Stories
Published Stories
Beidou (北斗)
Read it in The Dragon and the Stars, an anthology edited by Derwin Mak and Eric Choi featuring “science fiction and fantasy stories written by ethnic Chinese writers outside China.” It will be published by DAW Books in 2010.
A popular genre of science fiction written in Chinese is a Chinese analogue for steampunk, which I’ve dubbed “silkpunk.” These stories are set in a classical or medieval East Asian setting, and instead of steam, the fictional inventions tend to be powdered by wind, water, animals, or uniquely Chinese concepts like qì, ox sinew, and jīguān (a type of mechanical engineering associated with Mohist philosophers of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods). Few silkpunk stories have been translated to, or written in, English.
I was inspired by a discussion with his aunt on the aesthetics of calligraphy and Chinese painting to write this story. The Seven Years War (1592-98), enormously important in the history of East Asia but little known in the West, provides the silkpunk setting for the debate between the Emperor and Tan Yuansi about our universal ambivalence towards the interplay between art, technology, war, and reason.
One of his favorite things to do, on those long-ago nights, was to make and fly Kongming lanterns. He would make the frame out of a lattice of light bamboo, shaped so that the lantern tapered down to a small opening at the bottom, like the hat worn more than a millennium ago by General Kongming, the greatest strategist who ever lived. He would then glue a layer of thin rice paper onto the lattice, making sure it was airtight, and then suspend a small candle in the center of the opening with a bamboo skewer or two. When the candle was lit, the warm air trapped by the Kongming lantern would lift it out of his hands, its warm glow receding from him until it was just another star in the sky, a distant point of light. Other children, on other pirate ships, would sometimes answer with their own Kongming lanterns, and Yuansi had loved to see them ─ giant fireflies hovering over the dark East China Sea.
Read it in Thoughtcrime Experiments, a Creative Commons-licensed anthology of science fiction stories and art.
It’s also available here on my site.
A Chinese translation of this work by Tao Ruohua (陶若华) was published in the April 2009 issue of Science Fiction World / 科幻世界.
In the words of Sumana Harihareswara, one of the co-editors:
“Sumana Harihareswara and Leonard Richardson selected nine mind-squibbling SF and fantasy stories from the slush pile, commissioned five works of art, paid the authors and artists, and packaged the whole thing as a high-quality anthology that you’re free to copy and remix. Artists include E-Sheep’s Patrick Farley and fanfic darling Erin Ptah; authors include Mary Anne Mohanraj, Carole Lanham, and Ken Liu. We also wrote an essay describing the process, which you can read if you’re interested in how we did it or what the SF/fantasy market looks like from the editor’s perspective.”
I wrote this story all the way back in 2003, and it simply took a long time to find a market. Single-Bit Error is about a rationalist’s attempts to come to terms with faith, and the editors of Thoughtcrime Experiments note that it’s not clear if this is a fantasy or a sci-fi story. That uncertainty is deliberate. My hope is that an atheist and a Christian will read this story and come to very different conclusions as to what the story is about, but that they’ll both find it interesting.
If a single-bit error on a circuit board could breach the mathematically perfect type system of a programming language, Tyler reasoned, wasn’t it conceivable that a single-bit error in the brain could break down the system of distinctions between nurses and angels? All it would take was for one neural connection to be broken and randomly reattached somewhere else, somewhere it had no business to be connected to, and all the walls between the types of memories would come crumbling down.
Read it in the July 2007 (Vol. 1, Issue 2) Edition of On The Premises.
It’s also available here on my site.
On the Premises is a contest-based magazine. Each issue’s contest centers around a “premise” which the contest entries must strive to satisfy. “Beneath the Language” won first place for the July 2007 issue.
The premise for this particular contest was as follows:
One or more characters want to find a supremely capable detector–one that can discern something almost imperceptible. The story must include a test designed to distinguish a sufficiently capable detector from similar, but not quite good enough, detectors.
I want to add a few words about the “Chinese angle” in this story. Readers who are unfamiliar with the spiritual crisis in contemporary Chinese culture may misunderstand this story as a veiled attempt at China bashing, a popular past time for Western authors writing about China. I think the story can be read as a critique of both the centuries-old process of Western domination and assault on China and its culture, and the complacency and destructive impulses of certain classes of Chinese intellectuals in reaction to that onslaught. So, it’s not at all a story that is contemptuous of contemporary Chinese culture; rather, it laments certain weaknesses in contemporary Chinese culture.
Like all of my stories, this particular story had many sources of inspiration picked up over the years: Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker article, “The Formula,” which discusses the algorithms companies like Platinum Blue and Epagogix are developing for predicting hit songs and movies; a conversation I had with Andrew Pimlott years ago about the effects of poetry at the level of neurobiology and ultimately physics; the stories of 王小波 (and those of his disciples in 《一群独立特行的狗》); an article about Wallace Stevens that Joel sent me; Heather O’Neill’s poem “Before It Had a Name”; every poet I’ve ever read …
We were sitting in the lounge of the Manhattan Palace, one of Shanghai’s newest and most expensive Chinese-owned and operated hotels, an eighty-story concrete-and-glass tower erected in only 181 days in the perpetual frenzy of construction that defines modern Shanghai. As if illustrating Solulu’s point, there was nothing original or Chinese about the place: the muzak was a bad copy of jazz, the color scheme a bad copy of the Shanghai JC Mandarin, the furniture gaudy imitations of five-year old Japanese designs, and the drinks menu full of translation errors. The staff stood around aimlessly, green actors on a new set with no script. The most coherently Chinese thing about the place was that it felt like a copy of a copy of a copy.
The Algorithms for Love (爱的算法)
Read it in The Year’s Best SF 10, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.
It was originally published here on Strange Horizons (July 2004).
It’s also available here on my site.
A Chinese translation of this work by Tao Ruohua (陶若华) was published in the April 2009 issue of Science Fiction World / 科幻世界.
Hartwell and Cramer describe “Algorithms” this way: “This is a love story and an AI existential horror story that turns the Turing test inside out.”
Patrick Samphire reviewed “Algorithms,” calling it an “excellent piece of near-future science fiction explor[ing] the theme of consciousness and intelligence with a light, certain touch, … superbly constructed and wonderfully written … [Though the author] plays rather loosely with the science in a few places.”
There is a thread in the discussion forums of Strange Horizons about “Algorithms.” Many interesting points have been raised.
The story was also an honorable mention in Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best Science Fiction, 22nd Annual Collection (2005).
The story’s basic premise, a talking doll that inspires fear and awe, is inspired by Rebecca Raney’s article in the New York Times about Manley Toy Quest’s talking doll, Cindy Smart. The ending of my story is meant to echo the ending of her article. One of the characters in the story is thus named Cindy in acknowledgment of her inspiration.
Brad drives with a light touch on the pedals, the same way he used to when I was pregnant with Aimée. The traffic is smooth and light, and the foliage along the highway is postcard-perfect.
“I love you.” He says this quietly, the way he has always done, as if it were the sound of breathing and heartbeat.
“I love you too.” I look at him when I say this, the way I have always done, as if it were the answer to some question. He looks at me, smiles, and turns his eyes back to the road.
We are just another tourist couple from Boston on a mini-break for the weekend: stay at a bed-and-breakfast, visit the museums, recycle old jokes. It’s an algorithm for love.
I want to scream.
Read it in Polyphony, Volume 4 (September 2004) from Wheatland Press, edited by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake.
It’s also available here on my site.
“State Change” was written at a writer’s workshop.
Rich Horton of the Speculative Literature Foundation picked “State Change” for inclusion in his annual “Virtual Best of the Year” (1, 2).
Every night, before going to bed, Rina checked the refrigerators.
There were two in the kitchen, on separate circuits, one with a fancy ice dispenser on the door. There was one in the living room holding up the TV, and one in the bedroom doubling as a nightstand. A small cubical unit meant for college dorm rooms was in the hallway, and a cooler that Rina refilled with fresh ice every night was in the bathroom, under the sink.
Rina opened the door of each refrigerator and looked in. Most of the refrigerators were empty most of the time. This didn’t bother Rina. She wasn’t interested in filling them. The checks were a matter of life and death. It was about the preservation of her soul.
Read it in Volume XIX of the Writers of the Future Anthology.
It’s also available here on my site.
According to Publisher’s Weekly, September 23, 2003, “Gossamer” is “an elegant twist on the first contact story, [which] asks: what if we finally meet another life form, but have no idea how to communicate with them?”
“I’ve never read a line of poetry that’s beautiful,” Peter said to me once, before I left him.
Laura thought he said it just to hurt me, which probably was true. Peter was like that. He never backed down in a fight and he gave no quarter. It was why I loved him.
I’m thinking back to the time, years ago, when Peter first stopped me in front of the library. “I disagree with you.”
“That’s okay,” I said.
That was the day the Gossamers landed.
Read it in the Orson Scott Card-edited anthology Empire of Dreams and Miracles.
It’s also available here on my site.
According to Sandra Schulberg of Phobos Books, the publisher:
“Due to a devastating fire at the National Book Network warehouse (in Blue Ridge Summit, PA) the night before the NY Blackout, over 2 million books were burned, including all but 14 copies of Phobos Books’ 1st anthology, EMPIRE OF DREAMS AND MIRACLES. This now qualifies as a rare book. It includes Orson Scott Card’s original introduction, plus his preface to each story, and the 12 great stories by the first winners of the now annual Phobos Awards. If you have a copy of this book, please pass it on or make it available on Ebay, so others can read it.”
“Carthaginian Rose” is favorably reviewd by Geoff Willmetts of SF Crowsnest as “a very touching story of a character seeking a new frontier from her sister’s perspective.” “Despite the consequences, [the reviewer] liked the way the characters came to life on the page.”
I don’t think Camlisle is the best place in the world. I just can’t imagine moving anywhere else after having spent my whole life here. I like the way the shadows move across the floor of my bedroom. I like the squeaks and cracks as I go up the stairs, each one an intimate, old friend. I like the view of the apple trees, lined up like headstones in a cemetery behind the house, on the hill. Or maybe I’m just used to those things, too comfortable to change. Too many brain cells have died to make those connections for me to abandon them easily.
I do wonder, sometimes, how the physical contours of my mind would have been different if I had traveled, like Liz, around the world.
“You’d be running on different hardware,” Liz would have said. “Time for an upgrade. Cote d’Ivoire, here I come.”
Other Stories
From before I was published professionally.
Please send me feedback on any of the stories you read. That’s basically what motivates me — it certainly isn’t the money.
- Tieguan: The name is a play on the Chinese word for iron cans, but that probably won’t help you much. First published in my college’s literary magazine.