Science fiction serves as a crucial vehicle for imagining the future. This genre was introduced into China through translation amid the late-nineteenth-century tide of the eastward transmission of Western learning. Known at the time as“scientific fiction,”it was from the outset endowed with a nationalist mission of “saving the nation through science.”In this context, for progressive intellectuals of the late Qing period, the translation and introduction of scientific fiction was not merely a form of cross-linguistic literary transmission, but a practice of“engaged translation”closely intertwined with enlightenment, national salvation, and social transformation. Late Qing translators sought, through the translation of diverse future-oriented imaginations, to provide China with a trans-spatiotemporal perspective to examine the deficiencies of the present and to explore possible solutions to pressing national crises, thereby transforming literary imagination into an active constructive force. In this sense, the significance of the translation and introduction of scientific fiction in the late Qing period lies not only in scientific enlightenment and the renewal of literary genres, but more importantly in its role in enabling“the future”to break free from the cyclical logic of traditional Chinese temporality and become a modern category closely tied to national survival, rejuvenation, and historical progress, thus contributing to the construction of a modern Chinese conception of the nation’s future. 

science fiction, future, vision of national future, translation and introduction, the late Qing