Cixin Liu is China's #1 SF writer and author of The Three-Body Problem - the first ever translated novel to win a Hugo Award. Prior to becoming a writer, Liu worked as an engineer in a power plant in Yangquan.
'Beautifully written, the Sun hangs 'motionless in the sky, surrounded by a faint, dawn-like halo'. The ten other stories collected here are just as great' * Wired * 'As with other Chinese works in the genre, it is tempting to draw parallels with the Communist regime, even when the writers themselves do not - and dare not - make those analogies explicit. For Western readers, Chinese sci-fi thus offers a window into the country's hopes and fears. Especially its fears' * Economist * 'Liu has continued to write and publish stories which share similar ideas and offer a vision for a better world through scientific fantasy' * New European * 'Short stories [...] allow an idea to be developed without getting bogged down with having to fill hundreds of pages and in this collection Cixin Liu has ably demonstrated the form ... One of the most interesting books I have read' * Concatenation * 'Liu uses the exotic foreignness of alien environments to lure readers into an enchanted literary escape pod. The story's backdrop might be one of spectacular beauty or entropic devastation but the distancing effect its abnormality provides is always stirring' * Big Issue * 'A wonderful collection and brings Cixin Liu's own unique flavour to the genre' * SF Crows Nest. * 'Absolutely fantastic ... The hardback is a thing of beauty and its translations are wonderful' * For Winter Nights. * 'Liu conjures up a genuine sense of wonder' * SFX * 'Top-flight SF; smart, informative and engaging' * SFX * 'Complex and grandiose ... this is a mind-altering and immersive experience' * Daily Mail * 'China's answer to Arthur C. Clarke' * The New Yorker * 'A marvellous melange of awe-inspiring scientific concepts, clever plotting and quirky yet plausible characters ... Exhilarating, mind-stretching' * TLS * 'A milestone in Chinese science fiction' * New York Times * 'Wildly imaginative, really interesting ... The scope of it was immense' -- Barack Obama 'An evocative and powerful ode to Cornwall, its magic and mysteries, and the power to start over again' Nancy Barone, author of New Hope for the Little Cornish Farmhouse -- George RR Martin