News culture “Corrupt” The 3-Body Problem hit by censorship? 65 years ago SF was banned!
Published on 03/21/2024 at 7:45 p.m.
Share :
The Three-Body Problem is a science fiction heavyweight that was adapted by Netflix into an event series. However, this work could very well have never seen the light of day because of a rule that was as funny as it was surprising.
If science fiction is today a genre that touches the whole world and makes young and old alike dream or shiver, that was not always the case. In 1960, China left little room for this genre for a very specific reason.
Take a Netflix subscription card on Micromania
The galactic bourgeois
Professor of Chinese literature at the University of Montana, Hua Li, explains in an interview that China has oscillated between outright ban and encouragement of the genre since 1949. These fluctuating decisions are partly due to a surprising reason: the aliens. These were simply banned from Chinese culture, even after Mao's death.
Marxist-Leninist doctrine did not foresee the existence of extraterrestrials in the Universe. At the time, any story based on extraterrestrials was considered irreparably corrupted by bourgeois ideology – Hua Li (Le Monde)
The history of Chinese science fiction is littered with these kinds of bans that were eventually relaxed. The genre, initially considered sacrilege, given the themes addressed, and the political ideals it could transmit, will gradually be seen as a tool at the service of the people and their erudition. He could now participate in the influence of China. This return to the surface is notably due to the magazine Littérature Scientifique and its director Yang Xiao, who obtained the organization of the International Science Fiction Convention in Chengducapital of the Chinese province of Sichuan.
Science fiction as a tool of soft power
As a reminder, the Three Corps trilogy sold more than 1,200,000 copies in China before receiving the Hugo Prize (awarded each year to the best works of science fiction and fantasy) in 2015 and being adapted into a series to be released on Netflix. This popular success is supported by the existence of a vast extended universe in various works analyzing the original work or extending it even further or even into a video game. Liu Cixin's literary work made it possible to place China as one of the high places of world science fiction.
Under the leadership of Vice President of the People's Republic of China Li Yuanchao, the Association of Science and Technology announced in 2016 that it has create a system of prizes and funding for works of science fiction and fantasy. She also mentions the upcoming creation of an international science fiction festival and a foundation whose aim will be to promote Chinese science fiction abroad. An article in Today's Headlines reveals that, much more than the Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to a Chinese classical author, science fiction today represents a lucrative sector for the country.
About the series The 3-Body Problem
News culture
A Netflix sci-fi series worthy of Denis Villeneuve and Christopher Nolan? I saw The 3-Body Problem and it's unheard of!
News culture
'A burden' Game of Thrones creators rejected multi-million dollar HBO offer
News culture
The series The 3-Body Problem is available for free on YouTube: China is competing with Netflix in 2024!
This page contains affiliate links to certain products that JV has selected for you. Each purchase you make by clicking on one of these links will not cost you more, but the e-merchant will pay us a commission. The prices indicated in the article are those offered by the merchant sites at the time of publication of the article and these prices are likely to vary at the sole discretion of the merchant site without JV being informed. Learn more.