Print List Price: | $18.99 |
Kindle Price: | $9.99 Save $9.00 (47%) |
Sold by: | Simon and Schuster Digital Sales LLC Price set by seller. |
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Audible sample Sample
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Kindle Edition
Bestselling author Ken Liu selects his multiple award-winning stories for a groundbreaking collection—including a brand-new piece exclusive to this volume.
With his debut novel, The Grace of Kings, taking the literary world by storm, Ken Liu now shares his finest short fiction in The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. This mesmerizing collection features many of Ken’s award-winning and award-finalist stories, including: “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” (Finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards), “Mono No Aware” (Hugo Award winner), “The Waves” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” (Nebula and Sturgeon Award finalists), “All the Flavors” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King” (Nebula Award finalist), and the most awarded story in the genre’s history, “The Paper Menagerie” (The only story to win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards).
Insightful and stunning stories that plumb the struggle against history and betrayal of relationships in pivotal moments, this collection showcases one of our greatest and original voices.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherS&S/Saga Press
- Publication dateMarch 8, 2016
- File size2412 KB
Customers who bought this item also bought
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Review
Questions of identity galvanize the 15 stories in this outstanding collection of fantastical fiction, giving them extraordinary gravity and resonance. In "Good Hunting," the human companion of a supernatural creature from Chinese folklore contrives an ingenious way to help her adapt to a steampunk future. The title tale (which swept the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards), in which a mother expresses love for her son through the magically animated origami animals she creates, is one of several in which the author uses Chinese-American experience to explore how all individuals assimilate into society. Whether writing about Asian culture and history, as in "The Literomancer" and "All the Flavors," or extraterrestrial civilizations, as in "The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species" and "An Advanced Reader's Picture Book of Comparative Cognition," Liu (The Grace of Kings) universalizes the experiences of his characters, who realize at some point, as the protagonist of "Mono No Aware" does, that "we are defined by the places that we hold in the web of others' lives." Gracefully written and often profoundly moving, these stories are high-water marks of contemporary speculative fiction. (Mar.) (Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW Feb 29, 2016)
These remarkable stories highlight Liu’s themes of family, love, and politics and gathered in one collection pack an even bigger punch. Those who revere shorter speculative works will definitely want this book. (*STARRED REVIEW, Library Journal February 26th, 2016)
Emotionally unpredictable, Liu's stories take off in unexpected directions and arrive at destinations both startling and satisfying. (Shelf Awareness, *STARRED REVIEW March 25th, 2016)
Liu’s wondrous tales eloquently explore the place where ordinary and the extraordinary meet. (The Washington Post March 22nd, 2016)
Selected as “14 of the Most Buzzed About Books of 2016” (BuzzFeed March 30th, 2016)
There is a dark and sometimes shocking edge to some of these stories, but nearly all are provocative, and several are brilliant. (The Chicago Tribune April 6th, 2016)
Liu's book compiles brilliant stories written in several different, overlapping modes, a technically dazzling collection of compulsively readable narratives, presenting characters with agonizing moral dilemmas and never forgetting the heart. (The Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee) March 18th, 2016)
Liu’s talent in evoking atmosphere and culture make these tales more than stories – they’re journeys. If you’re looking to dream of another world, or reflect on our own, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of The Paper Menagerie. (Muggle.net March 8th, 2016)
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
THE BOOKMAKING HABITS OF SELECT SPECIES
There is no definitive census of all the intelligent species in the universe. Not only are there perennial arguments about what qualifies as intelligence, but each moment and everywhere, civilizations rise and fall, much as the stars are born and die.
Time devours all.
Yet every species has its unique way of passing on its wisdom through the ages, its way of making thoughts visible, tangible, frozen for a moment like a bulwark against the irresistible tide of time.
Everyone makes books.
• • •
It is said by some that writing is just visible speech. But we know such views are parochial.
A musical people, the Allatians write by scratching their thin, hard proboscis across an impressionable surface, such as a metal tablet covered by a thin layer of wax or hardened clay. (Wealthy Allatians sometimes wear a nib made of precious metals on the tip of the nose.) The writer speaks his thoughts as he writes, causing the proboscis to vibrate up and down as it etches a groove in the surface.
To read a book inscribed this way, an Allatian places his nose into the groove and drags it through. The delicate proboscis vibrates in sympathy with the waveform of the groove, and a hollow chamber in the Allatian skull magnifies the sound. In this manner, the voice of the writer is re-created.
The Allatians believe that they have a writing system superior to all others. Unlike books written in alphabets, syllabaries, or logograms, an Allatian book captures not only words, but also the writer’s tone, voice, inflection, emphasis, intonation, rhythm. It is simultaneously a score and recording. A speech sounds like a speech, a lament a lament, and a story re-creates perfectly the teller’s breathless excitement. For the Allatians, reading is literally hearing the voice of the past.
But there is a cost to the beauty of the Allatian book. Because the act of reading requires physical contact with the soft, malleable surface, each time a text is read, it is also damaged and some aspects of the original irretrievably lost. Copies made of more durable materials inevitably fail to capture all the subtleties of the writer’s voice, and are thus shunned.
In order to preserve their literary heritage, the Allatians have to lock away their most precious manuscripts in forbidding libraries where few are granted access. Ironically, the most important and beautiful works of Allatian writers are rarely read, but are known only through interpretations made by scribes who attempt to reconstruct the original in new books after hearing the source read at special ceremonies.
For the most influential works, hundreds, thousands of interpretations exist in circulation, and they, in turn, are interpreted and proliferate through new copies. The Allatian scholars spend much of their time debating the relative authority of competing versions and inferring, based on the multiplicity of imperfect copies, the imagined voice of their antecedent, an ideal book uncorrupted by readers.
• • •
The Quatzoli do not believe that thinking and writing are different things at all.
They are a race of mechanical beings. It is not known if they began as mechanical creations of another (older) species, if they are shells hosting the souls of a once-organic race, or if they evolved on their own from inert matter.
A Quatzoli’s body is made out of copper and shaped like an hourglass. Their planet, tracing out a complicated orbit between three stars, is subjected to immense tidal forces that churn and melt its metal core, radiating heat to the surface in the form of steamy geysers and lakes of lava. A Quatzoli ingests water into its bottom chamber a few times a day, where it slowly boils and turns into steam as the Quatzoli periodically dips itself into the bubbling lava lakes. The steam passes through a regulating valve—the narrow part of the hourglass—into the upper chamber, where it powers the various gears and levers that animate the mechanical creature.
At the end of the work cycle, the steam cools and condenses against the inner surface of the upper chamber. The droplets of water flow along grooves etched into the copper until they are collected into a steady stream, and this stream then passes through a porous stone rich in carbonate minerals before being disposed of outside the body.
This stone is the seat of the Quatzoli mind. The stone organ is filled with thousands, millions of intricate channels, forming a maze that divides the water into countless tiny, parallel flows that drip, trickle, wind around each other to represent simple values which, together, coalesce into streams of consciousness and emerge as currents of thought.
Over time, the pattern of water flowing through the stone changes. Older channels are worn down and disappear or become blocked and closed off—and so some memories are forgotten. New channels are created, connecting previously separated flows—an epiphany—and the departing water deposits new mineral growths at the far, youngest end of the stone, where the tentative, fragile miniature stalactites are the newest, freshest thoughts.
When a Quatzoli parent creates a child in the forge, its final act is to gift the child with a sliver of its own stone mind, a package of received wisdom and ready thoughts that allow the child to begin its life. As the child accumulates experiences, its stone brain grows around that core, becoming ever more intricate and elaborate, until it can, in turn, divide its mind for the use of its children.
And so the Quatzoli are themselves books. Each carries within its stone brain a written record of the accumulated wisdom of all its ancestors: the most durable thoughts that have survived millions of years of erosion. Each mind grows from a seed inherited through the millennia, and every thought leaves a mark that can be read and seen.
Some of the more violent races of the universe, such as the Hesperoe, once delighted in extracting and collecting the stone brains of the Quatzoli. Still displayed in their museums and libraries, the stones—often labeled simply “ancient books”—no longer mean much to most visitors.
Because they could separate thought from writing, the conquering races were able to leave a record that is free of blemishes and thoughts that would have made their descendants shudder.
But the stone brains remain in their glass cases, waiting for water to flow through the dry channels so that once again they can be read and live.
• • •
The Hesperoe once wrote with strings of symbols that represented sounds in their speech, but now no longer write at all.
They have always had a complicated relationship with writing, the Hesperoe. Their great philosophers distrusted writing. A book, they thought, was not a living mind yet pretended to be one. It gave sententious pronouncements, made moral judgments, described purported historical facts, or told exciting stories . . . yet it could not be interrogated like a real person, could not answer its critics or justify its accounts.
The Hesperoe wrote down their thoughts reluctantly, only when they could not trust the vagaries of memory. They far preferred to live with the transience of speech, oratory, debate.
At one time, the Hesperoe were a fierce and cruel people. As much as they delighted in debates, they loved even more the glories of war. Their philosophers justified their conquests and slaughter in the name of forward motion: War was the only way to animate the ideals embedded in the static text passed down through the ages, to ensure that they remained true, and to refine them for the future. An idea was worth keeping only if it led to victory.
When they finally discovered the secret of mind storage and mapping, the Hesperoe stopped writing altogether.
In the moments before the deaths of great kings, generals, philosophers, their minds are harvested from the failing bodies. The paths of every charged ion, every fleeting electron, every strange and charming quark, are captured and cast in crystalline matrices. These minds are frozen forever in that moment of separation from their owners.
At this point, the process of mapping begins. Carefully, meticulously, a team of master cartographers—assisted by numerous apprentices—trace out each of the countless minuscule tributaries, impressions, and hunches that commingle into the flow and ebb of thought, until they gather into the tidal forces, the ideas that made their originators so great.
Once the mapping is done, they begin the calculations to project the continuing trajectories of the traced-out paths so as to simulate the next thought. The charting of the courses taken by the great, frozen minds into the vast, dark terra incognita of the future consumes the efforts of the most brilliant scholars of the Hesperoe. They devote the best years of their lives to it, and when they die, their minds, in turn, are charted indefinitely into the future as well.
In this way, the great minds of the Hesperoe do not die. To converse with them, the Hesperoe only have to find the answers on the mind maps. Thus, they no longer have a need for books as they used to make them—which were merely dead symbols—for the wisdom of the past is always with them, still thinking, still guiding, still exploring.
And as more and more of their time and resources are devoted to the simulation of ancient minds, the Hesperoe have also grown less warlike, much to the relief of their neighbors. Perhaps it is true that some books do have a civilizing influence.
• • •
The Tull-Toks read books they did not write.
They are creatures of energy. Ethereal, flickering patterns of shifting field potentials, the Tull-Toks are strung out among the stars like ghostly ribbons. When the starships of the other species pass through, the ships barely feel a gentle tug.
The Tull-Toks claim that everything in the universe can be read. Each star is a living text, where the massive convection currents of superheated gas tell an epic drama, with the starspots serving as punctuation, the coronal loops extended figures of speech, and the flares emphatic passages that ring true in the deep silence of cold space. Each planet contains a poem, written out in the bleak, jagged, staccato rhythm of bare rocky cores or the lyrical, lingering, rich rhymes—both masculine and feminine—of swirling gas giants. And then there are the planets with life, constructed like intricate jeweled clockwork, containing a multitude of self-referential literary devices that echo and re-echo without end.
But it is the event horizon around a black hole where the Tull-Toks claim the greatest books are to be found. When a Tull-Tok is tired of browsing through the endless universal library, she drifts toward a black hole. As she accelerates toward the point of no return, the streaming gamma rays and X-rays unveil more and more of the ultimate mystery for which all the other books are but glosses. The book reveals itself to be ever more complex, more nuanced, and just as she is about to be overwhelmed by the immensity of the book she is reading, her companions, observing from a distance, realize with a start that time seems to have slowed down to a standstill for her, and she will have eternity to read it as she falls forever toward a center that she will never reach.
Finally, a book has triumphed over time.
Of course, no Tull-Tok has ever returned from such a journey, and many dismiss their discussion of reading black holes as pure myth. Indeed, many consider the Tull-Toks to be nothing more than illiterate frauds who rely on mysticism to disguise their ignorance.
Still, some continue to seek out the Tull-Toks as interpreters of the books of nature they claim to see all around us. The interpretations thus produced are numerous and conflicting, and lead to endless debates over the books’ content and—especially—authorship.
• • •
In contrast to the Tull-Toks, who read books at the grandest scale, the Caru’ee are readers and writers of the minuscule.
Small in stature, the Caru’ee each measure no larger than the period at the end of this sentence. In their travels, they seek from others only to acquire books that have lost all meaning and could no longer be read by the descendants of the authors.
Due to their unimpressive size, few races perceive the Caru’ee as threats, and they are able to obtain what they want with little trouble. For instance, at the Caru’ee’s request, the people of Earth gave them tablets and vases incised with Linear A, bundles of knotted strings called quipus, as well as an assortment of ancient magnetic disks and cubes that they no longer knew how to decipher. The Hesperoe, after they had ceased their wars of conquest, gave the Caru’ee some ancient stones that they believed to be books looted from the Quatzoli. And even the reclusive Untou, who write with fragrances and flavors, allowed them to have some old bland books whose scents were too faint to be read.
The Caru’ee make no effort at deciphering their acquisitions. They seek only to use the old books, now devoid of meaning, as a blank space upon which to construct their sophisticated, baroque cities.
The incised lines on the vases and tablets were turned into thoroughfares whose walls were packed with honeycombed rooms that elaborate on the pre-existing outlines with fractal beauty. The fibers in the knotted ropes were teased apart, re-woven, and re-tied at the microscopic level, until each original knot had been turned into a Byzantine complex of thousands of smaller knots, each a kiosk suitable for a Caru’ee merchant just starting out or a warren of rooms for a young Caru’ee family. The magnetic disks, on the other hand, were used as arenas of entertainment, where the young and adventurous careened across their surface during the day, delighting in the shifting push and pull of local magnetic potential. At night, the place was lit up by tiny lights that followed the flow of magnetic forces, and long-dead data illuminated the dance of thousands of young people searching for love, seeking to connect.
Yet it is not accurate to say that the Caru’ee do no interpretation at all. When members of the species that had given these artifacts to the Caru’ee come to visit, inevitably they feel a sense of familiarity with the Caru’ee’s new construction.
For example, when representatives from Earth were given a tour of the Great Market built in a quipu, they observed—via the use of a microscope—bustling activity, thriving trade, and an incessant murmur of numbers, accounts, values, currency. One of Earth’s representatives, a descendant of the people who had once knotted the string books, was astounded. Though he could not read them, he knew that the quipus had been made to keep track of accounts and numbers, to tally up taxes and ledgers.
Or take the example of the Quatzoli, who found the Caru’ee repurposing one of the lost Quatzoli stone brains as a research complex. The tiny chambers and channels, where ancient, watery thoughts once flowed, were now laboratories, libraries, teaching rooms, and lecture halls echoing with new ideas. The Quatzoli delegation had come to recover the mind of their ancestor, but left convinced that all was as it should be.
It is as if the Caru’ee were able to perceive an echo of the past, and unconsciously, as they built upon a palimpsest of books written long ago and long forgotten, chanced to stumble upon an essence of meaning that could not be lost, no matter how much time had passed.
They read without knowing they are reading.
• • •
Pockets of sentience glow in the cold, deep void of the universe like bubbles in a vast, dark sea. Tumbling, shifting, joining and breaking, they leave behind spiraling phosphorescent trails, each as unique as a signature, as they push and rise toward an unseen surface.
Everyone makes books.
Product details
- ASIN : B00TBKYK60
- Publisher : S&S/Saga Press; Reprint edition (March 8, 2016)
- Publication date : March 8, 2016
- Language : English
- File size : 2412 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 465 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 1481442546
- Best Sellers Rank: #187,534 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #186 in Science Fiction Anthologies (Kindle Store)
- #284 in U.S. Short Stories
- #420 in Fantasy Anthologies
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Ken Liu (http://kenliu.name) is an American author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards for his fiction, he has also won top genre honors abroad in Japan, Spain, and France.
Liu’s most characteristic work is the four-volume epic fantasy series, The Dandelion Dynasty, in which engineers, not wizards, are the heroes of a silkpunk world on the verge of modernity. His debut collection of short fiction, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, has been published in more than a dozen languages. A second collection, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, followed. He also penned the Star Wars novel, The Legends of Luke Skywalker.
He’s often involved in media adaptations of his work. Recent projects include “The Message,” under development by 21 Laps and FilmNation Entertainment; “Good Hunting,” adapted as an episode in season one of Netflix’s breakout adult animated series Love, Death + Robots; and AMC’s Pantheon, with Craig Silverstein as executive producer, adapted from an interconnected series of Liu’s short stories.
Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Liu worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. He frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, machine-augmented creativity, history of technology, bookmaking, and the mathematics of origami.
Liu lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the stories engrossing, fantastical, and captivating. They also appreciate the imaginative, wide-ranging, and unforgettable stories. Readers describe the emotional tone as poignant, touching, and insightful. They praise the writing quality as well-written, interesting, and illuminating. Customers also mention that the content is poignant and touching. They are impressed with every page of the book and the styles fit the story well.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the stories in the book engrossing, fantasy, and speculative. They also say the book has a lot of range, including cosmic science fiction, near-future speculation, and fantastical all rolled together.
"...• “The Regular” is an excellent story about the way a female ex-cop, and now private detective, tracks down a serial killer who preys on prostitutes...." Read more
"...I loved reading this book. Each story was a new adventure and I went into each new story with great anticipation...." Read more
"...Others are pure literary. Either way, it's a tough book to put down because each story is better than the last...." Read more
"These stories are all well written, but they are melancholy...." Read more
Customers find the book very enjoyable, with a perfect prose. They also say the collection is well worth the effort and unique.
"...” and “The Paper Menagerie” were the best of the stories—definitely worth reading. This is a four star work that will both entertain and educate...." Read more
"...quite fantasy (not in the sense of dragons or whatever) but absolutely fantastical and fantastically written...." Read more
"...Some of them are science fiction, folkloric, strange, or fantastical. Others are pure literary...." Read more
"...often wryly funny, as you digest the action and re-read the pithy and elegant prose." Read more
Customers find the writing quality well written, interesting, and powerful. They also say the descriptions are accurate and the perspective is fresh and sharp. Readers also say it's good for a little light reading.
"The writer is gifted and creative. I guarantee you won't guess the direction that these stories take." Read more
"...(although he did in a later story in the book), his descriptions were still accurate, as were his Wade-Giles romanizations of Mandarin words...." Read more
"...but absolutely fantastical and fantastically written...." Read more
"...He employs rich language and complex themes that made me reflect on the stories long after reading them...." Read more
Customers find the emotional tone of the book poignant, touching, and insightful. They also appreciate the historical fiction ones, which are woven together by themes of family and the challenges of asserting. Readers say the book is imaginative and heartfelt, and they easily get drawn into the plots.
"...I thought this story was very poignant. I liked it a lot.• “..." Read more
"...I loved the mix of alternate history and sci fi and... not sure what to call it... not quite fantasy (not in the sense of dragons or whatever) but..." Read more
"...Some of them are science fiction, folkloric, strange, or fantastical. Others are pure literary...." Read more
"...Very depressing, but also much needed. I was aware of some of the atrocities, but not this one in particular...." Read more
Customers find the book super imaginative, with a wide variety of subjects and styles. They also say the book has a very unique perspective, touching on many topics. Readers also mention that the book contains oriental cultural references and sense of family. They say the writing is intelligent, original, thoughtful, and humane.
"The writer is gifted and creative. I guarantee you won't guess the direction that these stories take." Read more
"...He employs rich language and complex themes that made me reflect on the stories long after reading them...." Read more
"...The stories are varied in length, are wide in range and subject, and are all unforgettable...." Read more
"...The more spec-fic mash ups are pretty good, but it's his Asian fantasy that really comes alive...." Read more
Customers find the fantasy elements in the book captivating, fun, and intriguing. They also say the normal-seeming happenings are incredible and inspiring.
"...It was an interesting read with some creative thoughts. The author concludes the chapter with the words: “Everyone makes books.”• “..." Read more
"...are varied in length, are wide in range and subject, and are all unforgettable...." Read more
"...These stories are packed with excitement and leave you wanting to finish them in one sitting...." Read more
"...favorite is the title story, The Paper Menagerie, which is happy, sad, fun, and fantastical all rolled together...." Read more
Customers find the content poignant, touching, insightful, inspiring, and intelligent. They also say the author does a wonderful job driving a strong political theme through his characters.
"...of history lesson, science fiction, revisionist history, and social commentary, Liu deserves every award and accolade he has received for this..." Read more
"...Liu did do a wonderful job of driving a strong political theme through his characters in “The Literomancer.”..." Read more
"...And there are even lessons: A very moving personal story, as in "The Paper Menagerie" (which had me shedding a tear at the end) and societal..." Read more
"...of, mundane or banal, normal seeming happenings is incredible and inspiring...." Read more
Customers find the book collection amazing.
"If you like great short stories this is a gem of a collection." Read more
"Absolutely beautiful work. Each story is incredible and as a collection it is indispensable...." Read more
"Good writer. Stories vary from good to great. Nice collection and I would recommend as a good read." Read more
"...I will relish re-reading this collection again and again. It is a treasure." Read more
Reviews with images
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
• “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” is a story about how different species in the universe might produce or read books. It was an interesting read with some creative thoughts. The author concludes the chapter with the words: “Everyone makes books.”
• “State Change” is a story about a young woman named Rina who believes that her soul resides in an ice cube that she keeps frozen and keeps near her at all times. She has multiple refrigerators in her apartment, and one underneath her desk at work. She carries the ice cube in an insulated carrier. She has a girlfriend named Amy who believes that her soul resides in a pack of cigarettes. They believe that if the ice cube melts, or if the cigarette pack becomes empty, they will die. Rina meets Jimmy at the office. His soul resides in a salt shaker. Eventually, the cigarette pack is empty, and the ice cube melts.
• “The Perfect Match” is a story about a mega-corporation named “Centillion.” It is reminiscent of Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook, all rolled into one. Its marketing thrust is like that of Google. It has a female persona that speaks to its clients like Siri or Alexa does today. The voice is named “Tilly.” Tilly is ubiquitous. She tells people what to eat, what movies to see, who they should date, everything about their lives. Sai meets his new neighbor, Jenny, and they decide to abandon Tilly and Centillion, and to work actively to destroy the company and regain their individual freedoms. Needless to say, the plan fails. This story is spooky because it has already begun—started by the companies I just listed.
• “Good Hunting” is a story set in Southern or Southeastern China, not too far from Hong Kong. Liang and his father are demon hunters. Father has a sword named “Swallowtail” that he uses to kill the demons, who are shape-shifters. The particular demons in question are able to change from human form into the form of foxes. Although intended to follow in his father’s footsteps, Liang befriends a demon who can transform into the shape of a white fox. Instead of killing her, he hides her from searchers and brings her food. The British arrive in Hong Kong, and they build a railroad. Soon, the demons disappear, and father and son no longer have work. Liang moves to Hong Kong and becomes an engineer with expertise in metal working and steam power. After a time, he meets his demon friend, who has also traveled to Hong Kong in order to survive. The story takes some interesting twists after this.
• “The Literomancer” is a story that is set in Taiwan, beginning on September 18, 1961. The protagonist is a fourth-grade American girl named Lilly Dyer. She had recently moved to Taiwan from Texas with her family when her father was transferred by his employer. Lily is picked on by the other little girls at the American school where she attends classes, and she is not accepted by the Chinese children in the neighborhood. She meets an old man named “Kan,” and his adopted grandson named “Teddy.” Kan is a man who came to Taiwan from the mainland of China to escape both the Communists and the Nationalists. He was educated in America at Harvard. Teddy wants to play baseball for the Red Sox. Lilly finds parts of a classified letter written by her father, and she reads it. Later she shares one of the words in the letter with Kan, and then tells her father about it. That was a very big mistake.
I was living in Taiwan during all of 1961, and I found at least one aspect of the story to be not very believable. The author has a political axe to grind, here, and he takes the side of the mainlanders against the native Taiwanese people. One of the stories he tells is one that I heard many times while I was in Taiwan, except that the roles of villains and innocent people was reversed. Mainlanders absolutely controlled the government, the military, the educations system, and the financial systems in 1961. I know. I was there. Also, a classified letter with the words that her father allegedly wrote, and that Lilly found and read, would never have left the confines of a secure location, nowadays called a “SCIF” (Secure Classified Information Facility). It could never have been found in somebody’s home, like Lily’s. The part of the story that referred to the origins of the Chinese written language was, however, quite good. Even though Mr. Liu did not use the conventional term “radical” to describe the roots of the more common Chinese characters (although he did in a later story in the book), his descriptions were still accurate, as were his Wade-Giles romanizations of Mandarin words. (The Chinese language has no alphabet.)
• “Simulacrum” is a story about a man who invents, develops and uses simulacra. Paul Larimore is a technical entrepreneur who has invented several models of simulacra, including a very realistic artificial intelligence for them. He even uses them as a substitute for pornography. One day, his thirteen year-old daughter, Anna, is sent home from school early because she is ill. She walks in on her naked father and four female simulacra engaged in a simulated sex fantasy. She is disgusted, and by the time she leaves for college, she will no longer speak to her father, or have any contact with him. Eventually, Larimore makes a simulacrum of his daughter Anna that is frozen at about the age of seven. The story is mildly interesting, but I really didn’t like it much.
• “The Regular” is an excellent story about the way a female ex-cop, and now private detective, tracks down a serial killer who preys on prostitutes. He murders them, mutilates their bodies, steals all of their valuables, and then uses films that they have made to blackmail their clients. He is called the “Watcher.” The detective is Ruth Law, and she was fired from the police department when she failed to use her firearm in a hostage situation that, ultimately, resulted in four deaths. Leave out the sci-fi element of the story, and this is just as good as the best of the police and crime genre of fiction written today. This author could easily transition from sci-fi and fantasy to police procedurals and murder mysteries if he wished. The story is excellent.
• “The Paper Menagerie” is about a little boy named Kan, whose Chinese mother is able to make origami paper animals and then breathe life into them using magic. The paper animals then become animated and lifelike, with behaviors mimicking their real-life templates. The first animal she makes is an origami paper tiger made from leftover Christmas gift-wrapping paper, so the tiger has the stripes from the candy-cane design on the paper. Not only can the tiger move around, it can also growl. The boy loves his paper menagerie, which also includes a goat, a deer, a water buffalo, and a shark made from tin foil that chases goldfish around their bowl.
Kan’s father is an American, and the family lives in Connecticut. His mother was selected by his father from a catalog of Chinese women that, supposedly, came from Hong Kong and spoke English. This wasn’t true, of course, but Kan’s father purchased and married his mother anyway, and they traveled back to Connecticut. Kan, also called “Jack,” was born a year later. I thought this story was very poignant. I liked it a lot.
• “An Advanced Readers’ Picture Book of Comparative Cognition” is about various forms of intelligent life in the universe, and how they perceive, remember and think. The author describes giant single-celled beings living in a warm sea who briefly merge and exchange all knowledge, becoming two identical individuals. He also describes a race that travels in ships that accelerate forever, traveling to the end of the universe. The protagonist is a woman who grew up on a boat and now wishes to join a group of humans who have decided to journey to the focal point of the Sun’s gravitational lens, which is fourteen times the distance from Pluto to the Sun out into empty space in the hope of hearing radio signals from extraterrestrial intelligent life. I didn’t really like it much.
• “The Waves” is a story about a group of humans who have decided to travel directly to the stars in a form of generation ship that will travel for 400 years. Their goal is a star system known as 61 Virginis. Unexpectedly, the ship receives a message from Earth that changes everything. As a background, traveler Maggie Chao is reading old Chinese fables to some of the children on the ship. When the pilgrims arrive at their destination, they learn that the system is already inhabited—by humans. Or, at least, what used to be humans. The pilgrims have been passed by in their journey by ever faster ships that have reached the planet ahead of them. It was interesting to see where the author went with this concept, because he didn’t stop there. I thought this story was pretty good.
• “Mono No Aware” is a story set in deep space in the not-too-distant future. An asteroid has been detected heading for earth, and America has decided to build great “generation” space ships to travel to a distant star system in the hope of survival. Hiroto is a young Japanese boy whose mother has arranged for him to board the only starship life boat to survive the ensuing wars on earth. He is the very last surviving member of the Japanese people. Later, at age twenty-five, his job aboard the ship is to monitor the vast light-sail that powers it. He detects a tear in the fabric of the sail, and it is driving the ship off course. He volunteers to repair it, and takes a repair kit out to the sail. He succeeds, and becomes a hero to the others—but not without cost. His strategy is modeled after the Japanese board game, “Go.”
• “All The Flavors” is about a group of Chinese immigrant placer miners in Idaho City, Idaho who arrive there shortly after two outlaws, Obee and Crick (who call themselves “The Missouri Boys”) burn the town after murdering a saloon proprietor. The year is 1865. Lily Seaver is a little girl who lives in the town and is fascinated by the music of the Chinese men, and by the smell of their cooking. Her father is a merchant whose store was destroyed in the fire, but who is now rebuilding. Lily likes to roam around the area outside the town, and she comes across the placer mine being operated by the “Chinamen.” She hides behind a tree and watches them and listens to their singing. She is there when Obee and Crick arrive with guns to rob the miners, and she sees their leader, Lao Guan (called Logan by the locals), get shot by the outlaws. But after Lao Guan has been shot in the shoulder, he is still able to kill one of the outlaws with a stone he has picked up and thrown. Lily tries to run, but she falls and is injured. The miners treat her wounds, and they treat and suture Logan before they all return to the miner’s house in town. They use traditional Chinese herbs and potions, along with acupuncture.
The next scene shows Logan teaching Lily the rudiments of the game “Go,” known as “Wei Qi” by the Chinese, by scratching a board grid in the dirt with his knife, and using lotus and watermelon seeds as game pieces. He tells Lily the story of Guan Yu, the Chinese God of War. He relates how Guan Yu was taught to play Wei Qi by his father, using lotus seeds and watermelon seeds as game pieces. The story proceeds from there, and the author presents a couple of footnotes at the end. This story is much more like historical fiction than science fiction or fantasy. At 87 pages, it is a bit long for a short story. It is closer to being a novella in my view. I enjoyed reading it, however.
• “A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel” is alternative history fiction in that it is supposed that a two-tube tunnel has been built between Seattle, Tokyo and Shanghai. It is set in the early to mid-twentieth century. It took ten years to construct the 5,880 mile long tunnel: 1929 to 1938. Seven million men worked on the project, the majority of which were furnished by Japan and the United States. The breakthrough between the two ends of the tunnel took place in 1938.
The protagonist is a Formosan (Taiwanese) who calls himself Charlie. Charlie was one of the diggers who dug the portion of the tunnel between Shanghai and the halfway point. There is a rest area midway through the tunnel, under the Pacific Ocean, where travelers can rest and eat on their journeys between Asia and America. It is called Midpoint City, and a number of people live there permanently, including Charlie. The trip from Shanghai to Seattle takes about two days due to the maximum speed of the monorail carriages that travel through the tunnel being only 120 mph, although it is hoped that it might soon be increased to 200 mph. Still, it is much faster than the zeppelins, aeroplanes or ships that currently carried passengers at the time. The story is a metaphorical description of the history of how the Japanese military treated the Chinese and the Manchurians from the 1920s until the end of WWII. It is well worth reading.
• “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King” is a story that tells us how, perhaps, the massacre of the city of YangZhou came to be known, even after a brutal suppression by the Manchu emperors. Apparently, the populace of the entire city was wiped out— murdered by the Manchus on the order of Prince Dodo. The slaughter lasted ten days, and every single Chinese witness was killed, but one was able to write a book about it. The book was hidden, and later smuggled out to Japan, but the Manchus searched relentlessly for it. Later, the words of a children’s song in the form of a puzzle led scholars to track down the book and reveal the truth. This is a good story, and it tells us something of the history of China.
• “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” is a story about a Chinese-American husband (Evan Wei) and his Japanese-American wife (Akemi Kirino) team who invent a method for anybody to travel back and look at a time in the past. She is a physicist. He is a historian. The only problem with their technique, which uses quantum entanglement between two previously undiscovered sub-atomic particles similar to photons, is that once the place and time has been viewed, it is lost forever and can never be viewed again. (Thus, the title of the story.) The historian husband is the lead member of the team, and he decides that, rather than allow scholars and scientists to use the technology first, it should be reserved for the families of the Chinese victims of Japanese military atrocities in Pingfang, on the outskirts of Harbin, Manchuria in the early part of WWII. This arbitrary viewing of the past leads many people to believe that history is becoming like Swiss Cheese, with many holes in it.
This decision by Dr. Wei turns out to be quite controversial, however, and Congress holds hearings that result in the US government shutting the project down. Many people, called “deniers” do not believe that the technology is real, and Dr. Wei loses his teaching tenure. It seems that a unit of the Japanese Imperial Army, called Unit 731, engaged in terrible atrocities under the guise of medical research at the that place during the war. As the war ended, the camp was destroyed leaving little trace, the unit was disbanded, and everybody involved was sworn to secrecy. Parts of this story are historically true, and have been validated. The Japanese government, however, has never formally apologized for this particular horror of war, and the United States was complicit in the cover-up so that it could obtain the results of the bio-warfare and medical research.
The author, like very many other Chinese, is very much focused on this horrible chapter in human history. To this day, many Chinese hold a visceral hatred for the Japanese and their government. What everybody seems to have forgotten, however, is that human history is rife with events where the innocent have been tortured and slaughtered. Has the author forgotten his own words in an earlier story: “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King”? It wasn’t the Japanese who slaughtered the people of HangZhou, China. It was the Manchus. Or how about, more recently, the persecution of the Falun Gong in modern-day China? In a report compiled by “World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong,” we learn that, as recently as 2004, the persecution continued. According to the report:
“Today the persecution of Falun Gong still continues in China. As of the end of March 2004, 918 Falun Gong practitioners have been confirmed to die from persecution. More than 100,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been detained and imprisoned. Those who openly express and practice their belief are met with tortures, arbitrary arrests and detentions. Forced Labor camps, mental hospitals, state-owned media and the law have been misused as tools of severe human rights violations. Force [sic] labor and selling organs of executed prisoners are still common.”
People should read this report, which is available on the Internet. We can see from it that atrocities are not unique to the Japanese. It’s happening now to the Rohingyans. It’s going on in Syria. Have we forgotten the Cambodian genocide: “The Cambodian genocide … was carried out by the Khmer Rouge (KR) regime led by Pol Pot between 1975 and 1979 in which an estimated 1.5 to 3 million Cambodians died or were killed by the regime.” (Wikipedia) Humans have been acting like this for thousands of years. We humans are a deeply flawed species
The book, while meriting a four-star award, would have been complete without this final story, in my view. I don’t think it was as well-written as most of the other stories, and it was too overtly political in nature to fit with the rest of the book. I thought ���The Regular” and “The Paper Menagerie” were the best of the stories—definitely worth reading. This is a four star work that will both entertain and educate. I recommend it.
Liu handles the science so smoothly that you rarely if ever notice he is teaching you.
He writes from within the skins, or wearing the shoes, of 3-D, well realized characters. The vivid individuals are incidentally of several different races or ethnicities, and they do powerfully illuminate their experiences for a white bread guy like me, but the grand unified field theories never intrude. Real folks confront, among other things, race hatred - vividly drawn but never clanking stereotypes for any group.
One "for instance" is a detective living with a McGuffin (new tech device) that "regulates" your emotions, as when an armed peace officer decides whether or not to shoot a terrorist using your daughter as a human shield. The dilemma and arc of character shine - the McGuffin and some ethnicity just make the story even better.
And often wryly funny, as you digest the action and re-read the pithy and elegant prose.
Top reviews from other countries
Reviewed in Mexico on October 18, 2019
Au final, l'amateur de science-fiction restera sur sa faim, en tout cas de ce point de vue, car ce recueil n'est pas du tout de la SF. Ken Liu est souvent comparé à Ted Chiang, pour l'unique raison qu'ils sont tous les deux auteurs américains tendance SF et d'origine chinoise. En réalité, ces deux auteurs n'ont strictement rien en commun qui permette une comparaison. Mais s'il faut vraiment s'adonner à ce jeu, personnellement je préfère les nouvelles de Ted Chiang dans le registre hard-SF que la mélancolie de Ken Liu.
Une précision : le contenu de The Paper Menagerie n'est pas identique au recueil publié en France par Le Bélial sous le titre La Ménagerie de Papier (La Ménagerie pour faire court). La Ménagerie de Le Bélial contient 19 nouvelles. Certaines nouvelles sont communes aux deux éditions, d'autres non. L'édition américaine ne contient que 15 nouvelles dont notamment les deux longs textes The Regular (qui sera publié dans la collection Une Heure Lumière de Le Bélial en Juin 2017) et The Man Who Ended History (publié dans la collection Une Heure Lumière en 2016 sous le titre L'homme qui Mit Fin à L'Histoire) qui sont absents de La Ménagerie. The Paper Menagerie est donc un recueil intéressant à lire, si vous lisez l'anglais, car il regroupe les textes les plus importants de Ken Liu, et notamment ceux qui ont été primés ou nominés.
Je donne ci-dessous un très court résumé des textes qui m'ont semblé les plus intéressants :
- Good Hunting (23 pages). Un très joli texte sur l’évolution de la société face au progrès technologique ou comment la société traditionnelle change avec la disparition de la « magie » dans une ambiance mêlant croyances traditionnelles chinoises, et steampunk. Un des beaux textes du recueil.
- The regular (55 pages). Il s'agit de la nouvelle que Le Bélial s'apprête à sortir traduite sous le titre "Le regard" en Juin 2017. A partir d'un thème très cliché du roman policier, le meurtre d'une prostituée chinoise, Ken Liu construit un polar cyberpunk dans un future proche. La nouvelle est courte mais efficace, même si ce n'est pas le texte le plus original de ce recueil.
- The wave (26 pages) est le texte le plus SF et le plus optimiste du recueil. Il explore l'évolution d'une humanité amené à quitter la terre et à voyager durant des siècles à travers l'espace, subissant de nombreux changements dans sa nature même.
- Mono No Aware (20 pages) reprend le thème de The Wave, pour présenter une version plus sombre du début de l'exile de l'humanité. Le texte est bon car il dresse le portrait d'un jeune exilé japonais confronté à un choix et explore les origines de sa décision, mais il souffre de quelques incohérences d'un point de vue SF.
- All the Flavor (49 pages) est un récit historique sur la vie des premier émigré chinois aux Etats-Unis. Le texte est très bien écrit, passionnant et met en jeu une galerie de personnages vraiment intéressants qui vont apprendre à se comprendre et échanger leur culture. Un très beau texte du recueil.
- The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary (59 pages). Il s'agit d'un texte majeur de Ken Liu, publié en 2016 en français par Le Bélial et qui a fait forte impression à tous ceux qui l'ont lu. Deux chercheurs, Evan Wei et Akemi Kirino, lui historien d'origine chinoise et elle physicienne d'origine japonaise, mettent au point une technologie permettant d'observer le passé. En choisissant d'explorer les crimes japonais commis par l'Unité 751, durant l'occupation japonaise de la Mandchourie, et qui a pratiqué nombres d'horreurs sur des prisonniers chinois et coréens, les deux chercheurs vont déclencher un séisme politique. Ce texte très dur est clairement le meilleur du recueil.
Un mot pour finir sur la nouvelle qui donne son titre au recueil : The Paper Menagerie (15 pages). Il s'agit de la nouvelle qui a fait connaitre Ken Liu et a reçu les trois prix Hugo, Nebula, et World Fantasy. J'ai personnellement été très déçu par cette nouvelle. L'idée de départ est charmante, mais elle est utilisée dans une nouvelle qui cherche à être exagérément triste en déployant des artifices élimés pour finir de manière somme toute assez banale.