Ken Liu, Writer

Author of The Grace of Kings and The Paper Menagerie

reading

The Chronicles of European Heroes

by

Oh my God. I am reading the coolest book ever.

Ma Boyong, one of my favorite Chinese authors, has written a wuxia novel featuring European elements: The Chronicles of European Heroes (《欧罗巴英雄记》). Yes, this is a wuxia novel in which heroes use the “Templar Crucifix Sword Fighting Technique” and Christian monks heal people by balancing aqueous and igneous humors, a novel with xiake and magic and wandering poets and quotes from books by ancient sages like Hippocrates.

I never would have thought such a thing possible. But here I am, reading it. I feel like a kid on Christmas with a smile on my face the whole time.

This is the most creative thing I’ve ever seen. I wish I had even a little bit of Ma’s brilliance.

Craig Mod on the Digital and the Physical

by

Craig Mod, who has written some very insightful things about the future of books, has put up a new essay on the importance of edges to our sense of the scale of the act of creation.

Mod is one of the creators of Flipboard for the iPhone. He turned the digital record behind the first release of this app — git commit messages, design mockups, launch party photos — into a physical book, giving the intangible bits that form the trail of modern creative efforts tangible form.

This is a way to combat what Mod calls the “feeling of thinness” in modern digital life:

Put in more concrete terms: a folder with one item looks just like a folder with a billion items. Feels just like a folder with a billion items. And even then, when open, with most of our current interfaces, we see at best only a screenful of information, a handful of items at a time.

The whole essay is chock full of great insights like this. I’m particularly enamored of this bit, on the ways that the digital creative process will give us new ways to appreciate art as a performance:

Perhaps the next Carver’s manuscript will contain the entire typing history of the document including GPS data of where he was when he wrote it. We will be able to replay the entire composition process. Shadow, if you so desire, a particular Hemingway through a certain Spain as he writes a new The Sun Also Rises.

Now that’s an truly SFnal idea. I love it.

Do give the essay a read. You’ll thank me.

Arkfall

by

“Arkfall,” by Carolyn Ives Gilman, was a Nebula nominee for 2009. It’s good, really good.

One thing that annoys me is a belief by some that stories are only interesting if they have “active” heroes who change the world. Passive heroes who let things happen to them and are then forced to change themselves are just as interesting to me. We have to do both in life. Why should fiction be different?

“Arkfall” takes place in the seas of an ice-covered planet. It involves a technology culture that is largely based on biology, a social culture centered on conflict-avoidance, a hero tied down with family obligations, and vehicles that follow the current and cannot be steered. It is richly imagined and realistic in the best sense of that word. And the theme of balance between active and passive modes of engagement with the world is very much at its center. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Rachel Swirsky for recommending this to me.

The Axiom of Choice

by

“The Axiom of Choice,” by David W. Goldman (New Haven Review, Winter 2011).

What a great way to end my Nebula reading.

I have a weakness for second-person narratives. (And I love adventure games).

This story begins as a literary version of a choose-you-own-adventure book, but soon turns into something else. I can’t tell you what. You have to go read it. Have to.

I stood on the train platform to finish this story just so I wouldn’t have to stop. It was that good.

The Man Who Bridged the Mist

by

“The Man Who Bridged the Mist,” by Kij Johnson (Asimov’s Science Fiction, October/November 2011).

Almost done with all of the short fiction Nebula nominees…

Kij Johnson’s stuff is usually awesome (who can forget “Spar”?), and I like this one as well. The novella is an interesting selection for Asimov’s: it hovers half way between fantasy and science fiction.

The hero of this story is the lead architect for a suspension bridge over a river of “mist” that will connect a divided Empire. In so doing, he (and we) learn that a great engineering project like this knits together not only iron, stone, and rope, but also the people who work on it. In changing the landscape and the flow of trade and goods, the bridge also alters the lives of the people around it irrevocably.

I like the way the precise nature of the mist is never made clear: is it magical or just some kind of physical matter we don’t understand? Such questions are beside the point.

Two More Nebula Nominees

by

“What We Found,” Geoff Ryman (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September/October 2011): what if the notion of the observer changing the observed applied at the level of all of science? I have a soft spot for works that try to tackle difficult problems about justice and history. This one does not disappoint.

“Mama, We are Zhenya, Your Son,” by Tom Crosshill (Lightspeed Magazine, April 2011): what happens to a boy who is experimented on to think like a quantum computer? I’m impressed by the skillful way in which the premise is introduced. The pacing and the laying out of information is perfectly executed. Not a word is wasted.