Waste Tide

Starred review from February 25, 2019
Anglophone readers will cherish the opportunity to experience Chen’s sweeping, complex, and deeply emotional near-future dystopian vision via this thoughtful rendition by Hugo-winning translator and author Liu that maintains the story’s essential Chinese character. Guangdong Province’s environmentally devastated Silicon Isle, ruled by three powerful clans, is the destination for the electronic garbage created by a world addicted to body enhancements. The rubbish is processed in hellish conditions by the migrant workers considered by the rich natives to be subhuman “waste people.” Chen Kaizong, a Silicon Isle–born but America-trained translator, reconnects to his heritage and clan family while accompanying Scott Brandle, a visiting representative of TerraGreen Recycling, which wants to automate the process. Meanwhile, waste girl Mimi, on the run from the henchmen of the Luo clan after having been connected to the mysterious illness of the clan leader’s grandson, becomes the central figure in a rising rebellion. Liu’s careful handling of multiple Sinitic languages, as well as naming conventions that connect to class, education, and geographical origin, maintains the flavor of the setting and preserves the integrity of Chen’s focus on interacting subcultures and the social opportunities available to those capable of linguistic code switching. Chen’s story is extremely relevant to the current moment of throwaway culture, increasing income disparity, and technological advances progressing at such a rate that morality and ethics have trouble keeping up. Readers who crave gorgeous imagery and a thrilling narrative that also explicitly wrestles with big questions will be overjoyed. Agent: Eddie Schneider, JABberwocky Literary.

February 15, 2019
Cutting-edge, near-future science fiction from China: With a setting based on a real-world Chinese town that recycled electronic waste from all over the world, Chen's (aka Stanley Chan) first and so far only novel, originally published in 2013, comes to vibrant life in Liu's deft and informative translation.To Silicon Isle, a vast waste dump where electronic devices and components are manually recycled, desperate workers flood in from all over China despite the extreme toxic hazards and attacks by fanatical environmentalists. Ruthless local clans enforce long hours and wretched wages. Luo Jincheng, head of the most powerful clan, despises the migrant workers and treats them with particular brutality and contempt. He refuses to do business with Scott Brandle, a mysterious American nominally representing TerraGreen Recycling, a global corporation hoping to reap vast profits from automating the processing. Brandle's interpreter, Chen Kaizong, a young Chinese-American who speaks the local dialects, hopes to find his roots; instead, he finds Mimi, a waste girl viciously abused by Luo's thugs, who dreams of earning enough money to buy her family out of poverty. Her one friend, or perhaps exploiter, is Brother Wen, an electronics genius building devices and weapons out of junk and secretly assembling an army of the downtrodden. What nobody anticipates are the active remnants of biological warfare experiments discarded in the trash, with horrifying and tragic consequences. The author patiently engineers these ingredients and personalities into a nightmarish conflict while showing a particular talent for writing viscerally gripping action. The moral dilemmas he presents are all too familiar, with seemingly little to differentiate villains, victims, and victors. China itself, of course, takes center stage, as the past--with its rich cultural backdrop, paramount loyalty to family and clan, and reverence for tradition--confronts social upheaval and the accelerating importance of artificial intelligence and virtual reality.Chinese science fiction, once an unknown quantity in the U.S., is making its way to the forefront through sheer excellence.

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April 1, 2019

DEBUT On China's Silicon Isle, electronic waste is processed by poor migrant workers known as "waste people" to island natives. The workers toil long hours with dangerous chemicals, as three local clans and their unofficial leader profit from the environmental degradation of the island and the toxic conditions in which the laborers live. As an American businessman, his Silicon Isle native/Boston University-educated translator, and a young waste girl become involved with the island's struggles for power, a deadly virus is unleashed, sparking a workers' rebellion, rampant violence, and heroic acts. As in Chen's short stories, this work is stylistically gritty and spare, emphasizing the harsh realities of Silicon Isle and the devastating burdens developing areas of the world (and marginalized people) suffer as the result of technology they cannot themselves enjoy. VERDICT Already an award winner in China, this debut is likely to draw comparisons to Cixin Liu's The Three Body Problem and Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140 and is a provocative addition to the growing corpus of Chinese speculative fiction and near-future and realist sf as a whole.--Vikki Terrile, Queensborough Community Coll., Bayside, NY

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March 15, 2019
Best-selling Chinese sf author Chen has created a dizzying near-future world of technological advancement and ecological calamity. Electronic prostheses are so prevalent and addictive that they are constantly traded out and tossed away on a whim. This creates a tremendous amount of trash that often contains toxic biological waste, and recycling garbage is big business for three immensely wealthy Chinese families who operate a major reprocessing center off the coast. These clans control everything on their island, a cesspool that has become so polluted it is almost beyond redemption. Poorly paid workers sort the trash and dare not defy the clan's brutal enforcers. When an American negotiator arrives with a tempting proposal, the greedy clan heads are at odds over how to deal with a proposition that would get rid of the pollution and provide improved conditions for their workers. The callous treatment of a young "waste girl" involved with the foreigner's translator sparks a violent conflict between haves and have-nots. Cultural details and rampant consumerism combine in an action-packed recipe for disaster.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)