'Three-Body' combines hard tech, soft culture

The reception that a TV series on a Chinese science fiction novel has received augurs well for the future of technology. The Three-Body Problem, based on perhaps the most widely known modern Chinese science fiction novel written by Liu Cixin, debuted on Sunday both on TV and online platforms after seven years of work.

The book is the first in the author's Hugo award-winning trilogy about humanity's first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization.

It attracted wide attention as sci-fi stories have become increasingly popular in recent years. An animation series of the same story tailored for young minds have already been available on teenagers' favorite platform Bilibili, while Netflix has struck its own deal with Yoozoo to create an English-language adaptation.

Earlier, Wandering Earth in 2018 and Moon Man in 2022 became blockbusters at the Chinese box office during Spring Festivals in those years.

The rising popularity of sci-fi movies and TV series in China is a good sign at a time when China is determined to become a technology power.

More than one and a half centuries ago, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, a classic science fiction adventure novel by French writer Jules Verne, depicted the Nautilus, a giant submarine, which was regarded as much ahead of its time. Nautilus had many features that today's submarines have.

Similarly, one can find mobile phones, 3D technology, domestic robots, smart watches and self-driving cars, decades before those were invented, in movies such as Star Wars and Back to the Future. Such imagination might also have inspired engineers to invent the new gadgets.

In the 1970s when China began its reform and opening-up, there was a popular sci-fi novel called Xiaolingtong Travels in the Future, in which a child journalist travels into the future to see robots, satellites and man-made organs for medical use, a concept that was quite ahead of its time for China then.

Therefore, the reemergence of science fiction movies and TV series in China should be welcomed as they might inspire scientists to come up with new technology and gadgets.

What's more, sci-fi can be a new driver for the real economy. In 2021, the State Council, China's Cabinet, issued a National Action Plan for Scientific Literacy 2021-2035, with a goal to make 15 percent of the country's population scientifically literate by 2025, and 25 percent by 2035. Metropolises like Shanghai, Chengdu and Shenzhen have promulgated policies to support sci-fi themed forums, exhibitions and matches. In 2023, the World SF Convention will for the first time be held in China, opening a new window for exchanges.

However, it should be noted that the sector's development needs stronger IP protection. China still has a lot to do to make sci-fi brands, and better combine hard technology and soft culture, to help narrow the gaps with its counterparts in developed countries.

The author is a writer with China Daily.