A review by erikars
Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation by Ken Liu

4.0

Like many short story collections, some of the stories in this collection were better than others. Unlike most short story collections, I liked all of them. Thus, this collection is better than average as far as story collections go. Although, as essays at both the introduction and closing make clear, there is no singular definition of Chinese science fiction, one thing I really appreciated about this collection is that the stories were distinctly from a cultural background different than I was used to. Not the plots so much as the details of life -- names, food, cultural reference -- that permeate fiction even when it is set in a different time and place.

My personal favorites from this collection were "The Fish of Lijiang" by Chen Quifan, "A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight" and "Tongtong's Summer" by Xia Jia, "Invisible Planets" by Hao Jingfang, and "Taking Care of God" by Liu Cixin.