That We May Live: Speculative Chinese Fiction

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Speculative fiction from China and Hong Kong that uses its invented futures to talk about the present — urbanization that devours memory, propaganda that reshapes desire, sexuality that the state would prefer didn't exist. The stories range from near-future realism to full-blown surrealism, united by a willingness to let strangeness do the political work that realism sometimes can't. Edited by Yan Ge and Dorothy Tse, the collection introduces English readers to writers who are redefining what Chinese speculative fiction can be — less interested in technological spectacle than in the quiet ways power reshapes everyday life. Stories that prove the most dangerous fiction is the kind that makes the familiar look as strange as it actually is.