This post in the “Ten Commandments of Science Fiction Films” thread by oshmaker got me ter thinkin’:
That appears to be the case. We obviously know what would happen if the US went to space -being one of two up there (France doesn’t count!) and the only one of the moon (or so they want us to think) sure helps- but it is a mystery (for me, at least) how the East would do it. That is because SF is a very Western genre in origin and popularity. Most books/movies are made in the United States or countries in western civilization; Russia is iffy. Most people are not even aware of other cultures’ SF. For example, I’ll admit the only reason I know about any Russian SF is because of the remake of Solaris. China’s space program looks promising and could just maybe do something interesting in the future. So, I’m curious to hear from Greater Minds than I on the idea of the East (and it’s different culture, technology, and way of looking at things than the West) conquering space and what a freakin’ mind trip for a movie that would be.
This reminds me of a monumentally lousy film I saw once, Women of the Prehistoric Planet, where the non Earthlings were all plyed by Chinese actors. It was apparently imported to Europe by some Dutch company and on the cover there were promotion texts in English, Dutch and Swedish. The Swedish part, however, must have been written by a Dutchman with no knowledge of the lanuage whatsoever, so the Dutch title Vrouwen van het prehistorisch planet had transmogrified into Fruar från en prehistorisk planet, which I refrain from translating into English as it is first class gibberish.
There’s a series of science fiction novels which revolves around the Chinese who’ve taken over the world and begin expanding into space. I’m attempting to find the books as I write this, but I’m not having much luck as I don’t remember the author’s name, nor any of the book titles. I only read the first book of the series, it was well-written, and had some interesting concepts in it. I didn’t bother with the rest of the books, however, because in the Afterward, the author detailed what was to follow and I didn’t like the path that some of the characters were going to be taking, so I didn’t bother with the others. If I can find my copy, or remember the name of the series, I’ll post it later.
William H. Keith, Jr. has also written a few books in which the Japanese set up interplanetary colonization. It’s been a while since I’ve read them, so I don’t remember the details, but I can get the titles for you in a day or two, not to mention the mindset behind them.
I doubt that even the Chinese could “conquer” space. I mean, what is going to surrender? And when space does surrender, will it say so in Chinese or English?
DrFidelius
Cordwainer Smith’s The Year the People Fell
I remember that. The thrust was that the colonisation was not done by organised military or civilian teams, but by a widespread mass drop of rural peasants with very little equipment, the rationale being that they were used to finding shelter and food in poor terrain. (Venus was, in this case, assumed to be Earthlike, but wet and inhospitable).
In Clarke’s 2010, the Americans, Russians, and Chinese are portrayed as being more-or-less equal competitors in the space program. The story focuses primarily on the joint Russian-American mission (Russian ship and captain, but several American crewmembers), and it looks at first like the Chinese are going to be left in the dust, but it turns out that that’s just because they’ve done a better job of keeping their plans secret.
But anyway, people have mentioned Western writers who talked about the Chinese in space, but I think the question is- does China itself have liturature concerning mankind’s role in space.
We know what our fantasies are. We got a lot of them from science fiction- and I think they played a major role in getting us into space in the first place.
So I think it’s an interesting question. As China goes into space, what are their…um…paridigms?
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