All That We See or Seem

The first in a new series of near-future techno-thrillers, All that We See or Seem is scheduled to be published in the US by Saga Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, on October 14, 2025, and in the UK by Head of Zeus, a part of Bloomsury, on October 9, 2025.

Publisher’s description:

Award­-winning author Ken Liu returns with his first scifi thriller in a brand-new series following former “orphan hacker” Julia Z as she is thrust into a high-stakes adventure where she must use her AI-whispering skills to unravel a virtual reality mystery, rescue a kidnapped dream artist, and confront the blurred lines between technology, selfhood, and the power of shared dreams.

Julia Z, a young woman who gained notoriety at fourteen as the “orphan hacker,” is trying to live a life of digital obscurity in a quiet Boston suburb.

But when a lawyer named Piers—whose famous artist wife, Elli, has been kidnapped by dangerous criminals—barges into her life, Julia decides to put the solitary life she has painstakingly created at risk as she can’t walk away from helping Piers and Elli, nor step away from the challenge of this digital puzzle. Elli is an oneirofex, a dream artist, who can weave the dreams of an audience together through a shared virtual landscape, live, in a concert-like experience by tapping into each attendee’s memories and providing an emotionally resonant narrative experience. While these collective dreams are anonymous, Julia discovers that Elli was also dreaming one-on-one with the head of an international criminal enterprise, and he’s demanding the return of his dreams in exchange for Elli.

Unraveling the real and unreal leads Julia on an adventure that takes her across the country and deep into the shadows of her psyche.

Resourceful, relentless, contemptuous of authority, trying to do her best to move on from a troubled past, never giving up hope even when all around her is darkness—Julia Z is my favorite literary creation since the Dandelion Dynasty.

Also, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the future of art in a world of AI. How will AI challenge us to be more human? What can artists do with AI that they couldn’t? Many of my thoughts have been put into this book, and I can’t wait to share it with you.