TO HOLD UP THE SKY: Cixin Liu Signed & Numbered Subterranean Press Edition

TO HOLD UP THE SKY
 
Subterranean Press Edition
 
Cixin Liu
 
Signed & Numbered - This Being No.106 Of 500
 
Dust jacket and interior illustrations by David Ho
 
With the publication of the Hugo Award-winning The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu, long one of China’s leading SF writers, emerged as a major figure on the international stage. Together with its successors (The Dark Forest and Death’s End), that extraordinary novel offered one of the most rigorous visions of the human—and post-human—future ever recorded. The protean imagination behind those novels is present on every page of To Hold Up the Sky, a generous and varied collection of Liu’s exceptional short fiction.
 
The twelve stories gathered here are tightly constructed narratives that address the largest possible subjects. In his introduction, Liu notes that his work concerns “the direct, tangible relationship” between humanity and the vast, unknowable universe beyond. In Liu’s hands, that disparate relationship fuels some of the most extravagant, high-concept science fiction you will ever encounter.
 
The earliest story, “Contraction,” examines the moment when the universe that has been expanding for billions of years begins to contract, with stunning —and unpredictable —results. “The Time Migration” is a unique time travel story that follows a mass of displaced humans moving through a succession of possible futures toward a viable new home for the human race. “2018-04-01” posits a world in which increased longevity is possible and genuine immortality within reach – all at a very steep price. In “Ode to Joy,” the universe itself conducts a concert which leads to an unexpected moment of hope. “The Thinker” imagines a vast, universal consciousness that mirrors the consciousness of the human species. To Hold up the Sky offers all of this – and a great deal more.
 
Finally, the Subterranean Press edition contains a bonus short story that cannot be found anywhere else. “Moonlight” is the account of a man tasked with altering and preserving the human future three times in the course of a single night. Like the eleven other stories in this remarkable volume, it is the clear product of a master craftsman with a wild, unfettered imagination. To Hold Up the Sky is a gift to Cixin Liu’s many readers, a gift they can return to repeatedly in the years to come.