■ Xu Yang, reporter of this newspaper
After winning the "Best Online Science Fiction Award" at the 32nd China Science Fiction Galaxy Awards, not long ago, post-95 online writer Tianrui Shuofu won the gold medal for novels at the 14th Chinese Science Fiction Nebula Awards and won the 2020-2022 Rising Star Gold Award. Yao Haijun, deputy editor-in-chief and chairman of the jury of "Science Fiction World", commented: The novel bridges the gap between online science fiction and traditional science fiction, and expands the growth space of science fiction subdivided themes.
Not only him, but in the Internet, a field that naturally has the label of "youthfulness", a group of post-95 and post-00 generation Z groups are pouring into the production and dissemination of sci-fi online literature with an accelerated attitude, injecting a lot of young blood into the collision and fusion of scientific and technological rationality and humanistic care. The soil of online literature is new, the cutting-edge themes of science and technology are new, and the authors are mostly newcomers... The triple "new" superposition brings strong new momentum to local science fiction writing.
After more than 00%, the first time to write online literature, the first choice of science fiction theme
In recent years, the trend of younger and more educated authors has accelerated, and the strong rise of Generation Z has gradually become a new feature of innovation and change in science fiction online literature. According to data disclosed in the "2022 China Science Fiction Online Literature White Paper" and "2022 China Online Literature Development Research Report", a total of more than 4,2 starting point platform authors created science fiction web articles last year, and 2022% of the authors who chose science fiction themes for the first time in 72 were post-00s; Last year, 42080,70 new science fiction works were added, a year-on-year increase of nearly <>%; About seventy percent of the signed authors of the science fiction category are bachelor degree or above. Whether it is creative practice or reading works, science fiction web literature has become the main channel for young people to contact science fiction culture.
Talking Elbow, Sweeping the World, Newspaper Seller Xiaolangjun, Black Mountain Old Ghost, I Eat Tomatoes, Back to Business, Fire Things, Kong Changqing and other online authors have successively launched new works on science fiction themes, enriching the content style of science fiction themes through different perspectives. Taking the 26-year-old Tianrui Shuofu as an example, the masterpiece "We Live in Nanjing" has long ranked first on the best-selling list of the starting point Chinese network, telling the story of Bai Yang, a boy in high school, who accidentally contacted a girl living in the same geographical location in 2040 for half a summer through a radio station, and the two faced an unknown natural disaster together. Professor Li Wei of Nanjing Normal University commented that in addition to professional sci-fi settings, wonderful stories and delicate emotions, the work also shows a scarce aesthetic style, and finally completes the "new science fiction" experiment of hardcore sci-fi achieving aesthetic stories.
On the one hand, Tianrui Fu pursues "hardcore" - the famous work "Death on Mars" lists a long list of bibliographies and quotes scientific research results on past Mars missions and spacecraft design, which makes many aerospace fans directly addicted; On the other hand, he also insisted that no matter how hard science fiction is, it should also serve the readability of the text, "Technical details are like bricks and tiles of the story structure, which are used to enhance the credibility of the story, not to become a reading disorder for readers." ”
Netizens spontaneously "take notes" to activate the community ecology
It is not difficult to find that young web writers pay more attention to readers' feedback and interaction. This also reflects the rapid maturity of the community ecology of science fiction online literature. Many users have shown extraordinary initiative, actively participated in spontaneous popular science interaction, and spontaneously sorted out knowledge points in the discussion area of works with the help of real-time paragraph chapter reviews on online literary platforms, and wrote long "notes".
For example, in the comment section of Tianrui Shufu "We Live in Nanjing", there are radio technology enthusiasts who explain the interpretation and usage of related professional terms online; In the comment area of Morningstar LL's "Xueba's Black Technology System", some readers answered questions in detail around "Zhou-style guessing", "twin prime number conjecture" and "Kakutani conjecture", which once triggered large-scale scientific topic exchanges.
Not long ago, the "Top Ten Famous Scenes" of the online novel were announced, and the scene "Change Back" in Chapter 212 of Yuanpu's novel "Deep Sea Ember" was selected. He bluntly said that with the growing science fiction market, there are more professionals who understand science fiction, and the readership hides the dragon and crouching tiger, which in turn motivates the author to strive for excellence. "The ranking is highly competitive, there are especially many young authors, and post-90s and even post-00s web writers emerge. Writing science fiction requires a flexible mind and a new knowledge base, and the younger the author, the newer the knowledge base. Yuanpu expects that works such as "Deep Sea Ember" can convey to netizens the attitude of adhering to an optimistic life, "It would be better if everyone could watch it with a smile and get the courage and inspiration to face life from the story." ”
Conveying positive energy and feelings of home and country through science fiction is also the vision of post-95 writer September Sauce. He worked in Africa for many years, combining local knowledge, industry knowledge and imagination, completed the serial update of "Big Country Science and Technology", and showed the progress of all aspects of the country through scientific and technological details, and the results of his works reached 17000,<>.
The "long tail effect" of sci-fi IP is becoming more and more prominent
The traditional sci-fi motif has grown a series of new integrated writing directions in the context of online literature, covering multiple sub-categories such as evolutionary superpower, interstellar civilization, and super technology, enriching the content ecology of sci-fi web literature. According to incomplete statistics, evolutionary superpower, future world, and interstellar civilization are subdivided themes with obvious growth in the past three years, and the number and scale in 2022 have doubled compared with 2020, meeting readers' diversified reading expectations, and the number of existing theme works such as ancient martial arts mecha and time and space travel has declined.
"The excavation of science fiction themes is moving deeper, and authors are no longer satisfied with the simple application of science fiction symbols such as mecha and crossing, but more deeply integrate cutting-edge scientific and technological elements such as big data, space exploration, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, as well as the memories of the times and feelings of home and country of the younger generation, into their works, showing the social responsibility and cultural responsibility of the new generation of online literary creation teams." Some scholars have given an example that the 90-pound smile of the post-95s science fiction web writer used biotechnology to create an intelligent miniature bacterial civilization in "My Universe in a Bottle"; Post-<> authors September Sauce, Explosive Style, etc. integrate cutting-edge technologies such as simulators, chips, aircraft engines, mechanical exoskeletons, nuclear power, and intelligent brains into "Great Country Technology" and "Crossing to Become the Guardian AI of Lost Civilizations", trying to give the science fiction theme a new look, and composed representatives of science fiction web novels such as "Under Deep Space", "Millennium Retrospective", "Legend of Cyber Heroes" and "Nomenclature of the Night", which to a considerable extent has become a vivid reflection of contemporary individual real experience and spiritual life.
Sci-fi online literature such as "The Beginning", "The Nomenclature of the Night" and "40,000 Years of Star Field" have been successively developed into film and television, animation, audio books, peripheral derivatives, etc., and the "long tail effect" of sci-fi IP has gradually become prominent. In the new stage of China's online novel "ecological going to sea", the works represented by "Earth Age" and "Supergod Mechanic" "Going Global" are typical samples of science fiction web novels "telling Chinese stories and spreading Chinese voices", highlighting the continuous rising overseas influence of Chinese science fiction online literature.