Baoshu

Li Jun 李峻 (born 1980), known by the pen name Baoshu 宝树 or Isaiah, is a Chinese science fiction and fantasy writer. One of his main works, Three Body X, is a sequel to the 2015 Hugo Award winner, Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin 刘慈欣. After receiving his Master of Philosophy in Peking University, Baoshu continued to study at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and got a second master there, and finally became a full-time science fiction writer in 2012.

One of the latest generation of major Chinese Sci-Fi writers, Baoshu has won six Nebula Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy in Chinese, three Galaxy Awards for Chinese Science Fiction, and once nominated for the Grand Media Award for Chinese Literature. He is now a contract writer of famous writer and director Guo Jingming's 郭敬明 ZUIBOOK, a leading hub for young fiction writers in China. His works have been translated into English and published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Clarkesworld.

Biography

Baoshu spent his undergraduate and master's years at Department of Philosophy, Peking University. In PKU, at times he immersed himself in the campus social network BDWM BBS and neighboring Tsinghua University's SMTH BBS, where he chose "Baoshu" as one of his many pseudonyms. Literally meaning "divine tree", the name in fact refers to an evil monk in Louis Cha's famous novella Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain.In years, it gradually become his major pseudonym, and relatively well-known on those BBSs. Upon graduation Baoshu went to Belgium, pursuing a Master of Philosophy at KU Leuven, the oldest Catholic university still in existence.

According to a conversation with Xia Jia, a fellow Chinese science fiction writer and a friend of Baoshu, Baoshu has become a loyal fan of Liu Cixin since 2000, when Liu just began to publish his first novelettes. But it was not until 2010, while studying at Leuven ,that Baoshu began to compose his own stories. When the third volume of Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem trilogy was published in China at the end of 2010, Baoshu was still abroad and apparently had no way to get the book soon. Luckily, a good friend photoed every page of the book and sent the photoes to him online. Having read the chunky work through non-stop and greatly inspired by its plot, Baoshu composed a 100,000 characters Dōjin-style sequel of the original, Three Body X: Aeon of Contemplation 三体X•观想之宙 in roughly three weeks. Appearing in less than one month after the publication of Death's End, this online sequel attracts many Liu's readers' attention. After circulating online and fairly welcomed, the work was authorised by Liu to publish in 2011 and received decent appraisal.^[1] Since then Baoshu began to write literary works, instead of philosophical treatises.

Major works

Three Body X: Aeon of Contemplation

The first book by Baoshu, a sequel of Liu Cixin's Hugo Award winning SF epic Three Body Problem, intersected with dōjinshi and young-adult fictional experience. Published by Chongqing Press in June 2011.

Ruins of Time

This work relates a story about the contemporary world trapped in a mysterious and unbreakable time loop in one single day—October 11, 2012(apparently caused by an uncontrollable LHC experiment but the truth is only revealed at the end of the story)and its salvation by a male college student Han Fang and an enigmatic girl he met. This work is one of the first attempts to blend science fiction and Western-style apocalypse theme in Chinese science fiction works and proved to be a great success, winning 2014 saga novel Nebula Award for Chinese science fictions, one of the highest honors of Chinese SF works.^[2]

What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear

According to Baoshu himself, this story is better understood as alternate history rather than hard-core science fiction. The premise of the story draws on philosophy, and Jean-Paul Sartre, who actually appears in the story. It runs real historical events and personalities in reverse order, to ask some fundamental questions. So the starting point is a China where it is now – lots of technology, industry, a successful host of the Olympics (birds nest stadium). We follow Xie Baosheng from this point over decades as events happen in the reverse order, with world leaders and nations carrying out actions that see the USSR created, then Germany split in two, then the Cultural Revolution, then the Korean War, then the Second World War.^[3] Owing to some of its sensitive contents its original Chinese version "Da shidai" 大时代 (Mandarin Chinese for The Great Era), was circulated online only, but American SF writer Ken Liu just translated it into English and had it published on Fantasy and Science Fiction March/April 2015.^[4][5] Currently it is nominated contenders for Best SF short story of the year 2015, to be announced ca. December 31, 2015.

Bibliography

Novels

Three Body X: Aeon of Contemplation（《三体X：观想之宙》）（2011） Ruins of Time（《时间之墟》）（2013） Garuda（《金翅鸟》）（2014） Maharoga（《伏地龙》）（2014）

Short story collections

The Song of Ancient Earth（《古老的地球之歌》）（2012） Fantasies of Time（《时间狂想故事集》）（2015）

See also

• Chinese science fiction
• Science Fiction World
• Ken Liu
• Liu Cixin
• Xia Jia

Footnotes

External links

• Baoshu at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• "BestSF.com's review of Baoshu's What Has Passed in Kinder Light Appear, contender for Best SF short story of the year 2015"
• An interview with Ken Liu, translator of Baoshu's recent work, about his story and the Chinese writer
• "Preserve her memory", one of Baoshu's latest short stories, translated by Ken Liu, published in Clarkesworld, 108, September 2015
• "Baoshu's bio in Chinese, with a list of his works and photo album" (Chinese)
• Baoshu's homepage on douban.com, where he publishes his works in Chinese and interacts with readers (Chinese)