This is My Genre: Sci-Fi
I saw Joel's post and Syl's post about their fav genre and immediately decided to join the fun.
You will find my list of authors quite international, haha. I hope whoever happens to read this finds it interesting.
What is your favourite genre?
Science Fiction or Speculative Fiction, literature that asks "what if"? Within the genre I like "soft sci-fi", the ones that focus on the human mind and body, what makes our humanity, climate and biology.
Who is your favourite author in this genre?
There are so many! But my favourite author across all genres is Ursula K. Le Guin. Other sci-fi authors I like include Arthur Clarke, Ted Chiang, Ken Liu, Kim Cho-yeop, Blake Crouch, Stanisław Herman Lem and Muneki Yamada. Oh do you know that Lu Xun (鲁迅) and Lao She (老舍)，the two most famous Chinese writers of the 20th century also wrote sci-fi？
What is it about the genre that keeps pulling you back?
The infinite possibilities of the future, good or bad (so far mostly bad for some reasons?). I am a person who is generally hungry for stories, and in sci-fi I find the most tasty ones. I like the moments when I find "wow you can think like this?" Also sci-fi stories make me feel humble as an ordinary human being, be able to see and reflect on our position on earth and in the universe.
What is the book that started your love of this genre?
When I was in elementary school, my grandpa bought me a book called 《小灵通漫游未来》Little Smarty Travels to the Future, by Ye Yonglie (叶永烈), it was written in 1961 and published in 1978, possibly THE sci-fi novel of contemporary China. When I read it, it had already been the must read for 25 years.
It is basically a YA novel about a young reporter who timed travelled to the future when he rode a ferry and made friends with a family there. They took him to a tour of the city with all those flying cars, contact lenses, face time calls, weather controllers, wearable devices etc. Sounds familiar? They were crazy ideas then and initially considered as "inappropriate". Anyways, when I was a kid in China, I read this book and its sequels so many times. I wish I could go with the protagonist to the future!
If you had to recommend at least one book from your favourite genre to a non-reader/someone looking to start reading that genre, what book would you choose and why?
There is a novelette that stayed with me for a few years after reading it, which is Ken Liu's The Waves, it tells a story of a family on a 400-year generation ship to another planet. On their way, things happened and humans...evolved. You get to experience many sci-fi ideas in a concise text, which is very powerful and poetic in the end. It is one of the stories that make me want to write my own sci-fi ideas. A short introduction here.
Why do you read?
I constantly crave stories. Diving into even more challenging worlds in books is how I get through hard days in this reality. I prefer reading because it cannot fast forward like a video, and it is an activity that requires my full attention and offers me full control.