The Near Future Setting of Japanese Contemporary Science Fiction

The Near Future setting, a very common phenomenon of science fiction, refers to the fact that the future social structure in the science fiction is conceived and set up on the basis of the author's understanding of the current reality. Modern Japanese science fiction confronts the social crisis while adhering to its tradition, thus establishes Near Future settings from four dimensions including political criticism, disaster prediction, time and place exploration, and cultural reflection through the employment of iconic signs, posing a creative perception of the relationship between the current reality and the near future, and signifying the unique innovative characteristic of culture and literature in an "intelligence+" era. The Near Future setting manifests that contemporary Japanese science fiction puts humans at the center of the networks of time and place, science and technology, and culture, providing a kind of fiction that embodies both universal significance and unique Japanese culture, which is a strong merit that Chinese science fiction can absorb in its future development.