About Science Fiction World

Science Fiction World

Science Fiction World (Kehuan Shijie, literally "SF World") is a monthly science fiction magazine headquartered in Chengdu, Sichuan, in south-western China. It is the best-known and most dominant science fiction magazine in the Chinese market, described by the Science Fiction Encyclopedia as the journal of record of the modern science fiction community in China. Published by the SFW group and available online at sfw.com.cn, the magazine has been the central institution of Chinese science fiction for more than four decades: it survived political campaigns that closed almost all of its competitors, founded the Galaxy Award, China's most prestigious science fiction prize, hosted the first World Science Fiction conference held in China, and provided the first audience for the writers — above all Liu Cixin, Han Song and Wang Jinkang — who carried Chinese science fiction to worldwide recognition.

Origins in the Spring of Science

Science Fiction World began in 1979 in Chengdu under the name Kexue Wenyi, translated as Science Literature or Science Literature and Art. It was a state-supported magazine, one of several that sprang up amid a post-Mao renewal of interest in science popularisation. The timing mattered. After the Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976, during which science fiction had effectively disappeared from the mainland, the 1978 National Science Congress declared that the spring of science had come, and a wave of new science fiction magazines appeared to meet public enthusiasm for imagination and for a hopeful, science-led future. Based in Chengdu from the start, Kexue Wenyi built its editorial offices in Sichuan's capital and began publishing the short fiction, translated work and popular-science material that defined the first years of China's science fiction revival.

Surviving the Campaign Against Spiritual Pollution

The revival proved fragile. In the early 1980s the political line on science fiction reversed: around 1983 the genre was charged with causing "spiritual pollution," and most Chinese science fiction magazines gradually ceased publication. Kexue Wenyi was hit hard — its government funding was cut off in 1984 — but it did not die. Relaunched as an independent journal with Yang Xiao as editor, it became the nexus of a group of interrelated ventures in book publishing and translation. Yang Xiao herself became the familiar face of Chinese science fiction at foreign conventions, and her editorship carried the magazine through the lean years when it was, in effect, the last major mainland outlet for the genre. That survival is the foundation of everything that followed: because the Chengdu magazine endured when its rivals closed, it inherited the field.

From Science Literature to Science Fiction World

The magazine's identity was reshaped twice in three years. In 1989 it was renamed Qitan, rendered in English as Amazing Stories or Amazing Tales, and in 1991 it took the name it still carries, Kehuan Shijie — Science Fiction World. Before settling on the new title, the editors conducted extensive market research, especially among high school and college students, the readership that would power its 1990s growth. The relaunched Science Fiction World was conceived as a platform presenting science fiction in a variety of forms, intended to stimulate young people's imaginations and encourage innovative thinking. The timing coincided with a broader relaunch of Chinese science fiction itself: the genre was picking up steam again through the 1990s, symbolised by the International Conference on Science Fiction held in Beijing in 1997, and Science Fiction World, as the field's flagship, rode that wave from its Chengdu base.

Circulation and the 1999 Peak

By the mid-1990s Science Fiction World had reached a circulation of about 400,000 copies, and its sales peaked in the range of 300,000 to 400,000 copies after 1999. One famous episode helps explain the 1999 figure: that year the state-run university entrance examination unexpectedly set the essay topic "Memory Transfer," a science-fictional premise that sent students and teachers looking for exactly the kind of fiction the magazine published. Sales of around 400,000 in 1999 made it not merely China's leading science fiction magazine but one of the largest-circulation science fiction magazines anywhere. Even in later years, when the editors serialised Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem in 2006, the magazine could still command a nationwide circulation reported at around 200,000 — a scale few genre magazines in any country have matched.

The Galaxy Award

Science Fiction World runs the Galaxy Award (Yinhe Jiang), China's most prestigious science fiction award, often compared in standing to the Hugo and Nebula awards in the United States. The award was established in 1985 and first presented in 1986, founded jointly by Science Literature — the magazine's earlier incarnation — and the magazine Wisdom Tree (Zhihui Shu). After Wisdom Tree ceased publication soon afterwards, Science Fiction World became the award's sole organiser, a role it has kept ever since. The prize became an annual award in 1991. Originally it recognised only works published in or by Science Fiction World itself, but it later opened to all science fiction works published in China, and its categories have evolved over time. Award ceremonies have traditionally been held in Chengdu, the magazine's home city — the 25th awards in 2014 were held in Shanghai, the first time the ceremony left Chengdu, and the 27th followed in Beijing in 2016 before the 28th returned to Chengdu in 2017. The 33rd Galaxy Awards, held in March 2023 in Yingjing County, Sichuan, were notable for winners drawn from younger generations, with all three of the main fiction winners born in the 1990s.

The 1991 Chengdu World SF Conference

In May 1991, under editor Yang Xiao, the magazine organised a landmark event: the World Science Fiction annual meeting held in Chengdu on 20 May 1991, with the theme "Science Fiction, Peace, Friendship." It was the first-ever international science fiction convention held in mainland China, and the first international event hosted in China since the student protests of 1989. The conference marked Chinese science fiction's formal entry into international exchange and became the historical starting point for what later developed into the Galaxy Science Fiction Convention brand. Chengdu's standing as a science fiction capital grew from these roots: the city later hosted further international gatherings, including the Chengdu International SF/F Conference that opened on 25 August 2007, drawing authors from America, Canada, Britain, Russia, Japan and China and tens of thousands of fans.

The Writers It Made Famous

The generation that defined modern Chinese science fiction came to prominence in Science Fiction World's pages during the 1990s. The authors who rose through the magazine include Liu Cixin, Han Song, Wang Jinkang, Xing He, Qian Lifang and He Xi. Wang Jinkang won the Galaxy Award six times running, from 1993 to 1998. Liu Cixin, then an engineer at a power station in Shanxi province, published his first short story, "Whale Song," in Science Fiction World in June 1999, and had four contributions published in the magazine that year. His relationship with the magazine culminated in The Three-Body Problem, serialised in Science Fiction World from May to December 2006 after editor Yao Haijun received the draft; the novel won the Galaxy Award in 2006, was published as a book by Chongqing Press in 2008, and in Ken Liu's English translation won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015 — the first Asian novel to do so — before reaching a global audience again through the Netflix series 3 Body Problem in 2024.

The SFW Group and Sister Magazines

Science Fiction World is published by the SFW group, which grew out of the interrelated publishing and translation ventures built around the magazine in the 1980s. The group has run four magazines serving different age groups and interests. Science Fiction World itself and Fantasy World are aimed mainly at teenagers; Science Fiction World Translations, founded in 2004 to publish longer Western science fiction and fantasy novellas, is read mostly by adults; and Little Newton serves school pupils. This family of titles allowed the Chengdu operation to hold readers across age groups and to act as a two-way channel, bringing world science fiction into Chinese while developing original Chinese work in its flagship title.

Place in Chinese Science Fiction

Scholarly and journalistic accounts of Chinese science fiction treat Science Fiction World as the crucible of the contemporary scene. It anchored the genre's revival after 1978, survived the anti-spiritual-pollution campaign that shuttered most competitors, set the tone and pace of Chinese science fiction fandom through the Galaxy Award from the early 1990s onward, and cultivated generations of writers and a mass fan base. Chengdu's identity as China's science fiction capital — reinforced by events from the 1991 World SF conference to the Chengdu Science Fiction Museum era — rests substantially on the fact that the country's most influential science fiction magazine was born and remained there.

Science Fiction World Today

Science Fiction World continues to publish monthly from Chengdu and remains the dominant title in the Chinese science fiction magazine market, with its official site at sfw.com.cn. Its Galaxy Award continues as the field's senior honour — described by Xinhua as China's oldest literary science fiction award, established by the magazine in 1985 with the first awards given in 1986 — and the convention tradition that began with its 1991 Chengdu conference was renewed in the Galaxy Science Fiction Convention, whose 2025 edition in Chengdu included the 36th Galaxy Awards ceremony. More than forty-five years after its founding as Science Literature, the magazine's trajectory — from a state-supported popular-science journal, through near-extinction in the 1980s, to a peak circulation of some 400,000 and the launchpad of the Three-Body phenomenon — remains the single clearest thread through the modern history of Chinese science fiction.