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    Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation
    Unavailable
    Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation
    Unavailable
    Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation
    Ebook453 pages6 hours

    Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation

    By Ken Liu

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Invisible Planets, edited by multi award-winning writer Ken Liu--translator of the bestselling and Hugo Award-winning novel The Three Body Problem by acclaimed Chinese author Cixin Liu--is his second thought-provoking anthology of Chinese short speculative fiction. Invisible Planets is a groundbreaking anthology of Chinese short speculative fiction.

    The thirteen stories in this collection, including two by Cixin Liu and the Hugo and Sturgeon award-nominated “Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang, add up to a strong and diverse representation of Chinese SF. Some have won awards, some have garnered serioius critical acclaim, some have been selected for Year’s Best anthologies, and some are simply Ken Liu’s personal favorites.

    To round out the collection, there are several essays from Chinese scholars and authors, plus an illuminating introduction by Ken Liu. Anyone with an interest in international science fiction will find Invisible Planets an indispensable addition to their collection.

    For more Chinese SF in translation, check out Broken Stars.

    Stories:
    “The Year of the Rat” by Chen Qiufan
    “The Fist of Lijian” by Chen Qiufan
    “The Flower of Shazui” by Chen Qiufan
    “A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight” by Xia Jia
    “Tongtong’s Summer” by Xia Jia
    “Night Journey of the Dragon-Horse” by Xia jia
    “The City of Silence” by Ma Boyong
    “Invisible Planets” by Hao Jingfang
    “Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang
    “Call Girl” by Tang Fei
    “Grave of the Fireflies” by Cheng Jingbo
    “The Circle” by Liu Cixin
    “Taking Care of God” by Liu Cixin

    Essays:
    “The Worst of All Possible Universes and the Best of All Possible Earths: Three-Body and Chinese Science Fiction” by Liu Cixin and Ken Liu
    “The Torn Generation” Chinese Science Fiction in a Culture in Transition” by Chen Qiufan and Ken Liu
    “What Makes Chinese Science Fiction Chinese?” by Xia Jia and Ken Liu


    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateNov 1, 2016
    ISBN9780765384188
    Unavailable
    Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation
    Author

    Ken Liu

    Ken Liu is an award-winning American author of speculative fiction. His collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, has been published in more than a dozen languages. Liu’s other works include The Grace of Kings, The Wall of Storms, The Veiled Throne, and a second collection The Hidden Girl and Other Stories. He has been involved in multiple media adaptations of his work, including the short story “Good Hunting,” adapted as an episode in Netflix’s animated series Love, Death + Robots; and AMC’s Pantheon, adapted from an interconnected series of short stories. “The Hidden Girl,” “The Message,” and “The Oracle” have also been optioned for development. Liu previously worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. He frequently speaks at conferences and universities on topics including futurism, machine-augmented creativity, the history of technology, and the value of storytelling. Liu lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

    Read more from Ken Liu

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    Reviews for Invisible Planets

    4/5

    104 ratings7 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I felt fascinated, terrified, and hopeful after reading these stories. The window into Chinese science fiction provided by this anthology is rich and varied. I particularly appreciated the story "The City of Silence" by Ma Boyang -- the possible future of censorship is clear, and it is terrifying.
    • 4/5
      An interesting and colorful collection of stories competently translated by Ken Liu. It is interesting how fanciful an author can get when a planet is described in a paragraph or even five. And the stories run from the fanciful to the grim, though more sad and resigned that buoyant or hopeful.
    • 4/5
      Like most anthologies, there were some hits and some misses.

      A few personal stand-outs:
      Xia Jia's "Night Journey of the Dragon-Horse"
      Tang Fei's "Call Girl" (I need to look up some more of her work ASAP)
      Cheng Jingbo's "Grave of the Fireflies"

      I'm admittedly not a huge Liu Cixin fan but his stories here serve as a good introduction to his longer work, for people who may be interested!

    • 5/5
      An essential introduction to the rather distinctive body of scifi coming out of modern China. It's hard to pin down exactly what the characteristics of "Chinese Science Fiction" are--in fact one of the essays at the end labours that point somewhat--but much more fruitful to show than tell, which this collection does by covering a very wide range. There are stories that are obviously mocking the Party, openly enough that I'm surprised they were allowed to be published, and stories that feel much less political but go deep into technological fantasy or just straight fantasy worlds. And in between there are some social commentary stories that bite just as hard in the US as they must in China.

      As with any diverse collection I didn't love every single story, but there are so many that I did that I'm already looking forward to getting my hands on the next volume that Liu's edited and translated. And adding books by at least half of the authors to my wishlist.
    • 3/5
      I recently read Cixin Liu’s science fiction Three Body Problem trilogy, and was pretty much blown away. The second book in the series, The Dark Forest, may be the finest science fiction work I have ever read (and I’ve read hundreds). I was anxious to read more of his work along with other recognized Chinese science fiction authors and purchased a collection of short stories as soon as I found it. Liu’s writing is clearly in the genre of classical science fiction, with interstellar travel, alien species and good hard science fiction technology. I was somewhat disappointed with the work of the other authors. The translator of this work, Ken Liu, explained in his introduction the various sub-genres of Chinese science fiction, with which I was not familiar. Whereas, Cixin Liu fits very comfortable in my understanding of what encompasses science fiction, most of the other short stories didn’t register as science fiction to me at all. In addition, there were recognizable cultural aspects of most of the other work that do not appear in Liu’s work. Aside from the short story Folding Beijing, and Liu’s contributions, I was pretty much underwhelmed.
    • 3/5
      Overall disappointing aside from Folding Beijing, The City of Silence, and some of the essays at the end. Liu Cixin's massive diss to Robert Sawyer was funny and the different takes of varying candor on The Chinese Dream were interesting.No hyperlinked table of contents is extremely frustrating and backwards. How can you have an anthology without a table of contents? Just now I tried to look up the other story that I liked but I couldn't be bothered to dig through the entire book just to find it. Sad!
    • 5/5
      Westerners who read _Invisible Planets: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese SF in Translation_ are making a big mistake if they approach this collection with our typical ill-informed views of China. Don't assume that every story is some kind of veiled swipe at the current political system. The reality is that many, if not most, of these stories should be understood in a more universal sense. These writers speak to the human condition. Chen QiuFan's stories, in particular "The Fish of Lijiang," contemplate the futility of human existence, lack of free will, and how our efforts to improve life often goes awry. Ma Boyong's "The City of Silence" is a scary and evocative homage to Orwell's _1984_ terrifying to us all, Chinese and Westerners, in the age of the internet and artificial intelligence. One of my favorites is Hao Jingfang's "Folding Beijing" which describes in painful detail the rigid class differences that exist everywhere in the world - yes, even in the United States. So don't miss the universal themes in these stories. That said, the stories are wildly creative, many of which are genre-bending tales populated by ghosts and cyborgs, medieval knights on space ships, and "call girls" unlike any we've encountered before. Perhaps the most "Chinese" among these Chinese stories is Liu Cixin (author of _The Three-Body Solution_) who demonstrates his deep entrenchment in Chinese history and Chinese cultural values. My hat goes off to award-winning writer and translator Ken Liu who brought these very excellent selection of contemporary Chinese sci-fi to us. Thank you, Mr. Liu.