Han Song: China's Sci-Fi Visionary Confronts a Changing Nation and His Own Mortality

Science fiction typically projects future possibilities, yet the works of Han Song, one of China's foremost authors in the genre, often read like recent history come to life.

In 2000, Han penned a novel envisioning the destruction of the World Trade Center. Years later, in 2016, he imagined a world transformed into an enormous hospital, with medical personnel retrieving patients from their homes — an eerie parallel to China’s experience during the coronavirus pandemic.

Now 59, Han reflects that his earlier predictions did not fully capture the depth of darkness or strangeness that modern life would eventually embody.

“I believed I was simply writing fiction, assuming these things could never happen,” he said of his novel “Hospital,” where society reduces everyone to patients. “Yet it actually came true a few years later. This is a case where reality has become more surreal than science fiction.”

For over forty years, Han has explored how the unimaginable can become reality. By day, he works as a journalist at China’s state news agency, chronicling the country’s rapid modernization. By night, he crafts stories grappling with the disorienting effects of that transformation.

His narratives are often bleak, graphic, and grotesque. Some examine the cultural divide between China and the West, such as in the short story “The Passengers and the Creator,” where Chinese characters worship an enigmatic deity named Boeing. Others imagine China overtaking the United States as the global superpower, only to face its own decline soon after.

While elements like space travel and artificial intelligence appear in his stories, Han’s focus lies less on the science and more on human reactions to disruptive technologies and their societal impact.

He has remarked that contemporary Chinese science fiction is particularly concerned with exploring human suffering.

This fascination is deeply personal. Long plagued by health issues, Han has faced worsening physical decline in recent years, leading him to question medicine’s and science’s ability to enhance human life.

Acknowledging the sensitivity of his stance, Han spoke during an interview in Beijing, where he lives with his wife. He is slender and soft-spoken, his serious demeanor contrasting with the dark humor woven through his work.

“According to official narratives, there is only one predetermined future — plans laid out from 2035 to 2050 and beyond, leading to ‘peak socialism,’” he explained, referencing China’s government development plans. “But in science fiction, countless possibilities exist.”

The Chinese government has embraced science fiction as a symbol of technological progress and international stature. President Xi Jinping is known to admire Jules Verne, the French author of classics like “Journey to the Center of the Earth.”

China’s state film authorities have committed to fostering sci-fi cinema as a form of soft power. Among the country’s notable cultural exports is Liu Cixin’s novel “The Three-Body Problem,” which has been adapted into a Netflix series.

Han’s work aligns more with an earlier conception of science fiction in China. In the early 20th century, intellectuals translated Verne’s stories with the hope of exposing China’s shortcomings and inspiring reform.

Han is not a dissident. He has received China’s highest awards for science fiction and served as president of the national science fiction association. He also holds a senior journalist position at the state news agency, which portrays China’s achievements as inevitably triumphant.

This apparent contradiction may stem from the relatively open era in which Han began writing.

Born in Chongqing during the Cultural Revolution — a decade marked by violent upheaval — Han grew up when science was denounced as bourgeois and universities were closed. After Mao’s death, however, China’s leaders committed to modernization. Han’s father, a journalist, brought home popular science books and magazines that captivated the young Han.

At university, Han studied English and journalism, reading Western novels such as “Slaughterhouse Five” and “Gravity’s Rainbow,” alongside science courses. He published his first novel in 1991, the same year he joined the state news agency, where his supervisors supported his fiction writing, some sharing his interest in sci-fi.

Back then, science fiction’s niche status allowed writers to subtly challenge censorship, often embedding social critique in their stories.

Han’s distinctive style tends to avoid overt political statements, instead evoking profound ambivalence about China’s global position.

One tale, “My Country Doesn’t Dream,” appears to criticize China’s relentless pursuit of development, which lifted living standards but fostered corruption and social issues. The protagonist, Xiao Ji, learns from an American spy about a government technology enabling people to work while asleep.

Yet, Xiao Ji grows wary of the American’s moral superiority, suspecting hidden motives behind his revelations.

A translator of Han’s work notes that his stories invite multiple interpretations, revealing both the humanity and darker impulses within people.

Han estimates that about half of his writings remain unpublished in China due to censorship, including “My Country Doesn’t Dream,” though it circulates widely online.

Recently, Han’s focus has shifted inward, turning to his own physical decline.

On Weibo, where he has over a million followers, Han has openly chronicled the onset of dementia and other ailments. Sharing photos of books, meals, and daily moments, he candidly describes forgetting subway companions or losing bladder control.

He approaches his own deterioration with the same psychological curiosity he applies to his characters. After enduring cold weather to buy food and feeling exhausted, he reflected, “People often sacrifice their bodies and souls just to survive.”

Han views Weibo as a platform to continue writing when fiction becomes too taxing. He has also experimented with DeepSeek, a Chinese AI chatbot, to help refine drafts or generate stories. Though initially discouraged when the AI sometimes outperformed him, he now embraces it as a tool—akin to the human brain, which also requires sharpening.

While human frailty is a recurring theme in Han’s work, so too is a subtle optimism about the power of writing itself.

Beginning in 2015, Han posted cryptic references to a mysterious seven-year countdown on Weibo. Fans speculated he might unveil a new novel or announce retirement at its end.

In 2022, Han revealed that years earlier a fortune teller had predicted his fate only until that year.

With his health declining in step with the countdown, Han pondered whether this suggested fate’s existence or undiscovered scientific laws.

“There are no definitive answers, nor ways to test them scientifically,” he wrote. “Since my memory may vanish one day, I want to record this — both as a reminder to myself and for anyone interested in studying it.”