A review by thearbiter89
The Wandering Earth, by Cixin Liu
4.0
The Wandering Earth is Liu Cixin at his inventive best - a cavalcade of out-of-this-world stories whose relatively short lengths conveniently exonerate Liu from the need to pad them with character insight and narrative exposition, things that are not his comparative advantages.
The Wandering Earth is a collection of short stories from the storied writer of what is perhaps China's most significant modern science fiction export to date - the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. The stories are replete with his signature style of combining 10,000-light year high concept science fiction with a the evocation of the ability of societies to mobilise en masse to solve existential threats with ludicrously ambitious feats of engineering.
Liu's greatest weakness as a writer is that he doesn't do characters very well, and his women characters, in particular, have all the nuance of a low-budget high school science fiction anime series. Thankfully, the short story format ameliorates this weakness as it reduces the need to make character interest the hook to sustain longer narratives, once the high-concept part has run its course.
Here are some of the stories I particularly appreciated:
I give this short story collection: 4.5 out of 5 Devourers
The Wandering Earth is a collection of short stories from the storied writer of what is perhaps China's most significant modern science fiction export to date - the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. The stories are replete with his signature style of combining 10,000-light year high concept science fiction with a the evocation of the ability of societies to mobilise en masse to solve existential threats with ludicrously ambitious feats of engineering.
Liu's greatest weakness as a writer is that he doesn't do characters very well, and his women characters, in particular, have all the nuance of a low-budget high school science fiction anime series. Thankfully, the short story format ameliorates this weakness as it reduces the need to make character interest the hook to sustain longer narratives, once the high-concept part has run its course.
Here are some of the stories I particularly appreciated:
- Mountain: An intriguing first-contact story with an utterly alien society whose very notions of the nature of reality were shaped by vastly different physical environments and evolutionary starting points from our own. I won't spoil it here, but suffice to say that if you aren't too fussed about scientific accuracy, there will be much to appreciate about Mountain's fearlessly inventive attempt at depicting alien aliens.
- Curse 5.0 A surreal and oftentimes strangely hilarious take on how irresponsible IoT deployment could lead to apocalypse. The clincher is the self-parodic self-inclusion of Cixin and fellow sf writer Pan Dajiao as hapless tramps who unwittingly set off a virus that makes people's IoT devices try to kill them.
- Sun of China A sf parable of pure optimism, depicting the life of a village bumpkin who, through hard work, slowly ascends to a commanding position in China's space program and becomes the first man to embark on an interstellar journey. Of interest is Liu's depiction of a scenario in which China-led scientific and engineering ingenuity bring peace and prosperity to a future world.
- The Wandering Earth: The titular story is less of a compact narrative but a sweeping historical account of mankind's attempt to move Earth to another solar system to escape the Sun's impending stellar flare. It's chiefly distinguished by the sheer epic audacity of the notion of installing giant, mountain-sized engines on the Earth's surface to propel us out of the solar system, evocatively envisioned by the haunting image of a looming Jupiter on the cover of the book.
I give this short story collection: 4.5 out of 5 Devourers