Trouble at China’s largest (okay, the world’s largest) circulation SF magazine, where the editors have united to publish an “Open Letter of protest” against the editor in chief.
Here’s the original: Open Letter (in Chinese).
I’ve translated the Youth Daily news article below:
**
“Science Fiction World“ turns into a “pseudo-science farce” as editor’s collective seeks to “overthrow the president”**
by: Li Fan (Youth Daily) 2010-3-23
translated by Lex Berman
China’s largest science fiction magazine Science Fiction World, has recently become wracked by infighting. On March 21, the magazine’s entire editorial staff published an open letter on the Internet accusing the publication’s editor-in-chief, Li Chang, of various offenses and seeking his removal from office. Yesterday, it was learned from relevant channels that the unit in charge of Science Fiction World (the Sichuan Province Science and Technology Association) has dispatched a team to investigate the sitation.
The open letter claims to be written under the “duress of the last banner that can be raised before Science Fiction World ceases to exist.” Among the accusations leveled at Li Chang were that after taking office he dropped relations with various authors and instead forced the magazine editors to write the stories themselves; he then demanded that the foreign language editors take on the task of translations into Chinese; and went so far as to make the art editors create the illustrations instead of hiring artists. Also, for example, he interfered with the advertising to the point of replacing the magazine’s cover with an advertisement for a school.