Ken Liu, Writer

Author of The Grace of Kings and The Paper Menagerie

Ken

The Top Idea

by

Paul Graham:

I think most people have one top idea in their mind at any given time. That’s the idea their thoughts will drift toward when they’re allowed to drift freely. And this idea will thus tend to get all the benefit of that type of thinking, while others are starved of it. Which means it’s a disaster to let the wrong idea become the top one in your mind.

…

I’ve found there are two types of thoughts especially worth avoiding—thoughts like the Nile Perch in the way they push out more interesting ideas. One I’ve already mentioned: thoughts about money. Getting money is almost by definition an attention sink. The other is disputes. These too are engaging in the wrong way: they have the same velcro-like shape as genuinely interesting ideas, but without the substance. So avoid disputes if you want to get real work done.

Words to live by. Certainly makes me rethink a lot about how I ought to go about dealing with disputes.

100% Real Lobster

by

Saw a commercial advertising “100% real lobster” in a sandwich last night.

First thought: is “fake lobster” a real problem?

Second thought: “100% real lobster” is actually a meaningless assertion. The sandwich consists of bread and condiments, which are obviously not lobster. So “100% real lobster” must be understood to mean: “to the extent there is any lobster here, it’s 100% real lobster.” But suppose we mix in some fake lobster (say, crab meat), the assertion remains true, as long as it’s taken to cover only such portion of the sandwich filling which consists of real lobster meat. Indeed, the assertion is even true in the case of a BLT since, to the extent there is any lobster, it would be 100% real lobster (it just happens that there isn’t any lobster in a BLT).

Maybe I’m overthinking this.

Characters with Gender-Neutral Names

by

Writing tip of the day: if you give your characters gender-neutral names (or names that have masculine and feminine forms that are easily confused, like Rene and Renee), make sure that you give your reader some means of identifying the gender of the character early. Unless the ambiguity is intentional, this can really trip up readers.

What I had against me: the story is told in the first person, so there’s little opportunity for physical description that doesn’t seem intrusive; the story is set in a post-Singularity world, so physical descriptions are out in any event.

It’s also interesting how important a role gender plays in our ability to sink into a narrative. Uncertainty about the gender of a character is like a toothache, constantly pulling the reader out of the story. It does raise interesting questions about how gender identity will be handled in the post-Singularity world.