Science fiction vividly presents the rich imagination of the near-future world and lifeforms, with "Cyberpunk" novels being the most influential subgenre. Originating in the 1980s, Cyberpunk absorbed many features of the science fiction "New Wave" since the 1960s, such as critical analysis of socio-cultural issues and focus on the inner world of individuals, while also incorporating the 1980s' imagination of new technologies, particularly information technology. It blends hacker culture, punk (music), youth culture, and crime literature, presenting an enlightening vision of the future. However, with the pace of contemporary technology, another phenomenon depicted in Cyberpunk novels has started to gain prominence–the development of sensory immersive digital cyberspace and the generation and existence of various new lifeforms within it. In the future, the so-called "digital existence" may no longer be limited to the external aspects like "using smart digital devices," but evolve towards "digital world," "digital life," and largely change the traditional definitions of "birth", "death," etc.

Science fiction has also greatly expanded and updated humanity's understanding, imagination, and construction of public space from a technical perspective. The digital world as a cyberspace embodies the ideal of creating a new world, possesses significant totality and publicity, updates the understanding of public space in human society from the technical dimension, and provides an activity space for digital life.

The three possible forms of digital life mainly include: simulated images of humans in the digital world, referred to as "digital twins"; the highly immersive "Human+" form combining organisms and inorganic matter; and purely digital life forms that live independently in the digital world. The first, digital twins, are mainly simulated images formed by people in the digital world through external devices, mapping and realizing their actions and operations. The second is the digitized "Human+" form, which fully immerses in the digital world but can freely move between the physical reality and the digital world. The third are independent digital life forms, or people who live entirely in the digital world. These digital lifeforms have become dissimilar and lack resonance with carbon-based lifeforms.

Digital life represents the generation of a subjective form, the "cycle of life", breaking the "life chauvinism" based on natural organisms. With the definition change of birth and death, the imagined digital life in science fiction has also formed two possible "revivals": the digitized mind of the deceased in the digital world and the digital simulation of the deceased already emerging in our reality. The significance of the digital world and digital life is not to provide an illusion of immortality but mainly to prospectively renew human understanding of the meaning of life itself and to construct an integrated world framework with new life and norms.

Literature and science, as two paths for human cognition of the world, have always been in a dynamic development. From the initial homology in early history, to the estrangement after the subdivision of disciplines in Renaissance period, and then to the re - integration under the trend of interdisciplinary research in modern times, the process reflects the construction and expansion of the human knowledge system. The changes in social demands at different historical stages are the external motives for the adjustment of the relationship between the two, while the development laws of academia itself and change of thinking are the internal driving forces. Studying the relationship between the two can deepen the understanding of the essence of disciplines and provide theoretical support for the development of interdisciplinary research.

This paper explores the material underpinnings of digital resurrection in Greg Egan’s Permutation City (1994), situating its speculative framework within contemporary debates on posthumanism, digital subjectivity, and computational metaphysics. N. Katherine Hayles, while skeptical of disembodied digital consciousness as proposed by Hans Moravec’s Mind Children (1988), nonetheless finds herself captivated by Egan’s exploration of post-biological existence. Unlike Moravec’s teleology of disembodiment, which assumes an uninterrupted continuity of human subjectivity through computational processes, Egan’s vision interrogates the unstable foundations of digital existence by embedding his “copies” within a world constrained by material infrastructures, algorithmic determinism, and emergent randomness.

Building on Hayles’ critique of the computational universe, this paper examines how Permutation City challenges the epistemological and ontological assumptions underlying digital resurrection. Through the novel’s depiction of self-aware digital beings, I introduce the concept of digital changelings—entities that, unlike avatars, are not merely extensions of human agency but autonomous subjects formed through the economization of surplus data. These changelings problematize the boundaries between embodiment and simulation, as their existence is predicated not on corporeal continuity but on patterns, iterations, and stochastic emergence. By foregrounding the tension between structure and randomness in Egan’s “Dust Theory,” I argue that Permutation City advances a radically posthumanist vision—one that reconfigures agency not as a property of an isolated subject but as an entangled process of algorithmic and material becoming.

Furthermore, this study engages with Karen Barad’s agential realism to explore how Egan’s nested simulations do not merely simulate physical reality but enact an ontological shift, wherein digital beings generate their own material conditions through computational entanglements. This marks a departure from traditional AI narratives that frame digital consciousness as either a tool of human intent or an existential threat. Instead, Egan’s computational universe suggests that digital subjectivity, rather than being a mere extension of human consciousness, emerges as an autonomous force, co-constituted with the infrastructures that sustain it.

Ultimately, this paper argues that Permutation City does not merely speculate on digital immortality but reveals the inescapable material entanglements of digital existence. In doing so, it offers a framework for rethinking agency, materiality, and the ontological status of digital life in the age of algorithmic governance and computational capitalism.

Kazuo Ishiguro imagines a small story about the post-human survival situation in "Klara and the Sun": Josie, a victim of life-threatening gene-editing technology, is saved by her AF (Artificial Friend) Klara's faith in the SUN. This is clearly a MIRACLE with mythological narrative characteristics set against the backdrop of the future society depicted in the book. Combining Mircea Eliade's philosophical anthropology theories, this paper attempts to explore the philosophical thoughts on the existence of life that Ishiguro implies beneath the surface of the story through a close reading of the text: the extreme rationality of technology has intensified the existential anxiety of Modern People in the Terror of History; the estrangement between humans and nature (the sacred) makes the Hierophanies possible only through artificial intelligence as Primitive; the ambiguity of the novel's ending further reveals the significance of this post-human fantasy for the contemporary era, that is, LOVE is always the Fixed Point that helps human subjectivity from being submerged by the flood of digital intelligence, and the coexistence of The Dialectic of The Sacred life experiences is one of the scales we must adhere to.

石黑一雄在《克拉拉与太阳》中设想了有关“后人类”生存境遇的小故事：生命垂危的基因编辑技术受害者乔西因其AF（人工智能朋友）克拉拉的“太阳”信仰得到拯救。这在全书设定的未来社会背景下显然是一个具有神话叙述性质的“奇迹”。结合米尔恰·伊利亚德哲学人类学相关理论，本文试图在文本细读基础上对石黑一雄内蕴于故事表层下的生命存在性哲思进行探究：技术理性极端化加剧了“现代人”身处“历史的恐怖”中的生存焦虑；人与自然（神圣）的隔阂使“圣显”必须籍由作为“前现代人”的人工智能方能实现；小说结局的模糊性则进一步显示了这则“后人类”幻想对当时代的意义，即“爱”始终是帮助人类主体性不被数智洪流淹没的“定位”，“圣俗并存”的生命经验则是我们必须坚守的尺度之一。

The popularity of virtual reality makes us wonder in what sense "abandoning the body and enjoying the wandering of consciousness in fictional mechanisms" satisfies human needs. Does this indicate that some basic assumptions about human subjectivity have unconsciously entered the "post-human" era? I will discuss this issue through the robots or artificial intelligence imagination in science fiction.In the first part of the paper, I will trace the evolution of robot imagination in science fiction narratives to clarify the development logic of the construction of modern subjectivity discourse, and explain the blurring, disappearance, and even outward expansion of the subject boundary in contemporary AI literary narratives do not directly indicate the emergence of a new type of human beings. Instead, it forces us to return to the clue of the construction of modern subjectivity through the mind-body dualism to re-understand the underlying logic of human subject construction and discover its coherent thread. In particular, from the contemporary robot science fiction literature narratives, we do not see a transcendent imagination, but can read the reflections and worries about the old subjectivity problems from authors.In the second part of the paper, I will mainly analyze Spike Jonze's science fiction film "Her" (2013) and Kazuo Ishiguro's novel "Klara and the Sun" (2017) as the main texts to explain the fictional characteristics and cultural logic of subjectivity in contemporary AI science fictions. In these texts, neither "body" nor "mind" can define the boundary of "being ". The texts jointly present a new model of the subject: in the subject-to-subject interaction, human beings made up and imagine “alter-ego” reflected on others, with the fictional purpose of making the world completely satisfy the self's needs and narcissism. This subject model can explain the social communication predicament in our contemporary life and also indirectly indicates that the questioning of the essence of existence has never withdrawn.In the last part of the paper, I will place the science fiction texts in the specific technological background of the information age to study how the production logic of virtual culture sustains the mechanism of human subject production. The "being" that survives in an autonomous and self-regulating social system is also the "alter-ego" of the social production logic and always maintains a "heterogeneous isomorphism" balance with social changes. Cybernetics and systems science can reveal the phenomenon that human subjectivity is "alienated" in the social system and exploited by consumerism. However, humans themselves have agency. Under the inspiration of new science fiction narratives, we need to break through the old logic of subjectivity production, remain vigilant against the expansionary subject model promoted by consumerism, and then explore the generation logic of a new ontology.

Contemporary Chinese cyborg narratives highlight the characteristics of Chinese science fiction. This is manifested in three specific ways: first, the high-tech anti-hero narrative, which expresses the concerns of Chinese science fiction writers about the conflict between humans and machines and their worries about the future society of artificial intelligence; second, the exploration of the cyborg image in ancient Chinese thinking and concepts, using dreams to connect the relationship between humans and machines and to ponder the nature of humanity; and third, to use the cyborg as a cultural practice and social adjustment for human alienation, and to place it in the context of Chinese history and culture to rethink the relationship between past and present, tradition and modernity, and human and non-human, and to attempt to achieve a new balance in the relationship between humans and machines and a stable future.

This paper returns to the vexed question of the status and meaning of “science” for science fiction (SF) and its criticism, examining the widespread tendency in contemporary SF criticism to downplay the role that science and scientific rationality play in defining SF. Prominent theorists have argued that SF “has no essence” (Rieder, “On Defining SF”) and that “sf will include more and more assemblages involving incongruous ontologies…. as naturalized alternative rationalities” (Csicsery-Ronay, “Global SF”). While this embracing of hybridity, often accompanied by claims regarding the perceived emancipatory potential of what are called “alternative sciences” or "alternative epipstemologies," responds to a progressive sociopolitical desire to foster inclusion and combat (Western) technoscientific hegemony, this paper argues that settling uncritically with the notion of the "non-essence" of SF would bring about more mystification than clarity, both in terms of our study of SF literary history, and of SF’s potential progressivism. One problem is that this critical tendency is based on a view science as inherently tied to sociopolitical exploitation: however, as this paper seeks to show, this judgement rests on a fallacy in fact-value distinction that the humanities, and literary studies in particular, have strikingly contributed to perpetuate. Furthermore, thinkers such as Indian cultural critic Meera Nanda or Syrian philosopher Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm have shown that the secularization of consciousness promoted by the transition from mythic to scientific rationality often acts as the truly emancipatory force able to oppose certain “local” and “traditional” practices and beliefs that enable the oppression of women and cultural minorities, thus problematizing any association of science or rationality per se with either emancipatory or oppressive social mores. Finally, the paper suggests that erasing the distinction between the science of SF and other worldviews and ontologies (“folkloric, mythological, supernatural” are some of those mentioned by Csicsery-Ronay) as expressed in other fictional genres also erases the historical and cognitive/existential specificity of SF (historian David Wootton, philosopher Michael Strevens, and physicist Carlo Rovelli are among the most brilliant explainers of the various aspects of such specificity regarding science). The paper thus proposes that rather than expanding our definition of science fiction to the point of unrecognizability, we should instead rely on the ample spectrum of possibilities afforded by the umbrella-label speculative fiction, actually able to encompass ontologies other than science’s naturalism.

Argentine author Ricardo Piglia’s 1992 novel The Absent City is often classified as science fiction, primarily because of its female cyborg, the Macedonio machine. With the help of the exiled Hungarian engineer Russo, Macedonio transplants the consciousness of his deceased wife Elena into a mechanical device, thus creating a cyborg that transcends the simple “organism-machine” and possesses the body of a machine and the soul of a human being who is capable of storytelling. Rather than placing the novel in a futuristic context, Piglia situates the narrative within the period of Argentina’s military dictatorship (1976-1983). Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, serves as the stage of the story, a city on the periphery of the Western-dominated global power structure, yet caught up in the wave of cybernetics. In this way, Piglia creates a space that moves beyond linear history, offering a platform to reflect on the complexities of human history while simultaneously considering the potential of a rapidly advancing digital future. The novel parodies the Huemul Project of the Perón government, and critiques patriarchal capitalism, militarism’s dedication to the technological development for its own sake, as exemplified by Argentinean nuclear energy research in the broader context of the Cold War-era global nuclear arms race. Within this historical context,the novel is rich in cyborg figures, both technical and metaphorical. Due to disembodiment and forced immortality in the form of information, Elena loses the ability to perceive the world through sense. This loss brings a profound sense of emptiness and existential confusion, resulting in a crisis of identity and subjectivity. From Elena’s absent body, Piglia reflects on the two dominant pursuits of modern technology: the creation of artificial life and the resurrection of the dead. Through the figures of Arana, a doctor with aluminum teeth who is as cold as a machine, and Fujita, an emasculated spy engaged in surveillance, Piglia interrogates the blurred boundaries between man and machine. The novel explores modern humanity’s anxiety in the face of technological advancement and reveals the potential crises faced by cyborged humans.

Flowers for Algernon is a classic science fiction novel by American author Daniel Keyes, published in 1959. It was awarded the Hugo Award in 1959 and the Nebula Award in 1966. Sixty years later, since the Chinese translation was published in 2015, the novel has sparked a "resonant" reading trend, particularly from 2022 to 2024, becoming one of the most influential science fiction works among the Chinese public. The narrative employs the story of Charlie, a protagonist with intellectual disabilities, using technological enhancement of intelligence as a catalyst, to fulfill a plot structure and emotional interaction of "nostalgia-acceleration-equilibrium". It also reflects on technological ethics and the acceleration of individuals throughout this process.

Acceleration is a defining characteristic of the technological era, and "nostalgia" represents an intuitive resistance to this acceleration. The "nostalgia" here refers to that which bears the marks of primitive and backward within the linear progression of technological rationality. In the novel, the societal acceleration of technology discards the appreciation of emotions and the attachment to things. Daniel Keyes adeptly perceived the crisis of acceleration lurking behind the progressive development brought about by technological rationality. Acceleration is not only a matter of daily and emotional experience but also a technological issue, which technology has already or will push to an unimaginable extent. The novel cruelly expresses the aspect of technological acceleration through a lobotomy, offering a warm and romantic narrative, and serves as an important representative reflecting on the future societal technological issues through the narrative of science fiction.

Technological progress has disrupted the integrity of life and the experience of growth. From the moment Charlie developed social awareness, he struggled between being accelerated or abandoned, without contemplating alternatives beyond these two. An accelerated life is another form of "precocity" and "aging", and the anxiety and fear for acceleration are also part of the process of adapting. Keyes imagines a view of natural balance as the ultimate means after nostalgia and acceleration, it is suggested that the explosive intellectual growth achieved through technological acceleration is unsustainable. The novel provides a vision of the near future that creates a "dislocation" of perception with China's compressed modernity, as the science fiction imagination of the near future from the 1960s now resonates with the echoes of the era. The near future of science fiction is impending yet not arrived, while the acceleration brought by technology has already impacted people's lives. Chinese readers' resonance with the nostalgic emotions in the novel, their extension of the anxiety about acceleration, and their reflection on the ultimate balance, is akin to picking up the Flowers for Algernon here and now.

As a contemporary American science fiction writer, Paolo Bacigalupi has always paid close attention to the ecological problems that have emerged since the 21st century, such as soil erosion, ocean pollution, species extinction, declining vegetation, climate deterioration, etc. This phenomenon is particularly salient in the context of near-future food imagination, where the confluence of natural factors and man-made factors, gives rise to a dystopian scene of “food apocalypse”. In works such as The Windup Girl, The Calorie Man, Pump Six, and The People of Sand and Slag, Paolo Bacigalupi explores a speculative approach, utilizing science fiction as an experiment to discuss potential solutions to the food crisis. By imagining the food system in the Near Future to shed light on the ecological challenges confronting the human world, The author posits a hypothetical scenario in which an unaltered human might have been able to achieve self-rescue through the severe shortage of food. However, the strategies employed to adapt to human survival by “Transform Nature”, such as gene-editing and the construction of dams, have instead accelerated the deterioration of the global environment and exacerbated regional tensions. It has even a direct impact on the human body, resulting in fertility disorders, epidemics, etc. The “Transform Nature” has led to a vicious cycle of self-rescue for the human group. Therefore, Bacigalupi has proposed a novel solution to the problem of food scarcity, by transforming the human body to create newcomers who have the capabilities to adapt to the “food apocalypse”. This involves a more varied nutritional intake and the ability to effectively cope with the problems caused by the decline of species, the homogenization of crops, and the toxicity of food. However, the imagination of posthumans adapting to nature actually obscures the pressing need to solve the food crisis and leave the ecological problems to the descendants as posthumans. The future in Bacigalupi’s works is generally characterized by a pessimistic outlook, with a notable absence of initiatives aimed at aiding the environment, and these experiments do not incorporate the efforts of “Restore Ecology”, whether involving the adaptation of nature to humanity or the creation of new species to adapt to an apocalyptic environment. The prospect of ecology writing in science fiction, as well as a potential method for avoiding ecological predicaments such as “food apocalypse ”, can only be realized by treating human beings as part of the whole ecology, by establishing the ecological community where human beings coexist with the planet Earth, and braking the further deterioration of ecology while implementing environmental restoration.

The Ontology discussed in this paper is based on the theory of Chinese philosopher Mr. Zhao Tingyang. The Ontology of human explores the essence, meaning, methods, and particularly how to better survive human existence.

The name and definition of robot are constantly changing along with the development of technology. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the author finds that terms such as Automaton, Android, Robot, Cyborg have been used to name robot in literature. Among them, "Robot" is the most popular word.

Based on current technology and human cognitive ability, this article defines robot as one of the "artificial man", which is humanoid intelligent beings accomplished by mechanical means except pure organisms that involve methods such as cloning. In science fiction, the hierarchy of robot can be divided into two main categories, based on difference of Turing machines and super-Turing machines: the former are caught up in the mechanical algorithms of mathematics and are not yet self-aware; the latter have reached Descartes' criterion of I-thought, possessing the ability of self-awareness and reflectivity.

The robot ethics in science fiction is prospective. It is closely related to the evolution of personal views on technology, theology and philosophy. This paper identifies four ethical paradigms (theologism, anthropocentrism, non- anthropocentrism, post-humanism) in science fiction, and explores the ethical relationships between human and transcendent being, nature (objects), other (new "human"), the self (post-humanism).

In order to exist better, human beings need to properly handle four possible ethical relationships: human and new "god", human and new "thing", human and new "human", human and new "self". The luck of human Ontology theory is about to run out, and only by constantly solving new ethical issues can human beings realize the "becoming" and "bene-existence" in the future.

In Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist (1999), human beings’ utter trust for “the perfect machine” leads not only to the disasters which almost end the protagonists’ life or profession, but also to their subsequent exploration for future human-machine relationship in highly-developed technological society. Though respectively being located in the spaceship aiming to Saturn and the neighborhoods like those in New York and thus seemingly representing two different literary genres, these two novels express their common doubt about the possibility for the so-called perfect machine’s existence. Being made by human beings who are confident about the rational power in technological production and blind to their own class, gender, race bias in the process of making, these so-called faultless machines like the digital computer and the skyscraper’s elevator are doomed to fail and once again reveal their human makers’ inability to overcome human weakness. According to this paper, the bankruptcy of the plan of making “the perfect machine” results from the frustration in interpersonal relation, rather than from the machine’s imperfection. In consequence, the future of the so-called ideal human-machine relation in essence is still reliant on human beings’ capability to solve existent problems in human society.

To handle this topic, both novels revolve around René Descartes’ mind-body dualism for human beings and the designing concept for “the perfect machine” according to this binary. If the focus of Clarke’s scientific fiction is to criticize human mind’s overconfidence in the domineering rule over human body, Whitehead’s semi-scientific fiction’s criticism for humanity is more thorough when it presents the vulnerability for both human mind and body. And the two novelists’ answers for their questioning concerning the existence of “the perfect machine” are both negative. After all, being the product of humanity, the machine itself is more a mirror-image for humanity than an independent organism itself. Without the improvement for human nature and interhuman relation, the future for “the perfect machine” is unpredictable and may be doomed from the very start.

As a representative work of New Space Opera of the late 20th century, Dan Simmons’ science fiction Hyperion constructs a complex future universe of collision and conflict between technology and emotion: after the death of Earth, some humans began interstellar colonization movements, while others roamed in space. Artificial intelligence has evolved and parasitized in human society, seemingly a servant to humans while controlling them. The prediction of the ultimate war led the Church of Shrike to select seven pilgrims to return to Hyperion. Six pilgrims tell their own stories, picturing a world entangled with reason and irrationality.

The name Hyperion comes from Keats’ poetry, which originates from Greek mythology. Hyperion is the name of the Titan who is the personification of the sun, thus becoming the name of the planet. As the story progresses, characters and stories such as the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, “The Burnt Offering of Issaac” emerge and become the mythological materials. Meanwhile, Simmons’ creation of the “Shrike”, which is a semi mechanical/semi divine image in the near-future, is full of postmodern mythological state, reflecting the anxiety of the era.

Mythology often exists as the material of epic poetry, and it is precisely Simmons’ mythological writing that some critics believe that Simmons’ writing is epic. Essentially, mythological writing indicates that when coming to the imaginative construction of the world, humans find it difficult to surpass the reality and existing spiritual heritage.

As a new space opera, Hyperion is not strictly following scientific logic to unfold fantasies. In the text, absurd writing may seem to blur the boundary between science fiction and fantasy, but it is actually writing about human fear of the undigested unknown, aiming to reflect the true spiritual world of humanity and emphasize attention to the irrational world beyond reason.

Both myth and the absurd are ways created by humans over history to balance the rational and irrational worlds. Since ancient Greece, people have been advocating the use of reason. Through the Enlightenment movement, humans gradually regarded reason as the criterion for social life. However, humans still created spiritual products such as religious beliefs, Romanticism, and Absurdism. These are the means by which people face the expanding rational world and preserve the irrational world to prevent falling into meaninglessness.

In Simmons’ writing, it is precisely the use of the two spiritual products from myth to the absurd, that attempts to elevate the height of the irrational world in SF novels that usually emphasize the physical world. Mythology and absurdity are not only symbols, but also methods for characters to seek help when facing specific conflicts. Hyperion invents a comprehensive path of emotional comfort in the technology-led SF world, promoting the suspension of reason and the return of irrationality.

Ian McEwan depicts a highly developed world of artificial intelligence in Machines Like Me (2019). The intelligent robot Adam not only possesses complex human emotions, but also has a high degree of moral consciousness. Intelligent robots are depicted as creatures with empathy and cognition. McEwan further expands the concepts of self, soul, and human consciousness through this novel, and contemplates ethical issues such as what traits make human become human and whether it is possible to incorporate these traits into intelligent robots. In contrast, the intelligent robots in Xiao Jianheng’s Professor Shalom’s Confusion (1980) are still in their early stages. Although the functions of intelligent robots are not yet complete, professor Shalom can no longer distinguish between intelligent robots and humans based on their appearance. Intelligent robots can play the role of personal mentors, nurses, housekeepers, or secretaries in households. Professor Shalom questions whether entrusting so many household and work tasks to intelligent robots was a wise behavior. Professor Shalom is concerned that artificial intelligence may to some extent jeopardize or even replace human dominance in society. Both novels discuss the serious topic of intelligent robots intervening in human moral life. Previous research has mostly been based on the plot development of novels, emphasizing the antagonistic relationship between robots and humans. This article aims to break through the analysis mode of the binary opposition between humans and intelligent robots, turn its attention to the details and contradictions of the novel narrative, examine the individualization process of intelligence robots, and explore the mutual influence relationship between individual emotions and social structural rigidity hidden behind the ethical selections of intelligent robots. Therefore, on the one hand, this article analyzes the ethical differences between the intelligent robots in these two novels from the perspective of ethical literary criticism, and the underlying reasons for these differences. On the other hand, this article calls for humanity to construct the ethical community between humans and intelligent robots from the perspective of postmodern Western ethics in the face of the arrival of the artificial intelligence era.

Mars, Earth's nearest solar neighbor, has long been a central destination in science fiction imagination. Our visions of Mars extend beyond literature, engaging in a complex interplay with technological advancements, socio-cultural dynamics, and historical contexts to form a cultural discourse on science and imagination. A unique case in China's Mars narrative emerged around the second decade of the 21st century with the development of Lenghu Mars Town in Qinghai's Mangya. Originally a barren Gobi desert area within the Qaidam Basin, Lenghu briefly flourished in the 1950s due to petroleum discoveries but was later abandoned as resources depleted. In August 2017, the "Lenghu Mars Town" project was launched, leveraging the area's resemblance to Mars to integrate science fiction culture and Martian themes into its cultural and tourism development. In 2018, the Lenghu Science Fiction Literature Award was established, becoming a significant force in contemporary science fiction creation and intellectual property development.

From a science fiction anthropology perspective, Lenghu's Mars imagination and discourse exhibit several creative characteristics. Firstly, the town relies on unique resources—China's largest Yardang landform cluster, optimal dark skies for stargazing in the Eastern Hemisphere, and petroleum industrial relics—to construct a Mars narrative with a strong "Chinese dreamcore" aesthetic. This localized narrative offers visitors and students an embodied science fiction experience, simulating a journey from a resource-depleted Earth to a new Martian home.

Secondly, the Lenghu Science Fiction Literature Award incorporates local landmarks and place names into writing contests and invites renowned authors to draw inspiration from the region. The interplay of awe-inspiring landscapes, abandoned petroleum towns, and humanity's uncertain future endows award-winning works with depth and richness. These novels continue the construction theme of classic Chinese science fiction while introducing new creative features, using science fiction as "fictional ethnography" to reflect on humanity.

Thirdly, Lenghu leverages science fiction narratives to brand itself as the "Mars Town" and develop its industry through "technology + science popularization + science fiction." This process highlights the potential of imagination as a practice across time, creating a cyclical relationship between real-world technological practices and fictional discourses. Imagination thus emerges as a driving force and discursive resource for constructing reality.

Night on the Galactic Railroad, the most famous novel of Miyazawa Kenji, has traveled across the boundaries of different nations and social media since his death in 1933. However, in the process of canonization, Kenji’s identity as a Buddhist believer has not been given due attention with few existing researches realizing the influence of his religious belief on his literary career. The imagination of a science-informed future shared by all human beings in Kenji’s fictional writings, in this connection, proves to be nothing but a natural product of this influence and embodies the ethical concerns of Nichiren Buddhism.

Under the influence of the Lotus Sutra, Kenji took science fiction as a vehicle of Buddhist ideas, with Buddha’s Milky Way, or Ihatov, at the center of the aforementioned imagination. The pursuit of Ihatov dictates many of his works and bridges the gap between Nichiren Buddhism and modern science. Furthermore, taking the form of Milky Way, Ihatov refers to one’s mortal life, which is neither an unattainable Arcadia perpetually beyond human vision, nor a result of mere calculation based entirely on logos. On the contrary, it could only be fulfilled by virtue of personal choices and rational thinking.

From the perspective of narrative structure, Nichiren Buddhism renders Ihatov an equal nature of all beings, including the author and the reader, who are both unaware of how the new world should be established and feel astonished at its magnificence. Moreover, the whole text of Night on the Galactic Railroad and other works is characterized by a sense of equilibrium between reason and emotion, which engages a pilgrimage by the trinity of characters, the writer and reader to an ideal village: the protagonists in Kenji’s works are all willing to sacrifice themselves for common welfare, and the writing process of Night on the Galactic Railroad also serves as an intellectual journey for Kenji himself, which was revised for four times and published without a final version during his lifetime, as if the novel itself represents the imaginary Ihatov and Kenji’s ultimate struggle.

As indicated by the fact that Kenji once chose to join farmers and establish the Rasuchijin Society to achieve the integration of agriculture, art, science and religion, he was undoubtedly an active participant of the secular world. Viewing difficulties as opportunities of self-cultivation, he advocated the elimination of all inherent standards and objective limitations and was eager to put Buddha’s compassion and wisdom into practice. In this sense, we can claim that Ihatov is by no means the end of this pilgrimage. The unfinished journey not only foreshadows the destiny of science, but also a unique concept of temporality Nichiren tended to propose, which turns out to be both linear and circular and accordingly endows Japanese science fiction, particularly Kenji’s works, with remarkable complexity and self-reflexivity.

The world in 800,000 years, which is the first Chinese translation of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, bears a very prominent cultural imprint of the translated language, which is mainly reflected in two aspects: one is the influence of the contemporaneous trend of thought on the translation of the book, and the other is the dominant role played by the Chinese travel culture tradition in the translation of the book, “creative treason”. The former reflects the utopian imagination of the late Qing intellectual elite for the future society, while the latter becomes the self-relief of the intellectual community under the pressure of the dangerous situation of “country destroyed, its people annihilated”. Both of them have quietly changed the basic connotation and purpose of Wells’ original TM, reflecting a strong Chinese cultural identity. In the final analysis, this is closely related to modern Chinese people’s multi-faceted and continuous imagination of the ideal future of the nation. Though the dominant force in this process is the linear view of progress and evolution, the anti-evolutionary ideological undercurrent still lurks in the background. The translation of foreign science fiction novels in the late Qing and early Republican period was a powerful reflection of this ideological and cultural background. Although as early as before TM traveled to China, there were already anti-utopian novels such as “Diary of the End”(mo ri ji), which reflected the hesitant tendency of straight-line social progress in the future imagination of modern Chinese people, the ‘arrival’ and translation of Wells’s TM presented a more detailed and specific picture of the “arrival” and translation of this novel. However, the “arrival” and translation of Wells’s TM has presented this skepticism in a more detailed and concrete way. Although Wells’s TM could not be compared with the science fiction novels of Verne and Oshikawa Harunami in the late Qing and early Republican period, the significance of its textual travel should not be ignored. That is, Xinyi’s translation provides a model for intellectual reflection on the theory of social evolution and even the development of science and technology in relation to the human condition and its relationship between the two, and represents the fact that the intellectual community in modern China has entered the folds of the future imagination. Further, it embodies the necessary introspection that the modern Chinese intelligentsia retains on the tenor of the times. The significance of the research in this paper is that it makes an attempt and exploration for the study of the history of ideas in translated literature.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s alternate history novel The Years of Rice and Salt draws on rich Buddhist cosmologies to imagine a history where Europe falls and Asia rises. Buddhist concepts and values such as rebirth, emptiness, and nirvana are intricately woven into the narrative to portray history as cyclical, traumatic, and in need of redemption and transformation. By intertwining Buddhist philosophy with the narrative structure of alternate history, Robinson critiques the limitations inherent in modern and postmodern historical discourses, and offers Buddhist philosophy as a potential solution to the crises of historiography to provide a therapeutic framework for reimagining historical thought. Through its depictions of recurring cycles of reincarnation, the novel illustrates how individuals and collectives confront and navigate the cyclical patterns of fate to shed light on new pathways for spiritual healing and historical understanding. Furthermore, the novel advocates for methodological approaches that emphasizes collective struggle and individual agency as means to transcend the “end of history.” Ultimately, through its unique fusion of Buddhist philosophy and alternate history, the novel reexamines global history that transcends Eurocentric frameworks and offers Buddhist-inspired insights into humanity’s future possibilities.

Recent years have seen the rehabilitation of fiction as a way to map complex futures. In addition to tech leaders’ book recommendations, this trend is exemplified by collaborations between science and creative writing. The Twelve Tomorrows-series at MIT Press (2011–), for example, features thematic future-oriented stories with a strong focus on probable developments to respond to ‘the moral imperative to be optimistic, to attempt to deal with climate change and the challenges it brings in a way that improves our situation, rather than giving in to despair’ (Strahan 2022, 1). On a similar account, Chen Qiufan 陈楸帆 recently teamed up with Kai-fu Lee 李开复, an IT entrepreneur, hoping that by ‘imagining the future through science fiction, we can even step in, make change, and actively play a role in shaping our reality’ (Lee & Chen 2021, xxi). While the two examples advance different agendas, they both place fiction in the backseat, conceding it an educational role or as a means to disseminate awareness of technological advancements.

To concede such a passive role to fiction, however, means to ignore the literary world-building processes that stands at the heart of most non-fictional engagement with the future, notably future foresight and risk assessment. After all, ‘scenario thinking’ continues to inform both statistical and case-scenario predictions, a method first explored by postwar cybernetics research. This type of investigation derives from a genuinely narrative approach, which places hypothetical sequences of events at the heart of its evaluations (Kahn & Wiener 1967; Aepli, Ribaux & Summerfield 2011). Literary imagination shows in the classical questions involved in the risk assessment process: what can go wrong? What are the consequences? On the other hand, the ‘narrative grammar’ of possible worlds, as explored by literary critics, complements the investigative purpose of scenario thinking by asking: what are the normative principles that regulate the reality of the narrated world? What is presented as certain, what as improbable? While obvious differences remain, such as literary studies’ stronger emphasis on perspective and risk analysis’ focus on mitigation and response, there is much room for dialogue between both fields.

Bibliography:

- Aepli, Pierre, Olivier Ribaux and Everett Summerfield. 2011. Decision Making in Policing: Operations and Management (Lausanne: EPFL Press).

- Kahn, Hermann and Anthony J. Wiener. 1967. The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-three Years (London: MacMillan).

- Lee, Kaifu and Qiufan Chen. 2021. AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future (London: Penguin).

- Strahan, Jonathan. 2022. Tomorrow’s Parties: Life in the Anthropocene (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).

This paper conducts a cross-cultural comparison of The Songs of Distant Earth and The Wandering Earth to explore the narratives of "homeland" and the writing of human destiny. Under the classic sci-fi motif of "interstellar migration amidst an apocalyptic crisis," Clarke and Liu Cixin construct distinct "homeland" narratives. The analysis is conducted across three dimensions: technological space, perceptive space, and symbolic space, uncovering differences in technological outlooks, ecological perspectives, and philosophical reflections on the future, rooted in their respective cultural contexts. Clarke’s portrayal of "leaving Earth" envisions an ecological utopia and an optimistic future for humanity, while Liu’s depiction of "wandering with Earth" reflects a profound meditation on apocalyptic anxiety and the darker aspects of human nature. Together, these works highlight the universal value of sci-fi literature in addressing questions of technology, ecology, and human destiny, offering literary insights into humanity's quest to answer the question: "Where is the future of our future?"

Sakyo Komatsu’s iconic science fiction novel “Japan Sinks (Nihon Chinbotsu),” published in 1973, represents an intersection of humanities and science. This paper analyzes Komatsu’s integration of scientific imagination and cultural critique, focusing on the "cultural memory" metaphor through the concept of using cultural relics to save the nation, as well as the novel’s reflection on Japan’s identity within a globalized world.

“Japan Sinks” portrays a dual strategy for survival—one rooted in scientific advancements and another in using cultural relics to save the nation. While advanced technologies enable the accurate prediction of natural disasters, they ultimately fail to prevent Japan’s sinking. This shift in focus from science to cultural artifacts signifies Komatsu’s critique of technological determinism and his exploration of the symbolic role of cultural memory in national and individual identity.

Komatsu’s treatment of science in “Japan Sinks” is marked by ambivalence. On the one hand, he showcases science as a powerful tool for understanding natural phenomena and informing policy decisions. On the other, he questions its sufficiency in addressing human and cultural dimensions of crises. This tension between scientific progress and its limitations is a recurring motif, reflecting Komatsu’s post-war skepticism about Japan’s reliance on technological prowess, arguing for the integration of spiritual and cultural survival strategies. The central theme of using cultural relics to save the nation manifests as a negotiation tool with foreign nations to secure migration for displaced Japanese citizens. The Buddhist statues, symbolic of Japan’s cultural and spiritual heritage, serve as a counterbalance to the dehumanizing forces of technological and economic determinism. Their inclusion in the migration strategy not only secures physical survival but also preserves the essence of Japan’s identity, emphasizing the role of cultural artifacts in sustaining a nation’s soul amidst displacement and globalization.

In summary, Sakyo Komatsu’s “Japan Sinks” offers a compelling synthesis of humanities and science, weaving together themes of cultural memory, technological critique, and global solidarity. The novel serves as both a cautionary tale about the limits of scientific progress and a visionary exploration of how cultural heritage can guide humanity through collective crises. Its enduring relevance lies in its ability to inspire interdisciplinary dialogue and to challenge readers to rethink the interplay between technological innovation and the preservation of human values in an uncertain future.

With the iterative development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, interactive narratives between human and non-human agents in science fiction are profoundly reconstructing the cognitive boundaries of “subjectivity” and “linguistic power”. However, existing research predominantly focuses on ethical philosophy or narratology, lacking linguistic decoding of the cognitive mechanisms underlying meaning negotiation in language interaction. This study integrates the “reality-cognition-language” tripartite model of Embodied Cognitive Linguistics, Conceptual Blending Theory, and Metaphor-Metonymy Theory to explore the cross-agent linguistic cognition negotiation and power reconfiguration mechanisms between humans and non-humans in science fiction narratives. Taking human-AI dialogue excerpts from Kazuo Ishiguro’s soft science fiction, Clara and the Sun, and William Gibson’s cyberpunk classic, Neuromancer, as corpus sources, this research employs a mixed-methods approach combining AntConc for quantitative analysis (e.g., frequency of conditional clauses, emotional vocabulary density) and NVivo for qualitative analysis to extract linguistic features in meaning interactions across agents. By analyzing how non-human agents use linguistic strategies such as metaphor and vague reference to break through anthropocentric cognitive frameworks and reconstruct power dynamics in human-AI interaction, and by deconstructing the ontological foundation of AI language through the lens of embodied cognition, the research critically examines the paradigmatic challenges posed by “disembodied linguistic interaction” in AI narratives to traditional cognitive models of language. Finally, it reveals the cross-agent cognitive mechanisms of meaning negotiation in “human-nonhuman” dialogue. It is hoped that his research provides a methodological paradigm for linguistics-based analysis of science fiction narratives and offers cognitive perspectives for power allocation in human-AI interaction within AI ethics.

This paper examines how “Bye Bye, Disco,” a 2022 live-streamed performance art installation by Chinese band singer Pang Kuan, who practiced self-quarantine on a 98-by-98-inch open platform at a gallery in Beijing, prompts a reconsideration of surveillance in the age of new media technologies. I first discuss how the presentation of everyday life itself can be considered as a reaction to surveillance in conversation with Kafka’s short story “A Hunger Artist.” Then, by comparing this work with performance pieces that did not integrate media technology, such as Marina Abramović’s The House with the Ocean View and Tehching Hsieh’s The Cage, I explore how the moral ambiguity of voyeurism in Pang’s work reflects a shift in surveillance from a top-down mechanism to a pervasive, everyday practice. Drawing on the analysis, an argument of the performer’s self-exposition in front of live-streaming cameras responds to this widespread surveillance by bringing privacy into public discourse. Finally, I consider the context of pandemic-era lockdowns, discussing how digital performance can function both as a means of expression for the masses and as a reinforcement of surveillance in daily life. By examining how new media technology shapes interactions between performer and audience, I argue that livestreaming technology enhances and amplifies this specific performance, enabling it to fulfill the dual function of art as both a form of expression and a medium, which helps to publicly showcase a situation that most people were experiencing during that period and giving a voice to what people want to say but cannot get across themselves.

Renowned for her thematic inquiries into the intersections of identity concerning race, gender and techno-science, the Chinese Canadian writer Larissa Lai demonstrates a profound commitment to social issues facing the entire humankind. This essay analyzes Lai’s novel Salt Fish Girl (2002) as a case of postmodernist fiction marked by a concern with the heist of “consumer society” and some transformative potential within the blighted reality. Focusing on the central motif, fish/fishiness, I propose that the symbol undergoes a process of mystification and demystification, precisely echoing the development of the “consumer society” under hyper-capitalism.

Through a semiotic lens, my thesis explores the significance of fish/fishiness in three stages of modern demystification. Firstly, I argue that the change of fish from a sacred sign to a global commodity epitomizes the gradual establishment of transnational capitalism and the consumer society. Secondly, I examine its realistic references to similar kinds of signs in the book, including the ethnic minority groups and cyborgs, demonstrating how the consumer society has transformed everything into signs. Finally, I argue that rather than criticizing the omnipresent consumerism, Lai takes a step further and unveils its potential and possibility to subvert entrenched notions of singular origin and hierarchical social structures predicated on genetic lineage. By presenting fish/fishiness as a mirror of capitalist progress, this interpretation contributes to a deeper understanding of Salt Fish Girl and aligns with the contemporary reflection on consumerism.

Following the popular tradition of the literary movement of sentimental novel in the eighteenth century, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96) not only ignites a dispute between the advocates of antislavery and the supporters of proslavery by depicting a lively plantation setting but also makes burning tears of self-indulgence from the readers by the story of Uncle Tom globally. Hence, Uncle Tom’s Cabin became one of the best-selling books along with the Bible. However, many critics, including Charles Dickens and James Baldwin, were skeptical about representations of the brutal exploitation of the race. This anxiety about racial atrocity, human benevolence, and faith is undoubtedly Stowe’s contribution to the legacy of the novel of sentiment. This paper examines how Stowe’s sentimental tropes and rhetoric are translated and manipulated by Lin Shu (1852-1924) and his collaborator Wei Yi in their rewriting: A Record of the Black Slaves’ Plea to Heaven (黑奴籲天錄) (1901) in China. Both David Der-wei Wang and Michael Gibbs Hill indicate that the “rhetoric of weeping and lament” played a pivotal role in translation in the late Qing period when the Chinese suffered from the invasions of the various powers. As a translator who couldn’t speak any foreign languages, Lin Shu asked his collaborators to read the story so that he could undertake the task of translation. This procedure is completed repeatedly by “presence” and “disappearance” over and over again: Listen (to the voice of the Other) and translate (for construction of the national identity). This process of translating resonates with Jacques Derrida’s philosophical discussion about expression and communication in Speech and Phenomena, and the role of a translator is regarded as a “listener” in the light of Byung-chul Han’s response to Derrida in The Expulsion of the Other. With his collaborator, voice transforms a distant story into a corporeal experience in a translated work. Lin Shu listened to, felt, and manipulated the pain of poor blacks while he called for patriotic consciousness by translating Stowe's sentimental novel.

This paper explores the construction of female identity through the fetishism of the head and the theme of death in two late 19th-century plays, Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen and Salomé by Oscar Wilde. By comparing the two works, the paper examines how the female protagonists engage in extreme behaviors related to their bodies in an attempt to assert meaning, subjectivity, and self-affirmation. In Salomé, the protagonist's obsession with John the Baptist's severed head and her desire to kiss this object of death demonstrate her fixation on mortality. In Hedda Gabler, Hedda's targeting of the heads of her former lover and current rival with a gun and flame symbolizes her struggle for control and self-destruction. These women construct their identities through actions closely tied to memento mori—the reminder of death—demonstrating an extreme aesthetic of self-destruction as a means of confirming their existence. In this way, death ceases to be merely an end; it becomes a symbol of existence and meaning. The intersection of head fetishism and the death motif reflects the complex emotional landscape of the fin-de-siècle, revealing how women, situated between the constraints of traditional and modern worlds, resist or respond to external pressures through self-destructive acts.

This study evaluates the efficacy of ChatGPT-4, a large language model (LLM), in translating items from the Emirati dialect into English. Recognizing the unique linguistic and cultural features of the Emirati dialect, this research addresses a significant gap in machine translation (MT) resources for low-resource Arabic dialects. Using excerpts from Emirati short stories, the study employs both qualitative and quantitative analyses to assess translation accuracy, word choice appropriateness, linguistic naturalness, syntactic coherence, and clarity. Experts identified 39 lexical items from the Emirati dialect in three online short stories written by novice Emirati writers. The qualitative analysis evaluates the translation challenges posed by the dialect's semantic and cultural nuances and the solutions applied by ChatGPT-4. Additionally, four bilingual raters quantitatively assessed the translated items based on their contextual fit. Results indicate that ChatGPT-4 captures the nuances of the Emirati dialect, demonstrating promising potential as an automated translation tool. The findings underscore ChatGPT-4’s ability to bridge linguistic gaps, offering insights into the future of MT for dialects lacking comprehensive linguistic resources. This research contributes to the broader discourse on AI integration in translation, emphasizing the importance of critically engaging with emerging technologies in the field.

Over the past decades, the development of IoT (Internet of Things) has found its way into literary representations. Studies have focused on how individuals become “thinglike” or adopt characteristics similar to objects due to the vast network that spans across the globe. The question arises: does the interconnectivity of things exacerbate the “thinglikeness” of humans in a world increasingly digitalized, interconnected, and transparent? Drawing on Georg Lukács’ theory of reification, this paper aims to offer a fresh perspective on this ongoing debate by examining the portrayal of networking technology in American author Dave Eggers’ dystopian sci-fi The Circle (2013) and Chinese writer Ge Fei’s latest novel, Deng Chun Tai (《登春台》, 2024). Two novels are set in an American social networking company and an IoT company in Beijing, respectively. Published a decade apart, they offer potential for a comparative analysis insofar as they parallel the evolution of the internet’s capacity for connection. Both fictions depict the extensive influence of highly developed technology beyond their primary settings, hinting at a globalized system that revolves around the powerful corporations they spotlight. In view of Lukács’ notion of reification as human beings’ degradation into things within a capitalist society, this paper explores Eggers’ disclosure of how humans are subject to algorithm, leading to their being treated as mere puppets or robots under panoptic surveillance. As the title insinuates, the complete transparency of everyone’s identity and actions kinetically prefigures IoE (Internet of Everything) as an immense “circle” that confines rather than liberates. The idea of “circle” links this work to Ge Fei’s novel, albeit with a distinct interpretation in the latter. Deng Chun Tai looks into the efficient circulation of things that contrasts the frustrated circulation of affections in human relationships. Reweighting the centre of global technological advancement to present-day China, Ge Fei’s realism enacts a dialectical view of digitalized relationships in a socialist cultural backdrop. While the company in the novel benefits from its sophisticated online system for transporting goods, its employees and leaders seek a backflow to a less alienating life from the highly interconnected yet isolating society. Through the characters’ efforts to reconcile their past and aspirations, the writer underscores their desire to de-reify themselves by reconnecting with lost love, family bonds, and conventions. Resonating with The Circle, this work serves as an ongoing investigation of reification in a radically formulae-oriented world while also proposing potential solutions to de-reification. Currently, criticism of these two works is still extremely rare. This paper will not only add to existing scholarship but also contribute to the exploration of narratives about high-tech corporations as a unique genre that transcends both eastern and western contexts.

Abstract: As for the integration of Chinese and Western poetry, Jiang Weakshui and Bai Hua both have similar judgments: Zhang Zao is the most outstanding poet after Bian Zhilin. Kafka to Phyllis, as Zhang Zao's most accomplished suite of poems, is often ignored. The suite of poems sequentially explores three aspects: the impossible love for Phyllis, the inadequacy of words to express reality, and the paradox towards God, which correspond to the loss of the Holy Spirit, the Son, and the Father in the theological concept of the Trinity. The modern dilemma of finitude caused by the absence of the Absolute is also revealed. In Zhuangzi’s Qiwulun (Discussion on Making All Things Equal), adopted in the poem, the pursuit of the Absolute also falls into an infinite regress. In Kant's criticism of traditional metaphysics, the Absolute, as the foundation of finitude, becomes an invalid concept that the verstand cannot judge, and the classical theory like Christian Order and virtue theory lose their effects in modern times. The possible turning point may still lie in the Trinity: the Holy Spirit has two implications, which are not only about the Son’s love for the Father, but also about the people connected by that love. In Hegel's interpretation, this connection goes beyond the church and becomes the spirit of the people and of history: the Absolute is not isolated from the world, but is itself a self-identical structure for the development of history.

Kubla Khan, as a masterpiece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge born from creative imagination and inspiration from Purchas His Pilgrimage, boasts the mystical images and the harmonious extreme meets. With the title of an ancient Chinese monarch, the poem evokes an idealized vision of China—one that, however, was not unique to Coleridge but rather part of a broader phenomenon in British Romantic poetry. Scholars have discussed consistent idealized image of China in the Romantic poems from political and economic perspectives yet few have provided convincing and thorough arguments regarding the religious and cultural factors. Even among the limited studies, attention is often focused on the disparate personal expressions, primarily attributing the depiction of China to the function of opium, the economical medium which objectively “bridged” the East and the West.

However, the common historical and cultural background of the British Romantic poets constituted a more active and profound role in shaping this collective unconscious imagination, which naturally lends itself to an archetypal analysis of the idealized China. Within this framework, I would demonstrate how the Romantic ecological turning towards nature in the paradise, echoed with the Chuang-tse’s unity of heaven and human; how the spontaneous overflow of personal feeling combined with fancy and imagination, resonated Zen’s epiphany of truth and finally, how the prosperous and harmonious China as “the Other”, was imbued with the shadow of their own projections — a panacea for the chaos in Europe and the construction of Utopia. Meanwhile, their East complex also encompassed the dominion attempt through the illustration of female characters.

Through the archetypal lens, the British Romantic poets transformed China into an ever-lasting heterogeneous symbol within world literature. Thus, investigating the inner cultural motivation of the literary vision within their poems, not only bears relevance in understanding the image of China in the early periods, but also experiments a new avenue of inquiry into Euro-Asian encounters, which extends its far-reaching influences even till today.

This research on science fiction is concerned with the affective consumption that constructs a re-globalised community in a technological environment. Published in 2003, William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition is situated in a post-9/11 consumer society where capitalism’s expansion is intertwined with mass affectivity’s commodification. The protagonist, Cayce Pollard, is an advertising consultant for Blue Ant—a multinational advertising agency, and her work and daily life are surrounded by brands and alternative media that circulate globally. Based on Sarah Ahmed’s notion of ‘affective economies’ and the autonomist Post-Marxism view of ‘economic postmodernisation’, I argue that it is the branding and alternative media in the novel that catalyse consumer affect and community relations reimagine the technologically conditioned reconstruction of the global political and economic order in the aftermath of 9/11. I begin by focusing on the literary strategy of the novel’s emphasis on the country origin of commodity, analysing how the global landscape of branding characterises capital’s exploitation of the affect of the consumer and creates an affective marketplace dominated by the power of Western capital. Considering that the affective consumption of the footage exists in posters’ investment and sharing of emotions, feelings, and desires, as reflected in the novel, I then dissect whether the marginal digital community constructed by alternative media can resist the market logic of capital. I conclude that PR suggests that alternative media situates affective consumption within a framework of de-centralised exploitation, it nonetheless inscribes affective autonomy within the overarching control of corporate globalisation.

My research compares two types of computer viruses and the subsequent transformations of communication and mutual understanding in a work of fiction and a fictional short film.

In Once Again, the third episode of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Hamaguchi Ryusuke imagines a world shaped by the computer virus Xeron, where people cannot use the internet to release any information. Telegrams and physical letters return to everyday life. In this context, two middle-aged women meet in front of Sendai Station and seem to recognize each other as former high school classmates. After a long conversation, one of them begins to doubt who she has met. Eventually, they realize they did not know each other before. However, their accidental encounter offers an opportunity to reflect on their past: they each imagine the other as someone they knew decades ago and express their innermost thoughts. In this process, although the original classmates are absent, the two women are still able to voice their aspirations and regrets. In other words, in a world without modern communication technology, both women use their imaginations to transcend temporal and spatial boundaries, revealing their true feelings face-to-face.

In The Land of Little Rain, a collection of six short stories, the author Wu Ming-yi imagines a global virus named “A Crack in the Cloud,” which can package someone’s data from the internet and deliver the key to the package to someone who knows the owner well. The recipients are able to uncover the unknown pasts of their closest acquaintances, especially when they encounter personal predicaments. Their minds are thus led to history and secrets through imagination. With the key, the protagonists create connections through emotions and aesthetics that transcend modern technology. Although people invent various communication tools and applications, they often cannot fully express their feelings to others. Yet, in these stories, the breakdown of privacy creates space for understanding and empathy.

Both works imagine a postmodern world without reliable modern communication technologies. However, these imaginaries do not predict a future plagued by a crisis of trust. Instead, both viruses aggregate people’s emotions and feelings over time, breaking down the boundary between physical reality and the reality of the heart and mind. Through these accidental encounters, mutual understanding is achieved at turning points of epiphanies.

British writer Francis Spufford's Golden Hill (2016) and Chinese-American writer Rebecca.F.Kuang's Babel (2022) are recent and award-winning novels. At the same time, the authors of the two novels belong to the academic school of writers, who graduated from Cambridge and Oxford respectively. Therefore, both novels are interesting and worthy of literary interpretation. Although Babel is a novel full of magic and legend and Golden Hill strives for realism, they both deal with the translation of mother tongues into English or the preservation of the original appearance of the language, and the two novels respectively show the overseas Chinese or their mixed-race descendants' pursuit of historical issues in England and America in the latter half of the eighteenth century and the first half of nineteenth century. Through a series of actions, such as the self-destruction of the protagonist of Babel and the establishment of a ‘memory exhibition’ for the past, present and future by the character of Golden Hill, this paper attempts to explore the different choices and outcomes and their underlying meanings and problems in cross-continental, cross-racial and cross-cultural conflict, dialogue and consultation.

Chinese American literature has often reimagined Chinatown, an ethnic urban enclave of Chinese people located outside China, but some writings, particularly memoirs, have been criticised for promoting the total assimilation of ethnic minorities. To explore how the Chinatown motif has evolved in the 21st century, this study offers the first comparative and narratological analysis of Lisa See’s Shanghai Girls (2009) and Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown (2020), investigating how they complicate the illusion of racial assimilation and reveal the performative nature of ethnic identity through gendered first- and second-person perspectives. Set primarily in Chinatowns, a literal and metaphorical stage, these novels trace pivotal moments in Chinese American history, from the detention of Chinese immigrants at Angel Island in the early 20th century to their continued confinement within Chinatowns in the later half of the century. Within this historical backdrop, the novels critique how white American norms of ‘Chineseness’ shape and discipline Chinese American performativity. This study argues that, through different narrative perspectives and gendered experiences, these new-century novels challenge the assimilationist ideals of earlier Chinatown memoirs, deconstruct dominant norms within an ethnic context, and evoke varied affective responses from readers. In doing so, this research opens new theoretical spaces for exploring performative identity and highlights the interpretative possibilities of narrative perspectives in representing performance.

Digital technologies have profoundly reshaped literature, not only transforming traditional reading habits but also introducing innovative forms of narrative creation and consumption. Audiobooks, as a convergence of oral tradition and digital media, serve as a prime example of this evolution by reintegrating auditory storytelling into the fabric of contemporary literary experience. This research explores how the production of audiobooks redefines the boundaries of literature and its reception in the digital age.

Drawing on examples from leading audiobook platforms such as Himalaya and Dragonfly FM, this study analyses how professional-generated content (PGC), user-generated content (UGC), and professionally-user-generated content (PUGC) intersect in audiobook creation. Meanwhile, advances in AI-driven text-to-speech (TTS) technology have enabled the large-scale production of audiobooks, making them more accessible to diverse audiences across platforms like WeChat Reading and Jinjiang Reading. While these innovations democratize literature, they also raise critical questions about the erosion of creative plurality and the potential alienation of audiences through algorithmic standardization.

This research addresses the tension between human-mediated and AI-generated audiobook production. Traditional audiobooks rely on performative interpretations to convey emotional depth and artistic nuance, enriching the narrative experience. In contrast, AI-produced audiobooks prioritize efficiency and scalability, potentially diminishing the diversity of storytelling and reducing the act of reading to a commodified exchange. Furthermore, algorithmic recommendation systems employed by platforms influence user behaviour, limiting agency and transforming literary consumption into a digitally controlled experience.

Key questions explored include: How does AI-mediated audiobook production impact the transmission of literary and artistic value? Can AI replicate the performative and emotional depth traditionally conveyed by human narrators? Does the integration of AI foster "hyper-social interactions" that enhance audience engagement, or does it exacerbate the alienation inherent in technologically mediated experiences?

By examining the implications of intelligent audiobook production, this study contributes to the discourse on literature in the digital age, particularly the interplay between technology, creativity, and audience agency.

In the context of the intermedia narrative and cultural integration, the virtual world of video games has three levels of "crossing boundaries" based on the existence of literariness, that is, crossing the boundary of the video games themselves (Infinite Possibilities): The first part discusses the relationship between media convergence and “literariness”. This synergy between various media platforms opens new vistas for storytelling and engagement. Media convergence deeply affects contemporary literature and makes "literariness" broadly possible and ubiquitous. The second part explains that in the context of convergent culture, literariness is possible to exist as a "story-universe" in video games. The open-world structure inherent in many video games cultivates environments rich with infinite narrative possibilities, which makes the "story-universe" (with infinite possibilities at the fictional level) possible (also due to the parasitism of literariness). The third part discusses the notion of otaku and “infant-universe”. This concept was first proposed by Hong Kong urban new generation writer Dong Qizhang in the three-part novel "Time History. Dumb Porcelain Light". The “infant-universe" is born from the limitations and possibilities of life" and "between reality and imagination", "opening a gap of possibilities" for real life, so that life can "walk to the edge of infinity". "Infant-universe" boldly blurs the line between fiction and reality，which means a world parallel to reality with infinite possibilities. The unique perspectives of committed otakus, coupled with the "circular reversible" nature of contemporary existence, facilitate the realization of "infant-universe" (at the real level) in our actual lives. Therefore, as a form of video games that is deeply mixed with literariness, they have become the most profound existence with the most possibilities and uncertainties in the “kaleidoscope” of media convergence, while also having a profound impact on the real world.

From the ubiquitous "literariness" to the "story-universe" and finally to the "infant-universe", this article creatively sorts out a possible path for the coexistence of video games and literature in the context of a convergent culture and the heights that can be achieved. The three levels represent the three stages of the "crossing of boundaries" of video games. If the third stage can be achieved on a large scale, the cognition of the material world, time and the universe may be rewritten again.

It is not novel for literature to be viewed as a ‘composite’ art or medium, which has different arts, media, and modes of representation within it. In literary studies, multimodal fiction is studied as one of the manifestations of this idea, and the multimodal novel is understood as a novel that integrates nonverbal modes of meaning-making, such as, e.g. photographs, maps, handwritten letters, etc., into its narrative discourse (Hallet 2018, 26). The multimodal novel has been conventionally conceived as a printed book, since the genre is believed to actively rely on nonverbal textual elements when conveying narrative details (Wagoner 2014, 2). But what would it mean for a multimodal novel to be realised by means of another technical medium, when its core practice is to utilise the conventions of the print novels in new ways?

In this paper, I examine how multimodal novels, which are remediated as audiobooks, engage with nonverbal textual elements that they rely on in their printed forms. Are the narrative details – that are based on nonverbal modes of meaning-making in printed books – modified, left out, or replaced by other modes of meaning-making in audiobooks? Do multimodal novels become monomodal when they get transformed into audiobooks? Or should audiobooks not be viewed as a medium that limits the possibilities to convey narrative information of printed multimodal novels?

Considering the fact that all novels are multimodal, I start the paper by defining the multimodal novel, proposing different degrees of narrative details’ dependence on nonverbal modes of meaning-making, that is, whether they are inherent elements of or complimentary tools for the narrative construction. I then differentiate novels as audiobooks and printed novels as separate media (according to Lars Elleström’s model of media’s modalities, modes, and qualifying aspects (2014)) to exemplify possible modal changes that printed multimodal novels (of different degrees of narratives’ dependence on nonverbal modes of meaning-making) can undergo when being remediated as auditory texts.

I proceed with the analysis of several multimodal novels – “Extremely Loud and Incredibely Close” by J. Safran Foer (2005), “The Raw Shark Texts” by S. Hall (2007), “Night Film” by M. Pessl (2013), “S” written by D. Dorst and conceived by J. J. Abrams (2013) – in their printed and auditory manifestations. These primary texts may be argued to be not “suitable” for the audiobook format as they heavily rely on the materiality of the medium of printed novel and, hence, serve as curious examples to demonstrate how audiobooks transform the multimodal narratives of printed books. I conclude that multimodal novels as auditory texts not only remain multimodal narratives but also give researchers another reason to view audiobooks as not a kind of remediation but an independent medium (Have and Pederson 2021, 214), contributing to the ongoing discussion of the status of audiobooks in media terms.

How do New Materialism and intermedial studies reshape traditional literary criticism within memory studies? This presentation addresses this question by shifting the focus from trauma theory to material processes and technologies of mediation. I will examine how "El clan Braniff" (2018), an intermedial novel by Chilean author Matías Celedon, engages with Chile’s dictatorial past through a montage of judiciary records, analogue slide images, and late-1970s visual advertising. I will interpret this novel as a formal experiment in what Fuller and Weizman term “investigative aesthetics” (2021), fostering an “expanded state of aesthetic alertness” to the infrastructures transforming social reality and the acceleration of mediatization, described by Andrew Hoskins as the intensified “impact of the media upon processes of social change so that everyday life is increasingly embedded in the mediascape.”

The novel borrows its title from the 1970s U.S based Braniff airline, which it exposes as part of an international network of political persecution, arms and drug trafficking tied to Pinochet’s regime, remnants of the Nazi elite and Latin American cartels. By discentering character-driven narrative with a documentarian emphasis on infrastructure, the novel demands a materialist reading, as it frames historical violence through the logistics of commercial aviation rather than personal trauma. The juxtaposition highlights the dependence of the Chilean Army’s para-legal networks on commercial jets as the iconic technology of late-capitalist globalization (Vanessa Schwartz). Moreover, this also suggests how political repression across Latin America paved the way for such a new stage of capitalist expansionism to take off.

Further, I analyze how "El clan Braniff" incorporates a history of Braniff’s visual branding to establish a continuity between its sleek air travel marketing and the deregulated transnational circulation of capital. The novel’s intermedial strategy underscores how corporate branding masked a geopolitical reality where tourism and privatization intersected with covert counter-insurgency.

Finally, I analyze how the novel redefines fiction’s role in historical recollection. Contextualizing its plot around a real case of political assassination, it speculates from the perspective of accomplices who were not submitted to trial, narrating their disappearance within the blind spots of justice. By incorporating a collection of found analogue slides as part of its narrative, "El clan Braniff" stresses the epistemic opacity of images and the limits of historiographic and judicial knowledge. By doing so, the novel demonstrates fiction’s unique potential to offer at least a speculative counter-history of State terrorism—one that history struggles to articulate fully. However, such counter-history would seem to require pushing the boundaries of “literariness“ towards an intermedial and materialist approach.

Amongst the many genres in the lyric mode, the intent to lament sets the tone for the much-anthologised literary forms – elegy, monody and threnody, to name a few. This paper shall attempt to depict the relation between the performativity of genres and the construction of grief found in the act of using language, beyond the temporal and spatial boundaries of the European literary system, in the primary texts – Amrita Pritam’s 'Ajj Aakhaan Waris Shah Nu' ('Today I Invoke Waris Shah') and in Usha Ganguli’s dramatization of Mahasweta Devi’s 'Rudali'. Despite having residual elements of an ode in its title, Amrita Pritam’s 'Ajj Aakhaan Waris Shah Nu' ('Today I Invoke Waris Shah') emerges as a lyric of lament, instead of a lyric of celebration/glorification, due to the difference in its intentionality and aesthetic reception. Further, the use of intertextuality is exemplified in the invocation of Waris Shah to lament for the “heers” (daughters) and the land of Punjab during the time of Partition. Simultaneously, the intermediality in Usha Ganguli’s dramatization of Mahasweta Devi’s 'Rudali' offers the voices of the “Rudalis”–women who cry at funerals for a living–the space to disclose as well as claim the performance of their expression of grief, both through language and their bodies which is exhibited in the act of beating their bosoms and breaking their bangles-a conventional sign of widowhood in the language-culture system the text is located in. Although the change is in the mode–from narrative to dramatic, that is, the novel 'Rudali' written by Mahasweta Devi in Bengali to the play of same name written by Usha Ganguli in Hindi, respectively–the intent to lament manifests itself in the poesis of grief in the performance of the Rudalis and suggests the possibility of reading the text as a lyric. A close reading of the primary texts in this paper, therefore, challenges the canonical approach towards the literary historiography of genres with the aim to extend the horizon of expectations through a phenomenological understanding of genres with respect to plurality and relationality.

Abstract: The Bildungsroman Until I Find You by contemporary American writer John Irving unfolds with Jack Burns’ tumultuous journey to uncover the mystery of his father’s prolonged absence. Set against the backdrop of a turbulent society, the narrative depicts the struggles and explorations of an individual in search of the answer to “Who am I?” Jack's twisted family relationships plunge him into a state of self-loss from a young age, and his quest for his father becomes his proactive response to the emotional and identity crises he faces. This journey aids him in rediscovering his true self and reflects Irving's profound contemplation on the relationship between the “self” and “others”— the discovery of the father ("you") is essential to Jack's self-discovery ("I") . The “you” in the novel’s title refers not only to the father Jack has long been looking for but also to the true self he has been pursuing. Through an analysis of Jack’s growth process, it becomes evident that the restoration of one’s true self is not achieved by erasing painful memories but rather by confronting and embracing all experiences, thereby shaping a complete, rich, and authentic self.

Both in the area of Walden and Hunan province, water has witnessed life derived from it circulate continuously and maintain its original form despite the alternation of seasons and recurrence of historical events. As a special archetype, water carries the collective memories of human civilization, which symbolizes life and circulation in many primeval myths and legends east and west. Both Northrop Frye and Jung took water as an important archetypal image related to life and circulation. This research will adopt the archetypal criticism theory by Frye and the collective unconsciousness theory by Jung to explore the archetype of water, which symbolizes the circulation of life and carries the human collective unconsciousness in both Chinese and western culture. This research will also analyze the difference of water archetype in Chinese and western myths, in the aim of enhancement to mutual learning among civilizations.

In 1973, when Richard Nixon accepted a custom-made LP titled Thank You, Mr. President—a gift from Country Music Association members under the leadership of Tex Ritter—it signaled the irrevocable fusion of country music with conservative politics. But this 15-track album did more than commemorate a presidency; it authenticated an ideological alliance, transforming a sociocultural flirtation into a permanent union, one whose reverberations would shape the genre’s memory landscape for decades to come.

This event, which I contend officiated the “arranged marriage” between the country music genre and conservative populism, symbolized far more than a gesture of political allegiance—it sounded a moment wherein the genre’s authenticity was officially co-opted and realigned to sing a conservative narrative. The presentation of this LP not only solidified country music’s future promoting right-wing jeremiads, but also strategically reimagined its past, anchoring the genre’s identity to a lyrically selective and exclusionary version of American cultural memory. The moment of exchange between the commander-in-chief and music city marked a definitive point in time in which public memory and authenticity were mobilized as rhetorical resources, carefully molding the contours of national identity politics.

To fully understand the implications of this deliberate conservative Nixonian alignment, I first turn to the broader rhetorical frameworks that shaped this cultural shift. By examining public memory as a lens, I will uncover how such moments rhetorically function as gateways for the reconstitution of collective identity.

Then, I will survey competing understandings of authenticity to argue it as a rhetorical construct rather than an inherent quality. In doing so, I argue that the Nixonian turn in country music redefined what it meant to be “authentically” American within the country genre. This authenticity was selectively framed, forgetting moments of departure and aligning it with conservative, traditionalist values—a process I term rhetorical amnesia. To further explore these dynamics, I employ my framework of rhetorical counter-mapping, which I use to chart how country music’s historical trajectories were redirected to serve the Nixonian agenda. This process of ideological remapping, grounded in selective memory, re-examines how dominant cultural narratives erase competing histories and construct singular remembrances and formations of the American experience. A brief historical overview will trace what led to, and enabled, the Nixonian turn. Thereafter, I will examine artists, songs, and rhetorics that challenge the construction of what an authentic American identity really means.

Modernismo is often considered the first authentic literary expression of the Americas as Juan Antonio Bueno Rodríquez underlines in the introduction to Azul (1888), the first important work of the movement penned by Rubén Darío (1867-1916). Darío’s fascination with the East is manifested in the prólogue he wrote in De Marsella a Tokio. Sensaciones de Egipto, la India, la China y el Japón (1906) of his friend Enrique Gómez Carrillo's travel chronicle of the East.

Rubén Darío, considered the father of Modernismo movement, starts to dialogues with himself while writing about Japan, as if the truth he is writing about Japan are the genuine truths, even though he could not visit Japan or the East in his life-time. His poetic travels to the East, in particular to Japan, are as visual as Gomez Carillo’s physical travels. But how come someone travels to a far land, without having to visit physically? What are the roles of such untravelled travels in the formation of self-reflections in modernista poets and writers? The travel chronicles of Goméz Carillo and the poetic travels of Darío opens up a whole new avenue to explore, in particular between Latin America and the East. Given that, Latin America is often considered outside the West, the place of distorted oriental imagination as criticized by Edward Said (1935-2003) in his seminal work Orientalism (1978). In this paper I would like to examine these two notions of travel in Darío and Carillo, and to explore the image of the East that they provide

In the field of comparative literature studies, the French school and the American School, as the two main schools, have formed the relations of mutual competition and mutual influence based on their own unique theoretical frameworks and research methods. The French school emphasizes empirical research, which is widely recognized in the academic circle, while the American School is famous for its aesthetic research methods. Over time, this dualistic dichotomy between positivism and aesthetics, between French and American, has become a common understanding in comparative literature textbooks. However, with the development of comparative literature research, this simplified classification model has its limitations. In fact, empirical criticism and aesthetic criticism are not unique to one school, the French school also adopts aesthetic criticism, and the American school also pays attention to the empirical method, the two approaches in comparative literature research are integrated and shared. This shift reveals the complexity and pluralism of comparative literature research methodology and its transcendence over traditional classification models.

Against the backdrop of the Cold War,McCarthyism and the Cold War containment policy instigated a heightened sense of public sensitivity and panic regarding the underlying violations and deviant behaviors.As the cultural context trended towards popularization,it was inevitably and closely intertwined with regulatory discourses,which were disseminated through medical fields such as psychiatry.Richard Yates,an American writer,by focusing on the issue of mental illness in the cultural context from the 1950s to the 1960s,revealed the degradation of the middle class's subject power in the post-war American cultural narrative.In Yates's works,the mentally ill are depicted as malleable symbols,representing the public's anxiety and challenging and polysemous concepts.These characters,often referred to as "Foucaultian madmen,"diverge from the previous stagnant "simulacra" and are instead positioned as the other within Deleuze's "becoming" context.Through absolute freedom and acts of destruction,they subvert the implicit social regulations that govern them.While confronting the suspension of "bare life,"they compel readers to reevaluate the general medical premises represented by psychiatry.

On this basis,Yates' novel in different periods corresponded to the phased characteristics of the development of mental illness treatment in the United States,providing a clear perspective on the ever-changing mental health diagnosis methods in post-war America.In his early novels,Yates revealed the transformation process of the psychoanalytic discipline from experiencing a short-lived peak in the late 1950s to gradually declining in the early 1960s by depicting the disadvantaged position of women in the psychoanalysis and treatment system.This perspective is rooted in the practical needs of post-war medical care and cost-saving in medical expenses,as well as the continuous attention of the media and the film industry to "mental illness".He thus criticized the legitimacy and effectiveness of this discipline from the perspective of the private sphere.The exposure of the poor conditions in state-run mental hospitals by Life and CBS in the 1960s,and Kennedy's vigorous promotion of institutional reform for mental illness,prompted Yates to shift his focus to the public sphere in his later works.By capturing the psychological states and distinctive experiences of the protagonists,he made a thorough evaluation of institutionalized treatment services within the national public sphere from two aspects:the spatial power mechanism and the delayed-onset harm of custodial treatment.Yates' works rendered mental illness and its treatment as crucial components of body metaphor,revealing how individuals break free from coercion and bondage in the context of “impotentiality”.Consequently,a brand-new dialogue space was formed.While deconstructing the futile pursuit of regulation,the text also explores the human cost associated with the harmonious operation of a democratic society.