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Originally posted on 23 Jun 2024

less than 1 minute read

This book is a compilation of thirteen stories previously published only in China. Xueting not only selected all of the stories, she also translated them all. What a monumental effort! Kudos to her for undertaking it.

I’ve read a fair bit of Chinese scifi in translation already, partly thanks to my subscriptions to things like Clarkesworld. It’s always interesting stuff, coming as it does from a culture so different from my own. That adds dimensions to the stories that are novel to me, keeping me more engaged as I learn more.

I enjoyed nearly every story in this collection, to varying degrees. There’s one which I got a few pages into then skipped, but I can’t recall which it was. All I remember is that there was a lot of fighting, which wasn’t interesting to me. Reading the book was time well spent, and I’d love it if Xueting were able to put out new Sinopticon volumes every few years (but know that might be more work than it’s worth for her).