---
product_id: 342122356
title: "Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translatio"
brand: "ken liu"
price: "€ 43.99"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 5
url: https://www.desertcart.nl/products/342122356-invisible-planets-contemporary-chinese-science-fiction-in-translatio
store_origin: NL
region: Netherlands
---

# Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translatio

**Brand:** ken liu
**Price:** € 43.99
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translatio by ken liu
- **How much does it cost?** € 43.99 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.nl](https://www.desertcart.nl/products/342122356-invisible-planets-contemporary-chinese-science-fiction-in-translatio)

## Best For

- ken liu enthusiasts

## Why This Product

- Trusted ken liu brand quality
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## Description

Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translatio

## Images

![Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translatio - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/A1IOSKXFvgL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    A wonderful, beautiful science fiction book
  

*by K***W on Reviewed in Canada on 10 March 2022*

I heard of the this book in passing and thought I would give it a try. I read a least one science fiction book per month and this book is by far, one of my very favourites. I haven't finished it yet because once it is done, it is done. But I am going to read it again, something I *very rarely* do! I love this book and the each piece. Every single one. Thank you to the editor for translating the text into English! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Great anthology.
  

*by D***K on Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 April 2022*

A really good collection of short stories, complete with short author biographies. Some of stories are a bit mystical compared to western sci-fi and can end quite abruptly.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Sci Fi flowers in China !!
  

*by M***S on Reviewed in the United States on 15 November 2019*

A youthful generation of sci fi writers is flourishing in China.  Their writing is cousin to the American  genre, it features robots, bio-engineered creatures, and dystopian cities.  The inspiration comes from closer sources, from their childhood science books, from modern Chinese history, and from the rise of a technological and surprisingly wealthy China.  The translator is Ken Liu, an American science fiction writer.  He warns American readers of the temptation to read the stories as a veiled critique of the People’s Republic, because that’s not always the intention.The anthology opens with ‘Year of the Rat’, by Chen Quifang.  This a mysterious story about  an unemployed and demoralized university graduate who is drafted into a civil defense force.  His unit is armed with spears and sent to the countryside to fight a plague of bio-engineered rats.  These might be the mutant descendants of cute and intelligent rats who were bred for export to Europe as pets.  I’ll leave you to discover what follows.The best story is Hao Jingfang’s ‘Folding Beijing’, which won a Hugo for Best Novella in 2016.  The story has attracted the attention of engineers in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI).  In the story, robots and AI produce an abundance of goods. The bulk of the  profits accrue to the governing class of 5 million and some to the middle class of 25 million.  The lower class of 50 million struggles to survive by laboring long hours cleaning and maintaining the city.She imagines a coldly dystopian Beijing, optimized to manage this distribution of wealth and work.  Beijing within the Sixth Ring Road is a giant urban machine that folds the city upside down every 48 hours.  The governing class lives above ground for 24 hours, then the city rotates upside down to expose the buildings of the middle & lower classes.  The middle class enjoys the surface for 16 hours, then its buildings retract and the buildings of the lower class unfold.  They have 8 hours to clean and maintain the city.The story is about a lower class worker, hired to carry a message from a grad student in the middle class sector, to the student’s lover on the reverse, wealthy side.  Near the close of the story, the protagonist discovers that his life of hard labor in the lower class sector was unnecessary.  The work could have been done by robots, but the governing class prefers to keep workers busy.I was charmed by an explosively colorful and original short story, ‘Call Girl’, by an apparently LGBT writer, Tang Fei. The final short stories are by the modern Sci Fi master, Cixin Liu.  For those of you who’ve missed it, I highly recommend his trilogy of novels, The Three-Body Problem.  The anthology closes with short essays on the state of Chinese sci fi.No single message unites these stories.  It’s hard however to miss the pervasive mood of anxiety and foreboding.  Perhaps that's about what's challenged every Chinese  government, the  absorption into employment of the annual cohorts of graduating students that emerge from China’s population of 1.4 billion.  Or perhaps the darkness relates implicitly to the tragedies of Chinese history: Cixin Liu begins his trilogy with a  scene from the Cultural Revolution.  Or perhaps Ken Liu is at least partly wrong ,and the source of the darkness is the shadow cast by an enormously powerful state.

## Frequently Bought Together

- Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation
- The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

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*Product available on Desertcart Netherlands*
*Store origin: NL*
*Last updated: 2026-01-27*