I have spent more than a decade organising and editing for the National Middle School Students' Science Popularization and Science Fiction Essay Competition, handling tens of thousands of student science fiction essays. After reading so many, I have arrived at an observation that may sound unflattering: many children read science fiction, but few can write it. And the difference between these two kinds of children becomes more pronounced the higher the grade.
Children who read a lot have an armoury of terms: warp drives, Dyson spheres, parallel universes, all at their fingertips. But ask them one question: in your story, what did these terms actually change? Most cannot answer. Children who can write are different. They may not know more terminology, but they possess a particular skill: alter one rule of reality, then reason out the consequences step by step, pushing the logic to places they themselves never anticipated.
That skill is imagination. It is not born of admiration; it is built by answering questions.
Take an example. Suppose a child wants to write about "a city on the Moon." A child who only reads will stop at the picture: glass domes, flying cars, happy people. A child who writes immediately runs into problems: with gravity at one-sixth of Earth's, how are buildings constructed? How do children get to school? What happens to people's bones after years of living there? Every one of these is a real scientific question, and the writer must produce an answer for each. Imagination grows inch by inch in the process of answering such questions.
The Guidelines for Youth Science Fiction Education, published in 2023, state it clearly: science fiction education draws on science fiction works to spark curiosity and cultivate imagination, creativity, and critical thinking. My observations and research over the years broadly confirm this, but I must add a second half that parents may not like to hear.
I once conducted a study analysing four hundred award-winning essays published in collections between 2015 and 2021, supplemented by interviews and questionnaires. The conclusion has two sides: students showed marked improvement in creativity and imagination; but in terms of scientific knowledge and practical skills, the effect of science fiction education was in fact limited. In other words, reading science fiction can ignite imagination, but scientific knowledge does not grow by itself.
Why? Because in reading, scientific concepts "glide past" before our eyes; in writing, those concepts "stand squarely in the road." When a child reads that "communications between Earth and Mars are delayed by more than twenty minutes," they nod and move on. But when they themselves write that "the protagonist on Mars awaits instructions from Earth," that piece of knowledge becomes a problem they cannot bypass: while the instructions are still on their way, can the protagonist decide for themselves during those twenty minutes? They must think it through for the story to hold; get it wrong, and the story shows its cracks.
Between "having read it" and "using it correctly" lies the act of writing. That is why I always tell parents: if your child loves science fiction, don't just buy them books; give them a pen.
What can be done concretely? Based on the outstanding works I have seen in the competition, there are four things parents can do at home.
First, think before you look things up. Before writing, have the child put the idea in their head into one rough sentence, however unpolished; once it is written down, then go consult books and materials. Never reverse the order: if the research comes first, the imagination gets fenced in, and what comes out is all from the books.
Second, after writing, ask: "Which sentence did you invent on purpose?" Science fiction is allowed to go beyond reality, but the child must know where they have gone beyond it. Being able to point out "I made this sentence up, because reality cannot do this yet." That sense of boundaries matters far more than memorising ten more scientific terms.
Third, revising once matters more than writing once. Among the truly outstanding works in the competition, almost none were settled in a single draft. Parents need not mark up the essay; just offer one or two concrete questions, such as "why could he suddenly do this here?", and let the child go back and revise. The traces of revision are the best record of learning.
Fourth, different ages call for different demands. For lower primary years, clearly writing about "one wondrous change" is enough; from upper primary to junior secondary, require them to answer "who wants what, what stands in the way, and what happens next"; beyond that, add one more question: "what is the cost?" Measuring an eight-year-old and a fourteen-year-old with the same ruler trains nothing.
Some parents ask: does this help with exams? My answer is direct: a child who can think through cause and effect, write coherent sentences, and tell fact from fantasy fears no exam. But that is the fruit, not the root. Schools in Hong Kong are now promoting STEM, and science fiction writing happens to be the thread that stitches language expression and scientific literacy together. The science a child verifies to make their story hold stays with them far longer than what they memorise for an exam.
This past year in Hong Kong, what parents ask me most concerns artificial intelligence: "My child hands in homework produced by AI in seconds. What should I do?" My answer: rather than guarding against it, change the assignment. "Write about a world of your own, set out its rules clearly, and then tell me which rule you invented." That is homework AI cannot do for them. AI can write the sentences, but it cannot do the "thinking it through."
Look at the process, not the final draft; the same principle applies. Asking a child "what did you revise?" is far more useful than asking "have you finished?"
One final, measured remark. Science fiction writing does not guarantee that a child will become a scientist, nor that a few more marks will appear on their report card. It guarantees nothing except one thing: the habit of asking the unknown "what if...?", and then setting out to find the answer oneself.
Two years ago, I shared a stage with Mr Liu Cixin at the South China Book Festival, where he said that science fiction writers should remain curious about the wider world. I would like to add one sentence: that curiosity is never produced by reading; it is produced by writing.
About the author: Chen Liuqi, Doctor of Education, founder of Hong Kong Science Popularization and Science Fiction Academy (HKSPSF), council member of the China Science Writers Association (CSWA) and deputy director of its Science Education Committee. He formerly served as deputy director of the organising committee of the National Middle School Students' Science Popularization and Science Fiction Essay Competition, co-editor-in-chief of the essay collection series "Waiting for You in the Future," and a columnist for Science Popularization Times, and has long been engaged in research and promotion of science popularization and science fiction education for young people.