Foreword from the Translator

I have been a fan of the time-travel genre for a while, especially where the central premise is where modern scientific and industrial ideas are transplanted into a non-modern world. This could be some time into our past (like in Eric Flint’s 1632 or here in LGQM), or it could be into an entirely different world (Thorensen’s Destiny’s Crucible). Parallel to this are novels that feature a host world with fantastical or magical elements (Er Mu’s Release that Witch).

The idea isn’t particularly new in the west. Most famously perhaps it is satirised at the end of the 19th century by Mark Twain in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, but there are many, many other works hence. Authors such as Turtledove, Stirling, Stross, Weber; the list goes on and on. This idea has been shaken and stirred and spilled across several genres such as alternate history, sci-fi, and fantasy.

The english novel that comes closest to Lingao is, in my opinion, Eric Flint’s 1632, i.e. the Ring of Fire universe. It parallels Morning Star in execution—a collaboration between several contributors—and also spirit, with the transposition of a group of people from our modern day world into the 17th century (in fact, almost down the very same year; 1628 vs 1632!).

Let us talk about the novel itself. Illumine Lingao, also known as Lin Gao Qi Ming or Morning Star of Lingao was originally published online on Qidian (a website in China that hosts serialised novels, known as web novels) in 2009 by Xiao Feng under the pen name Boaster (吹牛者, Chui Niu Zhe). He himself plays the role of one of the main characters in Volume 1 under the name Xiao Zishan. The premise of the novel was born from a discussion in 2006 on an online bulletin board, and the novel itself was written with ideas contributed from a few hundred people in the community. The first volume was published in print in 2017, and the second in 2022. This translation will follow the serialised rather than the print version due to the availability of source materials.

This novel is fairly unique in that it reads less like your traditional novel and more like a dramatic add-on of a real history. It stands out for its technical details, realistic grounding, and encyclopaedic exploration of time travel and its consequences (at times to the detriment of narrative enjoyability, I admit). It is a real tour de force of the nation-building/industrial fantasy/time travel genre, at least amongst Chinese webnovels. I hope that these distinct features emerge in my interpretation. However, there will doubtless be times where my scant knowledge of Chinese will limit the fidelity of my translation. For this I implore forgiveness. If the problem is particularly egregious I will endeavour to make note of it, but my focus is above all to spin a coherent retelling for an English audience.

There will be two forms in which I personally interject: either footnotes wherever I feel that the reader might be missing out on background or textual information, or translational comments (demarked TN) always at the end of chapters. However, don’t feel obliged: footnotes can always be skipped! Everything that isn’t a footnote or tagged with [TN] are words of the original author. Looking back on the first volume, I feel that I probably have made too many interjections. I apologise in advance if this detracts from the reading experience. There is also an entire wiki made by fans of the work, it’s all in Chinese unfortunately. If you’re interested, you can head over there and snoop around. Now, if it isn’t obvious already, this is of course a translation done by a fan without sanction nor licence from the original author or publisher. The writings herein are an unofficial rendering of the original work (for which a translation has not yet been licensed).

Finally, I also want to warn the reader that this novel has many aspects not palatable for Western audiences, we who are used to well-edited, published stories. This is a novel serialised online chapter by chapter (sometimes with multiple chapters published in a single day!) without much back-revision between them. Pacing, characterisation, exposition, and dialogue are all perhaps less polished than we are familiar with. As the translator I don't want to make edits that would overhaul the original; these traits are part and parcel of the online literature style.

Meta-narrative aside, the story also contains overt themes of nationalism, sexual and racial discrimination, sexual exploitation, slavery, an extremely authoritarian government, and so on. This is not a story concerned about Western ideals of how society ought to work: it is much closer in spirit to the wish-fulfilment genre that is so prevalent in Chinese web-literature. Supposedly, the overriding priority of the novel is realism; it is realpolitik that underpins the novel’s techno-nationalism. These are ideas that are scarcely discussed in mainstream English literature: I implore the reader to consider the place they have in this work. Now, my goal in this translation is not to argue for or against any particular set of opinions, and I try to be unbiased. Personally, I just think that it’s worthwhile to compare Boaster’s Lingao with other works in this genre.

More broadly, I hope that my translations are a small window for us in the West to see more of the East. To allow us to appreciate more of the story-telling heritage that all humanity, quite paradoxically, enjoys in common, but yet is simultaneously so divided. For, I think that all stories are worth telling. Let me finish my rambling with a concise epigraph, courtesy of Eric Flint, spoken through the mouthpiece of Oxenstierna:

Tremble, lords of Germany. A new breed has come into the world.

-JWD, 2024