Sci-fi novel predicted Olympic sprinter Su Bingtian 23 years ago
- By Zhang Rui
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E-mail China.org.cn, August 7, 2021
A comparison between Chinese Olympic sprinter Su Bingtian and an event in a 23-year-old sci-fi novel written by famous author Wang Jinkang has gone viral online after the latter seemed to portray Su's experience at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
Wang's novel "Baoren" (literally "Leopard Man”), written in 1998 and published in Chinese periodical Science Fiction World, includes a paragraph describing how a 32-year-old runner enters the men's 100-meter sprint final of the World Athletics Championships. He is the only Asian in the race out of eight competitors and finishes in under 10 seconds. However, due to a false start in final by a runner from Jamaica, the Chinese sprinter's physical strength is affected.
In Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, Su Bingtian, turning 32 at the end of August, was among exactly eight sprinters on the racing track of the world-class games. He also happened to be the only Asian at the start line. Su stunned the world when he ran his personal best of 9.83 seconds in the semifinal, making him the first Asian to reach the men's 100m final at the Olympics in 89 years. In the final, Su finished sixth with a time of 9.98 seconds. That result came after one false start by a runner, namely, British competitor Zharnel Hughes.
"Science fiction is about the future — sometimes coincidences happen," the prominent Chinese sci-fi writer Wang Jinkang, 72, told China.org.cn after being informed of the comparison and heated discussions online. "When I wrote the story, there was no prototype for me. I just wished that Chinese athletes could make a breakthrough in the 100-meter sprint at that time."
Wang also mentioned how he wrote a story in 1997 about how an artificially intelligent machine beat the human champion at the ancient Chinese board game Go. Two decades later, that premonition became a reality when Google's AlphaGo defeated the world's number one Go player, Ke Jie, in 2017.
Wang said that "Baoren" had already been picked up to be adapted into a short film, which finished filming in June. Wang also congratulated Su and his fellow Olympic peers, adding that he hoped Chinese athletes would continue to make breakthroughs in sports in the future.
Wang's book is not the only sci-fi link at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The animated post-apocalyptic cyberpunk masterpiece "Akira," created by Japanese artist Katsuhiro Otomo in 1988, also predicted that Tokyo would hold Olympics in 2020 and need to overcome possible cancelation. In fact, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games was postponed for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
