Baoshu

Biography

Baoshu spent his undergraduate and master's years at Department of Philosophy, Peking University. In PKU he immersed himself in the campus social network BDWM BBS and neighboring Tsinghua University's SMTH BBS, where he chose "Baoshu" as one of his many pseudonyms. Literally meaning "divine tree", the name in fact refers to an evil monk in Louis Cha's famous novella Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain. Over time, it became his major pseudonym, and relatively well-known on those BBSs. Upon graduation Baoshu went to Belgium, pursuing a Master of Philosophy at KU Leuven, the oldest Catholic university still in existence.

According to a conversation with Xia Jia, a fellow Chinese science fiction writer and a friend of Baoshu, Baoshu had been a loyal fan of Liu Cixin since 2000, when Liu started publishing his short stories. But it was not until 2010, while studying at Leuven, that Baoshu began to compose his own stories. When the third volume of Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem trilogy was published in China at the end of 2010, Baoshu was still abroad and had no way to get the book quickly. Luckily, a good friend photoed every page of the book and sent the photoes to him online. Having read the long work non-stop and greatly inspired by its plot, Baoshu composed a 100,000 characters Dōjin-style sequel, Three Body X: Aeon of Contemplation 三体X•观想之宙, in roughly three weeks. Appearing less than a month after the publication of Death's End, this online sequel caught the attention of many of Liu's readers – and of Liu himself who authorised the publication of the sequel in 2011. It was well received and launched his career as a writer..

Three Body X: Aeon of Contemplation

The first book by Baoshu, a sequel of Liu Cixin's Hugo Award winning SF epic Three Body Problem, intersected with dōjinshi and young-adult fictional experience. Published by Chongqing Press in June 2011.

Ruins of Time

This work relates a story about the contemporary world trapped in a mysterious and unbreakable time loop in one single day—October 11, 2012(apparently caused by an uncontrollable LHC experiment but the truth is only revealed at the end of the story)and its salvation by a male college student Han Fang and an enigmatic girl he met. This work is one of the first attempts to blend science fiction and Western-style apocalypse theme in Chinese science fiction works and proved to be a great success, winning 2014 saga novel Nebula Award for Chinese science fictions, one of the highest honors of Chinese SF works.

What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear

According to Baoshu himself, this story is better understood as alternate history rather than hard-core science fiction. The premise of the story draws on philosophy, and Jean-Paul Sartre, who actually appears in the story. It runs real historical events and personalities in reverse order, to ask some fundamental questions. So the starting point is a China where it is now – lots of technology, industry, a successful host of the Olympics (birds nest stadium). We follow Xie Baosheng from this point over decades as events happen in the reverse order, with world leaders and nations carrying out actions that see the USSR created, then Germany split in two, then the Cultural Revolution, then the Korean War, then the Second World War. Owing to some of its sensitive contents its original Chinese version "Da shidai" 大时代 (Mandarin Chinese for The Great Era), was circulated online only, but American SF writer Ken Liu just translated it into English and had it published on Fantasy and Science Fiction March/April 2015. It was named Best SF Short Story of the Year 2015 by bestsf.net.