Chinese sci-fi writer beats Stephen King for top fiction prize
“A futuristic tale of urban life in Beijing has won a Chinese novelist a top international prize for science fiction, beating out heavyweight Stephen King for the honour.
Hao Jingfang, 32, won the Hugo Award for best novelette with Folding Beijing, a year after another Chinese writer, Liu Cixin, won the best novel prize for The Three-Body Problem, Xinhua reported on the weekend.
Receiving her award in Kansas City, Missouri, Hao said she was not surprised she had won but had also been prepared to lose.
“In Folding Beijing, I have raised a possibility for the future and how we face the challenges of automated production, technological advances, unemployment and economic stagnation,” she said.
Hao said her book offered a solution to those challenges, but she hoped the situations she described would not become reality.
Hao is from Tianjin, and graduated with a physics degree from Tsinghua University in 2006.
The Hugo Awards, established in 1953, are regarded as the highest honour in science fiction and fantasy. They are named after Hugo Gernsback who was the founder of the American science fiction magazineAmazing Stories.”
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Congratulations Hao Jingfang!
You can read Hao Jingfang’s Hugo prize-winning novelette Folding Beijing here at Uncanny Magazine
