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A review by lucasilievskie
Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation by Ken Liu
3.0
An interesting and whimsical collection of contemporary Chinese sci-fi, containing everything from alternate history time travel, trains traversing multi-route space-time curves, split-personality clairvoyants, skies made of crystal, a techno-philosophical Alan Turing-AI conversation, and more.
The quality of the collection was consistently decent with a few busts – some of the stories I would even consider quite imaginative – but I couldn’t help but feel that the premises of the majority of them were only explored at surface-level. The overall execution was closer to playful and thoughtful than profound and revolutionary.
My favorites: What Has Passed Shall Appear in Kinder Light, The New Year Train, The Snow of Jinyang, and The History of Future Illnesses.
Rating: Three
The quality of the collection was consistently decent with a few busts – some of the stories I would even consider quite imaginative – but I couldn’t help but feel that the premises of the majority of them were only explored at surface-level. The overall execution was closer to playful and thoughtful than profound and revolutionary.
My favorites: What Has Passed Shall Appear in Kinder Light, The New Year Train, The Snow of Jinyang, and The History of Future Illnesses.
Rating: Three