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Han Song (writer)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In this Chinese name, the family name is Han.
Han Song
Native name
韩松
Born1965 (age 59–60)
Chongqing, China
OccupationEditor
LanguageChinese
Notable awardsGalaxy Award (six times)

Han Song (Chinese: 韩松; pinyin: Hán Sōng; born 1965) is a Chinese science fiction writer and a journalist at the Xinhua News Agency.

Life

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Han was born in 1965 in Chongqing, a year before the Cultural Revolution was launched. During this period, Mao Zedong aimed to "purge" anti-revolutionary elements from Chinese society, including intellectuals and scientists. Nevertheless, Han's father, a journalist, brought home science magazines and books that fascinated his young son.[1]

Han went on to study English and journalism at university. His first novel, Cosmic Tombstones (宇宙墓碑) was published in 1981 in the Taiwanese magazine Huanxiang. It waited ten years for publication in the People's Republic of China because publishers found its tone too dark.[2] It was finally published in 1991, the year Han began working for state news agency Xinhua.[3]

Han has received the Chinese Galaxy Award for fiction six times. The LA Times described him as China's premier science fiction writer.[4] Following a diagnosis of dementia, Han began using Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek to help him write stories. He told The New York Times in 2025 that he was initially dispirited that the bot sometimes produced better stories than him, but now views it merely as a tool.[1]

Work

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Critics have noted Han's ambivalent attitude towards the economic and social change experience in China during his lifetime.[5] According to the China Daily, Han describes himself as a "staunch nationalist at heart", and his work is critical of China's desire to Westernize as fast as possible. He believes that "fast-track development does not agree with core Asian values", and that adoption of the "alien entities" of science, technology and modernization by the Chinese will turn them into monsters.[6]

An overview of his work in Los Angeles Times notes that Han's "prolific body of work deals largely with the clash between the U.S. and the Middle Kingdom," and that "if the author is critical of a cocky America, he is also unafraid to ruthlessly satirize an overreaching China."[4] The New York Times says that although "classic sci-fi elements such as space travel or artificial intelligence" appear in Han's fiction, he is more interested "in how people respond to new technologies and the power and disruption they represent."

The New York Times describes Han's work as often "bleak, graphic, and grotesque," citing his use of "ordinary settings, like subway trains, as backdrops for wild scenes of cannibalism or orgies."[1]

A significant amount of Han's work is banned in his home country. In 2012, it was reported that most of his works are banned in mainland China.[4]

Bibliography

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Novels

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Han's novels include:[3]

  • My Homeland Does Not Dream, whose subject is the state drugging people so that they work while sleeping.[4]
  • 2066: Red Star Over America (2000), describing the collapse of the United States in a world dominated by China.[4]
  • Red Ocean (2004)[7]
  • Subway (2010), a novel of Chinese spacefarers returning to a post-apocalyptic Beijing subway.[6]
  • Hospital Trilogy (医院三部曲):[1]
    • Hospital (医院), published in Chinese on June of 2016, published in English by Amazon Publishing on March 1 of 2023
    • Exorcism (驱魔), published in Chinese in May of 2017, published in English by Amazon Publishing on November 28 of 2023
    • Dead Souls (亡灵), published in Chinese in May of 2018, planned to be published in English by Amazon Publishing on January 7 of 2025

Short stories

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  • "Tombs of the Universe" (宇宙墓碑), first published 1991 in Illusion SF, later published in the anthology Sinopticon.
  • "The Wheel of Samsara" (噶赞寺的转经筒), first published in English translation in the 2009 The Apex Book of World SF edited by Lavie Tidhar.[7]
  • "Submarines" (潜艇),[8] first published in Chinese on November 17, 2014 in Southern People Weekly, first published in English in the anthology Broken Stars.
  • "Salinger and the Koreans" (塞林格与朝鲜人),[9] first published in Chinese and English in 2016 in Tales of Our Time (故事新编), later published in the anthology Broken Stars.

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Wang, Vivian (2025-05-27). "A Science Fiction Writer Wrestles With China's Rise, and His Own Decline". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-05-28.
  2. ^ Aloisio, Loïc. "Ma Patrie ne rêve pas - Une nouvelle politiquement incorrecte de Han Song 韩松". Retrieved 15 February 2019.
  3. ^ a b "Han Song interview". Time Out Beijing. March 2011. Archived from the original on 21 April 2014. Retrieved 26 March 2012.
  4. ^ a b c d e Sebag-Montefiore, Clarissa (25 March 2012). "Cultural Exchange: Chinese science fiction's subversive politics". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 26 March 2012.
  5. ^ Aloisio, Loïc (2016-09-15). "Ma Patrie ne rêve pas". Impressions d'Extrême-Orient (in French) (6). doi:10.4000/ideo.470. ISSN 2107-027X.
  6. ^ a b Basu, Chitralekha (18 March 2011). "The future is now". China Daily. Archived from the original on 22 March 2011. Retrieved 26 March 2012.
  7. ^ a b "A Martian In Tibet". io9. 7 January 2010. Retrieved 26 March 2012.
  8. ^ "Neue Storys aus China | Leseprobe aus U-Boote". Die Zukunft (in German). 2020-03-01. Retrieved 2024-09-29.
  9. ^ Han, Song. "Salinger and the Koreans" (PDF). guggenheim.org. Retrieved 2024-09-29.
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