Interesting mix of ideas.
I'd read the Three Body Problem trilogy so I know that Cixin Liu's style was massive ideas of the cosmic scale and showing me how small we really are - and these short stories continue the theme.
What I didn't anticipate in these short stories was the total mix of stories (though that's entirely on me).
I didn't personally find any one story punching above the rest. I did, oddly, enjoy the story of the poet challenging the energy being and thusly breaking reality on a galactic scale.
Overall, well written, cosmic ideas, but not quite my kind of mind bending.
10 Highlight(s)
Here's another perverse thought experiment: If you were to make a meatball out of humankind, its diameter would be less than a kilometer.
If life is a candle, his had burned to its base, and its wick had fallen and ignited the last bit of wax there, with a flame ten times brighter than before.
"And then?" "I don't know. This is a philosophical question, but after so many times thawing out I'm afraid of philosophy."
"In other words, afterward, everything will be repeated. History and life will become boring and predictable." "No, it won't. You will be in another time. The current past will become your future. We are now in the future of that time.
In the instant that the slider entered the future, an error window popped up. Stack Overflow
knights of the sky
The idea was absurd, but once the oceans had dried, this was how Yan Dong always thought of it.
Even though the plane was climbing, the ice field climbed even faster. As a result, the distance between the planes and the ice field continued to shrink. "The Earth is chasing us!" the pilot screamed.
This magnificent work of art, its cruel beauty as well as nightmare, would forever be inscribed in the collective memory of humanity.
I've heard that a glass of water contains more atoms than the Earth's oceans contained cups of water.