The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories:A Collection of Chinese Science Fiction and Fantasy in Translation from a Visionary Team of Female and Nonbinary Creators Paperback – 28 February 2023

This Chinese Science Fiction and Fantasy Anthology is a bouquet of captivating stories compiled and edited by Yu Chen and Regina Kanyu Wang. When I saw the title "The Way Spring Arrives", I was suddenly reminded of Rachel Carson's last century famous work titled 'The Silent Spring'. Although Rachel Carson had drawn a horrifying picture of environmental destruction due to pesticide pollution in her fiction, the title story of this anthology has presented an interesting scenario of changing seasons presented in a fantasy full environment.The first story 'The Stars We Raised' is a fantasy story in which small stars emitting light fall from the sky to the ground which school students collect and earn money by selling them. Because by grinding them, some industrial units make a substance like cement. The stories that particularly impressed me were 'Blackbird', 'Baby I Love You', 'A Brief History of the Beinakan Disaster as Told in a Sinitic Language', 'Dragonslaying', 'The Mountains and the secret of Their Names'. These stories, in my opinion, reflect the true universally charecterized nature of science fiction. The remaining stories contain plethora of elements of local culture, ancient beliefs, folklores or fables.The story 'Blackbird' is the story of an aging woman with an indomitable lust to live long . But death is inevitable. She dies in a frightening and ominous atmosphere. The message of the story is that the desire for immortality is just an illusion. The most beautiful story of the collection is 'Baby I Love You' which relates to the couple who does not want to give birth to children and does not want to bear the burden of their upbringing in the hustle and bustle of modern ways life. The main character of the story creates a digital game for such couples in which the real experience of the birth and upbringing of a child is created through holographic projection. But he has to pay the price of this work by destroying his own family life. The plot is compact and very interesting. There is constant curiosity about what will happen next."A Brief History of Beinakan Disasters as Told in a Sinitic Language" is the sensational story of an undersea civilization somewhere in a distant universe, which is due to an imminent destruction, sets out to find an amicable place in the infinite universe. In the crisis of survival they annihilate one of their fellow species. Eventually reaching Earth, they naturally descends into the maritime part of the Chinese narrator's country, but in an attempt to establish they wipe out now only competitor Homo sapiens. But does the human species really become extinct? The story ends leaving the reader in this dilemma. This is an impressive story from the collection."Dragonslaying" is an interesting tale in which the tails of mermaids are converted into two legs through a special surgical operation and then they are given human forms and sold to lecherous men. An entire network is engaged in this flesh trade. But the story surprises at the end with the revelation that this work has been done by mermens themselves from the very beginning. In search of such sophisticated cases of surgery a female doctor visited that particular place and saw the process of surgery in developing plot of the story . The story continues to arouse curiosity every moment."The Mountains and the Secret of Their Names" is an immersive story from the collection that records the natural reaction of innocent humans to technological progress. In the story, a satellite launch station is established near a tribal village situated on a mountain, due to which when the satellite is launched, its discarded parts fall in the sky, showering light on the village and sometimes damaging their rice fields also . The villagers attribute this incident to the dead souls as part of their traditional beliefs and continue to perform some primitive rituals. This story is an excellent example of how new developments in technology reflects on human minds and elicit their reaction.The stories collected in the anthology are unique gifts to the world of science fiction from Chinese women writers and translators. The collection also includes some good essays and articles on the perspective and prospects of women and gender-neutral authors and the difficulties of Chinese to English translation, which makes this collection even more valuable.