“Broken Stars” edited and translated by Ken Liu

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Rating: 4/5 Stars

A pretty fascinating anthology of stories by writers of China that shows the wide range of fiction that is coming out from them. With stories ranging from the fantastic and absurd to those where technology is front and centre, it would be hard for a reader to enjoy all the stories. But readers should find a few that catch their fancy. For this reader, the alternate history tale by Baoshu was a highlight of the anthology.

• “Goodnight, Melancholy” by Xia Jia: the story is concerned with people interacting with apparently intelligent AI machines for therapy. Told as two connected tales, one is a modern day interaction with a toy, while the other imagines a conversation between Alan Turing and a conversation bot that Turing might have created.
• “Moonlight” by Liu Cixin: a tragic comedy tale about a man responsible for energy policy who apparently gets calls and messages from his future self, telling him about future energy and climate crisis and what he could do to prevent them. But as each future self offers a plan, and he decides to implement it, another future self calls to tell of the crisis his new plan creates. So what is he to do, or not do?
• “Broken Stars” by Tang Fei: a tale that starts off with a girl apparently having dreams about her dead mother who reads her fortunes in the stars, turns more eerie and horrifying when she figures out the truth and turns the tables on those who have bullied her about her mother.
• “Submarines” by Han Song: a slightly surreal tale about a fleet of submarines in a river inhabited by worker who commute to the land to work. We are shown their strange water based life and how it all comes to an end one day.
• “Salinger and the Koreans” by Han Song: a tale involving David Salinger and his book, “The Catcher in the Rye”. In an altered alternate universe, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) somehow conquers the world. They consider Salinger and his book to be the inspiration that would lead them to liberate mankind. Only, Salinger would rather be a hermit and not have anything to do with the North Koreans.
• “Under a Dangling Sky” by Cheng Jingbo: in a strange seaside town apparently covered by a crystalline cover, dolphins can talk and sing. One particular dolphin wants to do more and her actions would reveal what the world would look like on the other side of the cover.
• “What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear” by Baoshu: a fantastical tale about the life of a man and a woman who meet in childhood and grow up together. But in this alternate history story, events in this world happen in reverse order to our own. Starting from the early 21st century and moving backwards toward World War II (the first Great War in this story), we are told of the events from the viewpoint of the man as he and the girl make their way through them while growing up together and separately, until they are finally united at the end.
• “The New Year Train” by Hao Jingfang: a short short story about a train which vanishes from our universe, only to re-appear as expected. But to the passengers, more time has passed; yet, they still enjoyed the trip.
• “The Robot Who Liked to Tell Tall Tales” by Fei Dao: a fairy tale about a King who likes to tell tall tales. But one day, he decides that he doesn’t want to be remembered as a teller of tall tales and the only way to avoid that is by finding somebody else who can tell even more tall tells (nobody remembers number two in any category, he thinks). So, he sets a robot to tell more tall tales than him. The robot takes a long journey (apparently throughout the universe) to gather tales so he can turn them into as tall tales. The robot’s journey would in the end, comes back full circle to a (tall?) tale told by the king.
• “The Snow of Jinyang” by Zhang Ran: the story of a city that is being besieged by an army in ancient China. But as the story progresses, strange modern day terms (like Ray-Ban, internet, and so on) get introduced, and it gradually becomes obvious that a modern day person has appeared during this time and place. But his plans, which at first appear to be to prevent the city from being conquered, get revealed and history may get to reassert itself.
• “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: Laba Porridge” by Anna Wu: probably inspired by the same restaurant featured in Douglas Adams’ book in “The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series, it tells a story within a story of one of the patrons of the restaurant who makes a deal with a mysterious agency to steal the abilities of writers from other parallel universes so that he can become a great writer, only to lose the one thing that make his writing important.
• “The First Emperor’s Games” by Ma Boyong: a rather silly story of an emperor who has finally united all of China and now wants to relax by playing computer games. In this world that mixes up Chinese history and culture with computers, various groups vie to get the emperor to endorse their games like “Civilization”, “The Sims”, etc. that reflect their view of life. But in the end, it would be a sweet talking westerner who would win the day with a game that may never exist. Possibly only gamers or those who know some history of computer games may get the most enjoyment from this story.
• “Reflection” by Gu Shi: a man goes to meet an unusual woman who appears to be able to predict the future, but is strangely ignorant of the past. As he continues to meet her at various time and develop a relationship with her, the story becomes even stranger until the ending reveals how she and the man are related to each other and are reflections of each other.
• “The Brain Box” by Regina Kanyu Wang: a man access the last memories of the woman she loves, who has died from a plane crash. But what he learns about her last thoughts may not be to his liking.
• “Coming of the Light” by Chen Qiufan: a tale of a man working at a marketing company that is desperate to find a way to market an application by their biggest client. The man’s solution would involve a blessing by a Buddhist monk, but the results would backfire spectacularly. In the second part of the story, the man has retreated to a monastery to find peace, but the effects of his marketing effort would return to haunt him and reveal to him his role in the universe.
• “A History of Future Illnesses” by Chen Qiufan: a series of short tales telling the various unusual diseases that await us as technology takes over our lives.

Book read from 2021/04/24 to 2021/05/05