Ken LiuRezensionen

I seem to be having a bit of an Asian theme this year - Chinese sci-fi and Japan historical fiction. I don't usually read many short stories but these were mostly excellent. The final story in particular "The man who ended history" will stay with me.

3.5 Stars - for the short The Bookmaking Secrets of Select Species

I wouldn’t necessarily say this is an actual story, but the way Liu describes these species and how they communicate and pass on their culture is impressive. Such detailed originality needs to be acknowledged and appreciated. It’s a testament to sentience, where one wants to leave their indelible mark to forever remember and be remembered.

139

14

Genre: short story
Age: ya and up
Series/Standalone: part of a series by many authors, read as standalone
Content: Nothing

Beginning: fantastic
Middle: didn’t make sense
End: even better than the beginning

Rating: 3/5 Stars

My favourite was Good Hunting. I loved how Liu infused the romance of Chinese mythology with the shiny sleekness of steampunk future. The themes were done so well, even if the plot itself felt too intentionally geared towards specifically exploring these themes. I think it's just my own bias against science fiction and the extra unnaturalness I feel about having to learn the rules of a new world. Anyway, I haven't been able to stop thinking about 狐狸精 which funnily enough is the point! Paper Menagerie was obviously also a stand out, and great for anyone who regrets being a sullen teen mistreating their mother and wants to have a good cry!

As always, there are some stories I liked in this magazine, and some I didn't. I was surprised that one of the stories I didn't like was Ken Liu's, but not at all surprised to enjoy John Wiswell's, Sarah Pinsker's, or Mary Robinette Kowal's. Christopher Caldwell's story was another favorite from this issue.

Contents:

Fiction:
“Collaboration?” by Ken Liu and Caroline M. Yoachim
“Cold Relations” by Mary Robinette Kowal
“How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” by P. Djèlí Clark
“Waystation City” by A. T. Greenblatt
“Horsewoman” by A.M. Dellamonica
“Flower, Daughter, Soil, Seed” by Eugenia Triantafyllou
“One Man’s Treasure” by Sarah Pinsker
“The Father Provincial of Mare Imbrium” by E. Lily Yu
“Silver Necklace, Golden Ring” by Marie Brennan
“Miz Boudreaux’s Last Ride” by Christopher Caldwell
“Bad Doors” by John Wiswell
“Prospect Heights” by Maureen McHugh

Nonfiction:
“The Haunting of Her Body” by Elsa Sjunneson
“Something in the Way: AI-Generated Images and the Real Killer” by John Picacio
“What a Fourteenth Century Legal Case Can Teach Us about Storytelling” by Annalee Newitz
“The Magic of the Right Story” by A. T. Greenblatt
“The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm: Audio Writing” by Diana M. Pho
“Building Better Worlds” by Javier Grillo-Marxuach

Poetry:
“The Hole Thing” by Neil Gaiman
“Love Poem: Phoenix” by Terese Mason Pierre
“The Credo of Loplop” by Sonya Taaffe
“Kannazuki, or the Godless Month” by Betsy Aoki
“The Witch Makes Her To-Do List” by Theodora Goss
“Temperance and The Devil, Reversed” by Ali Trotta
“Driving Downtown” by Abu Bakr Sadiq
“Hel on a Headland” by Elizabeth Bear
“To Whomsoever Remains” by Brandon O’Brien½

Denne high fantasy boken foregår over 20 år, og i løpet av disse årene følger man flere (bra skrevet) karakterer gjennom kriger, bedrageri, og politiske intriger. Landegrensene forflytter seg stadig, og gudene følger tett med, og har sine favorittkarakterer. Karakterene i denne boken har et helt annet moralsk kompass, så ikke les denne boken om du trenger karakterer du liker godt

You’ve probably read an article (or twenty) about whether and how you should use ChatGPT. But Ken Liu’s The Hidden Girl and Other Stories might prompt you to extend your thinking and ponder a more existential question: what if you were ChatGPT?

To be clear, he doesn’t ask this explicitly. The short stories in Liu’s second anthology were originally published before ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022; none of them reference “generative AI” or “large language models.” But one of the collection’s dominant themes is the nature of consciousness, a topic Liu explores most directly by considering the ramifications of the Singularity, i.e., “digital immortality, the fusion of man and machine.”

Some of the stories illustrate intermediate steps on the path to this potential union. “Real Artists” projects what might happen to creatives when AI becomes better at crafting movies than humans—and how humans might be called upon to support AI (rather than the other way around). A trio of interconnected stories about “post-human, pre-Singularity … artificial sentiences” chronicles the conflicts that arise after corporations seeking to retain the skills of essential employees convert their minds into algorithms.

But most of the stories dealing with this subject reflect on the end state: what happens when people choose to upload their consciousness into the digital ether? Liu suggests the possibilities are both boundless and unfulfilling.

“Staying Behind” proposes that the initial decision might be whether to leave your body behind via a “destructive scanning procedure” that renders your “brain a bloody, pulpy mess.” But subsequent stories suggest that “uploaded” men and women will quickly learn how to reproduce, creating digital children who’ve never experienced the real world but can manipulate their virtual reality in any way they wish—“live in multiple dimensions, invent impossible foods, possess worlds that are as infinite as the sands of the Ganges.” In other words, our ultimate evolution in this scenario is to become billions of self-aware ChatGPTs, generating intelligently and endlessly.

For some, though, this will be a state of being without substance. “Something has been lost to humanity since we gained this immortal command over an imagined existence,” a woman says in “Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer.” She goes on to argue that, “We have turned inward and become complacent.” More succinctly, a young girl in “The Gods Have Not Died in Vain” asserts that, “Life is about embodiment.” The implication is that some measure of our vitality comes from our vitals—that the flesh encapsulating the human mind influences how it perceives in ways that can’t be simulated.

Additional pieces in the collection complicate that narrative. And like The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, Liu’s first anthology, the related themes of identity and memory provide further touchpoints. Pieces such as “Ghost Days” contemplate how what we remember—willingly or otherwise—grounds our definition of self. “You humans think you are what you’ve done,” a (decidedly non-human) character argues. “But you’re really what you remember.”

So which is it? What counts as consciousness and real, meaningful experience? Liu never clarifies his views in a way that feels definitive, so I won’t try to speak for him. But I enjoyed following along as he investigated various answers, even if they often tilted dark. (The long-term consequences of climate change are another theme. For Liu, they include a flooded Earth, floating refugee collectives, and “the sunken metropolis of Boston,” as detailed in “Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit—Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts.”)

I particularly liked some of the stories that don’t deal with the Singularity. “Thoughts and Prayers,” “Memories of my Mother,” and “The Message” are all examples of why sometimes Liu is at his best when he goes lighter on the science and uses it primarily as a tee-up for unpacking emotional resonances. I love his fantasy, too; the titular “The Hidden Girl,” which features an “anti-assassin,” is just plain fun.

Other stories worked less well for me. “Byzantine Empathy” comes off as a lecture on how blockchain technology could transform charitable giving, and “Grey Rabbit, Crimson Mare, Coal Leopard” feels less focused than most of Liu’s other pieces (even though it begins with post-apocalyptic dumpster diving in “midden mines,” which is a spectacular bit of worldbuilding).

But I don’t start an anthology expecting to love every entry. And hit or miss, each tale in this collection made me think. I didn’t come to any profound conclusions about what it means to be human or whether I might want to participate in the Singularity if that possibility became available to me. Reading The Hidden Girl and Other Stories did, however, remind me that Liu is a singular author, one whose skill generative AI can’t match.

Yet. But in another act of prescience, “Real Artists” works in a reference to folk hero John Henry: “He was a laborer on the railroads in the nineteenth century,” one character summarizes. “When the owners brought in steam-powered hammers to take jobs away from the driving crews, John challenged a steam hammer to a race to see who could work faster.” “Did he win?” another character asks. “Yes. But as soon as the race was over, he died of exhaustion. He was the last man to challenge the steam hammers because the machines got faster every year.”

The Henry anecdote is probably apocryphal. But its use in “Real Artists” is unsettling and insightful. And I expect nothing less from a Ken Liu story, whether it’s foreshadowing ChatGPT or some other near-(or far-)future development.

(For more reviews like this one, see www.nickwisseman.com)

Speaking Bones is the conclusion to Ken Liu's Dandelion Dynasty series. Toward the beginning of the book, the author gives us more of his incredibly detailed military engineering, this time focused on designing on a budget. However, the focus quickly shifts to Empress Jia's secret genocide plan, which reminds me strongly of the historical Opium War and obviates the need for direct military action. Naturally, this opens up a Pandora's box of ethical concerns, leading to the discussion of pacifism as a way of life in much of the second half of the book. This extends not only to the main theater of action in Dara, but also to Princess Thera's incursion into Ukyu-Gonde, where the pacifist Thoryo's death has had a big effect on Thera. The book ends with pacifist movements taking over both lands, which I found to be a satisfying (if somewhat unrealistic) conclusion to the series.½

Read halfway, which was a struggle. Too many independent groups of characters with slow plot advancement. Got tired of waiting for payoff and gave up.

I made it through 196 pages of this one before I gave up. Unfortunately, this book is very derivative, and the parts that aren't just are hard to accept. The kite rider? The 'special' people who have eyes with two pupils? The idea of a sword with heart of "dense" bronze and wrapped in steel, even though steel and bronze are basically the same density? The idea of fantasy and science fiction is that the author sets out some rules, different from our own, and usually a very small number of them, then lets the story develop. This one, on the other hand, just doesn't have any rules. It ignores physics without explaining why, leading me to believe that the author just doesn't realize what he's doing. How exactly do eyes with two pupils work?

And, the characters are all one-dimensional, and bland at that.

And, do we really need another bickering gods behinds the scenes of history book?

Thoughtful and Well Written

A fascinating and well wrought sci-fi tale with some interesting questions about authority, religion, and perception. My only real criticism would be that it didn't fully absorb me as much as I would have liked, but nonetheless it is well worth a listen.

Great performance.

Definitely makes me want to read more of the author.

I read Single-Bit Error after seeing that it was, I believe incorrectly Referenced as "response" Hell is the Absence of God by Ted Chiang on Hell's Wikipedia Page. It was inspired in part by that story and Liu even reached out to Chiang to ensure his story was OK to publish. This is an incredibly thoughtful and charming action, despite the stories being so very different beyond the themes of reconciling faith and the inclusion of angels.

It was originally published in ThoughtCrime: https://thoughtcrime.crummy.com/2009/Error.html
There is a different edit that appears more to be in its format than anything else on Liu's website:
https://kenliu.name/stories/single-bit-error/

This is a story I read twice for the first time tonight. The first time was breathtaking, but for every sense. The second time I was sobbing from about halfway through to the end and sporadically afterwards.

Liu writes in such a beautifully poignant manner that reading it is an ecstacy and/ or an agony from which my brain can't compute. I am left hollowed out his words and barely able to think. I literally don't know what else to say.

I lack the capacity to do this story any justice in reviewing or critiquing it, and, frankly, I see this as art in such a pure and affecting sense that I am disinclined to even try. However, I absolutely do recommend it and believe this is one of those stories that will stay with me for the rest of my life. This is also how I feel about another of Liu's stories, The Paper Menagerie.

Ken Liu writes beautifully, angrily, tenderly, piercingly about China, Japan, the West, racism, moral choices, history and its making, re-making, telling, and denial, ordinary heroes and monsters, post-humanity and interstellar travel. It’s brilliant.

The Bookmaking Habits of Selected Species
Everyone makes books.” Would you like to read a black hole? ;) I loved the idea of books that speak with the voice of the author, but decay with every read.

State Change
What a beautiful story… What if your soul was an object outside of your body? What if the object was a finite one? A pack of cigarettes, an ice cube, a tin of coffee? What if you had the power to measure out your life and have a superpower while doing so?

The Perfect Match
I had read this one before, in some other anthology (can’t remember which one it was). Anyway, it was an interesting dystopian take on social media algorithms and a mega corporation controlling everyone and everything.

Good Hunting
Another familiar tale, I had read it and loved it in Beyond the Woods: Fairy Tales Retold. Here is wonderful blend of shape-changing foxes, Chinese mythology and steampunk. I enjoyed it immensely, even more than the first time.

The Literomancer
Too heartbreaking for words.

Simulacrum
The idea is very interesting, but the story is really about the distances (sometimes insurmountable) between people.

The Regular
This one was a page-turner, a scary murder mystery with a bitterly ironic twist. The implant regulating your emotional state was intriguing and frightening. What kind of decisions would we make without emotions?

The Paper Menagerie
A story that made me cry. There was so much love and sadness in just a few pages. I loved the origami animals.

An Advanced Reader’s Picture Book of Comparative Cognition
There was a lot of cool ideas, but it did not leave much impression. I was probably still reeling after having read The Paper Menagerie.

Waves
At first it felt like I was reading a “regular” generation ship sci-fi, but then it moved into post-humanity territory. Enjoyable.

Mono no Aware
Beautiful and tragic. After reading this one, I wanted to hug everyone I know. Strangers, too.

All the Flavors
This is a slice of life novella mixing historical events, Wild West, meetings between different cultures, and Chinese legends. Very satisfying.

A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel
Alternative history dealing with sins of the past and the possibility of redemption.

The Litigator and the Monkey King
This one begins as a picaresque tale. It ends up being a story about the nature of history, memory, and who the true heroes are.

The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary
Continues the themes of the previous story. For me, it was a very emotional read. The use and abuse of history for ideological, existential, and moral reasons goes on and on and on. I also want to shake the author’s hand for writing (Ken Liu is not the first, of course) that monsters are ordinary people.

Lost the library hold for a bit but managed to get it again and finished. Such a fantastic book. All the characters are written so well I found myself so invested in their relationships and felt so much emotion for some of their betrayals and the world building is fantastic. I was really pulled in. While I usually listen to audiobooks on the go from place to place, this book had me laying in bed just listening for hours. Themes of power, ambition, and the stark reality of revolution tie so well with ideas of friendship, loyalty and hope. The book ended really well and is satisfying as a standalone book but once I realized it was a series I couldn't hold my excitement. Overall would definitely reccomend for fans of the genre.

The Veiled Throne follows the Imperial children as they grow into adulthood. Timu has thrown in his lot with the invading Lyucu in the hopes that they can peacefully coexist, Thera travels to the Lyucu's homeland to incite rebellion and prevent further reinforcements, Phyro contends with his mother the Empress Regent over Dara's response to the invasion, and Fara is just trying to find her role in the world. The overarching theme, however, is cultural conflict--Timu struggles to find common ground between the cultures of the agricultural Dara and the nomadic Lyucu, Thera fails to convince the enslaved Agon to use Dara tactics in their rebellion, and Phyro and the Empress try to decide how suspiciously they should treat refugees of both races from the occupied territories. The second half of the book introduces Kinri, the son of a Lyucu thane who is exiled to Dara and makes a life there but still has loyalties to his homeland. The author does such a good job of presenting many different sides of the conflict to the point where I, as the reader, wasn't sure what I wanted the outcome to be. Kinri's story was particularly moving as he really exemplifies how both cultures could be seen by fresh eyes. I look forward to reading the conclusion of the story in the next book.

I am torn on this book. Parts of it were wonderful but other parts were convoluted and dragged a bit. I can see where some people would love it. It just didn't quite connect with me. I liked the world building but didn't always like the character building. A solid 3.5 but I am not sure I will read the next one.

I really enjoyed the mythic, sweeping parts of this book, and I really enjoyed some of the conversations between characters, but the transitions between the two were jarring. I'll definitely check out the next book in the series, though.

A really great collection of stories, often grim and frequently gruesome but full of rich insight and gentle, brave, ordinary people. Must-read for LeGuin fans.

4 - The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species
Kind of a weird way to start off the book, but also very imaginative, which I liked very much.

5 - State Change
This was probably my favorite story. The story itself was executed beautifully and should not have been any longer, but I really wanted more of it! Such a novel idea which didn't dominate the story.

2 - The Perfect Match
I thought this story was a bit tiresome, but maybe it is just that I've read and seen about the subject a lot lately. Nevertheless, it failed to impress me.

3 - Good Hunting
I liked the setting of the story a lot and it made me want to read a book entirely in a chinese-mysticism-steampunk-setting. I just got the impression that not much happened in the story.

4 - The Literomancer
For some reason which I can't really pin down I liked this story. Even though the individual elements of the story didn't do anything for me, I found the whole very moving.

3 - Simulacrum
Very Black-Mirror-y, but not as well worked out I think. I did like the style though.

4 - The Regular
Again, I don't really know why, because the story honestly wasn't very deep or interesting, but I really liked this one.

3 - The Paper Menagerie
I might just have missed the point of this story. Maybe I just couldn't identify with the theme of the story. By all accounts this seems like an excellent, well written, moving story, it just didn't do anything for me.

4 - An Advanced Reader’s Picture Book of Comparative Cognition
Somewhat reminiscent of "the Bookmaking". I thought this was slightly better because it didn't feel as reading a Wikipedia page.

4 - The Waves
I guess I'm just a sucker for these kind of stories. I recently finished "Death's End" by Cixin Liu and it blew my puny mind. This did much the same albeit a gentler blow.

3 - Mono no aware
I thought this was a beautiful story, but at the same time very underwhelming. The calm end felt unrealistic and too easy.

5 - All the Flavors
This was very good. I liked that Liu took a bit more time with this one because this way the storytelling got really amazing.

3 - A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel
I kind of liked this story but it didn't really stuck with me.

4 - The Litigation Master and the Monkey King
This one surprised me, it continuously went places I didn't expect. The fact that it was based on real history made me appreciate it even more.

3 - The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary
I'm pretty torn about this one. I was grossly fascinated by the overall story and the history behind it. The time-travel idea seemed a bit much though. But the thing that made it pretty hard to read was the repetition. I got the idea that almost every aspect of the idea of this story was written down three or four times for me to read in different wordings. And, as much as i liked Chang's "Like what you see?", this was not really executed very well.

I nearly didn't read past the first few chapters. The beginning of the book did nothing for me, but I kept on going so I could participate in the r/fantasy discussion (and now I'm months late).

BUT. As I kept going, the book kept getting better and better. I was confused by the cast of characters, just because there were so many, but not so much that I felt like I was reading The Goblin Emperor.

I was bummed that the woman who looked like the youngest god died as soon as she did. I feel like she still had a lot more story to her, and her character was gone much too quickly.

Rin is a huge dummy.

Gin forever.

The Wall of Storms is really two books in one. The first part tells the story of the political aftermath of what's now term the Chrysanthemum-Dandelion War, and we get to know the emperor's three eldest childen as a potential succession fight looms. Most of the action revolves around the machinations of Empress Jia, who has very specific ideas about what a good government should look like, and uses devious means to entrap and condemn the Emperor's former allies for no other reason than they didn't fit in her mental model. At the height of this action, however, the fledgling empire is invaded by a seemingly unstoppable outside force, led by a ruler as clever as our heroes and much more ruthless. The book quickly shifts away from politics to war, with a focus on skunkworks-style military engineering as both sides try to adapt to the other's tactics. While the success rate of the new military weapons and techniques seemed a bit unrealistic at times, it was fun to read about the clever things they came up with. On the whole, I found the first part a bit depressing as the previously-likable Jia was turned into a bit of a villain, but the second part picked up as I enjoy reading about people being clever.½

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/speaking-bones-by-ken-liu-brief-note/

Fourth book in a fantasy series of which I have not read the first three; over a thousand pages in length; I did not get far.

A wonderful, thought provoking collection of short stories from someone who knows how to write short stories.

Well worth the 5 star rating i gave it.