Award-winning author of Waste Tide and co-author of the global bestseller AI 2041 with Kai-Fu Lee. Also known as Stanley Chan. He writes science fiction realism — fiction that treats the present as the strangest planet of all.
Shantou → Beijing → Shanghai → Hong KongWriting since 1997Scroll
荒潮Waste Tide — The Guardian Best SF of 2019AI 2041WSJ · Washington Post · FT Best Books of 2021刹海Ocean Break — new novel, 2025×12Chinese Nebula Awards×3Galaxy Awards2023Grand Prix de l'ImaginaireTEDA Sci-Fi Vision of Life in 204110+Languages in translation
Novel · 2013 / English 2019 · Translated by Ken Liu
Waste Tide荒潮
On Silicon Isle, an island of electronic waste off China's southern coast, a migrant worker becomes the spark of an uprising between clans, corporations and machines. A prophetic eco-techno-thriller set where the author grew up.
The Guardian Best SF 2019Locus Award FinalistGrand Prix de l'Imaginaire 2023
Ten stories, ten technologies, twenty years out. Chen's globe-spanning fiction paired with Kai-Fu Lee's analysis — a map of how artificial intelligence will reshape the way we live, work and love.
WSJ · WaPo · FT Best Books 2021Global bestsellerBest Business Book (Germany)
The new novel. A story of climate politics and co-existence — human, technological, oceanic — that carries the ecological urgency of Waste Tide into the age of planetary crisis.
New · 2025Huacheng Literary IP List 2025
02 — The Writer
“Science fiction realism — fiction that treats the present as the strangest planet of all.”
Born beside the world's largest e-waste site. A decade inside China's tech industry, at Google and Baidu. Since 2017, a full-time writer translating the near future into human terms — and one of the most borrowed voices when the world tries to imagine what China, AI and the climate century feel like from the inside.
Recognized among Hong Kong's ten cultural and creative figures of the year.
Ocean Break 刹海 published
The new climate-political novel, first serialized in Flower City and published by Huacheng Publishing House; selected for the Huacheng Literary IP List 2025.
A season of world stages
Venice (Antikythera × MIT), Berlin (re:publica), Bangkok Climate Action Week, Singapore Writers Festival, Moscow AI Journey.
Teaching & research in Hong Kong
Assistant Professor at Hong Kong Metropolitan University; President of the World Chinese Science Fiction Association.
