Chongqing - From June 11 to June 19, 2024, the inaugural "Future Fiction Workshop: International Masterclass" unfolded at the Qijiang campus of Chongqing College of Mobile Communication in Southwest China. As co-founder of this creative writing workshop, renowned Italian sci-fi author Francesco Verso said, "We aim to help the new generation of sci-fi writers develop the tools to write better short stories."

Francesco Verso, a celebrated Italian science fiction writer and editor of Future Fiction, has dedicated the last 20 years of his life to the genre, both as a writer and an editor. "In the last ten years, I have promoted international science fiction both in Europe and in China through a series of books and projects," Verso shared. One of these projects is the Future Fiction Workshop, which Verso co-founded with Zhang Fan over the past five years.

Verso first visited China in 2017 for the fourth International Science Fiction Convention in Chengdu. "I discovered the incredible phenomenon of Chinese science fiction," he recalled. "This phenomenon is still in its early stages, as China is now publishing much more science fiction than in previous years, especially after Liu Cixin won the Hugo Award with 'The Three-Body Problem' in 2015."

Recognizing the burgeoning potential, Verso believed that the Chinese science fiction community would benefit from a creative writing workshop. "Zhang Fan, the dean of the Fishing Fortress Science Fiction Academy in Chongqing, was also thinking about the same thing," Verso noted. "We had the idea of trying to help a new generation of science fiction writers develop the tools to write better short stories, with more awareness of what it needs and what it takes to write excellent science fiction stories."

Verso described the workshop's approach as follows: "The teachers are taking the students from the early stage of writing a short story, from the inspiration to the craft of writing the story, like how to use all the science fiction elements that might make the story interesting." The workshop covers major contemporary science fiction topics, including artificial intelligence, big data, algorithms, climate change, androids, biotech, space exploration, new energy, and cyberpunk.

Participants gain numerous advantages from the workshop. "The first one is to have a relationship with a professional writer, whether international or Chinese," Verso explained. Every group of five students is in a smaller environment with an international teacher who speaks in English and a Chinese teacher who speaks in Chinese." Additionally, participants will connect with publishers, editors, and translators, gaining firsthand experience of the professional relationships that will shape their stories.

"We have top-quality teachers from the US, the UK, Brazil, and Italy," Verso emphasized. "We aim to help a new generation of writers come up with excellent stories. This is the first year, the first edition, but we are learning to improve step by step."

(Yin Xiangning from Qijiang District Convergence Media Center and intern Li Tao also contributed to the report)