Little Mushroom: Chapters 4-6 (EN) or 5-13 (CH)

[x_los]

Welcome to week 2's "Little Mushroom" (小蘑菇) discussion for English chapters 4-6 of Book 1 and Chinese chapters 5-13 (inclusive). This spreadsheet contains the schedule and concordances of the chapter endings across the Chinese and English versions. There's an associated Discord server (ask superborb for an invite if you'd like one), and we'll be running comment posts here.

This discussion will wrap up and next week's will begin on April 24th.

Chinese text
English text

SPOILER POLICY: I personally don't give a fuck or even like to give unearned credence to the concept, so since I'm writing the post, anything's fair game.

Comments

Chapter 4, EN

[x_los]

Why don’t they genetically examine everyone coming back? Is it too expensive?

‘“We volunteer to bear the cost of genetic examinations.”’ Yep, there we go.

This urban section of the novel feels reminiscent of mid century SF, like Silverberg or Ballard.

Last week I missed that An Ze and An Zhe's names aren’t identical.