Welcome to Litsy!

Our guy Liu Cixin likes his exposition dumps, but damn if they aren't terrifyingly close to home sometimes! This one paints a horrific hypothetical on rampant capitalism. Read it for yourself and try not to be freaked by how relevant the piece is!

In a future where aliens hover in limbo above Earth, a hit man questions why he was tasked with "processing" a number of homeless people, and stumbles on the history of these interstellar migrants.

I swear to God this exposition is dense but dammit it keeps chilling me!

Apparently on First Earth, the Alien's homeworld, the rich isolated themselves in such a radically different environment that they literally split off into a different species from the rest of humanity.

@quotescreatorapp

Been buried in reading and a new part-time, but still demanding, job.

Anyways:
The last sentence gave me chills.

An alien from a different Earth is describing how the wealth gap--or rather CHASM--lead all the residents of his planet to flee to this Earth. After education became less, and less affordable, an advance in technology changed the nature of education and the transferring of information.

So Stephen Hawking makes an appearance in this one...
If only he DID live past a hundred

More Liu Cixin.

Part alternate history, part political satire, part cautionary tale. Ants and Dinosaurs work together to create an industrial age, but growing friction and eventual mistrust lead to horrendous consequences.

From the second story in this collection. It's called "Mountain"

I had to share this poem from the end of the story before I move on

Finished this novella. On to the next story in the collection.

#recommendsday

I have so much library reading 😰
Forgot to utilize the dang suspend function so here we are 🙄
This one is good so far. I heard about the movie first and watched Because Science's episode on it and the (im)plausibility of the premise, BUT there is still a lot of scientific thought put into this and that's what I am enjoying.

Because Science ep
https://youtu.be/Dgu1syQP124
B/c Sci Footnotes ep
https://youtu.be/qdzTFSOsb98

An anthology of Liu's short stories. Fascinatingly different feel from Western hard sf

Even nail clippers and bottle openers were no exception. The former could analyse the cut nail matter and send an alert about a calcium deficiency via text or email. The latter could determine if the spirits in the bottle were the genuine article and send a notification if the bottle had won a sweepstakes. The bottle openers were even capable of forcing breaks in drinking, if the user had become excessively intoxicated.

Short stories

These hard sci-fi stories are smart, thought provoking and intellectually chewy. Characters & prose take a back seat to concepts and ideas. The parable-like stories include:

- Earth relocates to a distant star
- Aliens arrive from a "bubble world"
- Super intelligent ants and dinosaurs at war with each other
- The gods (aliens) who created us return to earth to be looked after by humans in their dotage

#inagalaxyfarfaraway #maybookflowers

Hmm, reading has slowed to a snail's pace this month (I'm not calling it a slump!). I've been slowly working through this collection of sci-fi novellas/stories & am thoroughly enjoying it 👍

#slowingdown #notaslump #gratuitousbeachpic