Kexue Xiaoshuo

This article advocates reading kexue xiaoshuo (science novels) as a contact genre embodying a unique subjectivity emerging out of late Qing China’s interactions with the world. Taking its cue from Mary Louise Pratt’s (1948- ) concept of the ‘contact zone,’ this article adopts a contact approach to recount kexue xiaoshuo’s genesis by underscoring an unlikely combination of science and fantasy as interaction and improvisation found in the contact zone. Extrapolating from fictional texts such as New Story of the Stone to the shifting epistemological landscape in late Qing reading culture, this article presents kexue xiaoshuo as a cultural formation like Pidgin English, which records traces of contention between autochthonous and Western intellectual traditions.