Interesante perspectiva novedosa sobre la ciencia ficción. Aunque anticomunista, es crítico y sus cuentos tienen interesantes enfoques, y con dilemas que hacen pensar. ( )

Diverse collection of short stories. I liked that these tales weaved the philosophical with the scientific, all while presenting engaging stories. I think that my favorite was "Contraction," but they were all good. ( )

A wide-ranging and thought-provoking collection of short stories. While such volumes are usually uneven, I found this one quite uniformly good. ( )

A few of the stories had something in them that touched me, but these are thinking men's stories mostly, working out huge ideas that to me just don't seem to be what matters. ( )

Focusing 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 as the (inevitably capitalised) Great Classical Novels, and the writings of the various ancients might be to a scholar of ancient China, they are not of amazing utility to anyone trying to understand a country shaped far more by Mao and Deng than by Confucius. Much classic Chinese philosophy, religion, poetry and art is about absence, the protean void, silence, nothing from which something pregnant emerges. Almost all of these traits are present in this collection of Cixin’s short stories. A whole swathe of the modern Western SF tradition does not like this minimal absence, pregnant, silent, and the imagination implicit beyond words. But you’ll get that in spades by reading this collection.

At a deeper level there is something distinct about the Chinese character and outlook at a personal level. An emphasis on family and community (Confucian tradition) that owes nothing to Mao who if anything tried to atomise it in the name of a "new" collective of communism that tore many old bonds apart. That's all almost gone replaced by an older nationalism and again strong family and community bonds. Walking down the street you don't necessarily see it, nor necessarily in a business outfit except subservience to the boss, but get to know enough people an older China is still there.

After the disappointing and turgid “The Three-Body Problem”, it was with some trepidation, for me, that I started this new outing by Cixin, but I needn’t have feared. Much better fodder. In terms of understanding the country and getting a feel for things, if through a particular lens (but then that's true of all books!) then I really enjoyed “To Hold Up the Sky”. An evocative look at China through a SFional outsider-insider's eyes.

Outstanding stories: “The Contraction”, “Cloud of Poems”, “The Thinker” and “Ode to Joy”. ( )