Book Review: Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang (Translated by Ken Liu)

 

Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang (Translated by Ken Liu)

Hardcover, 640 pages

Published April 14th 2020 by Gallery / Saga Press

 

This is one of those novels that grew on me as I reflected on it and as I learned about the author behind it. I am starting to think also that a sub-genre seems to be developing, that is novels influenced by Leguin’s anarchist Sci-fi masterpiece The Dispossessed. Unlike Carrie Vaughn’s PKD award-winning novel Bannerless (for one example) I would not say this novel shares the radical left political stances.

The common DNA Vagabonds shares with Leguin’s classic is a character caught between two worlds. Both novels share a sociological and anthropological feel. These are novels that could be studied for years to come because they were written by women reflecting on the systems they were living in.  In the case of Vagabonds, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the author is Chinese, and perhaps too much will be read into this.

With the undeniable success of The Three-Body Problem trilogy, it was not surprising that Ken Liu would be called upon to translate more works. Two short story collections followed and last year Chen Qiufan’s amazing Waste Tide.  I am super thankful for Liu’s work in this field as I have enjoyed the window into Chinese Sci-fi and it is clear that there is a diversity to the entries.

 Vagabonds is Sci-Fi in that it takes place centuries in the future and in part on Mars but I am sure the literary tone and the lack of action may turn off some readers. If you look at the negative reviews many of them say more social science than sci-fi. This novel is about Luo Ying who was born on Mars traveled to earth for a few years and returned to her home planet. In this sense, it would be totally fair to compare these books and even refer to it as the Chinese Dispossessed.

Hau Jingfang is famous in China but not primarily as an award-winning Science Fiction author. Trained in Astrophysics and as an economist, she is known mostly for her educational reforms. Between producing science fiction films, she is helping open schools in rural parts of China that had no such thing before. While much of her education came in the west it seems that time going back and forth between cultures inspired this novel.

Taking place a few centuries from now Mars and Earth are just coming out of an extended cold war which saw the worlds cut off from each other Luo Ying is the granddaughter of the Martian prime minister and spent five years learning about the differences between the ways of life.

On page 179 “Now that she had lived in both worlds, she wasn’t sure which chains were heavier: the system that ensured everyone had no more and no less than they needed, or the poverty that resulted from the struggle for survival. But she did know that all humans loved freedom, and the more their ways of life differed the more fundamental commonality prevailed.

Freedom! Life is art, and the nature of art is freedom.”

The novel has a wide cast of characters from two pilots who live on a ship transport supplies and people back and forth between worlds, miners, filmmakers, and revolutionaries using a play to forward their ideas. That last element reminded me of the 50s post-apocalypse novel Doomsday Morning by CL Moore. This aspect was seen through the eyes of an Earth filmmaker Eko who has followed his favorite director who ended up dying on Mars.

This novel is written with a bit of literary surrealism the details Jingfang chooses to describe and describe keep this novel from becoming a hard sci-fi experience. Thus it has more of a Mars as analogy feel that is more PKD’s Martian Time-Slip than Kim Robinson’s Mars trilogy. There is no mention of what nations formed the Mars colonies that is left to the reader’s imagination but suggest is heavily implied with passages like this…

“When the city was first founded, resources were so scarce that everyone lived in dormitories. Only the most accomplished researchers could build their own houses, and the sizes of the houses were determined by their research results. The policy was reasonable at first, but after thirty years it was deeply flawed. If someone was unlucky and didn’t produce any practical applications, then they would die in a dormitory.”


 While the knee-jerk reaction might be to see Mars as socialist China and Earth as America, I don’t think there is a simplistic 1 to 1 interpretation. Sure, Earth in the 24th century is an over-populated capitalist mess suffering under the weight of ecological destruction. There is something like democracy but it is deeply flawed.  On paper, China claims to be a democratic republic while at the same suffering at the hands of capitalism by feeding its massive population by racing to the bottom with expansive and cheap labor everywhere.

Honestly, Mars in the novel can’t be really compared to either. It is basically one city; the population is so small to be compared to either the U.S. or China. The fact is the author is being critical of elements of both countries in this analogy.


It would be fairly typical for western readers to assume that Chinese science fiction writers are automatically condemning the Chinese system. That they must be using the metaphor of genre to protest their conditions. That assumes these novels view our western way of life as a functioning democracy is something to strive for. The egotism behind this notion can’t be understated, think about how Trumpism and America looks from the outside. Not great.

None the less this book was written a decade ago by a young Chinese author who is an idealist. Vagabonds is not anti-Chinese in fact it seems very much to be a novel about what it means to be a young person raised on those ideals. Often confused by how those ideals are put into practice. One of the key Relationships of the book is our main character Lua Ying whose spends much of the book trying to figure out if her grandfather the Martian leader is or is not a dictator?

The book is also not exactly patriotic either, there is a left interpretation but it is not as radical a voice as even Chen Qiufan’s Waste Tide.  And not nearly as radical left as many western Science fiction authors.

This novel is not for everyone as it is long and slow, but I found it incredible for a couple of reasons. The unique point of view that the author brings to the table is clear on every page. I had expectations and the novel dashed most of them. The challenge of this book is the length and pace. If you need constant weirdness or action from your science fiction then this might not be for you. That social science is very much a science and this novel is very much that kind of science fiction. Was it perfect? It was a little long, and some of the messages didn’t feel great to me, but I am super happy to hear this voice so I leaning towards this being a great novel that is not for everyone.