Ken Liu, Writer

Author of The Grace of Kings and The Paper Menagerie

scifi

Scattered Along the River of Heaven

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Clarkesworld’s January issue has a beautiful, powerful piece by Aliette de Bodard that I strongly recommend: “Scattered Along the River of Heaven.”

This is a political story. It deals with many themes that I think about often: de-colonization, exile, revolutions, the importance of memory and history, whether the oppressed must turn into oppressors in the struggle for freedom, the luxury of privileged and powerful peoples to suddenly appear magnanimous only when they’ve lost.

But much of the power of this story comes from its quiet, restrained tone. The Chinese/Vietnamese-inspired poems and milieu work well here, and the three generations of women at the center of the story form a moving emotional core.

I suspect that every reader will read this and get a different “message” out of it, as should be the case with the best kind of fiction.

As for me, the character I admire the most is Mingxia. I believe that she made the hardest, rarest choice of all.

Music of the Spheres, Illustrated

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“Music of the Spheres” is going to be the cover story for the January 2012 issue of 科幻世界 / Science Fiction World. The editors were kind enough to share with me the cover image and an illustration done for it.

SFW January 2012 cover

SFW January 2012 cover

I’m always grateful to the illustrators who provide art for my stories: they give my words a new interpretation that I couldn’t have come up with on my own.

SALE: Robots

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One of the first stories I ever published, “The Algorithms for Love”, has been selected for Robots: the Recent A.I., edited by Rich Horton and Sean Wallace.

Robots Front Cover

I’m pretty proud to be in this ToC:

“Tideline” by Elizabeth Bear, Asimov’s
“A Jar of Goodwill” by Tobias S. Buckell, Clarkesworld Magazine
“Balancing Accounts” by James Cambias, F&SF
“The Rising Waters” by Benjamin Crowell, Strange Horizons
“The Shipmaker” by Aliette De Bodard, Interzone
“I, Robot” by Cory Doctorow, The Infinite Matrix
“Kiss Me Twice” by Mary Robinette Kowal, Asimov’s
“Algorithms for Love” by Ken Liu, Strange Horizons
“Alternate Girl’s Expatriate Life” by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Interzone
“The Djinn’s Wife” by Ian McDonald, Asimov’s
“Houses” by Mark Pantoja, Lightspeed Magazine
“Artifice and Intelligence” by Tim Pratt, Strange Horizons
“Stalker” by Robert Reed, Asimov’s
“Droplet” by Benjamin Rosenbaum, F&SF
“Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky, Tor.com
“Under the Eaves” by Lavie Tidhar, original
“Silently and Very Fast” by Catherynne M.Valente, WSFA Press / Clarkesworld
“The Nearest Thing” by Genevieve Valentine, Lightspeed Magazine

Award Season

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If you’d like to nominate one of my stories for an award (or give me one…), here’s a list.

Thank you — for reading them. You’re what makes this all worthwhile.

Stories to Read

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I used to do a lot of book reviews on my site, and then, after the Great Crash that wiped everything out, I just stopped.

I haven’t stopped reading, of course. So I’m going to try to bring a little bit of that back, over time.

I’ll start by recommending a few short stories I read recently that I liked:

  • “Keeping Tabs”, by Kenneth Schneyer, at Abyss & Apex. Intimate, moving, sympathetic, and psychologically complex, this is a wonderful sci-fi take on our celebrity culture — from the perspective of a fan.

  • “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees”, by E. Lily Yu, at Clarkesworld. This is a complex, beautiful fable with a sting as sharp as those of the titular insects. Ostensibly a fantasy about mapmaking wasps, I suspect that every reader will come out of it with a different idea of what it “meant.” The story was selected by Jonathan Strahan for his Best of the Year anthology, and it’s easy to see why.

Staying Behind

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I noticed recently that I write a lot about people being left behind: by technological progress (e.g., “Music of the Spheres”), by faith (e.g., “Single-Bit Error”), by the unnameable yearning for the unexplored (e.g. “Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer” and “The People of Pele”). Hmm, not sure why. Something to think about.

The trend continues in “Staying Behind”, now up at Clarkesworld, with a narration by Kate Baker. (By the way, I love the cover art this issue).

Clarkesworld Issue 61

The tale is a prequel to “Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer,” and happens in the years before everyone went to live in the Data Center. It is also the third in my series of stories on the theme of faith and reason (after “The Algorithms for Love and “Single-Bit Error”).

Lisa really likes this story, and I hope you do too.

I’m grateful that it found a great market in Clarkesworld. Please support them so that they can continue to bring you quality speculative fiction.