The Wandering Earth

September 15, 2021
This new collection from Liu presents a variety of his sf short stories, most of them sharing his penchant for vast, world-altering events or ideas. Various stories focus on the epoch-shifting arrival of aliens on earth: a group of dinosaurs want to plunder Earth's resources in ""Devourer""; the elderly and inept creators of the universe become a collective humanity's annoying new guests in ""Taking Care of God""; and a vast, spherical bubble ship tells a former mountaineer of worlds within worlds in ""Mountain."" Some stories also focus on humanity transforming its own environment, such as the titular ""The Wandering Earth,"" in which humanity decides to convert the planet into a massive generation ship in order to escape the explosion of the Sun. Liu's fiction continues to feature high concept plots with less focus on in-depth characterization, and he remains one of the more accomplished creators of bizarre, hard sf ideas in the genre. Recommended for fans of Liu's previous work or of energetic, big-picture sf world building in general.

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Starred review from October 4, 2021
Climate change is the least worrying threat in this earth-shattering (literally) collection of 11 brilliant tales from Hugo Award winner Liu (The Three-Body Problem). In universes indifferent to humanity—filled with pragmatically minded, planet-stripping dinosaurs (“Devourer”), or where gods look to move back in with their offspring (“Taking Care of God”)—survival depends on those people brave or noble enough to take the long view, even if it takes 2,500 years to reach a new solar system, as in the title story. Despite the hardships Liu throws at his characters, he cushions his rougher truths with a wry humor; the elder humans in “For the Benefit of Mankind” pilot spaceships that “looked like an intergalactic cold-relief capsules,” and “Curse 5.0” pokes fun at Liu’s own sci-fi ambitions. While built around a hard-science outlook that acknowledges the bleakness of humanity’s chances, these stories also feature a lot of the heart and hopefulness that draw readers to science fiction in the first place. Liu conjures a sense of wonder while grounding his tales in well-wrought characters. This is a masterwork.