Chi Ta-wei

Chi Ta-wei is a Taiwanese author and scholar whose novel Membrane (1995) — published when he was just twenty-two — is a landmark of Taiwanese queer science fiction: a lyrical, haunting meditation on the body, identity, and transformation set in a posthuman future. Translated into English by Ari Larissa Heinrich in 2021, it arrived to wide acclaim and introduced international readers to a Taiwanese SF tradition that had long existed outside their awareness.

Chi is also a scholar of queer theory and science fiction studies at National Chengchi University, and his critical work on gender and sexuality in Taiwanese literature has been as influential as his fiction. He represents a generation of Taiwanese writers who found in science fiction a space to think about identity with a freedom that realism could not always accommodate.