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Chinese Censors Crack Down on Time Travel
H_Fisher writes "Disrespect the Chinese government at your peril ... and this includes anything you do with the past. Time magazine's Techland blog reports that China is banning references to time travel which are disrespectful to the nation's culture and history. No word on whether this includes a travel ban on time lords."
From Friday, April 15, 2011. PS, gas prices went up again.
I wonder if the Chinese traveled back in time to tell themselves to ban talking about time travel because it was possible. Will this prevent the discovery of time travel so that they can not warn themselves? The plot thickens...
If you outlaw scifi then only criminals will have scifi,
meaning only criminals will go on to study physics.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I was just getting ready to jump into my time machine and go back to kill Sun Yat-sen. How could they have known?
O... wait...
With the way things are run, the state controls and monitors everything shown on your television or your computer. So yeah, China can randomly go back in time and say Marty McFly never existed. Scary, huh? The Doc would be furious. Fortunately, that's not what they're saying. But somehow the government has taken a sudden disliking to the idea of distorting certain historical events, things and people. (Cough.) ....The decision was made earlier this month, with the country's State Administration for Radio, Film & Television stating that "The producers and writers are treating the serious history in a frivolous way, which should by no means be encouraged anymore."
What's wrong with these shows? They “casually make up myths, have monstrous and weird plots, use absurd tactics, and even promote feudalism, superstition, fatalism and reincarnation.”
So time travel comes in because the article decided to link the concept of time-travel to television and movies that convey alternative histories (Which, to the pedants, can include time-travel). But it the main theme discussed is regarding misrepresenting history. Nowhere does it say sitting in your back-yard and working on that warp-drive is verboten. It seems to me they want to cut down on media that strays from the government dictated and allowed 'historical context'. Far from a ban on time-travel. Censorship...Yes...Sensationalist...Unfortunately.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
It seems to me that their real fear is people latching on to the idea that things could ever have worked out differently. If people explore alternative histories and conjecture what would have happened if the ruling regime didn't come to power, how things might have been changed... perhaps for the better.
Better to nip those flights of fancy in the bud and keep everyone's horizons nicely blinkered and focused on the factory assembly line.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
I think I smell the birth of a new meme.
A favorite SF story of mine is Walter Jon Williams's "Foreign Devils," which was part of an anthology of stories taking place in the setting of HG Wells's War of the Worlds, but taking place in other parts of the world. WJW's contribution depicted the reaction of China's royalty to the tripods etc. Not time travel per se but definitely cast the Chinese court in a less than favorable light.
That's as close as I can get to a story which might draw ire from the PRC; any others? According to TFA they're down on stories which “casually make up myths, have monstrous and weird plots, use absurd tactics, and even promote feudalism, superstition, fatalism and reincarnation.” All of those at once sounds quite entertaining, actually.
June 4, 1989
Is here
in soviet Russia We remove people from time!
Their top researchers are too busy trying to figure out why ridiculous foreigners don't seem to comprehend that their language does, in fact, contain an 'L' sound.
Dr woooooo-oo hey! Dr woo.
Dr woooooo-oo hey! Dr woo.
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
Time magazine...I see what's going on here.
How will they prevent their people from traveling to the future naturally?
They have a time-tested bullet related procedure that's highly effective.
John
You know, other than some rather sordid and scandalous private affairs, Dr. Sun was alright. Now if we're talking about Glorious Chairman Mou or Messianic Generalissimo Chiang, I am all for it.
He rapes my wife three years from now...