the analysis. Despite the focus on ‘institutionalized imaginaries,’ the authors understand that imaginaries can arise from individual visions of the future or small collectives. In these terms, we argue that science fiction works to formulate and offer sociotechnical imaginaries that codify and shape our vision of the world regarding technological change and forms of social organization. Illustrative examples are the works of Jules Verne, the film Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang, the radio broadcast of The Wars of the Worlds by Orson Welles, 1984 by George Orwell, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and the various ancient myths of practically all cultures.

International Relations (IR) scholars have a growing interest in exploring the relationships between the field of study and science fiction literature. Some authors understand that the worlds produced by these works of fiction are framed as spaces in which international politics is represented, constructed, and criticized (Buzan 2010; Grayson, Davies and Philpott 2009; Kiersey and Neuman 2015). However, it is worth noting the predominance of articles centred on Western works; therefore, not much attention was paid to science fiction literature produced in other parts of the world. An exception is the studies gathered under the umbrella of ‘Afro-futurism,’ which seek to identify imaginaries and visions about the future in African literature (Adejunmobi 2016; Death 2022; Hugo 2017; Langer 2011; Milkoreit 2016).

Accordingly, this article seeks to extend the analysis of sociotechnical imaginaries to science fiction works produced in the Global South,¹ particularly China. In this way, the question that guides this work is: How does Chinese science fiction contribute to the construction of alternative technological futures? China’s role as a global power and as a perceived potential challenger to the US-led Western global order justifies focusing on Chinese science fiction literature. In recent years, academics from different research fields have engaged in debates on Chinese international insertion and its implications for sectoral, regional, and systemic dynamics. As Ken (2016), a prominent Chinese-American author, argues, science fiction is the literature of dreams; therefore, it always has ‘[...] something to say about the dreamer, the dream interpreter, and the audience’ (Ken 2016: 6). In this sense, due to how it interrelates the views of the author, the audience, and the context, the science fiction genre tends to be fundamentally political.

In these terms, we seek to contribute to the notion of imagination as a praxis to speculate other possible tomorrows or, as Escobar (2018: 21) argues, other pluriversal futures. We locate our analysis in the friction between de-futurization – the systematic destruction of possible futures by the structured and structuring unsustainability of modernity – and alternative futures that challenge the hegemonic monoculture of technological possibilities. In other words, ‘[…] visions portray a variety of potential sociotechnical constellations in the future, and at the same time each vision highlights specific future constellations as the most promising or desirable.’ (Hausstein and Lösch 2020: 84).

Given the above, we place science fiction works under the approach of sociotechnical imaginaries and mobilize the technodiversity concept to rearticulate the technology issue and identify different cosmotechnics (Hui 2020). The recognition of cosmotechnical plurality allows us to systematically observe, through multiple notions of the technological phenomenon, the link between action and political dispute over distinct and potential futures. The concept moves us away from a techno-determinist vision of futures based on colonial technology as the fundamental vector for maintaining and transforming hegemonic political and economic systems (Grunwald 2018; Reina-Rozo 2023; Wilson 2018). Therefore, we propose to decentralize hegemonic technological future images through Chinese science fiction works. The identification of alternative technological futures underpins political paths beyond the monofuture and hegemonic discourse, which ‘[…] colonizes our imagination with unfeasible ideas that one-size-fits-all’ (Pérez Comisso and Jeffrey 2023: 5).

Taking into account these questions, in the following section we will discuss how technology is usually instrumentalized into IR analyses. Next, we present the theoretical-conceptual framework that underlies the work. Subsequently, we discuss the relevance of science fiction literature for disseminating and consolidating Western hegemonic cosmotechnics.² We complement this discussion by analysing science fiction works produced in China. Finally, we reflect on the importance of science fiction works as repositories of sociotechnical imaginaries to envision and politically promote alternative technological futures.

Technology as a category of analysis in International Relations

According to McCarthy (2018: 2), technology is usually treated as a given variable in International Relations (IR) literature, while the politics behind technological design is left out. Consequently, readings on technology tend to ahistoricity and determinism, bearing in mind the separation of technological and social dimensions. However, technology is more than a variable. That is, ‘social practices are not caused by technology in a linear temporal sequence: driving a car or fighting a war are human actions that not only use cars or tanks but are also composed of them’ (McCarthy 2018: 2).

The mere recognition of this academic context is insufficient to theoretically and conceptually elaborate the relationship between technology and international politics; however, it represents a necessary premise to move away from simple technological determinism. As Fritsch (2011: 28) and McCarthy (2018: 4-5) argue, determinism is the typical position of traditional IR theoretical currents concerning the technology dimension. For Misa (1988: 309), technological determinism assumes two distinct forms: one related to the form of technology development and the other related to social changes determined by changes in technology.

In these terms, both aspects are necessary elements of technological determinism: the form of autonomous technology development linked to an endogenous technical logic alien to social relations and its ability to determine societal changes, steeped in the notion that technical progress is equivalent to societal progress. As Smith and Marx (1994: XI) point out, such a narrative reinforces the image of technology as an independent entity, in other words, a virtual autonomous agent of change. Despite its different variations, the central element of technological determinism is the idea that technical change forces social adaptations, constraining the historical trajectory (Sismondo 2010: 96).

The clearest repercussion of this position in the field of IR is how technological artifacts, although they may figure among the explanatory elements of international political dynamics, are not subject to theoretical and conceptual considerations. In this way, the analyses rarely extend to issues related to the context, the actors involved, their purposes, and the values ​​and norms incorporated in the design and creation of these artifacts.³ In these terms,

Artefacts and their (purported) properties have been taken as given, with analysts treating them as established facts rather than objects subject to ongoing contestation and interpretation of their design, purposes and uses. Not accounting for the social, political, economic and cultural dynamics that have shaped the design of new information technologies leaves the story of globalization incomplete. (McCarthy 2018: 4)

In short, technology remains primarily integrated into the theoretical efforts of the area as a black box that performs the function of explanans, but which is only exceptionally positioned as explanandum. More than an explanatory variable, we understand that the technological dimension must be considered a political phenomenon deeply rooted in the social fabric at different levels of analysis. Therefore, it is necessary to understand how international structural pressures interact, in relations of mutual production, with the micropolitics of innovation and technological design for the foundation of sociotechnical systems (Fritsch 2014: 117; McCarthy 2018: 5).

A Science and Technology Studies (STS) approach offers the foundation for overcoming ontological, epistemological, and methodological obstacles to technology study. Under such an interdisciplinary approach, we believe it is possible to develop holistic considerations about how international dynamics produce and are produced by the politics of technical artifacts. Tributary to different fields of knowledge, the approaches included in the scope of the STS share the notion that both science and technology constitute social activities.

Due to its intersectional nature, the debates inherent to the field of study produce relevant repercussions for understanding the modern world. As Sismondo (2010: 8) argues, technology tends to apply science directly in the academic and popular imagination. Under these terms, if technology is applied science, its limits are given by the limits of scientific knowledge. However, the analytical categories offered by the STS allow for denaturalizing the properties of science and technology; this is,

The sources of knowledge and artifacts are complex and various: there is no privileged scientific method that can translate nature into knowledge, and no technological method that can translate knowledge into artifacts […] For STS, then, science and technology are active processes, and should be studied as such. The field investigates how scientific knowledge and technological artifacts are constructed. Knowledge and artifacts are human products, and marked by the circumstances of their production. (Sismondo 2010: 11, emphasis added)

As a response to the analytical shortcomings of technological determinism, a group of academics studied the social factors that affect technology design and change. Based on these observations, and consistent with Fritsch (2011: 29), we understand that an intermediary reading that integrates the virtues of both readings provides a fruitful framework for integrating the technology category into IR analyses. In these terms, Mayer, Carpes and Knoblich (2014: 18) propose the notion of techno-politics as a meeting ground for different conceptions of science and technology that are unified by the focus on the intermediate zone between technological determinism and social constructivism. The notion of techno-politics holds that technological practices and designs, contrary to constituting objective and neutral phenomena, are elements sociologically linked to the fabric of power. From this point of view, technology not only ceases to be conceived as exogenous to political processes, but also politics, from the point of view of technology studies, ceases to be a mode of analysis to become a space of study (Sismondo 2010: 101).

Sociotechnical imaginaries and the diversity of cosmotechnics

In recent decades, a growing number of STS researchers have mobilized the notion of imaginary to analyse its relationship with the dimensions of science and technology. However, as McNeil et al. (2017: 35) notes, the concept is not usually accompanied by reflections and repertoires that address theoretical and methodological issues. Moreover, according to the authors, the proliferation of works on imaginaries in STS approaches also marks different clusters of work, despite the proximity between different approaches and methods employed.

As McNeil et al. (2017: 436) pointed out, the etymology of the term imaginary comprises an overlapping of notions of reality, thought, and image. The semantic characteristic of the term extends to its adjective use, referring to the imagination; that is, what does not really exist. As such definitions suggest, the properties of the imaginary are usually considered irrational or arbitrary, therefore not offering reliable representations of reality (McNeil et al. 2017: 436). However, based on reflections produced by different theoretical currents, the use of the term in the STS characterizes imaginaries as thought patterns that influence broad social processes – conceptualizing significant and abstract social processes.

In their study on the genealogy of the concept, McNeil et al. (2017: 439) argue that Western philosophy, psychoanalysis, and science fiction are relevant broad areas of study for the conceptualization of imagery employed by STS. Nevertheless, the field that most specifically influenced science and technology studies was social and political theory of the late twentieth century. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism has inspired and influenced the work of several STS researchers. His analysis sheds light on collective imaginative capacities, through literary and media technologies, as a fundamental element in the invention of nations.

In Anderson’s definition (2008: 32), the nation consists of an imagined political community that is intrinsically limited and sovereign. The nation is imagined because its members share the image of communion, whether they meet or not. It is limited because, even though it aggregates many members, it has finite borders that define its limits vis-à-vis other sovereign nations. Finally, it is imagined as a community through the concept of horizontality among its members, regardless of the inequality and exploitation that may characterize these internal relations (Anderson 2008: 32-34).

In line with this reading, Taylor (2004) expands the analysis of collective imaginaries to significant patterns of political and historical thought. His interest is in elaborating on the forms of social imaginary that underpinned the rise of Western modernity. In general terms, Taylor (2004: 2) argues that a revised conception of the moral order of society, initially limited to the ideal of influential thinkers, progressively transformed the collective imaginary of more extensive strata, even entire societies. According to the author, this change in the view of the moral order preceded certain social forms that characterize Western modernity, such as the market economy and the public sphere. In these terms, social imaginary is defined as

[…] [S]omething much broader and deeper than the intellectual schemes people may entertain when they think about reality in a disengaged mode. I am thinking, rather, of the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations. (Taylor 2004: 23, emphasis added)

By evoking the imaginary as a social practice, it is possible to identify a conception that extends beyond the idea of politics as strictly rational and intentional action in both works. In these terms, the approaches proposed by Anderson (2008) and Taylor (2004) not only promote foundations for the analysis of broad and diffuse historical phenomena such as the nation and modernity but also ‘[...] validated the cultural, historical, and comparative investigation of the psychosocial attributes of political collectives’ (Jasanoff 2015a: 7). However, despite the contributions made by classical approaches to the social imaginary, critics point out the absence of a systematic examination of two crucial forces of modernity: science and technology.

Situated in the field of STS and deeply influenced by reflections on the social imaginary produced by social and political theory, the works of Jasanoff and Kim (2009, 2015) and Jasanoff (2020) seek to address this gap. In Dreamscapes of Modernity, Jasanoff (2015a: 11) argues that the work aims to investigate how, through the imaginative work of diverse actors, science and technology have become intricate in the performance and production of different visions of the world’s collective good, on scales of governance that expand from communities to states. To this end, the author identifies the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries as a fundamental category for the analysis, defined as

[…] [C]ollectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology. (Jasanoff 2015a: 4)4

The imaginaries not only codify visions about what is possible in the scientific and technological fields but also point to societal forms of how life should or should not be; therefore, they express the understanding shared by society of what is acceptable and not (Jasanoff 2015a: 4). Generally speaking, sociotechnical imaginaries can be understood as typically positive visions of the future about social progress that connect technological and societal orders. From a theoretical point of view, the definition offers a framework that combines ideas present in political and social theory with the understanding of STS scholars that collective political images about the future cannot be dissociated from the dimensions of science and technology. In short,

Sociotechnical imaginaries occupy the theoretically undeveloped space between the idealistic collective imaginations identified by social and political theorists and the hybrid but politically neutered networks or assemblages with which STS scholars often describe reality. Our definition pulls together the normativity of the imagination with the materiality of networks. (Jasanoff 2015a: 19)

As Sismondo (2020: 505) argues, the analytical utility of the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries for STS is how certain visions can be understood as infrastructures of imagined and planned futures. In this sense, the possibility of delineating the space of choice links sociotechnical imaginaries directly to the field of political action. Although temporally and culturally situated, the imaginaries constitute collective, durable, and performable visions of the future; and, as their ‘sociotechnical’ quality suggests, they are both products and instruments of co-production between science, technology, and society.

From the STS point of view, the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) approach, developed by the French sociologists Bruno Latour and Michael Callon, provides the conceptual foundations for the analysis of the sociotechnical dimension. However, Jasanoff (2015a) offers a critical incorporation of the fundamentals of ANT, especially about the hybridity and diffusion that characterize networks. In this way, the sociotechnical imaginaries approach allows us to identify the intersectionality between the topographies of power and the forces of science and technology. According to Sismondo (2020: 505), the definition encompasses the possibility of coexistence between multiple imaginaries in dialectical interactions; therefore, multiple imaginaries are contestable, mutable, and flexible. From this point of view, sociotechnical imaginaries weaken the determinism present in the grand narratives about scientific progress, rescuing the uncertain element of historical transformations.

In this regard, the approach offers a way of understanding time in terms of a complex dialectical relationship between past and future; that is, as prologue and memory, the past is a space for reinterpretation considering society’s present understanding and its expectations about the future (Jasanoff 2015a: 21). So sociotechnical systems can be interpreted as a double-faced Janus, representing past cultural achievements and promising and desirable futures – or those that should be avoided. By shedding light on sociotechnical imaginaries,

We can engage directly with the ways in which people’s hopes and desires for the future – their sense of self and their passion for how things ought to be – get bound up with the hard stuff of past achievements, whether the material infrastructures of roads, power plants, and the security state or the normative infrastructures of constitutional principles, juridical practices, and public reason. (Jasanoff 2015a: 22)

We understand that the way in which the approach encompasses the perspective of multiple imaginaries coexisting in relations of dispute and dialectical production, as well as its relationships with transformation and historical time, has deep connections to the concept of ‘technodiversity’ developed by Hui (2020). For the author, the phenomenon of technology is not singular or universal; that is, different societies and political communities can present different forms of manifestation of technology. As Lemos (2020) points out, in addition to making a complex reading of the phenomenon impossible, the concept of uniqueness regarding technology is also a political tool: whoever defines technology as universal assumes the position of dominance, subjecting others to their worldview.

The key concept through which Hui (2020) opposes the perception of technology as a universal phenomenon apart from the social dimension is that of cosmotechnics. Inspired by the ontological turn, the author elaborates on the question of technology in terms of multiple techniques that differ not only quantitatively, functionally, and aesthetically but also ontologically and cosmologically. In these terms, cosmotechnics is understood as the ‘[...] unification of the cosmos and morals through technical activities, whether they be the creation of products or works of art. There are not just one or two techniques, but many cosmotechnics’ (Hui 2020: 25).

Therefore, as Mariutti (2022: 147) argues, the Western technique that has become universal is not neutral: it carries moral and ontological foundations that generate tension when imposed or imported by different cosmologies. Thus, to escape the traps arising from the universalization of Western technique, it is essential to reinsert the other technical forms into the cosmotechnics of which it is a part. Under certain cosmological specificities, every technique is simultaneously produced and constrained.

From the recognition of the existence of a cosmotechnical plurality, it is possible to think about the issue of cosmopolitics; that is, the possibility of overcoming modernity without falling back into the substantialization of tradition, fascism, or a geopolitical conflict of major proportions (Mariutti 2022: 148). In this sense, through a multiple conception of the technological phenomenon, cosmotechnics offers means to systematically examine the link between action and political dispute over a wide array of possible futures. According to Hui (2020: 25), facing the Anthropocene crisis, it is necessary to rearticulate the issue of technology in order to contemplate the existence of alternative technological futures under different cosmotechnical conceptions.

Thinking about technodiversity implies critically reflecting on the unilateral imposition of Western cosmotechnics that underlies the Anthropocene. Under this prism, it is necessary to rearticulate the question of technology; that is, to rediscover the multiplicity of cosmotechnics and to reconfigure, through cosmopolitics, the idea of ​​history and possibilities for the future. For Hui (2020: 10), how we observe technology merely as a productive force and capitalist mechanism makes it impossible to perceive its decolonizing potential and the need to shed light on technodiversity.

In general terms, sociotechnical imaginaries and cosmotechnic concepts suggest that it is necessary to question the hegemonic conception of technology to envisage alternative technological futures. A common element of both approaches is the understanding that the definition of technology does not end in its material manifestation; that is, artifacts have meaning in a complex network of interactions that encompasses actors, objectives, values, and norms. Thus, the characterization of universal technology as a contingent phenomenon, from the perspective of the diversity of technological possibilities, makes it possible to act politically on modern reality.

As Hui (2020: 29) points out, the Anthropocene is an axis of synchronization of global time based on the notion of technological progress in view of singularity. In these terms, the reappropriation of technology in its complexity and diversity, in its cosmotechnics and visions of the future, represents a necessary condition to renounce the idea of a homogeneous technological future presented by universal technology as the only possible development. In this context, we understand that science fiction is a fertile field for producing imaginaries that can support cosmopolitics that contemplate visions of alternative technological futures.

Chinese science fiction as repositories for alternative technological futures

Nowadays, there is extensive and influential literature dedicated to the study of science fiction works from a critical point of view, such as the works of Haraway (2016), Jameson (2005), and Whyte (2018). From this perspective, science fiction works are understood as reverberating materials and/or contesting specific properties that configure the political, societal, economic, and technological dynamics of the ‘real’ world. As Jameson (2005: 288) argues, science fiction is not about anticipating the future of a social system; on the contrary, by exploring possible futures, they transform the present into the determined past of something yet to come. By promoting disruptive readings of historical change, science fiction’s utopian and dystopian portraits undermine the foundations of widespread convictions about the absence of possible alternatives to the social system.

Thus, Jameson (2005: xiv) argues that the formal function of science fiction as a genre is to produce ‘cognitive estrangement,’ regardless of the particularities of plots and themes. Science fiction works carry the epistemological function of stimulating the (un)stability of specific categories that underlie explanations about the order of the world.⁵ As Jerng (2018: 17) points out, as a field for the organization of meanings, genres produce effects of authority and truth through the projection of their ‘generally specific’ worlds, fostering our anticipations and expectations about the world.

In his work on the ideas that shaped and motivated the utopia of the Anglo-American empire, Bell (2020) argues that war histories of the future – popularized between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century – are the most explicit expression, and politically didactic, of these fantasies. Despite being transatlantic in scope, the author identifies critical differences between British and North American works of fiction, especially in the views on technology and capitalism. North American works emphasize the ability of new technologies to transform the conditions of war and life on the planet; still tend to value

The powers of capitalist enterprise, assigning a pivotal role to individual entrepreneurs, heroic business leaders, or lone geniuses (often modeled on Thomas Edison), while portraying the state and politicians as sluggish, a bar to the United States realizing its full potential rather than the primary vehicle for achieving that hallowed end. Fantasies of hypercapitalist energy were far more muted in British writings. (Bell 2020: 210)

Four processes converged in the late 19th century to produce the context for publishing Anglo-American science fiction: the rapid expansion of literacy in the United States and Great Britain; the diffusion of novel editorial formats that stimulated formal innovation, and the emergence of new genres; the expansion of scientific training and technical institutions that spawned a large pool of scientists, engineers, and teachers; and the transformation of everyday life through technology. The technological innovations that marked the context of the second Industrial Revolution were incorporated, both in the urban environment and in the domestic sphere, into the population’s daily lives, which increasingly began to mediate their experiences through technology (Luckhurst 2005: 29). In this context, science fiction questions how technological progress and scientific reason influence the construction of social order and subjectivities.

According to this reading, British and American science fiction imagined utopian machinic futures, casting an optimistic view on technological progress. As Bell (2020: 206) argues, developing techno-scientific expertise was considered a superior manifestation of character, supporting arguments that legitimized imperial expansion and civilizing ambitions. Elements of this principle can be identified in the context of American ‘Manifest Destiny,’ whose process was marked by rapid and growing technological transformations – especially with the railroads. The commitment to scientific and technological advances spread the idea that capitalism and American representative democracy ‘[...] provided an institutional framework for societal improvement that transcended differences among even the most disparate human cultures’ (Adas 2006: 75).

As a result of this imaginary, Anglo-American cultures are seen as having supremacy in discourses reflected in the science fiction works of these countries. As Bell (2020: 206) points out, such an idea represents ‘Anglo-Saxons’ as the only ones who gather the intellectual, material, and spiritual qualities necessary to govern the world; that is, they dominate technology and are not dominated by it. In addition to attributing to technical progress the ability to solve social problems, the ‘Anglo-American’ utopian imaginary implicitly assumes which actors have the legitimacy to frame and solve such problems. Therefore, ‘they do little or nothing to redress the histories of inequality and injustice that gave rise to many global social ills in the first place’ (Jasanoff 2020: 37).

From this, we observe the critical relevance exerted by works of science fiction that stress the principles promoted by the ‘Anglo-American’ imaginary. Fictions of this nature, whether utopias or dystopias, shed light on the values and subjectivities present in technologically enabled visions of the future. In these terms, we approach the definition offered by Jasanoff (2015b), for whom science fiction works are repositories of

[…] [S]ociotechnical imaginaries, visions that integrate futures of growing knowledge and technological mastery with normative assessments of what such futures could and should mean for present-day societies […] Science fiction stories express fears and yearnings that are rooted in current discontents, either signaling possible escape routes or painting in morbid colors the horrific consequences of heedlessness in the present. They thus offer a deeper look into – possibly even predictions of – what harms societies are most desperate to avoid and what good they may achieve through foresight and imagination. (Jasanoff 2015b: 337)

In short, as Haraway (2016: 12) warns us, it matters which stories make worlds and which worlds make stories. Considering these questions, we understand contemporary Chinese science fiction works as alternative future technological imaginaries. We understand that the analysis of these works, in line with sociotechnical imaginary and technodiversity conceptions, allows us to envision cosmopolitics based on alternative conceptions of cosmotechnics.

In China, we can trace the origin of the science fiction genre back to the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, mainly through the efforts promoted by Liang Qichao. As Song (2013: 86) explains, Liang was one of the main leaders of the reforms of the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), which contemplated in science fiction the utopian genre that could reflect both reality and hope for change. This reformist context broadly portrayed science fiction as a tool of enlightenment, i.e. ‘a tool of popularization of scientific knowledge, a vehicle for expressing anxieties and hopes for modernization’ (Isaacson 2017: 2).

Since its inception, Chinese science fiction has been strongly marked by utopian narratives that projected political wills for reforms in technologically more advanced imagined futures that contrasted with the country’s reality. Under a context of solid foreign influence, science fiction works of the late Qing period reflected ‘[...] the dreams of the Chinese people after their encounters with modern technology, and these stories and novels represent Chinese culture’s first impressions not only of the West but also of the world as a whole’ (Yan 2013: 2).

However, as Yan, Jianbin, and Lingenfelter (2018: 47) point out, between the end of the Qing Dynasty and the republican period, science fiction transformed, being gradually absorbed by fiction and popular science. Likewise, the utopia usually presented in these works also weakened, especially after the political repercussions of the end of the First World War. The Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1919, marked the beginning of a period of disillusionment with scientific progress and the Western model; the perception was that mere scientific progress could not support the country’s rise (Zanon 2020: 8).

After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the science fiction genre renewed its importance as a space for the imagination of the future and the popularization of science – notably in the context of children’s literature. However, as Sonal (2019: 5) explains, during the turbulent process of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the genre came to be considered a potential corruptor of the ideals and objectives of the Communist Party as it represented values imported from Western culture. Science fiction publication in the country would only regain momentum in 1978, after the rise of Deng Xiaoping and the government’s renewed interest in science and technology (Yan 2013: 3).6

From the 1990s onwards, with Chinese economic growth and internet expansion, the genre got a significant boost that extends to the present day. Parallel to these processes, one phenomenon in particular marked the beginning of a new phase in the history of Chinese science fiction: the events in Tiananmen Square. For many authors, this was an influential milestone that motivated what would come to be known as the ‘new wave’ of science fiction in the country: ‘[...] a new paradigm of science fictional imagination began to complicate, if not to deny or be ashamed of, the utopianism that had dominated Chinese politics and intellectual culture for more than a century’ (Song 2015: 7-8).

As a result of the simultaneous perception of crisis and prosperity – arising from disillusionment with communism and Chinese economic growth and international protagonism, respectively – the authors present different visions of the future for the country. In these terms, the genre currently promotes a mixture of ‘[…] nationalism with utopianism/dystopianism, mixes sharp social criticism with an acute awareness of China’s potential for further reform, and wraps political consciousness in scientific discourses about the powers of technology and the technologies of power’ (Song 2013: 87). Despite this dissonance, Xia (2016: 322) observes that a common element of these works is how they fundamentally ponder Chinese problems, which are connected with the collective destiny of all humanity.

The so-called ‘new wave’ reflects the growing connectivity in the contemporary global context, where Chinese science fiction quickly springs up and prospers more than ever, thanks to China’s growing interaction with the world. In this phase, as Wu (2020) argues, translation still functions as an important agent for science fiction’s prosperous development; however, it has become a two-way exchange channel between China and the rest of the world. Instead of the past practice of translating and bringing Western science fiction works home, Chinese science fiction has started its journey to the West through translation. Hence, Chinese science fiction has been able to go global due to the powerful globalization trend (Wu 2020: 57).

Following this reading, we can identify the recurrence of three major themes in the science fiction works of the Chinese ‘new wave’: the rise of the country; the myth of development; and the future of technology and its human costs (Sonal 2019; Song 2013; Zanon 2020). One of the most significant examples of the country’s rise theme can be found in the work of Han Song,⁷ more specifically in Mars Shines Over America, which tells the story of China’s utopian rise as a superpower that helps restore world peace while the West declines. In this work, the United States struggles with a second Civil War, leading the country’s former president to face a dispute similar to the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

However, contrary to a mere re-reading of modern Chinese history, these questions represent more of a reflection on the possible future paths of humanity in the face of unprecedented disasters – such as the appearance of a strange spectre from Mars and an alien spacecraft. Under this imagined context, the work raises the question of whether the collectivist stance of the East would replace Western individualism as the new universal human value (Jia 2013: 108). In other works, such as Subway, Han Song reflects on the modernization process’s implications and contradictions. However, in its design

[…] Chinese sf [science fiction] writers are in a rather contradictory situation. Science, technology, and modernization are not characteristic of Chinese culture. They are like alien entities. If we buy into them, we turn ourselves into monsters, and that is the only way we can get along with Western notions of progress. (Han 2013: 20, emphasis added)

Han’s assessment points to an essential contradiction between hegemonic cosmotechnics and Chinese cultural values, incompatible with the notions of progress spread by the West. In this sense, the author highlights how China has undergone dramatic transformations due to its rapid modernization process. Science fiction authors are therefore expected to explore the futures that are evident in the present, particularly in urban and rural environments (Han 2013: 18).

The theme of the myth of Chinese development, particularly the growing economic and social inequality, is also present in the works of Hao Jingfang, especially Folding Beijing. In the book, Beijing has undergone a significant transformation, being artificially divided into three physical spaces so that when one of the spaces appears, the other two fold. The three spaces correspond to three social classes: the first is reserved for the elites, the second for middle-class workers, and the third for the poorest workers. Technical advances in science and technology have replaced productive labour with sophisticated automated machinery and artificial intelligence.

Due to the presence of elements of social stratification in future highly developed societies, the work dialogues with realities other than just China. As stated by the author, her professional experience as an economist enabled her to research the social and economic realities of different provinces in her country, reflecting on how she addresses these societal problems in her works (Hao 2020). As Dongmei and Xu (2018) point out, the more realistic characteristics of Hao’s science fiction place her works in an intermediate category between mainstream literature and science fiction. According to Hao Jingfang,

If we divide a novel’s space into real and virtual spaces, belletristic or mainstream literature is concerned about and expresses the real space, while science fictions or fantasy literature are concerned about and express the virtual space […] Between these two pure forms is a somewhat blurred style: It cares about the real space but expresses the virtual space […] It is not concerned about the strong or the weak, win or loss, of the virtual world, but rather, it intends to explore some possibility of the reality outside of reality. (Hao cited in Dongmei and Xu 2018: 55, emphasis added)

The argument raised by the author emphasizes the relevance of science fiction as an instrument for envisioning possible futures, especially technological futures. Folding Beijing’s inclusion of workers from the third space – who could, from an economic standpoint, be virtually dismissed since they do not participate in the productive system – illustrates a hope for civilization and a desire to combat this situation (Dongmei and Xu 2018: 57). Her narrative is close to the criticism elaborated by Feenberg (2017) regarding participant interests and the form of political mobilization of these actors.

The perspective that the predominant technological designs do not support the realization of certain potentialities, as well as do not adequately respond to social problems, leads to what Feenberg (2017) calls ‘democratic interventions.’ Such interventions are motivated by participant interests, inducing ‘[...] technical change not through a Great Refusal but through negotiations, some conflictual, others cooperative, between lay actors or technical outsiders and those in command of the institutions’ (Feenberg 2017: 8). From this point of view, Hao’s universe suggests an alternative cosmotechnic when considering potential transformations brought about by such interventions, thus fostering a ‘resistant cosmotechnic’ to the hegemonic cosmotechnic.

As previously noted, the future of technology and its human costs is a cross-cutting theme in much Chinese science fiction; however, we find its finest illustration in the works of Liu Cixin. Among the authors who make up the Chinese ‘new wave,’ Liu Cixin is recognized as the one who most approaches ‘hard’ themes, combining scientific speculation and literary imagination to glimpse the foundations of alterity (Song 2018: 111). In these terms, Liu (2013: 29) understands that the primary function of science fiction is the construction of worlds, which involves establishing the social norms and physical laws that regulate this imaginary world; that is, it may be strange but never supernatural. These elements can be observed in his most successful work, Remembrance of Earth’s Past – popularly known as the Three-Body Trilogy.

As Wu (2020: 59) argues, due the rapid technological innovation and continuing cross-cultural encounters in this global context, Liu Cixin’s works have gone international with the help of multiple translational agents. In addition to the critical roles Western publishers play, we highlight the fundamental Chinese government’s support for disseminating Liu’s work globally. As a result of funding from two government programs, the Silk Road Scholars Project and the Classic China International Publishing Project, the Three-Body trilogy has been translated into a number of languages – including German, Spanish, French, Turkish, Hungarian, and Thai (Wu 2020: 58).

In the Three-Body trilogy narrative, the universe is described as a dark forest in which all intelligent species compete to destroy other species. In this scenario, the only moral imperative is the absence of morality in relationships, which motivates the most intelligent species even to consider bending the laws of physics to destroy their enemies. As Song (2018: 116) argues, Liu’s motivation for the work involves questioning the possibility of preserving humanity in a universe that only obeys the inhuman principles of ‘hard science.’ For Song (2018: 116), this reading represents a vision deeply rooted in China’s recent political memory.

The trilogy’s first volume, The Three-Body Problem, begins during the events of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: members of the Red Guard torture an eminent scientist and father of the protagonist, Ye Wenjie. After witnessing her father’s death, Ye loses hope in humanity and subsequently joins a secret scientific project that aims to search for extraterrestrial intelligent life. The first contact with alien life – the Trisolaran civilization – is received as a warning: the message warns that responding could give away Earth’s coordinates and result in an attack.

Despite this warning, and as an excellent reason to start the plot of the trilogy, Ye decides to respond to the message: ‘Come! I will help you conquer this world. Our civilization is no longer able to solve its own problems. We need your strength to intervene’ (Liu 2016a: 235). In the second volume of the work, The Dark Forest, the answer to the question about the possibility of morality in the universe is formulated from the axioms of ‘cosmic sociology,’ which combines elements of Social Darwinism with Maoist principles of self-defence and pre-emptive strike:

There are many thousands of civilizations in the universe, they all want to survive, and there is only so much space out there. Every civilization must, therefore, regard every other civilization as an existential threat, leaving attack on sight as the only rational strategy. All that keeps technologically inferior civilizations (like ours) safe is the ignorance of others about their existence. The universe, then, is a dark forest, and each civilization is a hunter with knife in hand, carefully brushing back tree branches, ready to strike at the first sign of other life. (Dyson 2019: 6)

These axioms, therefore, present a negative answer to the previous question; that is, the universe is equivalent to a dark forest governed by the laws of the jungle. As Song (2018: 120) highlights, Liu’s concerns about the future of humanity are based on the contradictions between development and morality or between the universe – as a moral vacuum – and humanity. In this regard, Liu (2016b) understands that the universe, like science fiction, is a space of possibilities; some universes are better than others for humanity; however, ‘[...] Three Body shows the worst of all possible universes, a universe in which existence is as dark and harsh as one can imagine […] I wrote about the worst of all possible in Three-Body in the hope that we can strive for the best of all possible Earths’ (Liu 2016b: 310-311).

Despite the author’s dystopian imagination, his characters demonstrate humanity in his work. In a scenario marked by the imminent attack of the Trisolarans, the person responsible for Earth’s defence, Cheng Xin, does not take the initiative to push the buttons that would lead to mutual destruction. Thus, in a universe marked by the vacuum of morality, Cheng Xin makes a decision that reminds us of the moral principles of compassion and mutual aid (Song 2018: 121). In a universe marked by the asymmetry of capabilities between civilizations, the Trisolarans represent a ‘colonizing cosmotechnic,’ given their objective of dominating the Earth and its solar system. Among earthlings, some adopt a stance that adheres to the Trisolarans, including hindering the development of technologies that could impose some resistance to the imminent alien invasion. For these groups, only a ‘superior civilization’ could solve humanity’s problems, even if this represented its annihilation.

Science fiction literature may be the construction of a dystopian metaphor about the present, but it always represents an escape into the future. The strategy for defining this future is the scientific-technological abyss imposed by its abysmal technological superiority over the technological stage of the earthling present. A ‘superior culture’ can be extraterrestrial or exist in the future of humanity itself, but it generally presents itself as a threat to the present social forms.

In recent years, globalization and technological advancements have facilitated the emergence and global diffusion of Chinese science fiction works. A process of integration with the rest of the world led to the introduction of Western science fiction in modern China at the turn of the 20th century, which demonstrated its openness to foreign ideas and technologies. As a vehicle of enlightenment, Chinese science fiction reflected the hopes and anxieties of the Chinese people for social transformation, scientific modernization, and national emancipation. As Wu (2020: 67) indicates, ‘new wave’ science fiction expresses Chinese desires for development and international emergence as a responsible power as its central themes, promoting strong and potential alternative narratives for technological futures.

Final remarks

Considered for a long time a minor literary genre, today, the debate about science fiction literature is widespread and heated. Some authors argue that it is a global and globalizing phenomenon, typical of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, others argue that it responds to regional and even national characteristics. According to some scholars of this literary genre, its origin is related to colonial discourse and would serve as an instrument of colonialism. From this point of view, part of the literature points out that colonialism is not just an imposed condition, but technology can play a role in overthrowing colonialism through technological means.

In opposition to the instrumental perspective on technique, and in light of the STS literature, we argue that technological designs and practices consist of elements fundamentally linked to the political dimension and its power relations. In this way, we conceive technology as an intrinsic dimension to political processes in a relationship of mutual influence. Based on the concepts of sociotechnical imaginary and technodiversity, we illuminate elements in science fiction works produced in China that, in some way, tension the cultural form of a technical rationality that characterizes the hegemonic Western cosmotechnics and point to alternative technological futures.

From the understanding that science fiction works constitute repositories of sociotechnical imaginaries, we seek to identify in the ‘local’ the ontological pluralism that underlies technodiversity. Divergence and interaction between cosmotechnics form the basis for creating alternative technological futures that suit localities without falling into traditionalism or technophobia. By questioning the values of progress and efficiency, considered universal by monotechnological globalization, the recognition, and appropriation of technodiversity guide the consolidation of ‘resistant cosmopolitics’ that make it possible to envision alternative technological futures.

One of the potential contributions of the sociotechnical imaginaries identified in the analysed science fiction works is heterotemporality; that is, the existence of multiple and coexisting temporalities. By making the alleged linearity between past, present, and future complex, these works give rise to problematizations about the notions of progress and technological advancement. In these terms, we understand that the categories of colonizing, adherent, and resistant cosmopolitics, based on the concept of technodiversity, help us to analyse the topographies of the network of interactions that articulate the dimension of technology at an international level.

Instead of the techno-determination of futures, we propose defending the right to imagine alternative futures from the Global South. We affirm ontological, epistemic, and political plurality rather than an alleged universal technological rationality based on a hegemonic conception of technoscience. Through the reckoning of science fiction as a repository for potential alternative futures, we defend the practice of speculative imaginaries, as well as the reappropriation of technology, as a way of paving the way for the construction of non-colonial futures, or, more specifically, pluriversal futures. In short, reading and producing science fiction stories is an indispensable practice in the construction of imaginaries of – and political dispute over – alternative technological futures.

Notes

• 1
  Broadly, the Global South encompasses regions outside Europe and North America, mostly – although not exclusively – politically and culturally marginalized countries. The term refers to a history of colonialism, neo-imperialism, and power relations that favour maintaining a stratified and unequal international system (Dados and Connell 2012).
• 2
  We understand that hegemony at the international level is not restricted to a state order; it also refers to complex international social relations that link civil society in different countries. Thus, hegemony ‘[...] is expressed in universal norms, institutions, and mechanisms which lay down general rules of behavior for states and for those forces of civil society that act across national boundaries, rules which support the dominant mode of production’ (Cox 1996: 222).
• 3
  For Herrera (2003: 567), in the field of IR, a possible parallel is understanding technological determinism from materialist theoretical perspectives, such as Neorealism and economic forms of liberalism.
• 4
  The concept was originally defined by Jasanoff and Kim (2009) as ‘collectively imagined forms of social life and societal order reflected in the design and fulfillment of nation-specific scientific and/or technological projects’ (Jasanoff and Kim 2009: 120). In this way, we understand that the revised definition more adequately considers the myriad ways in which the visions of science and technology are linked to the elements that constitute forms of social life.
• 5
  These stories, therefore, should not be overlooked simply because they are created. On the contrary, ‘they are, and always have been, the way we think about possibilities, the way we try to grasp the consequences of what-is-not-yet or, more generally, what is not yet understood’ (Broderick 2000: 188).
• 6
  Despite this, already in the early 1980s, many science fiction works began to be accused of propagating pseudoscience and anti-socialist ideas (Sonal 2019; Yan, Jianbin and Lingenfelter 2018; Zanon 2020).
• 7
  The fiction produced by Han Song, due to the way it deals with the supernatural, is also known for its theme ‘Gloomy China.’ However, ‘the paradox is that the malevolent spirits of the past have not disappeared under the democracy and science of today’s society, but have, in new forms, become wedded to modern technology and to modern techniques of domination’ (Jia 2013: 103).

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  16 Dec 2024
• Date of issue
  Sep/Dec 2024

History

• Received
  30 June 2022
• Accepted
  18 July 2024