Literary Master: Starting with Refusing to Be a Child Star

Chapter 144 A Great Debate in the Science Fiction World

Luo Jinnian received an interview invitation, which was forwarded to him by Lin Yiming.

A European literary magazine is doing a special issue on the science fiction genre, inviting several authors from different countries to participate in online written interviews, all of which involve questions about the classification of science fiction writing.

Luo Jinnian paused for a moment when he saw the names of the other participants listed on the invitation—the writers came from different countries and had distinctly different styles.

Lin Yiming added a sentence to the forwarded email: "You can choose to only answer the written questions and not involve any other interaction." After reading that line, Luo Jinnian thought for a moment and replied: "Okay, I will answer in writing."

A week later, the interview was released online. Luo Jinnian opened the page one Friday evening and saw his part. There were six questions in total. The first five were about his writing habits and understanding of science fiction genres, while the sixth question directly addressed the classification: "The Martian is considered a very hard science fiction work. Do you think hard science fiction is more valuable than other types of science fiction?"

The page for that interview received more views than expected over the weekend after its release.

Because of Luo Jinnian's answer, his reply to that question was extracted and forwarded multiple times on several platforms. In his reply, he wrote: "The difference between hard science fiction and soft science fiction lies in the materials of their toolboxes, but the purpose of construction is the same—to reach a place that readers have never been before. 'The Martian' uses an engineering toolbox, and the tools inside need to be accurate to several decimal places to be effective. But I don't think that only this one toolbox can build good architecture. Some stories need to be built using a sociological toolbox, a psychological toolbox, or a linguistic toolbox. They measure the world in different ways, but they all strive to translate the measurement results into language that readers can understand."

"6

He added a paragraph after that: "Privately, I tend to read more works categorized as soft science fiction. They don't rely on technical details to build credibility, but rather on observations of human relationships. To me, neither approach is superior. They just have different starting points but the same destination. I simply prefer works that can accomplish their mission, regardless of the toolkit they use."

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The direction in which that answer spread was roughly as he had anticipated. Hard science fiction readers, who knew him from *The Martian*, might have some subtle feelings about that statement, but it wouldn't change their judgment of the book. Another group of readers, however, noticed his name for the first time because of that statement—not as a hard science fiction author, but as a creator with a holistic understanding of the science fiction genre.

After the interview was released, Lin Yiming sent several screenshots over the weekend. The screenshots came from media and social media platforms in different languages, and the comments in the comment section repeated similar wording. Someone wrote in English, "I like his answer, not because he said anything about hard science fiction, but because he didn't use 'soft' and 'hard' to distinguish between good and bad." Someone replied in German, "He said that the idea of ​​rigorous and hardcore science fiction supremacy has always existed, but I really didn't expect that the person who expressed this view was the author of 'The Martian.' I thought he would be very old-fashioned."

Someone else wrote an even shorter sentence in French: "Finally, someone isn't saying that hard science fiction is better than soft science fiction. This argument only keeps our science fiction community stuck in its ways."

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After that interview, Luo Jinnian never opened it again, but he remembered a sentence he wrote when answering the sixth question: "I like novels that make me stand by the window and daydream for a while after I finish reading them, whether they take me there with data or poetry."

Luo Jinnian closed his laptop, turned off the desk lamp, sat in the dark for a moment, and then got up and pulled the curtains open a narrow gap.

The week after the interview was published, Luo Jinnian received an email from Europe. The sender was a name he recognized—a science fiction writer known for his philosophical speculation and linguistic experiments, whose work was categorized as "soft science fiction," but whose position within that category was more like a solitary peak, so high that he didn't need to care which side he belonged to. The email was brief, written in English, with restrained wording but a clear warmth: "I read your interview. Your wonderful metaphor about science fiction categories reminded me of how I felt when I was writing my first book. If there's a chance, we can talk."

Luo Jinnian looked at the email but didn't reply immediately. He first checked the author's bibliography to confirm that he had indeed read some of his short stories. Then he sent a brief email, aligning his wording with the author's tone: "That interview was mostly a compilation of my own thoughts. It's a rare stroke of luck that it was read and resonated with after being written down. Your short stories are invaluable landmarks I couldn't bypass when I started trying to understand the boundaries of science fiction."

After sending the email, he shut down his computer without waiting for a reply. Two days later, however, he received one. The writer didn't mince words; he went straight to the point, as if they were sitting face-to-face: "I copied your comment about different types of science fiction into my reply and pasted it into my book. I don't completely agree with your point, but it really expressed some things I wanted to say but hadn't yet figured out how to express. Isn't the distinction between hard and soft science fiction like using the same ruler to measure a thermometer and an anemometer? Different functions, but both tied to the same flawed problem."

Luo Jinnian was on his way to school when he saw that message, and he paused for a moment by the roadside. He remembered that Robinson's email and this message came from completely different directions—one from the depths of hard science fiction, and the other from a corner of the starry sky of soft science fiction.

That Sunday afternoon, Luo Jinnian sat in his rented room without opening any documents.

He flipped through the book for a while, then placed the old novel on the table, the sunlight falling on a thin shadow on the wall.

He recalled a line he'd written in an interview—"I just like works that can accomplish their mission, regardless of the toolbox they use." This line was inconspicuous in the interview, but it was the most widely circulated. The letter from that European writer touched upon another layer of meaning in the concept of science fiction categorization—not just about genre classification, but also about whether the tools themselves can transcend differences in users and transform across different materials and contexts.

Re-adapted and remains effective.

Luo Jinnian read the writer's letter twice, then put it into the folder that was slowly getting thicker, separating it from Robinson's letters by a few pages.

The two letters contain vastly different contents, but they are rearranged within the same area to form a silent yet complete dialogue structure. One side discusses the material of the foundation, while the other discusses wind direction and coastline. The unoccupied space between them awaits a new path to connect the texts at both ends into a continuous and complete map.

The interview sparked a deeper and wider discussion within the science fiction community than Luo Jinnian had anticipated.

It started with scattered reposts and comments. Someone posted an interview link on social media, adding, "Finally, someone has clarified this topic." In the comments section, some agreed, while others offered different perspectives. Initially, it was relatively restrained, and the atmosphere of the discussion resembled a small-scale seminar. But soon, several long articles with clear stances began to appear on different platforms, pushing the initially mild discussion to the brink of controversy.

The first widely discussed article came from a Chinese science fiction critic, with a straightforward title that essentially stated, "Hard science fiction doesn't need to be balanced." In it, he wrote, "Hard science fiction is a writing discipline, not a toolbox. Toolboxes can be interchanged, but discipline cannot be compromised. When an author says, 'I don't prefer any particular genre,' he is actually undermining the existence of hard science fiction as a writing standard." That article resonated with many hard science fiction enthusiasts, was widely shared and cited, and became a major point of contention.

A few days later, another lengthy article appeared as a response. An editor who frequently translates and promotes foreign science fiction works wrote in a more moderate tone: "Treating hard science fiction as a standard" means that other types of science fiction can only be evaluated within a framework that "deviates from the standard." This is not pluralism, but another form of unicentricity. He mentioned Luo Jinnian's statement in an interview: "Different types of toolboxes are only made of different materials, but the purpose of their construction is the same. If we confuse the purpose with the means, then what we are discussing is not science fiction, but tool worship." In the comments section of that article, some people commented, "This is what I want to hear," while others countered, "Tool worship is better than tool chaos."

The intensity of the discussion began to attract media attention. Several industry observation articles started to focus on this hot topic, with titles roughly translated as "..."

Articles like "How a discussion about science fiction genres escalated into a debate about different paths within the community" were common. Most of these articles remained neutral, simply stating the viewpoints and developments. However, one article concluded by noting: "It's worth noting that the person who sparked this discussion didn't actively participate in the debate. After raising the topic, he went back to his study."

Luo Jinnian indeed didn't participate. At that time, he was revising some wording in the English version of "The Martian," and would occasionally see discussion notifications pop up on his screen, but he would just swipe past them after reading the titles. Chu Qingning once asked him, "You saw that online discussion, right? Aren't you going to say anything?" Luo Jinnian thought for a moment and said, "I've already said what I wanted to say."

"Let others continue," Chu Qingning said with an "Oh," without asking any further questions.

The discussion gradually cooled down after several weeks, failing to reach a consensus or produce a clear outcome where one side overwhelmingly dominated the other. The initially heated debate was gradually diluted by more diverse voices, and the disagreements slowly dispersed in multiple directions over time, each flowing towards different ends.

However, a phenomenon emerged as the discussion drew to a close—several articles, in their summaries, unanimously mentioned Luo Jinnian's original interview quote: "Undoubtedly, this era is open enough that we can handle one imaginative science fiction idea after another. Let's write them down and turn them into stories that readers will hold in their hands."

As mentioned at the beginning, the classification of science fiction is neither important nor unimportant; the key is the quality of the presented work.