A phenomenal anthology of short speculative fiction.
In this anthology, Liu offers an assortment of the short fiction he’s translated, along with three short essays about Chinese science fiction.
Some stories in this anthology have won awards and been anthologized elsewhere, while others are just stories Liu personally enjoys. In his introduction, he points out that although China has a rich science-fiction culture, “few stories are translated into English, making it hard for non-Chinese readers to appreciate them.” Hopefully, this collection is the first step toward rectifying that oversight, as every story is captivating. For instance, Hao Jingfang’s “Folding Beijing” takes place in a near-future dystopian version of the title city, where its buildings literally telescope out of and into the Earth, allowing three different strata of society to spend a portion of the day aboveground. A waste processor from the poorest level, Third Space, must slip through the breaches in the complex folding mechanism to deliver a letter to a woman in the far wealthier First Space in order to earn enough money to send his daughter to a good school. In “Taking Care of God” by Liu Cixin—author of The Three-Body Problem (2014), the first novel in translation to win the Hugo Award—who also contributes two essays here, a race of beings arrives on Earth, 2 billion old men and women with long white hair and white robes. They claim that they are God, creators of everything, and they now want to spend their golden years here with us. They’re taken in by people around the world, including Qiusheng’s family in rural China, which quickly learns how stressful housing an elderly relation can be. These stories, along with the rest of the anthology, represent the best in both science fiction and works in translation, detailing situations that appear alien on the surface but deftly reframe contemporary issues to give readers a new view of familiar human experiences.
A phenomenal anthology of short speculative fiction.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8419-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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