Invisible Planets

A better than average anthology of SFF by writers from China. The editor and translator, Ken Liu, is careful to say that the anthology is not meant to represent the best SFF from China, but to showcase some stories and give readers a taste of the kind of SFF being written in China. The anthology ends with some essays by the writers on some aspects of Chinese SF.

• “The Year of the Rat” by Chen Qiufan: without jobs, university graduates have to go for the only work available: the Rodent-Control Force, troops tasked with the job of killing genetically engineered rats meant for the market in the West that had escaped. As they try to meet their quota of rats (to be reassigned to other jobs), it is gradually revealed that the rats are not all they seem to be, and neither are the people catching them.

• “The Fish of Lijian” by Chen Qiufan: an up-and-coming employee is suddenly told to take time off from work for rehabilitation. Now in Lijiang, he meets a nurse who leads his rehabilitation, and it is gradually revealed why rehabilitation is necessary due to the way work has now messed up workers' sense of time due to workloads.

• “The Flower of Shazui” by Chen Qiufan: a person hiding in Shenzen meets an attractive prostitute who asks him to help repair some organic film applied to her body. As he gets to know her more after the meeting, we learn the reason why he is hiding in Shenzen and also what troubles the prostitute, and he decides to help her. But the results would turn out not to be as expected.

• “A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight” by Xia Jia: on a street filled with ghosts inhabiting various animated bodies (as a tourist attraction), a boy grows up under the care of a ghost lady. The street has fallen on hard times with few, if any tourist, walking it. And one day, a calamity hits the street and the boy's attempts to save it might not be successful.

• “Tongtong’s Summer” by Xia Jia: a robot, which turns out to be remotely controlled, comes into the household to take care of the grandfather, who is grumpy that he now cannot walk and socialize. But an attempt to get a more competitive Chinese Chess player for the grandfather would set off a revolution in remote robotic care.

• “Night Journey of the Dragon-Horse” by Xia jia: a mechanical dragon-horse (body of a horse, head of a dragon) comes to life in a future where humans have gone. As it explores its new world, it meets a bat who becomes its friend and leads it on to a new life. The author's note at the end gives links to the real life dragon-horse gifted from France to China, on which the story is based.

• “The City of Silence” by Ma Boyong: in a future where only authorized web links can be accessed and only certain 'safe' words may be used in conversations that are constantly listened to by the authorities, a man decides to sign up to use a BBS (bulletin board system). But a secret message encoded into the permission forms returned to him would lead him to join a secret society that would block the listening authorities for a brief time while they indulged their secret desires for conversation and companionship. But it would all come to an end and the man must decide on whether to take the next step in a world that is now becoming silent; for while everybody is listening, nobody would dare to say a word.

• “Invisible Planets” by Hao Jingfang: a series of brief stories about fantastical worlds as told by one person to another, leading to a brief meeting of minds.

• “Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang: in a future where Beijing as been physically divided to two halves (for the elite and the rest), with one half 'folded' into the earth and dormant while the other is active, a man is asked to pass on a message from one side to the other, from a man to a woman. The journey would reveal the story of how Beijing came to be the way it is.

• “Call Girl” by Tang Fei: a story that initially starts out giving the impression of a school girl who may have trysts with strangers turns into an altogether fantastical tale when the "Call Girl" turns out to have the ability to call strange things into existence to fulfil the expectations of her clients.

• “Grave of the Fireflies” by Cheng Jingbo: a story of a journey into the far future to a castle that may hold the future (or past) of a girl and a universe where the stars are going out.

• “The Circle” by Liu Cixin: a conquering king believes that the secret of eternal life may lie in the digits that make up Pi, and commands his adviser to calculate it for him. The answer to generating the digits would be a computing machine made up of his soldiers acting as the logic gates of a huge computing machine. But in the end, the king's hubris would lead to his downfall.

• “Taking Care of God” by Liu Cixin: an ancient civilization who claims to have created all life on earth suddenly appears, and ask humanity to take care of the last remaining members of the civilization, whose ships are now failing. As first, it goes well, but those taking care of ailing and forgetful elders may know, conflicts between generations will occur, and it all breaks down. But not before the gods pass on a message to mankind about their possible future

This is a collection of Chinese short science fiction stories, translated to English by Ken Liu. It's not a intended to be a "best of" but more of a representative look at contemporary SF. As a western reader I found some of the stories a little hard to identify with, as I think I lacked some of the cultural background to understand the full contexts of some of them. But they were nonetheless an interesting read. Overall the tone of almost all of them is quite dark and often rather Orwellian; there's a strong recurring feeling of anxiety and distrust of technology and the future (one of the essays at the end actually discusses this directly). I also felt there was quite a lot of subtle (and sometimes overt) misogyny; really no representations at all of a future where women are equal, and generally the women are either described as beautiful objects of desire or unattractive harpies, little in between (even though some of the stories are written by women). Still, a lot of the stories are very thought-provoking.

My two favourites were probably at the very end, and both by Liu Cixin: Taking Care of God describes what happens on Earth when our ancient ancestors (who have spent the last millions of years roaming the universe in their starships) return to Earth, which they had seeded with our ancestors in our far past, and ask if they can retire for their final days on our planet. After being able to irrefutably convince Earth's governments that they are, in fact, our ancestral "gods" and exchanging masses of valuable information and advanced technology, the gods migrate down to our planet where each household adopts a "god" to take care of. With initially fairly predictable results, and depressing commentary on humanity, but a few interesting twists.

My second favourite was actually the essay by Liu Cixin that follows this story, in which he talks about how his Three Body trilogy revolutionalized Chinese science fiction and how it's looked at. While I've read and enjoyed that trilogy, I hadn't realized how earth-shaking it had been in China and what an almost cult-like following it has developed. The essay includes an entertaining story about how CCTV, China's largest state television broadcaster, tried to hold an interview series about science fiction and had the audience (clearly full of Three Body fans) erupt into chants of "Eliminate human tyranny! The world belongs to Trisolaris!" (a quote from the Three Body novel), completely baffling the hosts.

Anyway, if you're a science fiction fan but have been primarily limited to reading English SF, then this is an interesting collection to read that will broaden your experience and illustrate both how similar and how different SF from other background and languages can be.

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.