The first book I finished this year was a collection of Chinese short sci-fi: Sinopticon 2021: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction, curated and translated by Xueting Christine Ni.

I received an ARC by Netgalley ages ago and started reading way back in 2021, but only managed to finish the last 3 stories this year.

This collection features a broad span of different science fiction subgenres, and there were some I really liked, and some that did not click with me at all. I like space and AIs, time travel not so much.

I especially liked the stories “Tombs of the Universe” by Han Song, which is an interesting story about death in a society sprinkled through space, and Starship: Library by Jiang Bo, which is about a library starship – that’s my kind of story right there!

One thing that threw me off was some casual remarks about the “nature of woman”. Kinda eyeroll-y, from my standpoint. One star less for this and the stories I did not like.

4/5 duckies