Early one morning during the recent World Science Fiction Convention in Helsinki, I met Chinese writer Chen Quifan for breakfast at Café Engel, a restaurant located in a 1765 building which was originally a pipe factory. We ate by a window which looked out on Helsinki Cathedral, built from 1830-1852 as a tribute to Tsar Nicholas I of Russia.

Chen Qiufan has published more thirty stories in venues such as Science Fiction World, Esquire, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Interzone, and F&SF. His 2013 debut novel, The Waste Tide, was praised by Liu Cixin as “the pinnacle of near-future SF writing.” He’s the most widely translated young writer of science fiction in China. He has won Taiwan’s Dragon Fantasy Award, China’s Galaxy and Nebula Awards, and a Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award with Ken Liu.

We discussed why his favorite character from all of science fiction is Mr. Spock, what kept him going during the seven years between the sales of his first and second stories, the reasons H. G. Wells is a genius, why he believes science fiction is the greatest realism, the differences in reading protocols between Chinese and non-Chinese readers, why he hopes his own upcoming science fiction movie will defy his prediction there’ll be many bad SF movies to come in Chinese cinema, and more.

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Check out what we ordered for our breakfast chat—

Chen Quifan’s French Breakfast
Café au Lait, orange juice, croissant, butter, jam, Brie, ham, and fresh fruit

My Café Engel Breakfast
House tea, orange juice, bread roll, butter, cheese,
ham, Brie, boiled egg, and fresh fruit

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Join me next episode when my guest will be Xia Jia, who’s been published in Nature, Clarkesworld, Year’s Best SF, Science Fiction World, and others, and has won five Galaxy Awards for Chinese Science Fiction as well as six Nebula Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy in Chinese.

Thanks for listening!