
A View from the Stars
Stories and Essays
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Narrated by:
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Brian Nishii
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By:
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Cixin Liu
About this listen
"Narrator Brian Nishii perfectly conveys the author's joy and feelings of isolation at discovering science fiction as a child, the exhilaration of world-building as a science fiction writer, and the imaginative process of predicting our world in 50 years."—AudioFile
"We’re mysterious aliens in the crowd. We jump like fleas from future to past and back again, and float like clouds of gas between nebulae; in a flash, we can reach the edge of the universe, or tunnel into a quark, or swim within a star-core. . . . We’re as unassuming as fireflies, yet our numbers grow like grass in spring. We sci-fi fans are people from the future."—Cixin Liu, from the essay "Sci-Fi Fans"
A VIEW FROM THE STARS features a range of short works from the past three decades of New York Times bestselling author Cixin Liu's prolific career, putting his nonfiction essays and short stories side-by-side for the first time. This collection includes essays and interviews that shed light on Liu's experiences as a reader, writer, and lover of science fiction throughout his life, as well as short fiction that gives glimpses into the evolution of his imaginative voice over the years.
A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books.
©2024 Cixin Liu (P)2024 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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FOR AMUSEMENT ONLY: Extra Ball at 600,000 points
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It's the characters that matter...
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Critic reviews
"[This collection] will give new context to old fans while introducing new readers to a true genius of the genre [and] leave readers refreshingly excited not just about sf but about humanity’s future."—Booklist, STARRED review
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Only mutual communication can forge an alliance with the planet's sentient species and prove that mammals are more than tools. Forced to land on a planet they aren't prepared for, human colonists rely on their limited resources to survive. The planet provides a lush but inexplicable landscape—trees offer edible, addictive fruit one day and poison the next, while the ruins of an alien race are found entwined in the roots of a strange plant. Conflicts between generations arise as they struggle to understand one another and grapple with an unknowable alien intellect.
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Weird. But good. But weird.
- By Lilyn G. on 03-20-18
By: Sue Burke
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Timequake
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Arthur Bishop
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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According to Kurt Vonnegut's alter ego, the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a global timequake will occur on February 13, 2001, at 2:27 p.m. It will be the moment when the universe suffers a crisis of conscience: Should it go on expanding indefinitely or collapse and make another great big BANG? For its own cosmic reasons, it decides to back up a decade to 1991, giving the world a 10-year case of deja vu, making everybody and everything do exactly what they'd done during the past decade.
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Arias only make hopeless situations worse
- By Darwin8u on 12-28-17
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Starless
- By: Jacqueline Carey
- Narrated by: Caitlin Davies
- Length: 21 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Destined from birth to serve as protector of the princess Zariya, Khai is trained in the arts of killing and stealth by a warrior sect in the deep desert; yet there is one profound truth that has been withheld from him. In the court of the Sun-Blessed, Khai must learn to navigate deadly intrigue and his own conflicted identity…but in the far reaches of the western seas, the dark god Miasmus is rising, intent on nothing less than wholesale destruction.
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The most beautiful thing I've enjoyed this year!
- By DabOfDarkness on 08-06-18
By: Jacqueline Carey
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Autonomous
- A Novel
- By: Annalee Newitz
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, traversing the world in a submarine as a pharmaceutical Robin Hood, fabricating cheap scrips for poor people who can't otherwise afford them. But her latest drug hack has left a trail of lethal overdoses as people become addicted to their work, doing repetitive tasks until they become unsafe or insane.
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Came For The Science, Bailed For The Porn
- By Becca Mellema on 08-05-19
By: Annalee Newitz
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A Half-Built Garden
- By: Ruthanna Emrys
- Narrated by: Kate Handford
- Length: 15 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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On a warm March night in 2083, Judy Wallach-Stevens wakes to a warning of unknown pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay. She heads out to check what she expects to be a false alarm—and stumbles upon the first alien visitors to Earth. These aliens have crossed the galaxy to save humanity, convinced that the people of Earth must leave their ecologically-ravaged planet behind and join them among the stars. And if humanity doesn't agree, they may need to be saved by force. But the watershed networks that rose up to save the planet from corporate devastation aren't ready to give up on Earth.
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Really interesting and engaging story
- By Sebastian on 07-09-23
By: Ruthanna Emrys
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Too Like the Lightning (1 of 2) (Dramatized Adaptation)
- Terra Ignota, Book 1
- By: Ada Palmer
- Narrated by: Alejandro Ruiz, Chris Stinson, Jacob Yeh, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Original Recording
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Mycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets. Carlyle Foster is a sensayer - a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away.
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Too much nonsense
- By Anonymous User on 12-01-22
By: Ada Palmer
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salt slow
- By: Julia Armfield
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In her electrifying debut, Julia Armfield explores women’s experiences in contemporary society, mapped through their bodies. As urban dwellers’ sleeps become disassociated from them, like Peter Pan’s shadow, a city turns insomniac. A teenager entering puberty finds her body transforming in ways very different than her classmates’. As a popular band gathers momentum, the fangirls following their tour turn into something monstrous. After their parents remarry, two step-sisters, one a girl and one a wolf, develop a dangerously close bond.
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spooky and fantastic
- By Hallie on 11-13-22
By: Julia Armfield
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The Stardust Grail
- A Novel
- By: Yume Kitasei
- Narrated by: Katharine Chin
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Maya Hoshimoto was once the best art thief in the galaxy. For ten years, she returned stolen artifacts to alien civilizations—until a disastrous job forced her into hiding. Now she just wants to enjoy a quiet life as a graduate student of anthropology, but she’s haunted by persistent and disturbing visions of the future. Then an old friend comes to her with a job she can’t refuse: find a powerful object that could save an alien species from extinction. Except no one has seen it in living memory, and they aren’t the only ones hunting for it.
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Pronouns are out of control
- By C P on 09-11-24
By: Yume Kitasei
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The Galaxy, and the Ground Within
- A Novel
- By: Becky Chambers
- Narrated by: Rachel Dulude
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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With no water, no air, and no native life, the planet Gora is unremarkable. The only thing it has going for it is a chance proximity to more popular worlds, making it a decent stopover for ships traveling between the wormholes that keep the Galactic Commons connected. If deep space is a highway, Gora is just your average truck stop. The Five-Hop is run by an enterprising alien and her sometimes helpful child, who work hard to provide a little piece of home to everyone passing through.
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The narrator completely ruined it.
- By rosenh on 09-13-21
By: Becky Chambers
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Ball Lightning
- By: Cixin Liu, Joel Martinsen - translator
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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When Chen’s parents are incinerated before his eyes by a blast of ball lightning, he devotes his life to cracking the secret of the mysterious natural phenomenon. His search takes him to stormy mountaintops, an experimental military weapons lab, and an old Soviet science station. The more he learns, the more he comes to realize that ball lightning is just the tip of a new frontier in particle physics. Although Chen’s quest provides a purpose for his life, his reasons for chasing his elusive quarry come into conflict with soldiers and scientists who have motives of their own.
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if you loved the three body problem . a must
- By Boaz on 10-19-18
By: Cixin Liu, and others
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The Cretaceous Past
- By: Cixin Liu
- Narrated by: BJ Harrison
- Length: 5 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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When a Tyrannosaurus rex suffers pain from meat trapped between its enormous teeth, a nearby colony of ants risks entering the great creature's maw to make their own repast from the remains of the dinosaur's most recent meal. From this humble beginning, over the course of millennia, a symbiotic civilization achieves amazing advances, facing dangers and exploiting opportunities at every turn.
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Maddeningly Accessible
- By Makelessnoise on 01-07-22
By: Cixin Liu
What listeners say about A View from the Stars
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Edward E. Annunziata
- 04-08-24
Great view of science fiction!
I loved this because interwoven between the mind blowing, Cixin Liu short stories are enthralling essays about the genre itself from his Chinese and 1980s sci-fi perspective.
Excellent collection from an amazing Hugo award winning SciFi author! ⭐️⭐️🪐🛸🚀🌟☄️🌎
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- Beatingu Silli
- 04-13-24
This was an awesome read!
I love the authors perspective on science fiction and science fiction fans. So glad I picked this up.
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- eR
- 11-25-24
Heard it in the Morning is epic!
Cixin Lui continues to astonish me. He was able to write an epic in short story form! In A View from the Stars, the short story Heard it in the Morning invokes the passion of the pusuit of the Unified Field Theory in physics and wraps it into the struggle of life trying to examine itself from the early universe to present day. It is beautifully written with great imagination and a practical Chinese sensibility that I have grown to appreciate.
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