 | |
| Author | Liu Cixin |
|---|---|
| Translator | John Chu, Adam Lanphier, Joel Martinsen, Carmen Yiling Yan |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction, Hard science fiction |
| Publisher | Tor Books |
Publication date | 2020 |
| Pages | 336 |
| ISBN | 978-1250306081 |
To Hold Up the Sky (Hold Up the Sky in other editions) is a collection of eleven science-fiction short stories by Chinese writer Liu Cixin. [1] Two short stories won the Galaxy Award. [2]
"The Village Teacher" inspired the movie Crazy Alien (Chinese: 疯狂的外星人 / 瘋狂的外星人, Pinyin: fēngkuáng de wài xīng rén) by director Ning Hao, [3] shot from 26 July 2017 to 9 December 2017 in Qingdao in Shandong Province and released in Mainland China on 5 February 2019.
Paul Di Filippo, writing in the Locus Magazine , thinks that the collection "continues to provide the same pleasures found in his [Liu Cixin's] award-winning novels: the simultaneous honoring and detournement of classic SF tropes, as filtered through a distinctly non-Western worldview and a quirky set of personal sensibilities." Liu Cixin is "at once a radical and a conservative, an optimist and a pessimist, a member of the Old Guard and of the New Wave simultaneously", making the collection "a bracing mélange." Since the translation is "handled by many different expert translators who are not named Ken Liu" (who is known for translating Liu Cixin's Hugo Award winning novel The Three-Body Problem and its sequel Death's End ), the review gives "kudos to them for some excellent renderings, every one of which seems miraculously to converge [....] Liu’s actual voice." [4]
Rachel Cordasco, writing for World Literature Today , says that "Liu is interested in how large swathes of time can help humans think about the future of our species and planet." She claims that "time is as much a character in Liu’s work as any human, and indeed Liu often is more interested in exploring time’s curious properties than describing human relationships, psychology, and interactions." [5]
Nicole Beck, writing in Strange Horizons , states the collection explored "that a human can have an effect on things larger than her comprehension—yet they never cease to remind the reader of how small we really are." She continues that "this writing is not for the faint of heart" since "Liu will test the limits of the reader's imagination" and that "he plays fair in the sense that his special effects are earned. Practical and scientific detail abounds", concluding that "there is a masterful range here." [6]
"Full Spectrum Barrage Ramming" won the Galaxy Award in 2001 and "Mirror" won the Galaxy Award in 2004. [2]
Fred Thomas Saberhagen was an American science fiction and fantasy author most famous for his Berserker series of science fiction short stories and novels.
Paul Di Filippo is an American science fiction writer.
Chinese science fiction is genre of literature that concerns itself with hypothetical future social and technological developments in the Sinosphere.
Liu Cixin is a Chinese computer engineer and science fiction writer. He is a nine-time winner of China's Galaxy Award and has also received the 2015 Hugo Award for his novel The Three-Body Problem as well as the 2017 Locus Award for Death's End. He is also a winner of the Chinese Nebula Award. In English translations of his works, his name is given as Cixin Liu. He is a member of China Science Writers Association and the vice president of Shanxi Writers Association. He is sometimes called "Da Liu" by his fellow science fiction writers in China.
The Three-Body Problem is a 2008 novel by the Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin. It is the first novel in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. The series portrays a fictional past, present, and future wherein Earth encounters an alien civilization from a nearby system of three Sun-like stars orbiting one another, a representative example of the three-body problem in orbital mechanics.
Ken Liu is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. Liu has won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards for his novel translations and original short fiction, which has appeared in F&SF, Asimov's, Analog, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and multiple "Year's Best" anthologies.
Remembrance of Earth's Past is a science fiction novel series by Chinese writer Liu Cixin. The series is also popularly referred to as Three-Body from part of the title of its first novel, The Three-Body Problem. The series details humanity's discovery of and preparation for an alien invasion force from the planet Trisolaris.
Wang Yao, known by the pen name Xia Jia, is a Chinese science fiction and fantasy writer. After receiving her Ph.D. in comparative literature and world literature at Department of Chinese, Peking University in 2014, she is currently a lecturer of Chinese literature at Xi'an Jiaotong University.
Li Jun, known by the pen name Baoshu (宝树), is a Chinese science fiction and fantasy writer. One of his books, Three Body X, is a sequel to Death's End by Liu Cixin. Baoshu received his Master of Philosophy at Peking University, and a second master after studying at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. In 2012 he became a full-time science fiction writer.
The Galaxy Award is China's most prestigious science fiction award, which was started in 1986 by the magazines Tree of Wisdom and Science Literature & Art. After Tree of Wisdom ceased publication soon afterwards, the award was organized solely by Science Literature & Art, which was renamed to Science Fiction World in 1991.
Chen Qiufan, also known as Stanley Chan, is a Chinese science fiction writer, columnist, and scriptwriter. His first novel was The Waste Tide (2013), which "combines realism with allegory to present the hybridity of humans and machines". Chen Qiufan's short fiction works have won three Galaxy Awards for Chinese Science Fiction and twelve Nebula Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy in Chinese. "The Fish of Lijiang" received the Best Short Form Award for the 2012 Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards. His stories have been published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, MIT Technology Review, Clarkesworld Magazine, Year's Best SF, Interzone, and Lightspeed, as well as influential Chinese science fiction magazine Science Fiction World. His works have been translated into German, French, Finnish, Korean, Czech, Italian, Japanese and Polish and other languages.
Ball Lightning is a hard science fiction novel by Chinese author Liu Cixin, also considered a prequel to The Three-Body Problem. The original Chinese language version was published in 2004. In 2018 the English language version, translated by Joel Martinsen, was published in the US by Tor Books.
The Wandering Earth is a 2019 Chinese science fiction film directed by Frant Gwo, loosely based on the 2000 short story of the same name by Liu Cixin. The film stars Wu Jing, Qu Chuxiao, Li Guangjie, Ng Man-tat, Zhao Jinmai and Qu Jingjing. Set in the far future, it follows a group of astronauts and rescue workers guiding the Earth away from an expanding Sun, while attempting to prevent a collision with Jupiter. The film was theatrically released in China on 5 February 2019, by China Film Group Corporation.
Crazy Alien is a 2019 Chinese science-fiction comedy film directed by Ning Hao and written by Sun Xiaohang, Wu Nan, Dong Runnian, Liu Xiaodan, and Pan Yiran. The third installment in Ning's "Crazy" series, the film stars Huang Bo and Shen Teng as the lead roles. It was released in China on Chinese New Year, February 5, 2019.
Rendezvous with the Future is a documentary series commissioned by Bilibili and produced by BBC Studios which explores the science behind the science fiction of author Liu Cixin. The series premiered in China on 16 November 2022 and has been watched by a combined audience of more than 85 million.
"The Village Teacher" is a science-fiction short story by Chinese writer Liu Cixin. It was published in Science Fiction World in Chengdu in January 2001, was later included in the best Chinese Science Fiction short stories from 2001 and also in the collection To Hold Up the Sky in October 2020. It won the Reader's Nomination Award for best short story for the Galaxy Award.
"2018-04-01" is a science-fiction short story by Chinese writer Liu Cixin. It was published in Esquire China in Beijing in 2009 and in the anthology To Hold Up the Sky in October 2020.
"Contraction" is a science-fiction short story by Chinese writer Liu Cixin. It was published in Science Fiction World in Chongqing in 1999 and in the anthology To Hold Up the Sky in October of 2020.
He Xi, born as He Hongwei, is a Chinese science fiction author. He won the Galaxy Award fifteen times and is part of the „great four“ or „four heaven kings“ („本土科幻四大天王“) of Chinese science fiction. He is a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 2024.
"Sea of Dreams" is a science-fiction novella by Chinese writer Liu Cixin. It was published in Science Fiction World in 2002, Asimov's Science Fiction in January/February 2018 and in the collection To Hold Up the Sky published by Bloomsbury Publishing in October 2020. A graphic novel illustrated by JOK and adapted by Rodolfo Santullo was published by Bloomsbury Publishing in August 2021. An adaption of the novella as a series by Youku produced by Liu Cixin and starring Huang Jingyu is planned to be released in 2025.