Review | Broken Stars: Ken Liu’s new anthology of 16 rising Chinese science fiction writers
- The collection features 14 writers, including Regina Kanyu Wang, Xia Jia and Han Song
- The stories explore time travel, prophecy, love, madness, family, nature and the apocalypse
Broken Stars edited by Ken Liu Head of Zeus
There’s a story in Broken Stars – a new anthology of Chinese science fiction – called “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”. Written by Anna Wu, it offers a recipe for the perfect writer. The ingredients include “mastery over plot structure” from a great playwright (“author A”) and an “ear for language” from the finest poet (“author B”). In the recipe, “author D” writes science fiction: “His stories were strange, clever things, well known throughout the galaxies. Ah Chen wanted his imagination.”
It’s quite a claim: science fiction = cleverness + strangeness + imagination, not least for a genre that traditionally inspires mockery and zealotry in equal measure. As Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451 (1953), wryly noted: “I have never listened to anyone who criticised my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”
Another riposte is provided by Broken Stars itself. The 16 newly translated stories by 14 writers make it hard to find fault with Wu’s crude equation. If it’s cleverness, strangeness and imagination you’re after, you’ve come to the right place, for the book has, among other things: a hot-air balloon flying over Song-dynasty China 800 years before its invention; a man being phoned by a future version of himself from a Shanghai that is mostly under water; a talking dolphin in love with a submarine; and a robot learning how to be history’s worst liar, surpassing the infamous “Bulls**t King”.
