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A review by timinbc
The Wandering Earth: Classic Science Fiction Collection by Cixin Liu
5.0
(Not the Kindle edition in my case, but a trade-format paperback)
So, take some Big SF Ideas, add a dash of unlikely, shake well, and examine the consequences.
Extinction of humanity? Cool - where's the human story, let's see, aha! There it is.
Extinction of earth? Same.
Ants vs. dinosaurs. OK, skip the "human" part, where's the POV story of one character?
... and so on.
Maybe not really a five-star, but it got there on bonuses -- for fresh ideas, for attitude that suggests Jack Vance without really being anything like him, maybe for the overall feeling of "Isn't this fun to think about?"
And maybe even a bonus for presenting these as stories, so that the character development expected in a novel isn't there. I think that's appropriate in this case. And the last story has as much human pathos as one could want.
In this publication, I felt that it was produced by people who speak English very well but not natively. There are typos, word swaps, unusual use of hyphens, and other small distractions. I forgive it all when the translators have managed to maintain a distinct authorial attitude or character while also giving us the stories.
These stories won awards from 1999-2004, so the oldest is probably 20 years old. Worth remembering if you are comparing to his more recent work.
And if you don't like Big Idea hard SF, maybe look elsewhere. This ain't space opera, or Hammer's Slammers; no 20-km-long spaceships, no rogue AIs, no ansibles, no teleportation, no telepathy. Just some interesting What If?
So, take some Big SF Ideas, add a dash of unlikely, shake well, and examine the consequences.
Extinction of humanity? Cool - where's the human story, let's see, aha! There it is.
Extinction of earth? Same.
Ants vs. dinosaurs. OK, skip the "human" part, where's the POV story of one character?
... and so on.
Maybe not really a five-star, but it got there on bonuses -- for fresh ideas, for attitude that suggests Jack Vance without really being anything like him, maybe for the overall feeling of "Isn't this fun to think about?"
And maybe even a bonus for presenting these as stories, so that the character development expected in a novel isn't there. I think that's appropriate in this case. And the last story has as much human pathos as one could want.
In this publication, I felt that it was produced by people who speak English very well but not natively. There are typos, word swaps, unusual use of hyphens, and other small distractions. I forgive it all when the translators have managed to maintain a distinct authorial attitude or character while also giving us the stories.
These stories won awards from 1999-2004, so the oldest is probably 20 years old. Worth remembering if you are comparing to his more recent work.
And if you don't like Big Idea hard SF, maybe look elsewhere. This ain't space opera, or Hammer's Slammers; no 20-km-long spaceships, no rogue AIs, no ansibles, no teleportation, no telepathy. Just some interesting What If?