“A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight,” by my friend Xia Jia, and translated by me, has won an Honorable Mention in the 2013 Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards!

I loved this story, and it’s great to see Xia Jia getting some recognition. I think she’s one of the best contemporary Chinese speculative fiction writers. I’m proud to have had a chance to work with her.

She’s also a skilled translator on her own, having translated my “The Man Who Ended History” into Chinese. I think her translation is superior to my own original in many ways. She’ll also have a story in Neil Clarke’s upcoming Upgraded cyborg anthology. (The story is amazing, and I cried while translating it.)

I also talked about translating Xia Jia’s story for Clarkesworld: “Gathered in Translation”.

Tor Books just made the announcement.

It was a lot of work, and it’s going to be a lot more work still. But wow. Happiness.

It’s true. I’ll be translating Volume One of Liu Cixin’s grand sci-fi trilogy 《三体》(SANTI — official title TBD) into English. Volume Two and Three will be translated by famed translators Joel Martinsen and Eric Abrahamsen.

Now, the time frame they’ve given me is aggressive, to say the least. I won’t have much bandwidth for anything else for a few months. I’m really excited by the opportunity to introduce one of China’s greatest sci-fi novelists to the West, and hopefully the sacrifices I make now will be worth it.

My translation of Li Cixin (刘慈欣)’s “Taking Care of God” (《赡养上帝》) is now out in Pathlight, an English-language publication of People’s Literature Magazine (人民文学). You can download a free electronic copy of the magazine on their web site.

It’s a science fiction story with a lot of heart. I really recommend it.

Some context for readers who don’t know much about China’s literary history: Liu Cixin is among China’s most prominent science fiction authors, and People’s Literature is something like a Chinese version of Ploughshares. It’s very rare for a literary magazine like People’s Literature to go genre — but with Pathlight, edited by a Western staff, the idea is to introduce Chinese authors who’re a bit more outside the well-trodden path to English readers.

I’m really honored to have been given a chance to translate this work. Liu is a literary hero of mine and influenced me more than a little.

Hope you enjoy!