(SFF Bingo): Broken Stars, translated by Ken Liu

[primeideal]

(Context: I am making some attempt to participate in the reddit r/Fantasy bingo, where participants read books that check different "boxes" such as "Published in 2022," "Set in Space," "Anti-Heroes." I'm not sure how far I get but hopefully it will push me to get back into dead trees and/or give my new e-reader some use.)

"Broken Stars" is a follow-up to "Invisible Planets," both anthologies of contemporary Chinese science fiction in translation. Ken Liu, the translator, mentions that he's tried to branch out and include stories both shorter and longer than the extremes of "Invisible Planets," as well as those that didn't originally appear in genre outlets.

The forward warns that some of the allusions might not be very accessible to Western readers, but I found that lots of the stories drew on a shared cultural context for modern SF fans. Throughout the book you can find mentions of Alan Turing, the Western zodiac symbols, the Greek constellation Delphinus, Harry Potter, the starship "Enterprise," Arthur C. Clarke, Marvin the Paranoid Android, the Sims, the Gospel of John, Dali's weird clocks...and, yes, a lot of Chinese history, both eras I have some knowledge of ("The Three Body Problem" informs most of what I know about the Cultural Revolution) and those I don't (the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period plays a prominent role in one story.).

While quality isn't always quantity, in this particular book I tended to especially enjoy a sense of playfulness and imagination that came through in the longer stories. My favorites were:

"What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear," by Baoshu. This is the pseudonymous author who wrote the "Redemption of Time" fanfic-turned-unofficial sequel to "The Three Body Problem" trilogy. It won't take you long to figure out the conceit of this one, but I'd still recommend going in blind if you want to experience the "a-ha!" moment of the intriguing premise.

In the dark, it happened naturally. With so many young people in the square, our lovemaking was an open secret. Normally I despised such behavior, and felt that couples who engaged in it tarnished the sacred nature of our protest. But now that it was happening to me, I couldn't resist, and felt our actions were a natural part of the movement itself.
 

"The Robot Who Liked To Tell Tall Tales," by Fei Dao. A silly story about a robot on a mission from an unpopular king, who has fairy-tale type adventures and meets people trying to escape, or outwit, Death itself. Enjoyable not so much for the plot as for the witty prose.

A patrol of three-dimensional barcode soldiers caught the robot and asked, "Whose side are you on?"

"My allegiance will always belong to His Majesty, the Glorious Bullshit King."

Unsatisfied with this answer, the patrol threw the robot in jail as a spy.

 

"The Snow of Jinyang," by Zhang Ran. Liu notes that he and cotranslator Carmen Yiling Yan had a lot of tricky but worthwhile translation problems posed by this one. (Spoiler: there's an Elon Musk joke.) It's an example of the chuanyue genre, which was new to me, about time travellers from the present day going back into historical eras--although this story is not from the time traveller's POV. This also confirmed that I would be completely useless as a chuanyue time traveller. Not only would I be wimpy and helpless without modern medicines, I don't understand any real-world technology enough to reconstruct it in the past! (Of course, I could introduce some anachronistic mathematics if I knew the local language. And yes, I have written a story about alternate-history discoveries of "modern" math. It's not necessarily very good...)

If you were chatting, only for someone to suddenly call you an "ignorant dog unworthy of the title of scholar sullying the names of past sages," it was a good sign that the threads for some of your type blocks had broken. While you had meant to type "The master spake, 'even the sage-kings of old were met with failures in this,'" what had shown up in the other text trays was "The master spake, 'the sage-kings of old were failures,'" thereby not only denouncing the legendary sage-kings, but also smearing great Confucius as well.

"The First Emperor's Games," by Ma Boyong. It's about Emperor Qin Shi Huang and his struggles with computer games. Liu notes that "liberal use of Wikipedia may be necessary for some readers," but I definitely related to the emperor's struggles with Civilization, the game.

"A fourth servant placed a mouse and a keyboard--wireless, nothing but the best in the palace--in a sandalwood tray and brought them to the emperor. A fifth servant knelt before the emperor--his robe was made of the same material as mousepads--and presented his broad, flat back to the throne."

And a qualified rec: "Goodnight, Melancholy" by Xia Jia alternates between a near-future woman taking care of childlike robots while struggling with depression, and a fictionalized version of the life (and death) of Alan Turing. Sometimes stories like this that pause for infodumps to talk about the RL history or alternate history behind the science can get kind of boring; however, this story takes just enough liberties with Turing's later computer projects to keep you on your toes. (For instance, it's true that Turing programmed a chess-playing algorithm and implemented it via pencil and paper because he didn't have the hardware to run it.) Xia Jia explains some of the fictionalizations in an author's note.

Christopher: Socrates is mortal?
Alan: Socrates has been dead for more than two millennia!
Christopher: Oh, I'm sorry, Alan. That makes me sad.

 

The book also includes a couple essays about the history and present state of science fiction fandom in China. I didn't find these very useful--maybe they'd be helpful as a reference if I was reading something else that namedropped people and magazines without context, but I didn't think they were necessary for enjoying the book.

Overall, I enjoyed this! If you liked the whimsical anachronisms of "The Circle" (one of the "video game" chapters from "Three-Body Problem, adapted as a standalone), I think you'll find lots to enjoy here.

Bingo: will probably use it for "two or more authors" (they specifically say that anthologies count!) Could also work for: 5+ short stories, I think probably "Award finalist but non-winner?" (going by this page), author of color, no "ifs ands or buts" in the title.

Comments

[unspeakablehorror]

Interesting! Maybe I'll check it out sometime. I've read The Three Body Problem trilogy (ie. The Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy), and enjoyed Liu's translations there, so perhaps I'd enjoy some of these as well. I generally prefer novel length works, but there is some short sci-fi I've liked.

[primeideal]

Enjoy, if you get the chance! Cixin Liu also has a standalone story in here, but it wasn't as interesting to me as Three-Body Problem.