Fiction In Translation

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. In this world, the fates of two people, Tengo and Aomame, are closely intertwined. They are each, in their own way, doing something very dangerous. And in this world, there seems no way to save them both. Something extraordinary is starting.Paperback: 1328 PagesProduct Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm ISBN: 9780099578079Published by Vintage UK

Translated by Joel Martinsen On his fourteenth birthday, right before his eyes, Chen's parents are incinerated by a blast of ball lightning. Striving to make sense of this bizarre tragedy, he dedicates his life to a single goal: to unlock the secrets of this enigmatic natural phenomenon. His pursuit of ball lightning will take him far from home, across mountain peaks chasing storms and deep into highly classified subterranean laboratories as he slowly unveils a new frontier in particle physic...

A new anthology of Chinese short-fiction by award winning author Ken Liu. Here are sixteen short stories from China's groundbreaking SFF writers, edited and translated by award-winning author Ken Liu. In Hugo award-winner Liu Cixin's 'Moonlight', a man is contacted by three future versions of himself, each trying to save their world from destruction. Hao Jingfang's 'The New Year Train' sees 1,500 passengers go missing on a train that vanishes into space. In the title story by Tang Fei, a youn...

Translated by Flora Drew Called "Red Guards meet Kurt Vonnegut... powerful!" by Margaret Atwood on Twitter, China Dream is an unflinching satire of totalitarianism. Ma Daode, a corrupt and lecherous party official, is feeling pleased with himself. He has an impressive office, three properties, and multiple mistresses who text him day and night. After decades of loyal service, he has been appointed director of the China Dream Bureau, charged with replacing people's private dreams with Presiden...

Translated by Sora Kim-Russell Distinguished for his talents as a rat killer, the nameless protagonist of Hye-young Pyun's City of Ash and Red is sent by the extermination company he works for on an extended assignment in C, a country descending into chaos and paranoia, swept by a contagious disease, and flooded with trash. No sooner does he disembark than he is whisked away by quarantine officials and detained overnight. Isolated and forgotten, he realizes that he is stranded with no means o...

Translated by Anton Hur Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung. Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society. Anton Hur’s translation skilfully captures the way Chung’s prose effortlessly glides from being terrifying to wryly humorous. Paperback: 256 PagesProduct Dimensions: 1...

Translated by Michael Kandel Scientists attempt to decode what may be a message from intelligent beings in outer space. By pure chance, scientists detect a signal from space that may be communication from rational beings. How can people of Earth understand this message, knowing nothing about the senders-even whether or not they exist? Written as the memoir of a mathematician who participates in the government project (code name: His Master's Voice) attempting to decode what seems to be a mess...

Here are thirteen short stories from the new frontiers of Chinese science fiction, selected and translated by Hugo, Nebula, Locus and World Fantasy Award-winner Ken Liu. Hao Jingfang's Hugo-Award-Winning Folding Beijing takes place in a near-future dystopia where the title city's buildings fold into and out of the earth, allowing three different strata of society to spend part of the day above ground. Xia Jia's Night Journey of the Dragon-Horse describes a post-apocalyptic world where machine...

Translated by Thomas Bunstead In a chaotic city, the latest in a line of viruses advances as a man recounts the fated steps that led him to be confined in a room with his lover while catastrophe looms. As he takes inventory of the city's ills, a strange stone distorts reality, offering brief glimpses of the deserted territories of his memory. A sports game that beguiles the city with near-religious significance, the hugely popular gambling systems rigged by the Department of Chaos and Gaming,...

An astronaut returns to Earth after a ten-year mission and finds a society that he barely recognizes. Stanislaw Lem's Return from the Stars recounts the experiences of Hal Bregg, an astronaut who returns from an exploratory mission that lasted ten years-although because of time dilation, 127 years have passed on Earth. Bregg finds a society that he hardly recognizes, in which danger has been eradicated. Children are "betrizated" to remove all aggression and violence-a process that also remove...

Illustrated by JOK It was the Ice and Snow Arts Festival that lured the low-temperature artist to Earth. Drawn by the beauty and technical skill of the sculptures displayed, the extraterrestrial visitor longed to collaborate and share its own art. But while humans learnt to craft ice into exquisite ephemera, the low-temperature artist's civilisation mastered the manipulation of whole worlds to create artworks – drawing on the seas and ice caps, and cooling their temperature to beautiful effec...

Translated by Sarah Moses It all happened so quickly. First, animals became infected with the virus and their meat became poisonous. Then governments initiated the Transition. Now, 'special meat' - human meat - is legal. Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans - only no one calls them that. He works with numbers, consignments, processing. One day, he's given a gift to seal a deal: a specimen of the finest quality. He leaves her in his barn, tied up, a problem to be disposed of later....

translated by Martin McLaughlin, Tim Parks and William Weaver The Cosmicomics tell the story of the history of the universe, from the big bang, through millennia and across galaxies. It is witnessed through the eyes of 'cosmic know-it-all' Qfwfq, an exuberant, chameleon-like figure, who takes the shape of a dinosaur, a mollusc, a steamer captain and a moon milk gatherer, among others. This is the first complete edition in English of Italo Calvino's funny, whimsical and delightful stories, whi...

translated by Joel Martinsen Imagine the universe as a forest, patrolled by numberless and nameless predators. In this forest, stealth is survival - any civilisation that reveals its location is prey. Earth has. Now the predators are coming. Crossing light years, they will reach Earth in four centuries' time. But the sophons, their extra-dimensional agents and saboteurs, are already here. Only the individual human mind remains immune to their influence. This is the motivation for the Wallface...

Translated by David Tse An entire month has gone missing from Chinese records. No one has any memory of it, and no one seems to care except for a small circle of friends who will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the sinister cheerfulness and amnesia that have possessed the nation. When they kidnap a high-ranking official and force him to reveal all, what they learn--not only about their leaders, but also about their own people--stuns them to the core. The Fat Years is a complex novel o...

Translated by William Brand An early realist novel by Stanislaw Lem, taking place in a Polish psychiatric hospital during World War II. Taking place within the confines of a psychiatric hospital, Stanislaw Lem's The Hospital of the Transfiguration tells the story of a young doctor working in a Polish asylum during World War II. At first the asylum seems like a bucolic refuge, but a series of sinister encounters and incidents reveal an underlying brutality. The doctor begins to seek relief in ...

Translated by Bill Johnston A space cruiser, in search of its sister ship, encounters beings descended from self-replicating machines. In the grand tradition of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, Stanislaw Lem's The Invincible tells the story of a space cruiser sent to an obscure planet to determine the fate of a sister spaceship whose communication with Earth has abruptly ceased. Landing on the planet Regis III, navigator Rohan and his crew discover a form of life that has apparently evolved from ...

Translated by Sally-Ann Spencer Mia Holl lives in a state governed by The Method, where good health is the highest duty of the citizen. Everyone must submit medical data and sleep records to the authorities on a monthly basis, and regular exercise is mandatory. Mia is young and beautiful, a successful scientist who is outwardly obedient but with an intellect that marks her as subversive. Convinced that her brother has been wrongfully convicted of a terrible crime, Mia comes up against the ful...

Translated by Ken Liu Set in the universe of the New York Times bestselling Three-Body Problem trilogy, The Redemption of Time continues Cixin Liu’s multi-award-winning science fiction saga. This original story by Baoshu--published with Liu’s support--envisions the aftermath of the conflict between humanity and the extraterrestrial Trisolarans. In the midst of an interstellar war, Yun Tianming found himself on the front lines. Riddled with cancer, he chose to end his life, only to find himsel...

Translated by Joel Martinsen Tonight, a supernova tsunami of high energy will finally reach Earth. Dark skies will shine bright as a new star blooms in the heavens and within a year everyone over the age of thirteen will be dead, their chromosomes irreversibly damaged. And so the countdown begins. Parents apprentice their children and try to pass on the knowledge they'll need to keep the world running. But the last generation may not want to carry the legacy of their parents' world. And thoug...

translated by Ken Liu 1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind. Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang's investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpr...

Illustrated by Zhang Xiaoyu In the depths of mountains shrouded with ignorance and superstition, one man has dedicated his life to igniting a passion for maths and science in the hearts of the peasant children around him. Now his life is coming to its end, he draws his students around him so he can impart knowledge on them to his final breath. All the while, in a far corner of outer space, fifty thousand light-years away, an interstellar war that has waged for thousands of years is coming to ...

Illustrated by Stefano Raffaele The Sun is dying. Helium will soon permeate its core, triggering a violent explosion, and its burning-hot diameter will increase until it has consumed everything that stands in its way. As long as we remain in its path, humanity stands no chance. Interstellar emigration is the only way out. Reaching a consensus on a destination has been easy: the only viable target is Proxima Centauri. It is the star closest to our own, a mere 4.3 light-years away. How to reach...

Translated by Soje To the Warm Horizon shows how in a post-apocalyptic world, humans will still seek purpose, kinship, and even intimacy. Focusing on two young women, Jina and Dori, who find love against all odds, Choi Jin-young creates a dystopia where people are trying to find direction after having their worlds turned upside down. Lucidly translated from the Korean by Soje, this thoughtful yet gripping novel takes the reader on a journey through how people adjust, or fail to adjust, to cat...

Translated by Sung Ryu Tower is a series of interconnected stories set in Beanstalk, a 674-story skyscraper and sovereign nation. Each story deals with how citizens living in the hypermodern high-rise deal with various influences of power in their lives: a group of researchers have to tell their boss that a major powerbroker is a dog, a woman uses the power of the internet to rescue a downed fighter pilot abandoned by the government, and an out-of-towner finds himself in charge of training a ...

Translated by Ken Liu AD2201. Just over a century ago, the Martian colonies declared their independence. After a brief conflict, Earth and Mars cut ties, carving separate trajectories into the future, viewing each other with suspicion and even hatred. Five years ago, a group of Martian students were sent to Earth as goodwill ambassadors from the Red Planet. Now the young men and women are coming home, escorting a delegation of prominent Terrans to see if the two worlds can bridge the void tha...

Translated by Ken Liu Mimi is drowning in the world's trash. She's a 'waste girl', a scavenger picking through towering heaps of hazardous electronic detritus. Along with thousands of other migrant workers, she was lured to Silicon Isle, off the southern coast of China, by the promise of steady work and a better life. But Silicon Isle is where the rotten fruits of capitalism and consumer culture come to their toxic end. The land is hopelessly polluted, the workers utterly at the mercy of thos...

Illustrated by Steven Dupré Yuanyuan was five months old when she saw bubbles for the first time. In that moment, her eyes lit up with a radiance that outshone the sun and stars, and she felt she truly saw the world for the first time. From that day on, her life's one dream was to blow the biggest bubbles possible. Yuanyuan's father doesn't approve of her dream. He fears his daughter's obsession is childish and too fleeting for his daughter, and longs for her to turn her intelligence to a cal...