 | |
| Author | Chen Qiufan |
|---|---|
| Country | China |
| Language | Chinese |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Changjiang Literature & Art Press 长江文艺出版社 |
Publication date | 2013 |
| ISBN | 9787535462398 |
The Waste Tide is a science fiction novel by the Chinese writer Chen Qiufan. It is the debut novel by the writer.
The story takes place in the imaginary ''Silicon Isle''. The Chinese word ''硅屿'' for Silicon Isle shares a similar pronunciation with Guiyu (Chinese: 贵屿) in Mandarin. In the real world, Guiyu is a town in the Shantou prefecture of Guangdong province in southern China. And it is Shantou where Chen Qiufan was born and grew up before he entered Peking University.
Situated on the South China Sea coast, Guiyu got famous in the global environmentalist community for its reception of E-waste. The town held the record for being the largest E-waste site up to 2013. Though some residents got rich by electronic recycling, pollution became serious in the town.
Talking about the background of writing the novel, Chen said: ''Choosing my hometown as background to write the story, is related to my thinking of China. To depict the pain of changing China, is just because I desire for she getting better gradually.'' [1]
The Waste Tide depicts a dystopian China in the post-2020 era. In the Guiyu island, the large electronic waste recycling industries are in full control of local lineage associations. The laborers who undertake dangerous work for the profit of the Chinese and foreign businessmen who employ them are depicted not as humans, but cyborgs whose bodies and minds have been altered permanently through bio-engineering. [2]
Mimi is a 'waste girl', a member of the lowest caste on Silicon Isle. Located off China's southeastern coast, Silicon Isle is the global capital for electronic waste recycling, where thousands of people like Mimi toil day and night, hoping that one day they too will get to enjoy the wealth they've created for their employers, the three scrap families who have ruled the isle for generations.
It all changes when a ship bearing a dangerous cargo arrives at Silicon Isle. What looks like normal e-waste is actually infected by a virus born out of one of the darkest episodes of World War II, Project Waste Tide. In a fateful accident, Mimi is infected by the virus and becomes the host for an omniscient consciousness, hell-bent on righting all the wrongs that have been done to her people. A class war ignites, one that draws in environmental extremists and waste workers, and involves family feuds and darker conspiracies. [3]
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which the Earth's civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; astronomical, such as an impact event; destructive, such as nuclear holocaust or resource depletion; medical, such as a pandemic, whether natural or human-caused; end time, such as the Last Judgment, Second Coming or Ragnarök; or any other scenario in which the outcome is apocalyptic, such as a zombie apocalypse, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics or alien invasion.
Snow Crash is a science fiction novel by the American writer Neal Stephenson, published in 1992. Like many of Stephenson's novels, its themes include history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy.
Shantou, alternately romanized as Swatow and sometimes known as Santow, is a prefecture-level city on the eastern coast of Guangdong, China, with a total population of 5,502,031 as of the 2020 census and an administrative area of 2,248.39 square kilometres (868.11 sq mi). However, its built-up area is much bigger with 12,543,024 inhabitants including Rongcheng and Jiedong districts, Jiexi county and Puning city in Jieyang plus all of Chaozhou city largely conurbated. This is de facto the 5th built-up area in mainland China between Hangzhou-Shaoxing, Xian-Xianyang and Tianjin.
Electronic waste recycling, electronics recycling ore-waste recycling is the disassembly and separation of components and raw materials of waste electronics; when referring to specific types of e-waste, the terms like computer recycling or mobile phone recycling may be used. Like other waste streams, re-use, donation and repair are common sustainable ways to dispose of IT waste.
Electronic waste or e-waste describes discarded electrical or electronic devices. It is also commonly known as waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) or end-of-life (EOL) electronics. Used electronics which are destined for refurbishment, reuse, resale, salvage recycling through material recovery, or disposal are also considered e-waste. Informal processing of e-waste in developing countries can lead to adverse human health effects and environmental pollution. The growing consumption of electronic goods due to the digital revolution and innovations in science and technology, such as bitcoin, has led to a global e-waste problem and hazard. The rapid exponential increase of e-waste is due to frequent new model releases and unnecessary purchases of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), short innovation cycles and low recycling rates, and a drop in the average life span of computers.
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is a 2006 zombie apocalyptic horror novel written by American author Max Brooks. The novel is broken into eight chapters: “Warnings”, “Blame”, “The Great Panic”, “Turning the Tide”, “Home Front USA”, “Around the World, and Above”, “Total War”, and “Good-Byes”, and features a collection of individual accounts told to and recorded by an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission, following a devastating global conflict against a zombie plague. The personal accounts come from individuals from different walks of life and all over the world, including Antarctica and outer space. The "interviews" detail the experiences of the survivors of the crisis, as well as social, political, religious, economic, and environmental changes that have occurred as a result.
Portunus trituberculatus, also known as the gazami crab, Asian blue crab or horse crab, is the most widely fished species of crab in the world. It is found off the coasts of East Asia and is closely related to Portunus armatus.
Challenging the Chip is a 2006 book on "labor rights and environmental justice in the global electronics industry" edited by Ted Smith, David A. Sonnenfeld, and David Naguib Pellow. It is published by Temple University Press. In three parts, the book looks at global electronics, environmental justice and labor rights, and electronic waste and extended producer responsibility. In four appendices, the book also deals with the principles of environmental justice, the computer take-back campaign, sample shareholder resolutions, and the electronics recycler's pledge of true stewardship.
Guiyu is a town created from an agglomerate of four adjoined villages totalling 150,000 people in the Chaoyang district of Guangdong province in China. Situated on the South China Sea coast, Guiyu is perhaps best known in the global environmentalist community for its reception of e-waste. In fact, the town also holds the record for being the largest e-waste site of the world, as of 2013.
Chinese science fiction is genre of literature that concerns itself with hypothetical future social and technological developments in the Sinosphere.
Guiyu, in Guangdong Province, China, is widely perceived as the largest electronic waste (e-waste) site in the world. In 2005, there were 60,000 e-waste workers in Guiyu who processed the more than 100 truckloads that were transported to the 52-square-kilometre area every day. The constant movement into and processing of e-wastes in the area leading to the harmful and toxic environment and living conditions, coupled with inadequate facilities, have led to the Guiyu town being nicknamed the "electronic graveyard of the world".
Electronic waste or e-waste in the United States refers to electronic products that have reached the end of their operable lives, and the United States is beginning to address its waste problems with regulations at a state and federal level. Used electronics are the quickest-growing source of waste and can have serious health impacts. The United States is the world leader in producing the most e-waste, followed closely by China; both countries domestically recycle and export e-waste. Only recently has the United States begun to make an effort to start regulating where e-waste goes and how it is disposed of. There is also an economic factor that has an effect on where and how e-waste is disposed of. Electronics are the primary users of precious and special metals, retrieving those metals from electronics can be viewed as important as raw metals may become more scarce
Electronic waste or e-waste in China refers to electronic products that are no longer usable and are therefore dumped or recycled. China is the world's largest importer and producer of electronic waste with over 70% of all global e-waste ending up in the world's largest dumpsites. An estimated 60–80% of this e-waste is handled through illegal informal recycling processes, without the necessary safety precautions legally required by Chinese government regulations. Processing e-waste in this way directly causes serious environmental damage and permanent health risks in areas surrounding the disposal sites. While the Chinese government and the international community have taken action to regulate e-waste management, ineffective enforcement, legislative loopholes, and the pervasiveness of informal recycling have been obstacles to mitigating the consequences of e-waste.
MBA Polymers is a recycling company with operations globally that recovers plastics from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and auto-shredder residue from end-of-life automobiles (ELV).
The global waste trade is the international trade of waste between countries for further treatment, disposal, or recycling. Toxic or hazardous wastes are often imported by developing countries from developed countries.
Biological warfare (BW)—also known as bacteriological warfare, or germ warfare—has had a presence in popular culture for over 100 years. Public interest in it became intense during the Cold War, especially the 1960s and '70s, and continues unabated. This article comprises a list of popular culture works referencing BW or bioterrorism, but not those pertaining to natural, or unintentional, epidemics.
Chen Qiufan, also known as Stanley Chan, is a Chinese science fiction writer, columnist, and scriptwriter. His first novel was The Waste Tide, which "combines realism with allegory to present the hybridity of humans and machines". Chen Qiufan's short fiction works have won three Galaxy Awards for Chinese Science Fiction, twelve Nebula Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy in Chinese. "The Fish of Lijiang" received the Best Short Form Award for the 2012 Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards. His stories have been published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, MIT Technology Review, Clarkesworld, Year's Best SF, Interzone, and Lightspeed, as well as influential Chinese science fiction magazine Science Fiction World. His works have been translated into German, French, Finnish, Korean, Czech, Italian, Japanese and Polish and other languages.
In 2019 the following events occurred in science fiction.
China's waste import ban, instated at the end of 2017, prevented foreign inflows of waste products. Starting in early 2018, the government of China, under Operation National Sword, banned the import of several types of waste, including plastics. The ban has greatly affected recycling industries worldwide, as China had been the world's largest importer of waste plastics and processed hard-to-recycle plastics for other countries, especially in the West.
Regina Kanyu Wang is a Chinese writer of speculative fiction and essays on the genre. Her work was first published in 2015, and she immediately began earning acclaim in the form of a number of national awards. In 2023, she was nominated for two Hugo Awards, one for her work the prior year on the fanzine Journey Planet, and one for her 2022 short story 火星上的祝融. She writes in both Chinese and English.