Chinese news agencys report that Zheng Wenguang, "the father of Chinese Science Fiction," died from heart disease Tuesday in Beijing.

Zheng, 74, published China's first SF story in 1954. It was translated into several languages. In English it was titled "The Mirror Image of the Earth" and was printed in The Penguin World Omnibus of Science Fiction and The Road to Science Fiction Volume 6: Around the World.

Zheng was born in Vietnam, but moved to China in 1947. He was a research fellow with the Beijing Astronomical Observatory and a member of the World Science Fiction Association and the Chinese Writers' Association.

Although Zheng stopped writing during the Chinese cultural revolution, he returned to writing in the late '70s and published China's first SF novel in 1979.

Following a 1983 stroke which left him paralized, Zheng did very little writing.

Posted June 21, 2003