Han Song (writer)

Han Song
韩松
Han Song (2025)
Born1965 (age 60–61)
Chongqing, China
OccupationEditor
Writing career
LanguageChinese
Notable awardsGalaxy Award (six times)

Han Song (Chinese: 韩松; pinyin: Hán Sōng; born 1965) is a Chinese science fiction writer and a journalist at the Xinhua News Agency.

Life

Han was born in 1965 in Chongqing, a year before the Cultural Revolution was launched. During this period, Mao Zedong aimed to "purge" anti-revolutionary elements from Chinese society, including intellectuals and scientists. Nevertheless, Han's father, a journalist, brought home science magazines and books that fascinated his young son.

Han went on to study English and journalism at university. His first novel, Cosmic Tombstones (宇宙墓碑) was published in 1981 in the Taiwanese magazine Huanxiang. It waited ten years for publication in the People's Republic of China because publishers found its tone too dark. It was finally published in 1991, the year Han began working for state news agency Xinhua.

Han has received the Chinese Galaxy Award for fiction six times. The LA Times described him as China's premier science fiction writer. Following a diagnosis of dementia, Han began using Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek to help him write stories. He told The New York Times in 2025 that he was initially dispirited that the bot sometimes produced better stories than him, but now views it merely as a tool.

Work

Critics have noted Han's ambivalent attitude towards the economic and social change experience in China during his lifetime. According to the China Daily, Han describes himself as a "staunch nationalist at heart", and his work is critical of China's desire to Westernize as fast as possible. He believes that "fast-track development does not agree with core Asian values", and that adoption of the "alien entities" of science, technology and modernization by the Chinese will turn them into monsters.

An overview of his work in Los Angeles Times notes that Han's "prolific body of work deals largely with the clash between the U.S. and the Middle Kingdom," and that "if the author is critical of a cocky America, he is also unafraid to ruthlessly satirize an overreaching China." The New York Times says that although "classic sci-fi elements such as space travel or artificial intelligence" appear in Han's fiction, he is more interested "in how people respond to new technologies and the power and disruption they represent."

Han's writing blends elements of technological dystopianism and Buddhist mysticism.: 202  The New York Times describes Han's work as often "bleak, graphic, and grotesque," citing his use of "ordinary settings, like subway trains, as backdrops for wild scenes of cannibalism or orgies."

Regarding the significance of Chinese science fiction, Han contends that contemporary authors "put the country in hypothetically extreme situations to see how people might respond to radical changes. Sometimes they can put China to the test in a way that no mainstream writer can.": 521 

A significant amount of Han's work is banned in his home country. In 2012, it was reported that most of his works are banned in mainland China.

Bibliography

Novels

Han's novels include:

Short stories

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Wang, Vivian (2025-05-27). "A Science Fiction Writer Wrestles With China's Rise, and His Own Decline". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-05-28.
  2. ↑ Aloisio, Loïc. "Ma Patrie ne rêve pas - Une nouvelle politiquement incorrecte de Han Song 韩松". Retrieved 15 February 2019.
  3. 1 2 "Han Song interview". Time Out Beijing. March 2011. Archived from the original on 21 April 2014. Retrieved 26 March 2012.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Sebag-Montefiore, Clarissa (25 March 2012). "Cultural Exchange: Chinese science fiction's subversive politics". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 26 March 2012.
  5. ↑ Aloisio, Loïc (2016-09-15). "Ma Patrie ne rêve pas". Impressions d'Extrême-Orient (in French) (6). doi:10.4000/ideo.470. ISSN 2107-027X.
  6. 1 2 Basu, Chitralekha (18 March 2011). "The future is now". China Daily. Archived from the original on 22 March 2011. Retrieved 26 March 2012.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Imbach, Jessica (2025). "Network Fantasies: Liu Cixin's China 2185, Digital Futurism, and History as Computer Code". Digital China: Creativity and Community in the Sinocybersphere. Routledge. ISBN 9781041178088.
  8. ↑ Li, Hua (2015). "The Political Imagination in Liu Cixin's Critical Utopia: China 2185". Science Fiction Studies. 42 (3): 519–540. doi:10.5621/sciefictstud.42.3.0519. ISSN 0091-7729.
  9. 1 2 "A Martian In Tibet". io9. 7 January 2010. Retrieved 26 March 2012.
  10. ↑ "Neue Storys aus China | Leseprobe aus U-Boote". Die Zukunft (in German). 2020-03-01. Retrieved 2024-09-29.
  11. ↑ Han, Song. "Salinger and the Koreans" (PDF). guggenheim.org. Retrieved 2024-09-29.