A Study of Reception and Influence of Chinese Science Fiction Writer Liu Cixin in American Culture

Abstract

Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin won Hugo Award for his The Three – Body Problem in 2015. The spread and influence of Liu’s works in America is being a new phenomenon for American to understand Chinese science fiction. Netflix will make the TV series for The Three  – Body Problem. People including American former President Barack Obama and mass all love to read and discuss it. This paper argues the reasons for Liu Cixin’s reception and influence in America. First, it meets the demands of American readers because of the fade of American science fiction in the golden age. Contemporary American science fiction writers would like to focus on realism theme instead of imaging cosmos and space war. Liu Cixin brings them back to the good memory of science fiction writing in the golden age and invokes them great aspirations to re  – explore the universe. Second, the economic and cultural development of China attract the world. People want to know and understand what China would do when the world is involved into the great disaster. It is a complicated cultural competition in the reception of The Three  – Body Problem. Third, Liu Cixin imagined cosmos sociology and arose the hot discussion for Three Body era and Three Body civilization. The power of imagination is the originality of the literature. It transcends the national and state boundary and link the world together. Liu Cixin and his The Three  – Body Problem present the worldiness of Chinese science fiction and call for the science fiction community go beyond the language and culture in the world. It is a new type of world literature.