In 2002, The Legend of a Soldier Boy became a hot topic on many online forums, with hits steadily increasing until its peak in 2004.
Even now, this segmented story has not yet ended, with its current total of 1.6 million Chinese characters posted online. This year also sees the release of its paper-based version, with two volumes already on the market, and the rest waiting to follow.
The author of The Legend of a Soldier Boy is a 25-year-old writer with the net name of Xuan Yu. His story takes place upon an imaginary world somewhere out in the cosmos. Initially the plot does not revolve around the whole universe, but rather around a high school student, who's determined to join the army.
After receiving tough training from his literally robotic drillmasters, he becomes a recognized soldier and an excellent leader. However the plot then expands to universal proportions, with a fast approaching interstellar war. Xuan Yu has this to say about this work.
"Through my writing, I try to find out whether robots can get along with human beings. I also set up this kind of world because I like animation works such as Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Gundam, whose stories take place within intergalactic settings. However, in many ways my creation also reflects human society, and I include the things that I hear and experience in my own life."
As a relatively new style of literature, the fantasy novel differs significantly from pure science fiction. The latter requires scientific theories to support its storylines, with a sci-fi author's fantastic but calculated ideas sometimes later becoming scientific reality.
The Chinese fantasy novel is also different from its Western counterpart, which is normally based upon mythology. Lacking either historical or scientific restraints, the authors of Chinese fantasy therefore have great freedom to unleash their imaginations.
Yang Wen is the editor and organizer of numerous fantasy works, including Xuan Yu's Soldier Boy. She talks about why they chose this on-line novel as the first to be published as a series of novels.
"I think it's distinguished because of its plot-setting. When you read it , you'll find that it's like playing a computer game, in which you finish one task after another, and you cannot stop because you know you'll find more attractive things if you continue. Moreover, the imagination within the story is quite different to what you can find in traditional types of literature.
It neglects the restrictions of time and space, but still remains plausible enough for a reader's mind to accept. I think it's really difficult to create an attractive story like Soldier Boy, which has already notched up 1.6 million Chinese characters."
If you try the search engine "Google," you'll get 678,000 results for "fantasy novel". This is an especially relevant statistic when you consider how much the fantasy genre owes to the internet. Of China's 90 million regular online users, the readers of fantasy novels are very young. Indeed, they generally range from the ages of 15 to 25, with the occasional thirty-something fan making up the numbers. China's younger generation is imaginative and willing to accept new things, thus creating a huge potential market for the fantasy novel. Furthermore, a close relationship between fantasy novels and online forums provides readers with the enticement of interaction. Here is Yang Wen.
"The fantasy genre interacts with its readers, in that the author always reads the comments and suggestions of readers after posting stories online. In this way the author can revise the story and always keeps motivated. Also, because fantasy novels are usually very long, when the author starts writing, he even doesn't know whether his work will ever be published. Therefore the support of on-line readers is very important."
The earliest Chinese fantasy novels can be traced back to 1996. However at that time, this concept only existed within the thoughts of avant-garde literary circles. The genre can only be said to have become truly popular among ordinary readers after its rapid dissemination on the internet. With these first two stages of development in mind, Yang Wen talks about the current changes within the fantasy genre.
"The earliest fantasy novels had a closer relationship with traditional literature. However, current fantasy authors are quite different in their approach; they're deeply influenced by online games, and this leads to differences in thought, storytelling and structure, when you compare them with the earlier writers."
Yang Wen believes that the fantasy novel does have potential within the book market. After all, these novels are varied enough to attract many different readers, with concepts ranging from the philosophical to the investigative. The book market's fantasy novels are mainly written by the most successful on-line writers. Most of these web writers initially write just for fun, and only think of writing as a career after their works have been published.
"The book market for fantasy novels is becoming more and more mature; things have already changed so much. The readers of fantasy novels are mainly born after 1980, and these young people have grown up under conditions very different to the older generation with their ingrained preference for traditional literature. These youngsters are therefore far more likely to accept fantasy works."
And as long as the demand remains, people like Yang Wen will continue to publish this kind of novel on the book market. Furthermore, if as expected, these novels are adapted into films, TV dramas and computer games, we can expect an even greater dynamism within the field of the fantasy novel.
(CRI.com June 2, 2005)
