Torddotcom Publishing is thrilled to announce that Lindsey Hall and Ruoxi Chen have acquired World English rights to The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories, a new anthology of Chinese science fiction and fantasy, written, edited, and translated by women and nonbinary creators, from Regina Kanyu Wang, Zhang Yiwen, and Emily Xueni Jin at Storycom. The collection will be available in hardcover and ebook in Spring 2022.
As the home of the critically acclaimed Broken Stars and Invisible Planets, Tom Doherty Associates continues to expand its Chinese science fiction and fantasy program with this brand new collection. It will feature stories by award-winning authors, with a star-studded team of translators, and will also feature critical essays on the art of translation and the state of science fiction and fantasy in China and the United States. The full list of contributors who have made this project possible are included below. All authors, translators, and essayists are listed alphabetically.
Authors
Anna Wu
Chen Qian
Chi Hui
Chu Xidao
Count E
Gu Shi
Ling Chen
Nian Yu
Shen Dacheng
Shen Yingying
Wang Nuonuo
Willow.L
Xia Jia
Xiu Xinyu
Zhao Haihong
Translators
Cara Healey
Carmen Yiling Yan
Elizabeth Hanlon
Emily Xueni Jin
etvolare
Gigi Chang
Judith Huang
Judy Yi Zhou
Rebecca F. Kuang
Ru-Ping Chen
Yilin Wang
Essayists
Emily Xueni Jin
Jing Tsu
Rebecca F. Kuang
Xueting Christine Ni
Said co-producers Regina Kanyu Wang and Emily Xueni Jin:
This collection is a kaleidoscope of contemporary Chinese speculative fiction that strives to embody the idea of stepping beyond boundaries in every way possible: moving away from the field of contemporary Chinese speculative fiction long dominated by men, we are represented specifically by a team of women and nonbinary creators who have generally been understated in international publication.
Blurring the line between “hard and soft” science fiction, we include not only science fiction, but also fantasy, myth-ridden lore, and general speculative fiction. We feature not only writers more known by the Anglophone world, but also writers extremely popular in China who have never been translated before, and a promising batch of new talents.
We are so excited to present not only those authors, but also our translators, who have equally unique voices and have been working hard on delivering Chinese literature into English in various disciplines. We believe that contemporary Chinese speculative fiction is not a single tune. Instead, it should be a symphony—composed by multiple voices, different kinds of talents, and most importantly a community of various components equally as important that nourish and inspire each other. This book was an opportunity for a brilliant team to assemble and the starting point for more to come.
Said TDA editors Ruoxi Chen and Lindsey Hall:
Over the last few years, we have been so excited to see the thrilling science fiction and fantasy being brought to English readers for the first time, and have had the pleasure of working with incredible talents like Ken Liu, Baoshu, and Chen Qiufan. With this collection, we’re thrilled to bring even more voices into the conversation. This all-female and nonbinary anthology—one of the first of its kind in Chinese SFF—spans time, space, worlds, and imagination. It will give English-language readers a window into the astonishing work being done in the Chinese science fiction and fantasy community. Working with Regina, Emily, and Yu Chen in assembling this incredible team of contributors and helping this very special project become a reality has been a privilege.
Storycom is dedicated to discovering and commercializing excellent stories, especially science fiction and fantasy. Several of Storycom’s features or short films have been screened or awarded in various international film festivals. In partnership with Clarkesworld from the US, Future Fiction from Italy, Kapsel from Germany, Galaxy 42 from Romania and more, Storycom is also working on introducing Chinese science fiction to a broader audience globally.
Zhang Yiwen, CEO of Storycom, is the presenter and producer of science fiction films like The End of the Lonely Island, Deep In and Shock; co-producer of the film My Best Summer; vice editor-in-chief of The Film Production Handbook of The Wandering Earth. She has been devoted to science fiction story development and dramatic presentation production as well as building the platform of publishing Chinese literature both domestically and internationally.
Yu Chen, Editor, has been working on the publication of science fiction and fantasy for almost ten years. She has planned and established an SFF column “Tales from Nowhere,” organized and participated a number of SFF forums, conventions, workshops and conferences, and published more than ten SFF books, including “Hospital Trilogy” by Han Song (Hospital, Exorcism and Revenant) and The New Wave of Chinese Science Fiction: History, Poetics and Text by Song Mingwei. Exorcism won the Best Original Book Award of the 29th Galaxy Award of Chinese Science Fiction.
Regina Kanyu Wang, Editor and Co-Producer, is a bilingual writer from Shanghai who writes both in Chinese and English. She has won the SF Comet international short story competition and multiple Xingyun Awards for Global Chinese SF. Her stories can be found in various magazines and anthologies, as well as her two individual collections, Of Cloud and Mist 2.2 and The Seafood Restaurant. She is the cofounder of SF AppleCore and the Overseas Market Director of Storycom, and will soon join the CoFUTURES project at the University of Oslo to research contemporary Chinese science fiction by female creators.
Emily Xueni Jin, Co-Producer, is a science fiction and fantasy writer and translator. She graduated from Wellesley College in 2017, and she is currently pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literature at Yale University. Her research focuses on cognitive literary studies, technology and Chinese science fiction. She has worked with various prominent Chinese SFF writers to translate their works into English as well as translating several books into Chinese, including The Search for Philip K. Dick (biography by Anne R. Dick).
The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories will be available from Tordotcom Publishing in 2022.
