Broken Stars

Broken Stars is an anthology of short stories by different Chinese writers. They are collected by Ken Liu (an awesome writer in his own right). I can’t say that I enjoyed every story as much, but there are some really innovative ones in there.

I don’t have the best mental map of Chinese history (but do know some things), so a lot of the subtle hints when using historic rulers/periods do get lost on me.

And I think I like sci-fi that plays with concepts (e.g. time) more than those that incorporate too much historic or today’s concepts.

The stories are:

• Goodnight, Melancholy (Turing is featured heavily, makes me think of Machines Like Me)
• Moonlight
• Broken Stars
• Submarines
• Salinger and the Koreans
• Under a Dangling Sky
• What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear (heavy, good)
• The New Year Train (good moral/end-note)*
• The Robot Who Liked to Tell Tall Tales (interesting, very good sci-fi and medieval mix)
• The Snow of Jingyang
• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: Laba Porridge
• The First Emperor’s Games
• Reflection (good idea about seeing time flow backward)
• The Brain Box
• Coming of the Light
• A History of Future Illnesses

*”I’ts simple when you put it like that right? What doesn’t make sense to me is this: lots of times, when the starting point and the destination are fixed – say, birth and death – why do most people rush towards the end?“