Scan barcode
A review by berlinbibliophile
Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation by Cheng Jingbo, Gu Shi, Zhang Ran, Xia Jia, Ma Boyong, Anna Wu, Mingwei Song, Regina Kanyu Wang, Baoshu, Chen Qiufan, Han Song, Hao Jingfang, Tang Fei, Cixin Liu, Fei Dao
3.0
As with all short story collections, I liked some of the stories much more than others. My favourite story was "What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear" by Baoshu, which combines a great story about the intertwined lives of childhood friends with a history of China in which historical events happen backwards from our own timeline.
A lot of the other stories are harder to remember because there are few characters to care about: it's more about the concept than the characters. Still, the concepts are usually interesting. The overall "feeling" of the stories is very different from the Western sci-fi I've read. It still definitely reads like sci-fi, but a lot of the hall-marks I usually expect, like a space setting or simply being set in the future, weren't present. I'd like to read more Chinese sci-fi to see if that's a general trend or just in this collection.
A lot of the other stories are harder to remember because there are few characters to care about: it's more about the concept than the characters. Still, the concepts are usually interesting. The overall "feeling" of the stories is very different from the Western sci-fi I've read. It still definitely reads like sci-fi, but a lot of the hall-marks I usually expect, like a space setting or simply being set in the future, weren't present. I'd like to read more Chinese sci-fi to see if that's a general trend or just in this collection.