Chinese sci-fi writer beats Stephen King for top fiction prize
Hao Jingfang wins Hugo award with dark story of social inequality and injustice in Beijing
A futuristic tale of urban life in Beijing has won a Chinese novelist a top international prize for science fiction, beating out heavyweight Stephen King for the honour.
Hao Jingfang, 32, won the Hugo Award for best novelette with Folding Beijing, a year after another Chinese writer, Liu Cixin, won the best novel prize for The Three-Body Problem, Xinhua reported on the weekend.
I have raised a possibility for the future and how we face the challenges
The best novelette category is for short works between 7,500 and 17, 500 words.
Receiving her award in Kansas City, Missouri, Hao said she was not surprised she had won but had also been prepared to lose.
“In Folding Beijing, I have raised a possibility for the future and how we face the challenges of automated production, technological advances, unemployment and economic stagnation,” she said.
The story describes a Beijing where people of different social status are separated into different spaces, and where low-skilled workers are replaced by robots.