Cixin Liu's To Hold Up The Sky is a 1974 Chevy van with icy moons and swirling nebulae painted on the side that you saw for sale by the side of the road in a snowstorm. It is a copy of Heavy Metal you found stuck in the back of the rack at Empire Comics when you were looking for old Savage Sword of Conan issues to read on a long road trip with your parents. It is the torn cover of a faded sci-fi paperback you found at the thrift store and spent the afternoon reading in the car while you waited for a girl to get off work and let you into her apartment for which you didn't yet have a key. It is magic, this collection of short stories Liu wrote and published ten, 20, 30 years ago. It is a time machine; a split-vision tunnel that lets you go back in time while staring forward ... To Hold Up The Sky gives us a window that looks out over a different sci-fi landscape than we've seen in decades.
Liu’s stories are generally part allegory, part hard science. Think Aesop collaborating with Robert A. Heinlein. A common theme running through his work is that science can both solve and cause problems; art is occasionally given a status equal to science. Liu is also not above giving a story an unexpected twist or turn ... To Hold Up the Sky does what a collection such as this is supposed to do, which is to give readers already familiar with the author's work something else to read while providing newcomers with a necessary introduction. I was in the latter camp and am now reading Supernova Era, which was published in China in 2003 but made its first appearance in the U.S. last year.
This volume gives us a chance to read Liu when handled by many different expert translators who are not named Ken Liu, a fellow who has ably shouldered more than his share of such duties. All kudos to them for some excellent renderings, every one of which seems miraculously to converge on what I presume is Liu’s actual voice ... The first item, 'The Village Teacher', is a perfect fulfillment ...The story is Simakian in its deep moral simplicity and emotional impact ... 'Time Migration'...pays off in layers of wonder ... '2018-04-01', short yet potent, is almost cyberpunk ... Despite its one-note gimmicky core, 'Contraction' is an effectively mind-bending tale dealing with the unforeseen fallout from cosmological reversals of interstellar expansion ... underneath any flavorful cultural trappings lies the essential core of a science fiction, identical to that found in SF from the West: engagement with the universe on the universe’s own terms of harsh and unrelenting physics, math and biology, without denying the specialness of homo sapiens and the human heart.
The poverty scenes in this collection are moving in a way not normally found in sci-fi, but one has to say that the 'casual elimination by aliens' trope was old by the time of Hitchhiker’s Guide ... Mr. Liu’s strength is narrowing the large-scale tech down to agonizing issues for individuals. That could be us. Just the same, the stories in To Hold Up the Sky seem aimed perhaps at a less-experienced sci-fi audience. If you compare them with The Three-Body Problem, they show how much work has to go into top-grade sci-fi these days. It’s not a form for the old ending-with-a-twist short story any more.
This collection presents readers with an assortment of short fiction by the most prominent voice in Chinese science fiction. Most of the stories collected reflect Liu’s interest in large-scale, high-concept sf stories featuring ideas such as a digital duplicate of the universe that can eliminate crime, a vast mirror-like entity that plays a concert on the sun, or the complete reversal of space-time by the contraction of the universe ... With a writer as prolific and varied as Liu, it is hard to say whether or not this collection is completely representative; however it does provide a well-rounded view of Liu’s work, showing him both in the mode familiar to readers of The Three-Body Problem trilogy as well as in other, perhaps more unexpected, styles. Highly recommended for fans of Liu’s work or for those interested in Chinese sf in general.
To some, Liu’s concepts may seem wistful, but there is a sense of wonderment even within his introduction. To put it more simply, Liu’s stories read like parables, instructing the reader that tiny, seemingly unimportant actions can have a greater impact on the world than they might think, and despite the short time human beings have on Earth, the universe will continue on ... Fans of Liu’s epic, sprawling trilogy should fear not, for despite their length, there is conceptual weight behind these stories and their themes ... Other stories run the gamut with their peculiarity ... While the mileage may vary in terms of quality, there is enough strong storytelling here to make To Hold Up the Sky worth any science fiction fan’s time.
Unlike most of his peers in the Western science fiction scene, whose worlds frequently comment on fundamental human failings or the dystopian struggles of an inconsistently ethical society, Liu’s work is suffused with an understated optimism. To Hold Up the Sky is no different ... Throughout To Hold Up the Sky, Liu brings his collections of ice sculptors and poets and computer scientists and military engineers teeteringly close to oblivion. He does so knowing that the crisis is finite, and that humanity in its feeble entirety will either survive, learn and grow, or simply...stop. And he insists that there is beauty either way. I am not certain if I agree with this sentiment. It is both too cynical and too idealistic for me. (See? Yet another contradiction!) But either way, Liu is far too good a writer for me to put this book aside.
These 11 stories, taken from the beginning of Liu’s career in the early 2000s when, per his introduction, 'sci-fi was still a very marginal pursuit in China,' offer an innovative and compassionate look at how knowledge shapes and changes humanity. Liu (The Three Body Problem) grounds his tales in contemporary Chinese life and society, using the sci-fi genre to tackle questions about humanity’s place in the universe ... Though the science will be too technical for some casual readers, Liu’s gift for juxtaposing long passages of exposition with emotional moments and beautiful imagery makes this a must have for readers of hard science fiction.
