A View From the Stars by Cixin Liu (Nonfiction #1 - 2025)

 This was not intended to be my first nonfiction book. I picked it up almost a month ago off of my local library's new book shelf thinking it was a collection of Cixin Liu's short fiction with a few of his essays sprinkled in. Really it's a collection of Liu's essays with a couple of his stories sprinkled in. Out of 19 total pieces, only six of them are short stories. The other 13 pieces are a mix of essays. Because of this, I've decided to count it as my first nonfiction read of 2025. 

I have mixed feelings about this book as a whole. Many of the essays are talking about authors, stories, and books that I don't know or haven't read. I'm lacking context which is hardly the book's fault. In general, Liu's opinions on science fiction, science, and the future of humanity are fairly grim and sometimes hard for me to relate to. There are, after all, some fairly significant cultural differences between he and I. Even so, some of his work is deeply compelling even if it paints a dim picture of humanity's future.

In this collection, I particularly liked three works:

1. "The Messenger" - a short story about the final days of Albert Einstein's life when he encounters a strange young man who enjoys listening to Einstein play his violin. While this is a sad story, it's also entirely hopeful which is unusual for Liu.

2. "Heard It in the Morning" - Liu at his most grim really, but as I said, being grim doesn't make it any less compelling. This is a story that is really a meditation on the nature of scientists. The final question it raises about the purpose of humanity and of the universe is troubling and almost despairing. 

3. "We're Sci-fi Fans" - this is Cixin Liu's essay on being a sci-fi fan in the People's Republic of China. I don't know that anyone born in the U.S. can really understand what it is like to live in such an ideologically different culture. Liu's description of what it means to be a sci-fi fan in China nevertheless resonates with my own experiences as a girl in the 90's who was a fan of both sci-fi and of table top role playing games. 

Over all, this is worth a read, but I would suggest reading several of Liu's novels before you do.