Hugo winner Liu Cixin talks about where the genre is headingLiu Cixin (seated) signs a book for a fan at the Shanghai Book Fair on Sunday. Photo: Yang HuiGT

"My congratulations to her!" said Chinese sci-fi author Liu Cixin Sunday morning during an event at the Shanghai Book Fair (SBF) after a member of the audience told him that Chinese writer Hao Jingfang won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette with her Folding Beijing.

In Hao's work New Jersey Devils Jerseys For Sale , a futuristic Beijing is divided into three spaces occupied by three different social classes, with each layer separated from each other by both time and space. The story revolves around a father from the underprivileged class who adventures through the three spaces in order to earn money to pay for his daughter's education.

The award-winning novelette was translated by Chinese-American sci-fi author and translator Ken Liu, the same translator for Liu Cixin's first novel in The Three-body Problem trilogy, which last year allowed the Shanxi-born writer to become the first Hugo Award winner who doesn't write in English.

"Folding Beijing is very well written, and is very different from what she had written before," Liu Cixin told chinanews, noting that Hao's previous works often featured elegant and graceful narration and were usually related to economics due to her PhD in that field.

Not long after Hao caused the world to focus its attention once again on Chinese sci-fi literature, Liu Cixin announced at his second SBF event that same day that the English version of Death's End, the last installment in the The Three-Body Problem trilogy, would be published on September 20 by Tor Books. The book sees Ken Liu return to the series as translator.

The first two books in the English version of the trilogy were published in November 2014 and August 2015. As of the end of June they have sold more than 160,000 copies around the world. Its readers include big names such as Mark Zuckerberg and US President Barack Obama.

Hundreds of fans attended the event, holding copies from both the Chinese and English versions of The Three-body Problem trilogy for Liu to autograph. One Chinese reader told the Global Times that while he doesn't read English he would be more than happy to spend about 500 yuan ($75) to purchase the hardcover English trilogy for his collection.

For comparison's sake, the paperback version of the original Chinese series published by the Chongqing Publishing House costs about 80 yuan in total.

Changing directions

Yao Haijun - editor in chief of Science Fiction World magazine, currently the only sci-fi magazine in China - was also in attendance at the events.

"It's fair to say that Liu Cixin has changed the way China and the English-speaking world communicate in the field of sci-fi literature," Yao said.

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