‘Really? You still haven’t decided where you’re going?’ She looked pleased. I’m happy to have some company,’ I replied sincerely. Her soft words seemed to float down from space like a gentle breeze, turning those crude and massive orbiting steel structures into silk. Never in my life had I heard such a gentle voice. ‘I’m really sorry for the inconvenience,’ she said, bowing apologetically.
No doubt she had dreamt of the romance of space from the safety of her university library now she faced the hellish reality of the infinite void. The woman’s puffy spacesuit made her appear even more petite than she probably was. The director gestured to the large screen in front of us as he handed me a pair and introduced me to the eyes’ owner, a young woman who appeared to be fresh out of university. The eyes were stored in a small room at the end of a corridor. I accepted, and he took me to pick them up from the Control Center. He agreed, but only on the condition that I take a pair of eyes along with me. I asked my director for a two-day leave of absence so that I could go on a short trip and clear my mind. Two months of nonstop work had left me exhausted. Please enjoy this excerpt of The Wandering Earth by Cixin Liu, on sale 10/12/21. With a melancholic and keen understanding of human nature, Liu’s stories show humanity’s attempts to reason, navigate, and above all, survive in a desolate cosmos. Liu’s fiction takes the reader to the edge of the universe and the end of time, to meet stranger fates than we could have ever imagined.
These ten stories, including five Chinese Galaxy Award-winners, are a blazingly original ode to planet Earth, its pasts, and its futures. From New York Times bestselling author Cixin Liu, The Wandering Earth is a science fiction short story collection featuring the title tale–the basis for the blockbuster international film, now streaming on Netflix.
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