Second paragraph of third story (“On the Ship”, by Leah Cypess):

It was as if they knew childhood was all we would ever have.

A collection of thirteen stories by authors writing in Chinese and English, published simultaneously in China and the USA in 2023. I knew three of them already because they had got onto the 2024 Hugo ballot, which I administered, but it was interesting to see them in context.

It’s actually quite an old-fashioned collection – most of the stories are about people on spaceships or on alien planets getting into trouble, which of course a lot of SF is still about, but few of these stories really touch on anything else. “Answerless Journey”, by Han Song, one of the Hugo finalists, takes this in an interesting direction by de-humanising its space travellers (if indeed they are human, which is – deliberately? – not clear). The thirteen stories range in length from 65 pages (“Shine”, by Chen Zijun) to 13 (“The Darkness of Mirror Planet”, by Zhao Haihong), most on the shorter side. Still, it’s an interesting step in intercultural communication.

You can get Adventures in Space here.