Because I loved The Three Body Problem and I wanted to understand Liu Cixin’s thought more deeply, I plunged into this mix of essays & short stories with a lot of curiosity and an open mind. I didn’t find the combination to work so well, jumping from essay to story again and again, and I can safely say this is a collection for fans, not for new readers. However, it seems I AM a fan and I did enjoy it, including reading about his predictions for the future, his thoughts on Chinese science-fiction, and random stuff I didn’t care about or didn’t agree with.
For example, “Whale song” is fun and sort of peculiar, because it shows an interest in ecological matters that doesn’t appear often in his bigger work (in the Three Body Problem’s universe, climate stuff is in the background because there are ‘bigger’ issues at play). I also found his idea that “If we already live in an environment full of danger, then science fiction won’t interest us” interesting (from the 2010 essay on finishing Death’s End). It’s completely opposed to what I am used to thinking about sci-fi and why I consider it useful, drawing from Le Guin, Butler and maree brown. But that’s because for Cixin, sci-fi is about man vs. the universe. Not so much for queer-feminists, not necessarily. Still, this divergence is exactly why I was interested in reading him - because he is this sort of classical hard sci-fi writer who pays too little attention to interhuman relationships, and YET I was not bored. His concepts of a micro-civilization (through shrinkage) was also fascinating, and so was the story “Destiny”, a sort of unexpected, amusing re-telling of evolution. All in all, time well spent.
Thanks to NetGalley & Head of Zeus for the e-arc!