'To Hold Up the Sky' by Liu Cixin
'To Hold Up the Sky' by Liu Cixin

Liu Cixin doesn’t disappoint. Just about every story of his I’ve ever read has at least one mind-blowing idea in it. Often, just in the first page or two, I found myself pausing, putting the book down, and going, “woah.” This book is a collection of short stories, and just about every single one has big, unique, mind-bender in it. The main drawbacks are (a) the stories are short, so just as you’re getting into them, they come to an end and (b) like other Liu Cixin books, the characters are mostly flat and robotic, and the writing, or possibly the translation, is a bit clunky.

I’ve jotted down brief summaries of the short stories in this book, mostly to help me remember them:

  1. The Village Teacher: a teacher in an extremely poor town in China does his best to teach as much as he can to the kids there, while, unbeknownst to humanity, an alien civilization contemplates destroying our solar system. My rating: 3/5.

  2. The Time Migration: after being put into cryogenic sleep, a group of humans wakes up at various points in the future, and tries to decide which human society to join. My rating: 3/5.

  3. 2018-04-01: humanity has discovered how to massively extend lifespans, but only for the mega-wealthy. My rating: 5/5.

  4. Fire in the Earth: an engineer tries to improve life for coal miners through a new, but highly dangerous technology. My rating: 3/5.

  5. Contraction: scientists discover that the expansion of the universe will actually stop, and even reverse, so the universe starts contracting. My rating: 5/5.

  6. Mirror: a new quantum supercomputer can simulate all of history with perfect precision. My rating: 5/5.

  7. Ode to Joy: a giant, perfect mirror appears above the earth. My rating: 4/5. The concepts are so good, but the characters are cringe-level bad.

  8. Full-Spectrum Barrage Jamming: Russia is at war with the US and NATO and both sides use jamming techniques to interfere with communication. My rating: 4/5.

  9. Sea of Dreams: an alien shows up on earth and creates a massive ice sculpture in orbit, but at great cost to the planet. My rating: 2/5.

  10. Cloud of Poems: a super advanced alien comes into contact with a human, who tells the alien that, despite all their technology, they cannot match the poetry and art of humanity. My rating: 3/5.

  11. The Thinker: an astronomer detects strange interactions between stars. My rating: 5/5.

Rating: 4 stars