My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for granting me early access to this book in exchange for an honest review.

As with any short story anthology there are stronger pieces and weaker pieces or pieces that work better for you than others. The main purpose of an anthology for me is to expose me to the writing of different authors and help me find authors to try more works from.
I really enjoyed this collection even if not every piece worked for me. At the very least each story had a very interesting concept that it explored. My favorites are probably 'The Last Save', 'The Absolution Experiment ' and 'Flowers of the other shore'

I loved the variety! The texture of these worlds means something its beautiful and elegant and so different to the scifi landscape. The poetic slow pace of these narratives makes them stand out.

The editorial note was very essential in understanding my reading and more of it would be appreciated throughout the novel.

"Sinopticon 2021" offers readers a breathtaking journey into the vast and diverse landscape of Chinese science fiction. Curated and translated by Xueting Christine Ni, the collection boasts a rich tapestry of voices, ranging from award-winning legends to budding talents. Each story is a portal, providing unique insights into Chinese culture, philosophy, and imagination. From the cosmic ponderings of Jiang Bo's 'Starship: Library' to the evocative imagery in Anna Wu’s ‘Meisje met de Parel', "Sinopticon 2021" is an essential anthology for aficionados of speculative fiction. A triumph in global storytelling.

I'm enjoying the wide array of science fiction from China coming into English translation. I'm exceptionally grateful for the skillful work of the translators and this collection is the highest quality I've read so far. There's a novelette in there that blew my mind. I love seeing how different science fiction can be with a backing of a culture other than my own, and at the same time how much we share. That sounds corny, but I mean it. A truly outstanding collection!

I am very late in reviewing this as I somehow missed it after I read!

This was a rocking little collection and I look forward to check out more anthologies from this press in the future!!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this title!

As with all short story collections, there are some that are more powerful or enjoyable than others. I had a positive experience with this collection, and really loved seeing the diverse and non-western background and themes of the authors.

Thank you NetGalley for this ebook. I was very curious for this collection because I am a big fan of sci-fi and I really wanted to try more short stories.

As a collection of short stories, I think a lot of them are unique. As a whole the collection is not an all time favourite, but there are many great ones in there. I highly recommend this if you like general sci-fi concepts. I have to say that I have a basic understanding of the Chinese culture and history, and I feel that many of the stories were based on that. This didn't make the stories hard to understand, it made me question my knowledge and more curious to find out more.

All in all, this was a success and I highly recommend it. :)

I very much appreciate being gifted this copy of Sinopticon 2021, and the opportunity to read & review it. Thanks to the publisher. It was a delight.

This was an interesting collection of Chinese sci-fi stories. While intriguing, I felt a bit detached from most of the stories, and as a whole the anthology felt a bit uneven in quality and tone - while some stories I greatly enjoyed, like Qiankun and Alex, others fell flat. I think this would have been improved if I'd gone into it with a more solid understanding of Chinese history and culture. That would have uplifted my general enjoyment of the collection as a whole, and erased any ambiguity that held me back from truly enjoying the work. This is a critique of myself rather than the book, however, and overall I'd recommend this compelling collection to anyone trying to immerse themselves in Chinese history, culture, and dystopia.

As with any short story collection, I think this was a bit of a mixed bag. Some were certainly stand-out stories, though naturally this will depend on the reader's preferences, and I particularly liked the ones involving AI and that kind of deep, introspective thought. Some of the others were less to my taste, but I could see why people would enjoy them.

I don't think they were all of the same quality, and there were points that felt strangely sexist or just off, but I don't know if that's the same in the original text or just through the translation. The editor/author notes are interesting, and it's nice to have that kind of side-note to consider.

The library one in particular is sure to spark the interest of most readers here :) but overall I think it reminded me I'm not the right kind of reader for short stories.

This was an interesting collection of stories written by Chinese authors, but unfortunately a lot of them just didn't work for me. I found quite a few of them quite sexist and didn't enjoy a lot of the characters. My favourite stories were 'Flowers of the Other Shore', which was a funny and original zombie tale, 'The Absolution Experiment', which was a very short and brutal look at immortality and 'Rendevous: 1937', which was a poignant time travel story. Overall, I think this is a valuable collection and would recommend it for people to broaden their horizons in terms of literature from under-explored cultures, but I do wish there was more variety in the stories and better representation for female characters.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I absolutely love short story collections, especially translated works. I find that translated works have something special that original English stories are sometimes missing. This collection did not disappoint.

As always with collections there were some stories that I enjoy more than others. Overall the collection was an absolute success. I highly recommend.

I really liked some of the concepts that were explored in this book. I would definitely read more by these authors

This might be obvious to say but any science fiction written is often shaped by a country's history and culture. Where and when you grew up will of course inform what your imagination will come up with and <i>Sinopticon</i> offers you a glimpse into a world that might not be accessible to you otherwise. Since I cannot read Chinese, I am very happy that these authors got a new English-reading audience.


This short story anthology that Xueting Christine Ni put together is a perfect mix of hard and soft scifi, stories that are very much informed by Chinese culture or those that follow more familiar to Western plot beats and explore a wide range of themes and ideas.
She lets each story stand on its own before giving us a short translator note about the author and her explanation of why she chose each specific short story. Along with the footnotes for any untranslated words and names where a little more context would be helpful, this is a carefully curated collection and I loved the insight we got into her process of putting this anthology together.

While I can't say I enjoyed every short story in here (would almost be impossible since there is such a wide range), I never truly felt I wasted my time, mostly because of the notes in the end. It helped me to see these stories from a different perspective and kept me in check to not only view them through a Western lens.
Still, my favourite were the ones that were about human connections along with artificial intelligences like The Heart of the Museum and Qiankun and Alex.



<u>The Last Save</u> - Gu Shi ★★★★✩
(You can now relaod to any time in your past if you've saved it.)
Loved the interplay between the delusions of choice and the idea of living a perfect life.
It grapples with an existantially human question

<u>Tombs of the Universe</u> - Han Song ★★★✩✩
(Interstellar traveling and graves at holiday sites.)
While I liked the exploration of death and graves and the cyclical nature of how we experience funerals but I didn't fully connect in the end.

<u>Qiankun and Alex</u> - Hao Jingfang ★★★★★
(Moments between a young boy and a global, all-knowing artificial intelligence.)
Delightful and deep.

<u>Cat's Chance in Hell</u> - Nian Yu ★★★★✩
(A father fights in a war where humans should not be involved in.)
Emotional.

<u>The Return of Adam</u> - Wang Jinkang ★★✩✩✩
(Adam comes back to earth after 200 years to find augmented humans.)
This is more of a short history recap but not told very interestingly. And I did not like Adam's point of view either.
I do appreciate its inclusion and the editor's explanation as to why.

<u>Rendevous 1937</u> - Zhao Haihong ★★★✩✩
(Time travel to a fictional moment in Nanjing.)
I think appreciate the idea behind this but it felt unfinished – even the author comments on that.

<u>The Heart of the Museum</u> - Tang Fei ★★★★★
(And all-knowing being watches over a young boy and thinks about his future.)
Lovely! Heartwarming!

<u>The Great Migration</u> - Ma Boyong (he/him) ★★★✩✩
(Two people – along with everyone else – want to travel back home to earth from Mars.)
I was bored through this for most of it until the very end.

<u>Meisje Met De Parel</u> - Anna Wu ★★★✩✩
(A girl, a painting, time travel.)
A litle too abstract for me but a cool concept.

<u>Flowers of the Other Shore</u> - A Que ★★★✩✩
(A zombie reunites with an old lover.)
The story is actually pretty good it's just that nothing can make me care about zombies.

<u>The Absolution Experiment</u> - Bao Shu ★★★★✩
(Being a test subject in order to not be imprisoned?)
Dark and questionable. It's short but by the end, I did a 180; a fantastic choice for a protagonist.

<u>The Tide of Moon City</u> - Regina Kanyu Wang ★★★★✩
(A misunderstanding between lovers and two connected planets.)

<u>Starship: Library</u> - ★★★★★
(About saving the last library.)
This one just charmed me. The premise alone is just made for booklovers.

A bit of a mixed bag, which is the peril of any short story collection. However, I have read Chinese SF in short story, novels, podcast form before and didn't feel this matches up (for example) to the collections compiled by Ken Liu. Highlights are an individual preference, I felt that Hao Jingfang stood out.

Many others were full of good and interesting ideas but it felt there was something lacking in a few in execution - it is impossible to say whether this was in writing or translation.

More than enough to recommend as an introduction to Chinese SF and intended as a broader overview, though I would suggest Invisible Planets or Broken Stars are better if people want further reading.

This celebration of Chinese Science Fiction — thirteen stories, all translated for the first time into English — represents a unique exploration of the nation’s speculative fiction from the late 20th century onwards, curated and translated by critically acclaimed writer and essayist Xueting Christine Ni.

From the renowned Jiang Bo’s ‘Starship: Library' to Regina Kanyu Wang’s ‘The Tide of Moon City', and Anna Wu’s ‘Meisje met de Parel', this is a collection for all fans of great fiction.

It was a whole new world for a non-chinese reader like me and I really liked it ! Texts are ric, inventive, universal and so specific at the same time. I loved all the aspects, epic, mundane, daily, historic of the stories. I recommand it for every new SF reader, especialy with the director's note, it was a joy.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me an eARC of this book in return for a fair and honest review.

Sinopticon is a collection of Chinese science fiction short stories. The collections includes a variety of types of scifi from zombie apocalypse to space travel and time travel to the pursuit of immortality. I like the inclusion of the note at the end of each piece that talks about the author and the inspiration/explanation of the story.

My favorite story was Flower of the Other Shore by A Que which I still think about months after finishing the book. I also really enjoyed Starship: Library and The Tide of Moon City.

The first book I finished this year was a collection of Chinese short sci-fi: Sinopticon 2021: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction, curated and translated by Xueting Christine Ni.

I received an ARC by Netgalley ages ago and started reading way back in 2021, but only managed to finish the last 3 stories this year.

This collection features a broad span of different science fiction subgenres, and there were some I really liked, and some that did not click with me at all. I like space and AIs, time travel not so much.

I especially liked the stories “Tombs of the Universe” by Han Song, which is an interesting story about death in a society sprinkled through space, and Starship: Library by Jiang Bo, which is about a library starship – that’s my kind of story right there!

One thing that threw me off was some casual remarks about the “nature of woman”. Kinda eyeroll-y, from my standpoint. One star less for this and the stories I did not like.

4/5 duckies

Sinopticon 2021: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction, is a new collection of short stories from Chinese scifi authors, presenting new futures and worlds. All the stories have been curated and translated in English by Xueting Christine Ni. Every time I noticed connections to Chinese history and culture, these made the stories richer for me, but I don’t think a reader would need to have a background in Chinese lit to read and enjoy this collection.

I really enjoyed Gu Shi’s story The Last Save, about a future technology that allows saving and rebooting our lives to go back and redo mistakes. This premise is so intriguing, asking what if we could undo a past choice and live a new life? When we look back on our lives with this ability to save and restart, we’d all be able to choose a different major and end up in a different career, to live in a different city, or maybe realize our hometown was the right place, to break up with that loser three years earlier. We could save before a major life choice, like accepting a new job or starting a new relationship, and have an easy respawn out if it didn’t work out. And the way it affects our characters and their lives is fascinating.

A Que’s story, Flower of the Other Shore adds a twist on the ol’ zombie tropes. I know, I know, after decades of zombie stories, I didn’t think there was any water left in that well either, but A Que found some. Perhaps by leaning into the Hollywood tropes and then subverting them in the apocalypse? This is a gristly story and a surprisingly moving one, with moments of humor, too.

Each short story in Sinopticon ends with a note about the author’s background and context on the story. I mostly found this very interesting, since when I find an author I like, I often go on a mission to find the rest of their works. At times, these notes felt a bit heavyhanded, especially after some of the great stories. The story worked, so it’s not necessary to explain it to readers again. My Mandarin taps out at ordering food, so I was very interested in all the notes on translation and language choices, both in the footnotes in the text and in the end notes after the stories.

The standout for me in Sinopticon was The Great Migration, by Ma Boyong, a story of travelers trying to get home to Earth during the limited period when the orbits line up for a shorter trip, creating a new mass exodus for a new lunar celebrations. This story recalls distinctly Chinese aspects of the desperate crush and shady business around getting tickets home for CNY, but anyone who’s ever waited at an airport will recognize elements. Should I use a bit of my precious carry-on space for a snack? Or pay $18 for a mediocre airport sandwich? How much of my time off will I spend waiting for my connection? Am I ever going to make it home? The world here felt wildly hostile, but also very believable.

Those are just a few of the stories that I particularly enjoyed, there are other great ones too. With any collection, not every story can be my favorite. I love the wild worlds that good science fiction suggests, but I also need to care about my characters. So the stories in Sinopticon that fell a bit flat for me usually had interesting worlds or situations, but without engaging characters in them.

Overall, this was a fascinating look at possible future worlds, through a Chinese lens.