To Hold Up the Sky
Ratings13
Average rating3.2
3.25 Liu was able to hold back on overt sexist commentary until the last story. Detailed dives into narrow points of imagination. He can't conceive of worlds where leaders aren't men, where justice and art thrive together, where god-like entities have more emotional intelligence than insecure, petulant babies.
“The Village Teacher” ★★★½
“The Time Migration” ★★★
“2018-04-01” ★★★
“Fire In The Earth” ★★★
“Contraction” ★★★
“Mirror” ★★★
“Ode To Joy” ★★★
“Full Spectrum Barrage Jamming” ★★½
“Sea of Dreams” ★★★
“Cloud of Poems” ★★★
“The Thinker” ★★½
Some of the short stories were interesting but not big and awesome like his longer series' or other big books. Some of them felt so small they didn't even need to be the 100 or so pages they were.
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Interesting mix of ideas.
I'd read the Three Body Problem trilogy so I know that Cixin Liu's style was massive ideas of the cosmic scale and showing me how small we really are - and these short stories continue the theme.
What I didn't anticipate in these short stories was the total mix of stories (though that's entirely on me).
I didn't personally find any one story punching above the rest. I did, oddly, enjoy the story of the poet challenging the energy being and thusly breaking reality on a galactic scale.
Overall, well written, cosmic ideas, but not quite my kind of mind bending.