I will include individual ratings for each story below, but my overall feeling is that I wasn't smart enough for these stories (and, as a software engineer, I generally like to think I'm reasonably smart). Like, I got all of the concepts but I had a hard time nailing down why we were being told these stories, what the goal was, what the actual outcome was. Most kind of... Ended and left me feeling unresolved.

-The Village Teacher 4/5⭐️ an ode to the importance of teachers, how they give everything to students who need it, how even the briefest positive interaction with a good teacher can literally change the world. The parts from the Carbon-Based Federation were a little incongruous, especially at first, and the idea of determining the worth of a planet by picking random life forms and asking questions seems limited
-The Time Migration 3/5⭐️ I went through this one kind of going "well what was the point?" I'll admit I was fascinated (especially with the first stop and the war) but I couldn't understand the ambassador's decisions (especially in choosing their last stop). I felt like I missed some key information that made her go "oh yes, let's do this"
-2018-04-01 3/5⭐️ again, loving the concept of this, but the delivery was bizarre. A big plot twist written off as a practical joke? Here's a big alternative to what you're hoping to achieve "oh by the way". It felt rather scattered to me.
-Fire in the Earth 3/5⭐️ I didn't understand Liu Shen's emphatic belief in his own infallibility. Like, I understood his goal was to render the mines obsolete (unless he wanted to totally destroy them and I just missed that?) but the way he reacted to being told no or slow down... Didn't make sense to me. We didn't get enough of his inner thoughts.
-Contraction 2.5/5⭐️ I'm starting to hate the superiority of Liu's characters... Professor Ding was just basking in the miscomprehension of the characters around him rather than, say, trying to ease the journey in any way
-Mirror 4/5⭐️ this one was long. I don't think a lot of the extraneous details were necessary to really get the impact of the mirror, especially when the scene 35,000 years in the future paints such a stark picture. As well as the last scene with the Senior Official. But this one was also enough to really make you stop and think
-Ode to Joy 2.5/5⭐️ these stories are starting to make me feel kind of dumb? Like... I feel like I'm not appreciating them / getting their significance. They just feel kind of bizarre and... Pointless?
-Full-Spectrum Barrage Jamming 2.5/5⭐️ Yay Emily Woo Zeller! Honestly I have almost no idea what happened in this story (though I'm guessing it's some kind of "if Russia won the Cold War / if there were actual battles during the Cold War" or maybe something about the weaponization of the space race??)
-Sea of Dreams 2.5/5⭐️ Yay Natalie Naudus! But another story where I'm left scratching my head. Like... These stories are getting more and more out-there as we go on and it's making me confused and not like them very much
-Cloud of Poems 3.5/5⭐️ I'm 100% here for the analysis of the dichotomy between technology and art. It seemed like we had to go to some pretty ridiculous lengths to get there, but I'll take it.
-The Thinker 3.5/5⭐️ I liked this one a lot in theory, with two people coming together at exponentially increasing intervals, the last longer than either of them will live. But again, I leave the story wondering "so what?"

{Thank you Macmillan Audio for the ALC; all thoughts are my own}