I recently took the ferry to Ireland and the crossing was scheduled to take four hours and one minute. Four hours and one minute is a long time so I picked up the copy of The Wandering Earth by Cixin Liu I’ve had checked out of the library for several weeks now (They have a second copy! This isn’t that much of a crime!).

Upon seeing the book my wife said: “You’ve already read that.”

I was indignant, as indeed I often am. I had not read it! Certainly, the Matalan receipt for two identical pairs of pants (They’re good) I was using as a bookmark confirmed I’d started it, but I certainly hadn’t finished it. It was a preposterous thing to even suggest, that I would be bringing a book I’d already read on holiday. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why she would make such an accusation, but I tried my best to not let it ruin the holiday.

Then, later in the day, I realised she’d been thinking of the book I’d just finished; The Wandering Worlds by Terry Greenhough. Reluctantly, I conceded my wife was not the deranged fantasist I had repeatedly suggested she was. Anyway, since I have been made aware of this significant happenstance, I decided I would share my thoughts on the books. So here we go!

The Wandering Worlds

Yes, I bought it cause it had a cool ship on it. How else am I supposed to judge a book?

I got into sci-fi as a genre because I like a big idea. Sure, good characterisation and writing is fine and all but it’s gotta have some weird hook. You’d think the hook of The Wandering Worlds would be some kind of world prone to wandering and I guess it technically is. The book starts on a survey ship flying a predetermined course through a solar system recently acquired by their corporate masters. While conducting their survey, they come under a psychic attack by aliens. The book starts with four of the younger crewmembers, essentially the apprentices to the main cast, either dead or in a coma from this psychic attack.

In retrospect, I like this premise. I have to specify “in retrospect” because when I read the book I didn’t realise they couldn’t deviate from their course and I only learned this from reading the handful of Goodreads reviews of the book. Obviously, my lack of reading comprehension isn’t something I can hold against the book yet I am going to because this book was awful. Sure, I now realise that their refusal to turn around and leave when faced with an alien threat makes sense that wasn’t my problem with the book. Stupid decisions I can accept, what I have an issue with is stupid everything else.

Here is the first mention of a Wandering World in the book:

For relaxation he toyed with ideas from widespread space-lore, the legends and the lies and the gossip of his trade: whispers of mythical creatures out past the boundaries of the charted places, idle talk of anti-matter galaxies and the Wandering Worlds. Imagination or reality? Fact or fiction? He didn’t know what to believe.

I often like when a story makes an offhand mention of something that will turn out to be central to the plot so I can’t really fault the book for just throwing it in there with no build or set up. How about the second time it comes up? In this scene, KEEK (He’s an alien, I’ll get to it) is having a debate with Ruthe Ogan (She’s a Woman, I’ll get to it) on the mysteries of the universe.

The spell got ready to break as he went over the question of how to continue. Where do I go from here? The answer appeared and he showed proper gratitude. Thanks, gods — whichever of you are responsible; the Wandering Worlds story! He’d scoffed at it himself before experiencing the shocks and surprises of cosmic diversity, laughed at a legend apparently fanciful and silly. But time told strange truths and now his attitude was more open, less sceptical. Wild myths had a sobering habit of proving not so wild after all. The Wandering Worlds, then! ‘Take for example planets that stray out of their systems at a whim and -‘

Now I want to stress, at this point no one has seen any evidence of a wandering world, people just keep bringing it up at random. It’s only in thirteenth chapter, of this fourteen chapter book, that the crew realise that the sixth planet in the system is a wandering world when it begins actively wandering off. It also seems to be made of hyperdiam (a world I thought was cool until I realised it’s just “Hyper Diamond”) and it was responsible for the psychic attacks for some reason. Years of Star Trek had left me primed for a reveal that it wasn’t an attack but instead a form of communication but no, it was an attack. They were being attacked. It was an attack.

The majority of the book is being worried about another ship that seems to be trying to kill them and lay claim to the system. Again, I imagined Captain Picard dealing with this problem and realising that the ship either didn’t exist or was the cause of the alien’s psychic attacks. No, it was another ship trying to kill them and lay claim to the system. It’s just a book where not all that much happens and while that’s not the worst thing in the world the characterisation is.

Keek is an alien and the psychic attacks don’t seem to affect him. Is this a hint that there’s more to him than meets the eye? Calm down, Commander Sisko, it doesn’t mean anything. Keek is a small little alien dude with some psychic powers and I’m not entirely sure why he exists. At the end of the book, it’s suggested that the Wandering World is a life form and I think it’d have more impact if this utterly alien form of life was the first intelligence humans had met. Instead, we know that there’s also a race of short people who seem to mostly do menial work and aren’t really taken seriously.  Unfortunately, Keek does exist and it seems the reason for his existence is to help Jocelyn, another crew member, because she is blind.

Anguish marred his flat, noseless face as he gazed sympathetically at her open eyes, blank for two decades. Life had allowed her four years of infancy, seeing, then had savagely taken away the fathom-less blue of summer skies, the polychrome wonder of sunset. On to her vision had fallen irremediable blindness, a night with no hope of a dawn.

Keek is very hung up on the fact that Jocelyn is blind.

Then by contrast the bad obtruded: death menacing the crew, strain inside, uncaring space outside – and Jocelyn’s blindness! He couldn’t hold down the injustice of it, the calamity. It hurt him more than it hurt her.

And is often reminded of her

Black blindness engulfed him and he thought of Jocelyn.

Another crew member, Andri, has a similar obsession.

Or had they landed on four? Would he see 13 again? And you, sweet blind Aphrodite?

Ambitions flecked the wave-crests like outflung spume: to be finally free; to find true belief, to quit the probe-game, to live a good life and stay faithful to the gods and a blind girl.

Jocelyn exists to be pitied and never gets much characterisation beyond being blind and that being sad. Oddly, Keek is right in that does seem to be much more cut up by Jocelyn being blind than she does and that concern manifests as an obsession.

What did the rest of the crew contemplate when they stared into space? He asked himself the question and immediately answered it. Ruthe Ogan: the majesty of Creation, the glory of the Almighty Being responsible for it all. Van Channen: the setting in which he had to do an onerous job. Andri: more or less the same, though with an inscrutable something at the back of his thoughts.

And Jocelyn: nothing…

Oh come on Keek! She can have thoughts! Not being able to see space doesn’t mean she can’t think about it! She’s working on a spaceships, she’s definitely thought about it!

I would say the way the books treats Jocelyn is heavy handed but in comparison to its treatment of Ruthe Ogan, well lets just say Jocelyn is drawn with feather touch while Ruthe Ogan is rendered with power drive.

Channen grimaced as he looked at Her ugliness: wide, mannish shoulders, big sagging breasts, crinkly grey hair and a face etched hideously by a lifetime of cynicism and spite. Religious fanaticism smouldered in her crazed eyes. Nobody liked her

Where Jocelyn is a slight thing to be pitied by all, Ruthe Ogan is characterised by her religious fanaticism and the fact she is TOO LARGE

Keek — what’s that funny little phrase he so cheekily attaches to Ruthe? Oh, I remember: Ogan the Ogress.

A chair squeaked protest as Ruthe Ogan’s obese figure twisted on it.

‘Van!’ Ruthe’s voice was a throaty growl, sounding masculine.

A figure appeared in the doorway: Ruthe Ogan, a sculpture of grooves, sharpened edges, planes, the curve of large breasts, the lines of square shoulders.

Shockingly, Ruthe gets a bit of an arc. Though people start off initially hostile to her, they eventually recognise she’s not all that bad and has actually been doing a good job. Then, after they have to strap themselves to their chairs to perform a manoeuvre to avoid crashing on the Wandering World, she dies. Why does she die? Well:

The non-human stopped, sickened, when he saw the body. It lay terribly mutilated in a corner, head split messily. Something caught in his throat and he nearly vomited. Blood splashed the bunks, still dripping.

Her breasts were bare, clothing ripped open by the violence of the fall. ‘She never deserved this, but I think maybe she pined for it. Her God didn’t help, did he?’

‘Weight,’ Andri explained laconically. ‘The spin whipping her against the straps, probably wrong way up.

She was heavy. Leather breaks.’

She was too big! If this “God” truly is all powerful, then he why did he make her so large? If she were slight and dainty, like sweet precious Jocelyn she’d have been fine. A lesson learned.

All in all, The Wandering Worlds was a chore and I did not like it. The Wandering Earth on the other hand…

The Wandering Earth

This isn’t the edition I had but I forgot to take a photo of it. Cool pyramids though.

As this is a series of short stories, I decided to tackles this story by story.

The Wandering Earth

The titular story starts us off. The sun is going to do a weird thing and the Earth will be burnt to a crisp. Humanity decides to put engines on the planet and zoom off. They do. I kind of hoped the story would be longer and chronicle the planets entire journey through space but it ends with people trying to turn the planet around cause the sun seems fine and then the sun does the weird thing. Close call. It’s fine, it’s a cool idea which is what I’m looking for.

Mountain

A big spaceship appears over Earth and its gravity begins to pull the ocean towards it, creating a mountain of water. Nearby on a boat, a guy who loves mountains but has taken a vow to never see mountains because he was responsible for four people dying on a mountain, is overwhelmed by his mountain lust. He swims up it and the aliens are like “Finally, a dude who loves digging up”. You see, they evolved inside the core of their planet and had to dig out and are on an expedition to see what’s at the edge of the universe and perhaps dig through it. A lot of the character stuff in this one is insanely clumsy but again, I like the idea.

Of Ants and Dinosaurs

…did I skip this one? I don’t remember anything about it. I’ve returned the book to the library (See, I’m a hero!) so I just have this index I found online to go on. Did my book have this? I don’t know. Maybe it was good, I don’t know.

Sun of China

The story of a man who starts in rural China and eventually becomes a window cleaner who then becomes a space window cleaner (of solar panels) and then decides to sail the windows (array of solar panels) into space. It’s fine. There is a funny bit at the end where the main character talks about going off on his one-way trip to space.

That is true; we will not return. Some may be satisfied with a wife, kids, and a picket fence, never so much as glancing beyond their small world; others will give their very lives for even a glimpse of something no human has ever seen. I have been both, and it falls to me to choose the manner of my life, and that includes a life on a mirror, drifting through space many light years away.’

And even though we’ve been with this character throughout the whole story, the first time he mentions his wife and children is when he’s about to abandon them forever. Look, maybe that was an outlook unique to this character and won’t crop up again.

The Wages of Humanity

A story about a hitman hired by billionaires to kill poor people cause aliens are going to equalise wealth throughout the world and these poor people have refused money and thus will bring the average down. It’s not very good?

Curse 5.0

A woman writes a computer virus to get revenge on her cheating ex. Over the years, it becomes increasingly deadly as it’s upgraded by women who support the general premise of getting revenge on your cheating ex. Eventually, Cixin Liu himself, in a drunken stupor, upgrades the virus and swaps out the name of the cheating boyfriend with a wildcard, meaning the virus targets everyone. The thing that struck me in this story more than anything else was Cixin Liu explaining what a wildcard is:

Wildcards were an ancient concept, originating from the time of our mentors (this was what the age of the ancient operating system, the DOS, was now called). The most commonly used wildcards were ‘*’ and ‘?’. These two characters could stand in for other characters in a string of characters. ‘?’ referred to a single character, while ‘*’ referred to any number of characters and was the most frequently used wildcard. For instance, ‘Liu *’ referred to every person with the family name ‘Liu’; ‘Shanxi *’ referred to every string of characters starting with ‘Shanxi’. A single ‘*’ referred to any and all possible combinations of characters.

And like, I get this is a story is a joke, but is giving the reader an explanation for wildcards part of that joke…? Like, he’ll drop something about Big Gravity with no explanation but he’s taking time to explain wildcards? What is this, am I being fooled. I don’t like this!!!

The Micro-Age

Dude returns from a failed mission to find a new planet for humanity. Earth is destroyed and he’s sad. But wait, there are still humans! They’re just tiny! Ho ho! That’s it. Has this exchange:

‘So you say that there are no women with you?’ the girl asked again, her eyes widening in genuine shock.

‘As I said, I am the only one. Are there no other spaceships out there that have yet to return?’ the Forerunner enquired in return, desperate to keep the fire of hope alive.

The girl wrung her delicate, elfin hands before her chest. ‘There are none! It’s so sad, so very terribly sad! You are the last of them, if… oh…’ She could barely contain her sobs. ‘If not by cloning…’ The girl was now crying uncontrollably.

Huh, women existing primarily as a means to beget children? Man, I hope this doesn’t become/is already a theme! Also, making people small makes them more emotional and a woman is in charge of the small humans we encounter. Look, I’m not saying anything here.

Devourer

A crystal appears and warns Earth that lizard people are coming to eat the planet. They are! A lizard ambassador arrives and explains they’re going to tear apart the planet and keep humans as food. The lizards are coming in a giant ring ship that’ll circle the planet and it’s too powerful for humans to stop. Earth throws the moon at it. The ship narrowly escapes and eats Earth anyway. The lizard ambassador is impressed and when they leave Earth it’s not a total husk so maybe some humans can repopulate, get to work ladies!

Also, the lizards were dinosaurs!!! Could have done without that final twist but they throw the moon at a spaceship! You love to see it.

Taking Care of Gods

Earth was seeded by a race of immortal humans who created us to look after them now they’re old. This was fun! At the end the old humans warn that we they seeded 3 other planets with humans and they’re jerks who’ll destroy us. Then they fly off cause humans keep pitying them and that’s kind of insulting. It’s not exactly a subtle allegory but the idea of creating an entire civilisation to look after your in old age is kind of funny. Funnier than explaining wildcards at least. Seriously, was that a bit? I keep thinking about it.

With Her Eyes

A guy is asked by his boss to wear special glasses on his holiday and share the experience with someone who can’t go on holiday. The woman he shares the experience with seems to really like flowers and nature. Turns out, she’s the boss’s daughter and she’s trapped in the core of the planet with no hope of rescue. It’s fine but I can’t shake the feeling that the person trapped in the core is a woman just because a man would obviously solve the problem or at the very least not be so maudlin about dying alone in the molten core of the planet.

The Longest Fall

A scientist is being frozen until a curse for his cancer is created. His son must decide whether to be frozen as well or stay his mother. Oddly, despite the fact his mother had had a child already and thus completed her purpose in life, the child decides to stay with her. Don’t worry, this is solely for narrative purpose! When the scientist wakes up in the future, he is apprehended by an angry mob because his son made a tunnel through the Earth from China to Antarctica and this had adverse effects on the environment and economy! Also, some people died. They throw him into the big hole as revenge but while he’s falling someone calls ahead to Antarctica so they just catch him and put him back to sleep. He wakes up in the future and now the tunnel is being used to launch spaceships and everyone thinks it’s cool. Fun fact, the son is the boss from the previous story and spent the end of his life falling up and down in the hole in the hopes if his signal was close enough, he could talk to his daughter. That’s kind of nice I guess?

And that’s the last one! So, what did we learn from this analysis of two books with similar titles? Well, whether the world wanders or stands still, women are not well treated in the Sci-Fi genre. Hell, maybe just in general? Wait, does the bit at the start of the blog still read as me being a petulant little nuisance to my wife or does it just read like I’ve internalised Sci-Fi’s view of women? Oh no, I don’t want to go back and edit that, I’m so tired of typing…!

Also, it was cool when they threw then moon at that lizard spaceship, I liked that.