CM’s Reviews > Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation > Status Update

"Tongtong's Summer" is a heartwarming story that is only lightly science fiction, in the sense that the tech seems pretty close to modern tech. it's an optimistic view of how people can use technology to care for an be more present in each other's lives. and i thought the child-centered POV was very well executed and fit the story.

i wasn't actually going to write about the essays in this collection, since they are so short (i didn't think i'd have anything useful to say). but i need to make note of the fact that Liu Cixin absolutely BODIED this canadian writer in his essay and i literally shrieked. (deserved, as far as i can tell, to be clear.)

"Taking Care of God" was interesting from a conceptual standpoint, but there were several moments where dialogue became a speech telling the characters and the reader something. that dry kind of telling was occasionally interspersed with really beautiful segments, like the opening lines of the story. made for an uneven reading experience.

having read THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM, "The Circle" was interesting but felt flat as a short story. within the novel, the story is an effective facet of the major concepts explored in the science fiction epic. on its own, this story is about the creation of a calculator, more or less, lacking the context that gave the story heavier meaning in the novel.

"Grave of the Fireflies" is the kind of beautiful that the reader has to earn by letting go of the need to understand. and then the simple story arrives and is lovely and weird. thinking about this story is wanting to reread it, but the benefit of the first read is getting to the point where it finally clicks for the reader, and the story opens up.

well, "Call Girl" was not my favorite. there's a great, somewhat creepy concept, but the calling of stories never really fleshes out or deepens enough to have the seizing gravity that the opening of the story seems to promise.

wow, yeah, i definitely understand why "Folding Beijing" was so well received - it's a marvel and a masterpiece. the power of this story is in its focus on the very personal in the midst of a massively shifting setting, and the textual understanding of the protagonist juxtaposed with high level concepts the reader comes to grasp is executed to amplify the feel of the story on the whole. really brilliant.

i've read "Invisible Planets" before - i liked it when i first read it and i still think it tickles the imagination in a nice way. in a story that is as much about interpersonal interaction as anything else, the ultimate message of change as a result of exchange is both subtle and striking.

to be honest "The City of Silence" struck me as both too close to home, and too exaggerated a premise. which i think means it's a great piece of speculative fiction in the sense of existing both at a distance and underneath my skin. the banal event of the death of language here - both ridiculous and ominous as played out in the story, well done.

"Night Journey of the Dragon-Horse" is quiet and atmospheric and really lovely in a small way. it did feel a little bit more like a concept piece loosely framed in myth rather than a story, but i still enjoyed how beautiful it was.