To Hold Up The Sky: A Collection of Science Fiction Stories - Shreyas

                    I have expressed my interest toward science fiction many times before, and for the last blog post of the schoolyear I have settled on To Hold Up the Sky by one of my favorite science fiction authors, Cixin Liu (you thought it was going to be Michael Crichton again). This book is also unique among the books I have reviewed in that its not an actual book, but more of a collection of several short stories written in Chinese by Liu and later translated to English. Unlike several popular superficial "science fiction" movies and books all involving aliens attacking the earth with laser guns and whatever, every single work by Cixin Liu is extremely profound and insightful in its content, and it is clear that lots of thought and creativity have gone into the stories. Although I read nearly all of the stories in the book, I will focus on one for this blog post.

                    My favorite short story presented in this book is one of the shortest, "Contraction." The story is set in China's largest observatory, where a crowd of people are waiting eagerly for an exciting event. A physicist named Ding Yi had developed a unified field theory describing quantum effects on a large scale, and the mathematical model produced by this theory predicted that in just an hour something monumental would happen. The relentless expansion of the universe would stop and then the universe would begin to contract instead. The redshifted light from distant galaxies would transform into blueshifted light as the galaxies started moving closer to each other. Ding Yi, however, begins to act strangely. It starts with him ignoring his tracheitis and deciding to smoke his pipe in a smoke-free area (Liu, 115). The governor then visits the observatory and they discuss Ding's theory for a while. News of flooding from the Yangtze river arrives, and the governor explains that she should leave to help combat the flood. Ding Yi's erratic behavior continues, as he explains how the flood doesn't matter and the workers fighting the flood can just "go home and sleep" if they want (Liu, 118). The governor explains how Ding's ideas, although of extreme theoretical value, will not influence the lives of humans and will not be a practical concern, unlike the flood. An engineer arrives at the scene after the death of her father, but Ding's bizarre behavior continues, as he says "If you truly understood the meaning of the contraction, your father's death wouldn't grieve you as much" (Liu, 119). He talks a little more about physics and then proceeds to take a priceless astronomical artifact made thousands of years ago and smashes it into pieces. At this point, the reader is at best quite confused and possibly even angered by Yi's behavior. So far, all the pieces of the story seem random and absurd, and there is no clear connection between them.

                    A few lines later Ding finally exclaims "Space-time and matter are not separable. The expansion and contraction of the universe comprises the whole of space-time. Yes, my friends, they comprise all of time and space!" (Liu, 121), and it is only then that the reader first has a deeply profound realization about the true consequences of the contraction (spoiler alert). Over the course of the last few pages, the characters slowly all understand what Ding has been trying to say and demonstrate throughout the story, that in a few minutes not only will the universe begin contracting, but time will begin flowing backwards as space and time are not in fact separate but linked together. Ding's tracheitis, the flooding of the Yangtze, the death of an engineer's father, and the destruction of the priceless artifact are all completely irrelevant, as in a few minutes time will begin flowing backwards and all will be undone. The story finally concludes with the line "The contraction has begun" (Liu, 124) followed by seemingly jumbled and nonsensical text. When the reader examines the text closely, it is revealed that it is the exact same as the normal text right before, just written backward to signify the reversal of time. The chaotic events at the beginning of the story keep the reader confused but interested in the story and prompt the reader to keep reading in search of an explanation, which arrives at the end and leaves the reader feeling very rewarded by the flash of insight that connects every seemingly disconnected event in the story. Another interesting aspect of this story is that the character Ding Yi appears not only in the story but in several other seemingly disconnected books by Cixin Liu, including the Three Body Problem trilogy and Ball Lightning. In many of these books he is portrayed in more or less the same way, a man with a peculiar and unpredictable nature but nonetheless a brilliant physicist to rival even Einstein.

                    In conclusion, To Hold Up the Sky is full of very interesting and insightful science fiction stories, including "Contraction" and several others equally as fun to read. I highly recommend this collection to anyone with an interest in science fiction as each story embodies the concept of quality over quantity. I also recommend the other famous novels by Liu for anyone seeking a unique and creative science fiction story.

(cover picture at the top taken from the actual book I have).