Not an easy read, but definitely worth it. There are several stories that I know I will hold on to for a long time.

The stories themselves are excellent -- and varied. If you haven't read The Three Body Problem yet and want a taste of what it's about, The Circle by Liu Cixin will give you a lot to chew on. My favorites were Folding Beijing and Silent City. Both deal with authoritarianism, though with vastly different outcomes.

The three essays at the end highlight what was inescapable for me as I was reading it: these stories are really good science fiction, but don't strain yourself trying to find the theme or themes that makes them uniquely "Chinese". If anything, stories about modernism, technology, and "progress" gone haywire were applicable to modern American life, and we're better served seeing this collection as a marker of our shared era, not its country of origin.

I liked many of the stories, but I think I found the three by Xia Jia the most outstanding. I agree that she is as elegant a writer of fiction as Ken Liu says she is.

Short stories are always great for poolside / vacation consumption and Invisible Planets is no exception. While it may not give you a full picture of what Chinese fiction is (how could it when so many authors have such diverse ideas - and across such a large country?) it does give you a sense of the ideas, culture and vision that many may have. Many of the stories are excellent and I'm finding that I am now looking up some of the authors to follow up-read their full-length novels. If you like science fiction, you like opening your mind to new things - I urge you to open a bit further and explore the Invisible Planets!