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Back Hold Up the Sky
Chapters (20)
  1. COVER
  2. BY CIXIN LIU
  3. TITLE PAGE
  4. COPYRIGHT
  5. COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  6. TABLE OF CONTENTS
  7. FOREWORD
  8. THE VILLAGE TEACHER
  9. THE TIME MIGRATION
  10. 2018-04-01
  11. FIRE IN THE EARTH
  12. CONTRACTION
  13. MIRROR
  14. ODE TO JOY
  15. FULL-SPECTRUM BARRAGE JAMMING
  16. SEA OF DREAMS
  17. CLOUD OF POEMS
  18. THE THINKER
  19. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  20. AN INVITATION FROM THE PUBLISHER

It’s very difficult work, and it’s the greatest challenge I face when writing science fiction. Common sense tells us that there is no such relationship. Whether the universe is expanding or contracting, or whether a star ten billion light-years away has gone supernova, truly has nothing to do with the mundane, insignificant events of my life. Yet I firmly believe that there is a relationship between humanity and the universe. When it was born, the universe was smaller than an atom, and everything within it was intermixed as a single whole; the natural connection between the universe’s small parts and its great entirety was thus determined. Though the universe has expanded to whatever its current size, this connection still exists, and if we can’t see it now, that doesn’t mean we won’t be able to in the future. I work hard to imagine all sorts of possibilities in the relationship between people and the universe, and I try to turn what I imagine into thrilling fiction. This anthology, just as its title suggests, contains a portion of my efforts.

Thank you all!

HOLD UP
THE SKY

THE VILLAGE TEACHER

TRANSLATED BY ADAM LANPHIER

He knew he’d have to teach his final lesson early.

He felt another shot of pain in his liver, so strong he almost fainted. He didn’t have the strength to get out of bed, and, with great difficulty, he pulled himself closer to the bedside window, whose paper panes glowed in the moonlight. The little window looked like a doorway leading into another world, one where everything shone with silver light, a diorama of silver and frostless snow. He shakily lifted his head and looked out through a hole in the paper window, and his fantasy of a silver world receded. He found himself looking into the distance, at the village where he had spent his life.

The village lay serenely in the moonlight, and it looked as if it had been abandoned for a hundred years. The small flat-roofed houses were almost indistinguishable from the mounds of soil surrounding them. In the muted colors of moonlight, it was as if the entire place had dissolved back into the hills. Only the old locust tree could be seen clearly, a few black crows’ nests scattered among its withered branches, like stark drops of black ink on a silver page.