Liu conjures a sense of wonder while grounding his tales in well-wrought characters. 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. 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. 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. This collections title story, The Wandering Earth, is the biggest SF movie ever to come out of China - taking the worlds 1 box office ranking in February. 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).
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