I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is the fourth book I've read by Cixin Liu. I enjoyed the others and looked forward to The Wandering Earth, a collection of Liu's short stories. Unfortunately, the stories felt derivative, as if each one was a twist on the same general idea. Big problem emerges, governments join together to create a collective response, twist ending. Liu is at his best when he has room not only to launch a hairbrained idea but also to see it through to its (often mind-bending) conclusion. Confining his creativity to a short story borders on self-parody.

If you like golden age science fiction, you will enjoy this collection of stories. The focus is on science, the plots unfold in a straightforward manner, and the social mores fit better with the 1950s. However, the observations, dark humor, and irony are every bit characteristic of the 2020s. I do see his treatment of women as something that was sexist back in the golden age of sf, but it may be representative of his cultural mores and personal experiences.

Republished in 2021 and narrated by Theodore Chen and Greg Chung.

In these stories, the author gives us stories about the continuing fallibility of man and mankind.

Wandering Earth. 2000
In the future, scientists have discovered that the sun is dying, so what is humanity to do? Of course there is no consensus. Some, having little understanding of science, want to build self-sufficient generation ships from which to search for a new planet to call home. Others, having seen no successful model of a self-sufficient system, want to move the ENTIRE earth to the next closest star instead. Right up until launch time, both sides are still arguing, even though genetic manipulation science has created a higher percentage of smarter people.

The process of guiding the earth out of our galaxy is narrated by a Chinese man over the course of his lifetime. Along the way, he shows us a people made rational by science to tamp down the illogical human emotional response: no more hindrance of hormones, no more stifling marital fidelity, no waste of love on children. He speaks of the impact on climate change and universal fear—so it seems that emotions cannot actually be subsumed. The telling is taut, compressed, and bleakly emotional.

Mountain. 2006
This is a story about a man who has the mind of an engineer and the soul of a mountaineer. He’s currently working onboard a ship in the ocean, and he begins by explaining to the captain how his responsibility for a climbing disaster in the past has shaped his current life. To punish himself for the deaths of his climbing mates, he has relegated himself to life at sea—never to set foot on land much less on a mountain.

From the boat they see a “mountain” of water and understand this anomaly was created by aliens hovering above in a spaceship.

“Why do you climb mountains?” “Because it’s there!” A universally recognizable call and response. Whether Chinese, British, German, this urge seems universal and I was surprised to see that sentiment explored here. Mountaineers and explorers are important to the race, so the engineer hops out of the boat to climb the water. Meanwhile, the ship captain quickly steers clear of this strange anomaly, as the converse urge of self preservation is also important to humanity’s success.

This is also a first contact story. As such, it shows the hubris of assuming you understand others. And the telling is interesting as well as humorous. Incidentally, this story is full of puns—intentional? Probably not.

Sun of China. 2002
This story begins with a poetic analogy between the old dry cracked lines of a farmer’s face and the destroyed, dry cracked ground below. Both—lacking moisture. The crux of the story is water, fulfilling desires, and personal ambition as the farmer’s son searches for clean water, along the way, he thinks and grows as he learns new things. This story speaks to the inability of even wise people to see value and utility of inventions—or even other people.

Wages of Humanity. 2005
An elite hitman learns lessons in economic theory from an alien. Explores education. Class. Hierarchy. Post humanism. Greed.

Curse 5.0. 2010
A computer virus kicking around on the internet gains power as jilted lovers and jaded hackers incrementally ratchet up its destructive parameters. The final team of two hackers are none other than Cixin Liu himself as a disillusioned sf author accompanied by an equally disillusioned friend and fellow fantasy author. There is lots of dark and self-deprecatory humor. *,*,*

Micro-age.
In preparation for a cataclysmic solar event, earth sends astronauts to find a new planet for human colonization. Long after the destructive event has torn through earth, and long all other astronauts have died, the last astronaut gives up and returns back to earth—where he discovers he’s supersized, like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, when meets teenie tiny earth people—and makes a really big decision.

Devourer. 2002
Our big ol’ dinosaurs are baaaaa-ack and boy are they hungry! This story is funny yet horrifying. Conveys many themes pertaining to war, compassion, social disparity, and tenacity.

Taking Care of God. 2005
A humorous yet sad depiction of the race of gods who created us but have now lost their power and in retirement need our support. A story about responsibility, aging, and pride.

With Her Eyes. 1999
Mankind has explored the seas and skies and now the earth’s core. This poignant exploration into earth calls to mind Edgar Rice Burrows tunneling stories but with heaps of loneliness. A fervent reminder to enjoy life.

Cannonball/The Longest Fall. 2003
After a worldwide nuclear peace treaty, a scientist uses his invention of a super dense material in the efficient subterranean destruction of these banned nuclear devices. His precocious 8 yo child watches in awe and glee, while the geologist mother wonders if she has birthed a monster. The scientist soon becomes ill and goes into suspended sleep until he can be cured. Meanwhile, the son grows up and uses this material to bore straight through the earth, which becomes the crux of the story. A few decades later, the scientist awakens with his cancer cured—only to face the aftermath of his son’s actions. This is another “deep” story, (sorry, pun intended) fraught with mistakes and misunderstandings. Referencing Jules Verne, it explores ideas of judgment, unintended consequences, criminality, revenge, and punishment.

Thank you NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for my feedback.

I really enjoyed this collection of science fiction short stories from Cixin Liu. The quality of each story, and the collection as a whole, is excellent. Many of the stories are about the destruction of the earth, whether from natural events or the action of men. Despite this, the overall tone of the stories seems to be about human connection and appreciating the beauty of the earth--while we still can.

Highly recommended.

I read this book because I loved the movie by the same name. Unfortunately the book is nothing like the movie.

It's not a bad book. The stories in it are creative. However the writing style is pretty dry at times and some of the stories are definitely better than others. All in all, I'm not mad that I read it, but I won't seek the author out again in the future

Insightful and written to make you think and rethink, The Wandering Earth was an interesting study of humanity. Both narrators were quite excellent and I enjoyed listening to them. I did need to take 2 breaks from this book and go listen to something else as his stories seemed to get a bit formulaic, but overall, I am glad to have spent some time with Cixin Liu.

The Wandering Earth by Liu Cixin is a great collection of short sci-fi stories about our beautiful planet. I really liked his Three Body Problem and I was excited to listen to this audiobook. And in the end, I wasn’t disappointed. The stories are beautifully written and very original.

Oh the surface, the collection kind of seems thoughtful and progressive with interesting exploration of human nature put in a dire circumstances. but after listening the stories, it feels too much of communist party propaganda and values, many of the stories end with the protagonist killing themselves for the greater good and mostly because he thinks that he is a vehicle of bad things happening in the world. I had too much of this growing up - not valuing human life, praising sacrifice for the "greater good" of people i.e. communist party, I just cannot stand it anymore. Every life has value!
The reader was also not to my liking - the voice is mechanical, he often starts inserting pauses after.each.and.every.word. It is very annoying, distracting, and sounds somehow patronizing.
I read some books by the author, and they are all filled with despair and sadness, and senseless sacrifice for no reason at all.

4 Stars

I am grateful to Macmillan Audio for sending me an advanced copy of this audiobook for review.

I am so happy to not feel disappointed by this read! I was looking forward to getting to this short story collection from Liu Cixin. Ever since I read his Redemption of Earth's Past series, I have steadily been making my way through his works, and thoroughly enjoying most of them. It was immediately clear why some of these stories are award winning, because they were mostly stunning.

The strength of this author is how imaginative he can be with the premise of each story, and how he can relate all of these abstract stories to greater social issues. We have a bunch of stories about first contact with aliens, but none of them are remotely similar. We have a variety of settings, a mix of perspectives, and various areas of physics being focused on in each story. There is a nice balance between scientific concepts, plot, and character work that made each story compelling. The major theme of this collection is humanity's quest to understand ourselves and to survive in this vast unknown universe.

I read this story via audiobook, and I think that the writing is definitely audio friendly, and I thought the narrator's voice fit well with the types of stories being told. The one criticism I have of the story is the overwhelming theme of violence. I think Liu too often has the "enraged, murderous masses" as a response to things. It gets a bit exhausting.

I think this is a great collection for fans of Hard Science Fiction and a must for readers of Liu Cixin's other works.

As someone who's read the Three Body trilogy I feel that Cixin Liu is much better at shorter works. This collection of novellas has some good variety mixing hard sci-fi with other genres. Some western, some humor with a slight nod to Douglas Adams, a variety of apocalypses... all reasonably enjoyable give or take the dinosaurs. Maybe a little too much of the whole "somebody just woke up from 2019 or so and needs the current world explained to them so let's just sit herr and do that" thing, but overall still enjoyable.

The Wandering Earth by Liu Cixin is a collection of the most brilliant sci-fi stories. Cixin has quickly become one of my favorite science fiction writers. I listened to the audiobook which was fantastic. I'm going to share a little bit of my thoughts for my two favorite stories from the set!

The Wandering Earth -

“I’ve never seen the night, nor seen a star; I’ve seen neither spring, nor fall, nor winter. I was born at the end of the Reining Age, just as the Earth’s rotation was coming to a final halt.”

What a fantastic opening line! I found myself going back to the opening paragraphs to listen again in order to let it all sink in. The Earth begins a centuries-long course in search of a new sun to escape an expected helium flash that will turn the sun into a red giant. These big ideas are what I crave from a science fiction novel. What impressed me the most was how this story was under 50 pages and yet included an entire plot that felt complete with a strong beginning, middle, and end. Bravo! The ideas were quite thought provoking and I am astonished by Cixin’s imagination. A brilliant 10/10 stars for this story!

Mountain -

“Indeed, it is the nature of intelligent life to climb mountains. They all want to stand on ever higher ground to gaze ever farther into the distance. It is a drive completely divorced from the demands of survival.”

A geological engineer, due to a string of events following a climbing attempt of Mt. Everest, is working on a sailing ship in order to be as far away as physically possible from a mountain range. We first meet our tormented mountaineer at sea when his passion meets his greatest challenge, a giant sea mountain created by an extraterrestrial sphere. This 47 page story includes an interesting take on first contact, different views on life, journey, and exploration within a short amount of space. Cixin successfully created an entire alien species made of metal and electronics living inside a vacuum space in a hollow world. It was fascinating to learn of their exit from their “bubble world” and their discovery of liquid and gas. This was an imaginative thought experiment that could easily be the foundation to a novel-length text. It is no wonder that readers wanted Cixin to write novel-length stories following the release of “Mountain.” 7.5/10 stars.

The remaining stories are all written in Liu's distinct writing style. From the development of the space industry to earth being devoured by extraterrestrial beings, you're in for a wild thought experiment.

Such an interesting collection of stories. Truly original and full of amazing sci-fi content. I loved the way it was written and I love all the elements put into the story. The narrator managed to keep me glued to the audiobook without never feeling bored or like I didn't understand what I was listening to, which is something I truly appreciate.

I have been on such a kick lately of reading books that are set in the future. I absolutely love seeing how authors imagine solutions to the problems that are facing us right now. The created science and world-building that went into this is just amazing. At times, gut-wrenching (the magma!)- but still awe-inspiring to read.

The narration was great!

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the review copy of this audiobook!

Liu Cixin has been one of my recent favorite sci-fi authors for how deliciously in-depth he gets with the science behind his stories. In fact, comparing The Wandering Earth to his other translated short story collection, To Hold Up the Sky, the stories in this collection go even harder on the hard science aspect compared To Hold Up the Sky‘s more philosophical bent. In fact, I remember remarking to several friends as I read this that at times, some of these stories seem like multi-step physics problems told in short story form.

Which is not to say the stories are dry or purely physics. One of my favorite aspects of Liu’s short stories is his ability to tie human emotions, love for family and cherished ones, the human ambition to go further and bolder, or just the petty greed tied with capitalism, and combine them so effortlessly with the technical components. I’ve seen the movie the collection’s title story is based on, also called ‘The Wandering Earth’ (you can check it out on Netflix!) and it was interesting to see how different the two stories were, both in time scale and areas of focus. Two very different stories, but both excellently told.

Personal favorites for me include, ‘The Wandering Earth’, which follows humanity’s escape from an exploding sun over multiple generations and ends in a beautiful poem to the future generation, ‘Son of China’, which follows an illiterate young farmer who slowly working his way through society, and ‘Curse 5.0’, a humorous Internet of Things gone terrorist and also Liu’s attempt at self-insert fic. Overall, I rate this collection a 4/5.

After reading and loving The Three Body Problem, I definitely wanted to enjoy more stories by Cixin Liu. I love sci-fi, and these translated stories bring something different to the table than most of the modern Sci-Fi I read.

The Wandering Earth is a collection of 11 stories. I first wanted to read this collection for the title story - The Wandering Earth - since a movie was made from this novella. I have a rule of always reading the book/story that a film is based on before watching the movie, and wanted to experience the story the way the author wrote it first before going to Netflix to watch the movie version. I heard the movie version was terrible so wanted to have an informed opinion. The reviews are correct -- the movie is terrible IMHO. Story is awesome....a bit absurd in spots but a great story nonetheless. The movie.....well.....watch it for yourself and see what you think.

I'm glad I listened to this audio book in its entirety instead of just listening to the main story I wanted to hear. All 11 of these stories are an ode to the Earth. Some are related to each other, but all can be read as stand alone stories. The author's stories encompass some hard-hitting topics - the environment, culture, society, human nature, and science.

Cixan Liu's writing is very thought provoking. It isn't the sort of sci-fi that involves robots and laser gun fights -- although I love that sort too. It's the sort of Sci-fi that makes one think about the place of human kind in the universe. The stories are varied...some are awesome, others a bit absurd....but all make the reader think deeper thoughts. At least I did.

**I voluntarily listened to an review copy of this audio book from Macmillan Audio. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**

This is a terrific collection of science fiction stories, some of which are connected to each other. The narration was well done and never grating. I would highly recommend this audiobook to my friends and colleagues.

The Wandering Earth
by Liu Cixin
reads like a dynamic collections short story.

The wandering earth story
chapter 1 The breaking era - The idea that earth is required to leave its solar system to survive. the ideology coming from a division in society between those who want to leave earth and those whom want to take it when the sun is about to supernova. First breaking the rotation of earth causing problems with the ocean, and how the tectonic plates rebound.

chapter 2 The deserting era- how we removed the earth from its orbit and how it affects the population, in society, and culture. Explaining how the earth would move from the orbit, how it affects the crops and the surface scalding it, then freezing it.

chapter 3 Rebellion- Getting closer to the edge of Jupiter's orbit, the population has begun to doubt its missions. Its an interesting concept and the unity and divisions is so spot on. The idea that people assume they being lied to, only to find out afterwards that it was they who were deceived.

chapter 4The wandering era - sailing past the orbit of Pluto, the atmosphere has vanished, as the world freezes the tectonic plate create a new danger.

Mountain
Chapter 1- man is adapting to a more submerged earth, water rising has changed the mountains, and the world. A sailor who had a previous life as a Sherpa, he has left himself isolated on oceans. The idea of the human life. When aliens appear they affect the atmosphere creating a mountain of water.
chapter 2 -words on the top the mountain the aliens talk to a human who reached up their mountain of water a larges digital screen that they learned earth language. they are explaining their life, and their focus on a exploration. They talk about the reason the earth is wondering. Explaining the concept of changing life that made the alien population.
chapter 3 -Bubble world the aliens describe their exploration from their rock world that the world was made of two parts, the area where they live, and the rock. The solid universe theory. They explore causing problems with people taking space. they are exploring the real universe. Their entire universe was made without gases and liquids, evolved as a mechanical beings, never found fire in their world. A philosophical idea of how life can be different life can be created by different means.
Chapter 4- the Aliens learn about the outer solar system. They learn about the barbarism of exploration. The aliens learn they are not alone, that the solid world did not end the universe.
Chapter 5- gravity. learning later about gravity, and caused by the gravity affected the groups as the ships explored out of their world.
Chapter 6- worlds core the true nature of the bubble world. the hollow center of a planet. They learned that their world was in a core, the began fighting, because of the refuse of the exploration, breaking the world.
chapter 7- war of the strata looking for their own space. they begin fighting ship to ship until they emerge from their world.
chapter 8- under the ocean, after the battle the ships explore on through the water, allowing the alliance to create more space. The gravity helps them to move through the rock. 5,000 miles to the surface of the world. The sea bed floods the tunnels with water in the helix.
Chapter 9- to the stars, the world begins to reconnect to intense exploration, learning to adapt their technology to explore the universe outside the bubble world. Comparing it to modern human sciences about exploration.
Chapter 10- Universality of mountains. the aliens created a mountain because the world has mountains if it exists intelligent life would explore to the top of the mountains. The aliens were just passing by, where there is a mountain there will be someone to climb it.

Son of china
Prolog- a young man takes all his belongings to find his meaning of life.
life goal number one, drink water not bitter, make money. by mining.
life goal number two, go to city with more lights, and sweeter water. learns to adapt to the city life, creating money and ideas He learns a practice to shine shoes.
life goal number three go to a bigger city, make more money. He learns to adapt to the big city, he is overwhelmed by the population. he learns to clean windows to make money.
Life goal number four- become a Beijing. He learns to help other to see the value of window cleaners, and challenging the concepts of importance.
Life goal number 5 fly to space clean the worlds sun, using the low educated population to clean in space. making space travel and exploration cheaper.
mirror farmers- learning how to clean the sun mirror in space, and the dangers in the process.
Live goal number 6 fly to the stars draw humanities gaze back to the cosmos. changing the idea of people connected back to their origin.

for the benefit of mankind.
aliens have come, they would look at the economy of humanity to determine the minimum that mankind needs, and spread the wealth evenly. an assassin has been contracted to kill the lowest level of economy who would not be bought out by the richest of the world. only to find that the aliens were not fooled by this endeavor.

Curse 5.0
a computer curse that started benignly, that really did not affect anything, but as hackers expand the perimeters of code, it was created more and more deadly before they know it the world is destroyed as erase the specifics of the internet virus. The virus creates a world that destroys itself.

The micro era
People have left the solar system trying to find a place to leave the dying earth. the sun is turning off slowly, mankind does not find an inhabitable world. They single survivor from this exploration returns.
The monument- The explorer finds a monument of the dead earth. He finds a connection to those remaining human civilization.
The capital- he explores the renewed earth, finding the people that is left. to find that mankind has changed.
Micro-humanity, the reduction the human race by 90% they can live without as much resources.
The banquet- the micro humans find the sole survivor interesting, and went to the last spaceship.
Rebirth- he spreads the seeds from the seed bank. Planting the grass, repopulating the earth with plants and animals. he destroys the last of the macro humans.

the devourer
the crystal of Adonis - the connection with the new alien species that wars man of an incoming invasion of a deadly alien presence.
emissary fangs- first contact with the second alien species. finding that humans were to be destroyed and used as a food source.
ants- the negotiations with the alien species, is made erroneous because of our use of the world destroys the world of the ants.
acceleration- humans learn to defend themselves with the information taken from the Adonis society.
lunar refuge- that some of the humans should live, make a refuge on the moon to allow humanity to survive. this is the first step in saving the human race
planting the bombs- the second step to save the human race, making the moon their final bombardment of the aliens.
Humanities first and last space war- sending the moon against the alien species, attempting to save humanity. to find that the aliens are the dinosaurs who went to space and are escaping the dying universe, last consuming earth on their way out.

Epilog- the return humans find the earth after its movement, leaving the earth after the war with the devourer. they find that they did not destroy their importance.

Taking care of god
the people support the long lived species of humans from earth 1. picked families are required to help nurture the alien species that came to their earth. They appeared in ships that look like toys, the ships were dying, and needed time for repair that the gods, have lost the education to repair. Questioning our assumption of gods, and religion

With her eyes
A man goes on vacation, taking the optical glasses allowing a person that is unable to go on vacation to see what the man sees. He found the connection with a young lady who is trapped in the core of the earth. He shows her the world, their interpersonal fighting causes her to lose connection to the world when he leaves the glasses to the side. he finds that she is the only one to save the world.

Cannonball-
the struggle between mankind over earths resources cause the world to die. they find technology to extend human life. A man was placed in hibernation because of cancer. He is awakened into the future to find his wife passed, and his son had become a dynamic world leader that would destroy many lives. His passing idea in his prior life he inspired his son to create a passage through the earth. The survivors of his sons destruction attempt to kill him. His path through the earth creates a passage that man can use to explore outer space.

Cixin Liu is quickly becoming one of my favorite sci-fi authors. These stories are masterfully crafted and diversely interesting. I love the cameo appearance by the author.

The Wandering Earth contains ten, marvelously imaginative stories about humanity’s future, with China at the center (unusual for us Westerners to read and it definitely has an impact on the story lines).

The premise of each story is intriguing, and I never know where it will lead. I’m usually hooked by the first sentence which is very unusual — Cixin Liu is a tremendous writer, combining hard science fiction with individual reflection and massive socio-cultural settings and impact. Stories ranged from the rescue of the Earth from a dying sun to a simple malware virus turned into a death warrant for humanity to the results of capitalism run rampant (definitely a Chinese view on this one). One story embedded the author and a friend into a key point of the story with hysterical (and simultaneously sobering) results.

This is definitely a science fiction book written from a man’s perspective. The main characters (the ones written with such depth) are all men, and the few female characters fit stereotypes from the 50s — a little dumb, easily led, not a priority, and occasionally vindictive. It didn’t bother me — plenty of books written by women have only two dimensional depictions of stereotyped men — but it’s worth mentioning.

Liu’s political beliefs appear to align with those of the Chinese government which provides an interesting lens through which to read his stories. I believe this is the only Chinese science fiction translated into English that I’ve ever read. Ken Liu translated the Three Body Problem and did a beautiful job. For some reason I can’t seem to find out who translated this one but they, too, did a fantastic job.

The narrator(s) were a tad robotic at times, but that actually fits the stories well, and the reading speed was fast enough for me.

The author of “The Three Body Problem” and other works, Cixin Liu has written a collection of short stories that showcase his imagination. In this collection he explores a series of “what ifs” from scientific, philosophical, ethical, and societal perspectives.

While posing interesting scenarios, Liu explores the ramifications of each. He does not disguise this is what he is doing, but he does so at the expense of his characters. They are barely developed enough to drive his musings. His writing here is excellent, humorous, realistically emotive, and thoughtful…just not character driven.

I rate this collection 3 stars. While each story presents interesting problems and possibilities, they could have just as easily been offered as white papers. Without characters I can care about, not even the best writing can pull me in.

My gratitude to Macmillan Audio via Netgalley.

Clearly The author has done an excellent amount of research and the level of detail to her stories is confounding. I did appreciate the structure and the content, the focus on humanitarian topics and the future of humanity. My main criticism is I don't appreciate the anti-theological and anti-deist comments, which retracted from the story itself.