Liu Cixin has won this year's Hugo Award for Best Novel for his The Three-Body Problem. In doing so, Liu has become the first Chinese science-fiction writer to win such a prestigious international award. His achievements in the field of science fiction are well known, and the Best Novel award, announced in Seattle on Aug 23, is indeed a breakthrough for Chinese sci-fi writers.

But is netizens' opinion that Liu has single-handedly taken Chinese sci-fi writing to the highest international level and filled the years of vacuum in the genre correct?

There is no denying Liu is an excellent sci-fi writer, and his personal achievements are immense. But despite that, sci-fi writing is still in a rather depressing stage in China judging by the overall standard of works. Also, science fiction attracts only a small group of Chinese readers.

That sci-fi literature is important there is no doubt. Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, in a way, provided the rocket (projectile in the book) launch site (Kennedy Space Center in Florida) for the "Moon Mission" more than a century before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped on the surface of the Moon. In his masterpiece Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, Verne accurately details the features of a submarine while describing Captain Nemo's ship, the Nautilus, which was ahead of its time because submarines then were very primitive vessels.

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