Much of the interest in science fiction within China is now driven by film and television companies, say writers and editors. China’s fast-growing media and entertainment industry is already worth about $180 billion, and companies are eager to capitalize on the burgeoning enthusiasm for sci-fi stories. A September 2016 article in Chinese outlet Today’s Headlines speaks of a “science fiction film investment fever.” It mentions that 85 sci-fi related film projects were undertaken in China in the first eight months of 2016 alone.
Hao Jingfang works as an economic researcher for the China Development Research Foundation think tank, so her research informs and inspires her writing.
“Half of the theme [of my writing] concerns social systems, their history and future development. The other half concerns philosophical aspects, such as human agency and willpower,” Hao says.
For example, her award-winning novelette Folding Beijing addresses the inequality perpetuated by the social and economic system. The story takes place in a futuristic Beijing that is divided into three time dimensions. Protagonist Lao Dao travels illegally between dimensions to raise school fees for his adopted daughter. The story idea stemmed from a conversation Hao had with a taxi driver in Beijing, who had to spend a whole night queueing to get his child into kindergarten.
The conspicuous successes of Liu Cixin and Hao have made Ken Liu the unofficial cheerleader for Chinese science fiction on the global stage. This status will only be enhanced by the recently released Invisible Planets, an anthology of short stories compiled and edited by Liu, from some of China’s leading science-fiction authors.
While grappling with cutting-edge technological development is nothing new, in science fiction or life, what distinguishes China from the rest of the world is the sheer scale and speed of that change. “The industrial advances that took centuries in Western nations have occurred in roughly 30 years,” he says. “Within the space of two generations, you have families where the parents lived an existence essentially like the 19th century and their children are now in Beijing working at some of the most advanced technological companies in the world.”
India has always been in the back seat when it comes to a literary-magazine culture. In fact, Brooklyn borough of New York boasts of more literary magazines than the whole of India.
But lately a host of new digital ventures are trying to change that.
Much like acclaimed literary magazines such as The Paris Review, The New Yorker and London Review of Books, these new online lit-magazines are named after cities or regions -- The Bombay Review, The Bangalore Review, The Madras Mag, Mithila Review, etc.
Visually appealing, these magazines publish high quality work – art, essays, fiction, non- fiction, poetry – merging genres, forms and realities.
शहर का किनारा. उसे छोड़ते ही भारतीय देहात का महासागर शुरू हो जाता था.वहीं एक ट्रक खड़ा था. उसे देखते ही यकीन हो जाता था, इसका जन्म केवल सड़कों के साथ बलात्कार करने के लिए हुआ है...
Corner of the city. The ocean of Indian villages began just beyond.Right there stood a truck. To see it was to be certain that it was birthed only to commit rape with roads...
“If I’m going to panhandle, I’m going to do it on the richest street in the world.”---[Eugene], who works on Wall Street.
Downtown Manhattan panhandlers use some of the most valuable land in the US, but they pay nothing for using it, and they have no legal right to exclude anyone else from using it... But how panhandlers solve the land allocation problem is an open question...
The paradox is that while panhandlers in general have low credibility, their livelihoods depend on having high credibility, since donors have no obvious way of learning, even ex post, whether their donations accomplished the intended purpose. Panhandlers are like used car salesmen whose customers never get to take possession of the cars they buy; they just get reports from the salesmen about how well the cars are supposed to be running. It’s amazing that panhandlers can make any money at all.
Our working definition of panhandling is asking passersby for money for oneself in a public place without offering anything of ostensible value In return. We therefore exclude musicians (however awful), trinket vendors, mendicant nuns and friars, solicitors for recognized charities, and the costumed characters like the Naked Cowboy and Weedman who pose with tourists for a fee.
Since 2000, men in their 20s without a bachelor's degree are working considerably less and spending far more time engaged in leisure activities, which overwhelmingly means playing video games. Over the same time frame, this group of men has also grown more likely to be single, to have no children, and to live with parents or other family members.
The surprising thing about the stereotypical aimless young man, detached from work and society, playing video games in his parents' basement: He's actually happier than ever.
The economy has rebounded since the great recession, and national unemployment now sits below 5 percent. But that figure only counts people who are actively seeking work. Even as the unemployment rate has dropped, labor force participation—the number of people who either work or want to work—has dwindled.
You might think that this would be demoralizing. A life spent unemployed, living at home, without romantic prospects, playing digital time wasters does not sound particularly appealing on its face.
Yet this group reports far higher levels of overall happiness than low-skilled young men from the turn of the 21st century. In contrast, self-reported happiness for older workers without college degrees fell during the same period. For low-skilled young women and men with college degrees, it stayed basically the same.
Research has consistently found that long-term unemployment is one of the most dispiriting things that can happen to a person. Happiness levels tank and never recover. One 2010 study by a group of German researchers suggests that it's worse, over time, for life satisfaction than even the death of a spouse. What video games appear to do is ease the psychic pain of joblessness—and to do it in a way that is, if not permanent, at least long-lasting.
... men are more likely to exhibit extremes of character and behavior, both positive and negative. A whole generation of men obsessively playing video games during their prime decades of life may not be ideal, but most would agree that it is preferable to riots.
Even the most open-ended games tend to offer a sense of progress and direction, completion and commitment. In other words, they make people happy—or at least happier, serving as a buffer between the player and despair. Video games, you might say, offer a sort of universal basic income for the soul.
"It's a simulation of being an expert," Wolpaw says. "It's a way to fulfill a fantasy." That fantasy, ultimately, is one of work, purpose, and social and professional success.
Sharma, in an interview before he passed away, said that he believed pulp fiction would come back in a big way through television and film. And it makes sense, because while the reader is upwardly mobile in his or her aesthetic pursuits, and the marketing model shows no signs of evolving, only the visual can embody the audacity of a pulp novel’s opening, like that of Sharma’s Vardi Wala Gunda:
लाश ने आँखे खोल दी. ऐसा लगा जैसे लाल बल्ब जल उठे हैं.
(tr. The corpse opened its eyes. It felt like red bulbs being switched on.)
The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts .... He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must be entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood, as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth as a politician.
