The floating ships in the fantasy role-playing game Honkai: Star Rail are populated with traders, gourmets and literati who surf their texts on jade abacuses. The game, from the Chinese company miHoYo, combines a taste of the Qing dynasty with gifts of the digital age — holographic bonsai and teleportation gateways for instant travel. “We call it Eastern fantasies, silkpunk, that kind of vibe,” Fish Ling, miHoYo’s senior director of global business development, said this year, showing off the ways its newest video game wove cybertech into a tapestry of ancient culture. Cyberpunk and steampunk were terms popularized in the 1980s to describe science fiction or fantasy worlds that explore rebellion against authority and the ramifications of technology, whether through body augmentations in near-future dystopias or brass vehicles in Victorian-era settings. The offshoot silkpunk is a more recent creation by Ken Liu, a speculative fiction author whose Dandelion Dynasty series features a throne made of bamboo and silk with intricate jewel-like clockwork and a kite built from similar materials.

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Persons: Fish Ling, miHoYo’s, Ken Liu