Sino Science Fiction and Zoefuturism: Writing Rationality and Culture

The aim of this thesis is to define the characteristics of Sino science fiction through understanding its grounding in ancient East Asian knowledge systems and philosophy, and its emergence through modern cultural and socio-political developments. This will facilitate locating my novel, Rimba within the genre, to critically contextualise its themes and concerns contemporarily. Often, Sino and Sinophone studies are synonymous with Chinese studies, which is problematic in the oversimplification of the community, where the pressure to focus only on mainland Chinese trends and their consequences have distracted researchers from the wider global Sino community. Using just texts that are available in English, either translated from Chinese or written in English by Chinese-speaking writers or writers with Chinese heritage, this research aims to keep its focus on literature that has been accepted into the pool of mainstream science fiction by the general readership, while presenting additional values to the global Sino readership. Beginning with situating Chinese science fiction and Chinese diaspora science fiction within the wider genre, I will show that science fiction is a congruence site for writers from China and the wider diaspora, and how a duality of science fictional and cultural traits can be expected from their works. Then, I will define the characteristics of the Sino community to reveal how a Sino rationality is required to unlock a Sino reading of the science fiction, and verifying Sino science fiction as diaspora literature. While this isn’t essential for the general understanding or enjoyment of the literature, this is still significant because it provides a new critical examination of Sino science fiction that does not rely on foundational theory that clashes with its fundamentality, instead, it informs a new way of approaching Sino science fiction that better caters to embracing all the meanings that it can proffer. Finally, I will introduce zoefuturism as a broader genre within which Sino science fiction is a part of, outlining its general concept and how it will form the next phase of my personal research and writing, post-PhD.