This story from Liu Cixin is the one that blew me away. He is called one of the present greatest science fiction writers for a reason. I've read a few of his stories now and believe he has earned a life-long fan. Amazing.

Always in awe of the stories by Liu Cixin.

This is an airtight short story:The central character has a compelling backstory.The setting is beautifully described. And the sci-fi concepts are well conceived.I will probably read it again.

Would you like a little confucianism mixed in with your scifi?

A very unexpected (and very different from Taking Care of Gods) take on a first-contact in this short story is both equally wonderful and though-provoking. Theoretically, one could claim that Liu Cixin here goes on a path Jules Verne went in his Journey to the Center of the Earth , but despite that, Verne never had any similar thoughts about an inverse civilization and it's progress and how simple, even trivial things and happenings for us might seem extremely different for other life forms and

This story is full of poetry & science, of progress & ignorance, of death & sacrifices for progress, for beauty...It is astonishingly good & I cannot express how nice it was to read this, how much joy it sparkted in me.

So a conveniently placed mountain-climber sees a massive pillar of water and misconstrues it to be a 'mountain'. Stupid, but let's see how this plays out. Using his vast experience in traversing all the worlds mountains, he decides to swim up the pillar. Riiiight, because his strong swimming ability was so well set up. Next, he reaches the top of said water 'mountain' with astonishing ease (must have been all that mountain climbing experience, am I right?) and is greeted by aliens who convenient...

Someone make this into a movie thank you.

This short story is a real treat for those of us who have a long love-story relationship with strange cosmoses, different laws of the universe, unified with unique aliens beginning to understand the nature of their universe. Of course, all of these scientific discoveries share a superficial similarity to our own, but when we get right down to the nuts and bolts... it's mind-blowing. :)A bubble world. A Tower of Babel-like mountain of water.The need to explore... explore... explore. :)Just... Hel...

This is an innovative, yet throwback sci-fi gem.Chinese author Liu Cixin wrote his short-story "Mountain" and this was translated into English and published in 2012.The setting is aboard a Chinese vessel at sea where tragic hero Fan, a former Himalayan mountain climber, and the captain are discussing his earlier ignominy when the captain, keeping his celestial navigation skills, notices a strange star growing in size.From here Liu takes us on a very unique hard science, physics heavy, but also s...

Over the weekend I had the chance of finishing reading Mountain and I can only say that my mind was blown away. This is one of the best novellas I've read in a long time.As in "Taking Care of God" the plot revolves around the first contact of humankind with an alien race. However, in Mountain the focus is on the mystery surrounding the aliens and the history of their civilization. In less than 50 pages, the author manages to develop a complete (and amazing) cosmology and introduces more ideas th...

Another amazing book from Liu Cixin! I also appreciate the translator Holger Nahm- I never felt that I’m reading a translated book. Similar to other books of Cixin, this one also has a very unique plot. Truly novel ideas are hard to find in the science fiction genre and that’s why Cixin’s books are so refreshing.

Haven't been disappointed with a story of his, yet.

Mountain was a story that started slowly, and it took a while before I was won over by it. In fact, I spent a while fearing I would give a two-star rating. When it came together, however, it won me over. It’s a unique story, one that certainly comes together in an interesting way, and it’s well worth sticking with.Although not my favourite short story from the author, this was an enjoyable quick read.

More like a thought experiment than an actual story, and the entire story is just a setup for a long discussion about the history of an alien species.But it's still fascinating.A man climbs a mountain made of water to meet extraterrestrials. These aliens come from a solid universe and describe how they discovered liquid and then gas and how they dealt with these new properties.It's a great novella, but not as good as The Wandering Earth or his novel, but this is a nice, optimistic story.

One man's redemption is another's alien. Imaginative writing as always.

As a reader in a language that it's not mine, I select the books I read carefully. This one was recommended to me, and the argument attracted me a lot, as to buy it without hesitation.It's fresh, it's original, and it made me felt the anticipation of the first science fiction novels I've read in my youth. I loved the central idea of the novel, the challenge of climbing and what it means to people. I loved the explanations that the aliens tell Fen, and felt very comfortable with them, not lost at...

Mountain by Liu CixinMountain is an interesting novella. I'm not all that fond of novella's, partially because it's difficult to know what to expect. Short stories have to move quickly to fill the reader in or not depending on the way the plot wants to go. Novella's have some time to build things but not really enough for the author to dawdle with.I think that Liu shows quite a balance in this story. Mountain seems to be a story of a mans ambitions, exemplified by an analogue about a strange spe...

3.5Very interesting thematically, and as always Liu's exploration of the science is breathtaking. Leaves much to be desired narratively and linguistically (including a point about language formation itself- why would a species who hand never seen liquids or gases and hence have no conception of the idea of a bubble- name their world 'bubble world', for example?). Quite fun though, and at ~47 pages, worth your time.

I think I preferred the framing story to the information dump given by the alien sphere.