Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Books for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.I haven’t read Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem yet because hard science fiction intimidates me, but I’m still intrigued by his work, so when I saw this short story collection on NetGalley I thought it might be a good opportunity to see if it’s something I might be into.I’m glad I did, because I absolutely loved Liu’s writing. I appreciated his foreword, where he explains his approach to science

Some of these stories are great, but I enjoyed his previous collection more :) Because a lot had me saying "Huh?! What??"

a bleak, mean-spirited, politically conservative collection of stories by an artist who seems to profoundly loathe art. thank god it’s overhighlights: the time migration, ode to joy, sea of dreams, the thinkereta 25422: bumping up the rating bc i am STILL thinking about this collection on like. a daily basis. but it does have a bunch of weird homophobia and nationalism in it so i think 3 stars is a good compromise.

How I read this: Free ebook copy received through NetGalleyI enjoyed some of the stories in this collection, but most felt like a chore. I struggled to finish this book, and I'm really sad, cause I'm a huge fan of the Remembrance of Earth's Past series. Part of this could be because I rarely enjoy short story collections (their themes tend to be too varied and the stories too different to really resonate with me). I hoped I'd still like them, cause this is Liu Cixin. But that didn't work out. I'...

Having been a long-time fan of Liu Cixin, it isn't much of a surprise that I fell into his short story collection. That being said, I *have* read a number of these from within other collections. This may have affected my overall impression of the entire thing.THAT being said, his stories ARE generally consistent. The strongest ones are the ones that mix high-SF with down-to-earth characterization. The most notable of these is the first story. The Villiage Teacher.I admit I have a soft spot for t...

I wanted to read The Three-Body Problem. But, the waiting list for the book at the library was MONTHS long. I still haven't gotten access yet! With my book buying budget pretty well dead in the water due to 2020 and it's continuing calamities, I'm still waiting in line for a digital library copy. Luckily, this collection of short stories popped up for review. I jumped on it immediately! I read through this collection of eleven short stories slowly, and then read them all again. Wow! Liu's writin...

The Village Teacher - 5 StarsThe Time Migration - 5 Stars2018-04-01 - 4 StarsFire In The Earth - 5 StarsContraction - 4 StarsMirror - 5 StarsOde To Joy - 4 StarsFull Spectrum Barrage Jamming - 3 StarsSea of Dreams - 4 StarsCloud of Poems - 4 StarsThe Thinker - 5 Stars

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.Outsider-insider's Eyes: "To Hold Up the Sky" by Liu CixinFocusing on popular Chinese Mundane Fiction would be like advising people who wished to know about Portugal to read Raul Brandão, Alexandre Herculano or Fernando Namora. Acting as if an understanding of modern-day Portugal requires a reading of these (often turgid) ancient works smacks strongly of humbug, mystification, and orientalism.The same happens with China. As interesting...

Cixin Liu is one of the most imaginative writers ever, and the collection is a testament to his prowess. He can conjure a war between silicon- and carbon-based inter-galactic civilizations as effortlessly as between the earthly empires of the US and Russia. His intensely humanistic stories adapt to the background of the heavens humming an Ode to Joy or resonating the heartbeats of a smitten. Our artistic skills are celebrated in more ways: in one of the stories, he focuses on our ability to scul...

ARC received from publisher, Tor, in exchange for an honest review.3.5 stars.True to his form as seen in his most renowned science fiction series, The Remembrance of Earth's Past, Cixin Liu's imagination in this short story collection, To Hold Up The Sky, was truly remarkable. The Three-Body Problem is likely to be the most well-known translated Asian science fiction novel in the world right now. In fact, I hardly hear or read about the series being mentioned in its actual name, but always in re...

2/10 starsMy full review is available on my blog here.Liu’s short story collection comes in the wake of his breakthrough success with the award-winning The Three-Body Problem. Translated by several translators (none of which was Ken Liu, who translated The Three-Body Problem, and I can’t help but wonder if politics wasn’t the reason for that) To Hold Up the Sky offers 11 diverse stories spanning near and far future of our own reality; their main common point seems to be their prominent focus on

The short stories in this volume cover many topics, including concerns and ideas that also appear in The Three-Body Trilogy, but they are used in different settings. Super-string computers, hollow earth, the value of poetry, total perfect vision of time and space achieved by simulating the original Big Bang and then tracing the trajectory, gods who manipulate matter and energy and probability to compose poetry.Wildly inventive and scientifically impressive, the stories nonetheless stumble by inc...

[Many SPOILERS ahead]Cixin Liu has been on my radar for years, but it took 1) one more raving recommendation from the Weltenflüstern podcast, 2) learning Mandarin and being more interested in Chinese culture in general, and 3) a timely ebook sale… for me to give him a second chance. I had not managed to get into The Three-Body Problem years ago, as the writing in the French translation was so dry. This collection of short stories is lighter on science – still very conceptual, but with less techn...

favorite stories: the village teacher, contraction, mirror and thinker

Liu Cixin is one of my favorite writers and will remain so, even if not all his stories are mind-blowing. And he's to blame for this, because after his famous trilogy, my expectation in SF skyrocketed. That is the case with this collection: it's a mixed bag with some mind-bending ideas and some less so. Most of them are novelettes, not short stories, and I think some of them would have been greater had they been shorter. Nonetheless, his tales are always fresh, totally different from the usual s...

3.5 stars

Collection of 11 short stories. Some of these were first published in Mandarin as early as 1999 and the latest was published in 2020. For such a wide span in a writer's life, the stories are more consistent than I expected. While some are more sentimental than others, I still felt that Liu returned to his most common themes with success - that is, his exploration of events or laws of nature greater than the people of the world to understand at first glance, as well as the hope of any communicati...

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Books for providing an ARC! So exciting to read this book!!___________________________4.5 starsBefore To Hold Up the Sky, I had never read Cixin Liu. I wanted to read The Three-Body Problem , but I was so afraid of misunderstanding it that I didn't dare. Then I received this ARC from NetGalley, so I decided to finally dive in. These stories are intelligent and push the reader to think and to challenge his ordinary thoughts and beliefs. Here, they will encounter ali...

3.5 stars Thanks to NetGalley and to the Editor. I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest reviewWriting this review is hard because this book is a whole universe, and even if we don’t really have spaceships and interstellar travels in there (or to be precise, we have them too but they are not the biggest part, or the most important part of this book) it is like every single short story is a planet that you visit for a while, and then you would go on, hopping on another one and an...

Sometimes success happens to exactly the right person. If you had told me a decade ago that one of the most popular of New Times Bestselling authors in the field of Science Fiction would be a translated Chinese author I would not have believed you. Set aside for the how tactical commercially engineered the Oprah and Obama reading lists are, it was Obama listing Cixin Liu’s breakthrough novel The Three-Body Problem that made that happen. I am not taking away from Cixin Liu or his achievement. The...