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This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January-February 2013. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014, edited by Rich Horton. The story is included in the collection The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016).

This short story originally appeared on Strange Horizons, 12 July 2004. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 10 (2005), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer, Robots: The Recent A. I. (2012), edited by Rich Horton and Sean Wallace, and Twenty-First Century Science Fiction (2013), edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden and David G. Hartwell.

Read the full story for free at Strange Horizons.

Nebula-nominated Novella

A didactic novella pointing out that Chinese immigrants comprised 28.5% of the population of Idaho in 1870, "All the Flavors" co-opts the subtext of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles (1950) to suggest that there are periods where the "Chinese" experience and the "American" experience are interchangeable. -- SF Encyclopedia

Read this story online for free at Giganotosaurus (epub also available).

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May-June 2011. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 17 (2012), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

This short story originally appeared in the collection The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016), and was reprinted in Lightspeed, Issue 109, June 2019.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Broken Stars, edited by multi award-winning writer Ken Liu--translator of the bestselling and Hugo Award-winning novel The Three Body Problem by acclaimed Chinese author Cixin Liu -- is his second thought-provoking anthology of Chinese short speculative fiction. Following Invisible Planets, Liu has now assembled the most comprehensive collection yet available in the English language, sure to thrill and gratify readers developing a taste and excitement for Chinese SF.

Some of the included authors are already familiar to readers in the West (Liu Cixin and Hao Jingfang, both Hugo winners); some are publishing in English for the first time. Because of the growing interest in newer SFF from China, virtually every story here was first published in Chinese in the 2010s.

The stories span the range from short-shorts to novellas, and evoke every hue on the emotional spectrum. Besides stories firmly entrenched in subgenres familiar to Western SFF readers such as hard SF, cyberpunk, science fantasy, and space opera, the anthology also includes stories that showcase deeper ties to Chinese culture: alternate Chinese history, chuanyue time travel, satire with historical and contemporary allusions that are likely unknown to the average Western reader. While the anthology makes no claim or attempt to be "representative" or "comprehensive," it demonstrates the vibrancy and diversity of science fiction being written in China at this moment.

In addition, three essays at the end of the book explore the history of Chinese science fiction publishing, the state of contemporary Chinese fandom, and how the growing interest in science fiction in China has impacted writers who had long labored in obscurity.

Stories include:

• "Goodnight, Melancholy" by Xia Jia
• "The Snow of Jinyang" by Zhang Ran
• "Broken Stars" by Tang Fei
• "Submarines" by Han Song
• "Salinger and the Koreans" by Han Song
• "Under a Dangling Sky" by Cheng Jingbo
• "What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear" by Baoshu
• "The New Year Train" by Hao Jingfang
• "The Robot Who Liked to Tell Tall Tales" by Fei Dao
• "Moonlight" by Liu Cixin
• "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: Laba Porridge" by Anna Wu
• "The First Emperor's Games" by Ma Boyong
• "Reflection" by Gu Shi
• "The Brain Box" by Regina Kanyu Wang
• "Coming of the Light" by Chen Qiufan
• "A History of Future Illnesses" by Chen Qiufan

Essays:

• "A Brief Introduction to Chinese Science Fiction and Fandom," by Regina Kanyu Wang,
• "A New Continent for China Scholars: Chinese Science Fiction Studies" by Mingwei Song
• "Science Fiction: Embarrassing No More" by Fei Dao

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #102 March 2015. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2016, edited by Paula Guran, and Clarkesworld Year Nine: Volume One (2018), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in Chinese in 2018. The original English publication can be found in Lightspeed, March 2018.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Drowned Worlds (2016), edited by Jonathan Strahan. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 2 (2017), edited by Neil Clarke.

This novelette originally appeared in Lightspeed, October 2013.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Short story originally published on Strange Horizons. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2013, edited by Paula Guran and the collection The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016).

Read the full story for free at Strange Horizons (part 1, part 2).

Award-winning translator and author Ken Liu presents a collection of short speculative fiction from China. Some stories have won awards; some have been included in various 'Year's Best' anthologies; some have been well reviewed by critics and readers; and some are simply Ken's personal favorites. Many of the authors collected here (with the obvious exception of Liu Cixin) belong to the younger generation of 'rising stars'.

In addition, three essays at the end of the book explore Chinese science fiction. Liu Cixin's essay, The Worst of All Possible Universes and The Best of All Possible Earths, gives a historical overview of SF in China and situates his own rise to prominence as the premier Chinese author within that context. Chen Qiufan's The Torn Generation gives the view of a younger generation of authors trying to come to terms with the tumultuous transformations around them. Finally, Xia Jia, who holds the first Ph.D. issued for the study of Chinese SF, asks What Makes Chinese Science Fiction Chinese?.

Table of Content

• Introduction: Chinese Science Fiction in Translation
• Chen Qiufan
  • The Year of the Rat
  • The Fish of Lijiang
  • The Flower of Shazui
• Xia Jia
  • A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight
  • Tongtong's Summer
  • Night Journey of the Dragon-Horse (unpublished)
• Ma Boyong
  • The City of Silence
• Hao Jingfang
  • Invisible Planets
  • Folding Beijing
• Tang Fei
  • Call Girl
• Cheng Jingbo
  • Grave of the Fireflies
• Liu Cixin
  • The Circle
  • Taking Care of God
• Essays
  • The Worst of All Possible Universes and the Best of All Possible Earths: Three-Body and Chinese Science Fiction
  • The Torn Generation: Chinese Science Fiction in a Culture in Transition
  • What Makes Chinese Science Fiction Chinese?

The world is shaped like the kanji for umbrella, only written so poorly, like my handwriting, that all the parts are out of proportion.

Read this story online for free at Lightspeed Magazine.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, February 2014.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue One, November-December 2014.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

Seven Birthdays originally appeared in the anthology Bridging Infinity (2016), edited by Jonathan Strahan. It is also included in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 11 (2017), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Ken Liu's "Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon," tells the story of Jing and Yuan, a pair of young women in love for the first time in their lives, who're about to be parted by circumstances beyond their control. On Qixi, the Festival of the Cowherd and Weaver Girl, the legendary lovers give the young women some help and advice.

The story was originally published in the anthology Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories (2014), edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Short story originally published in Lightspeed, February 2011. The story can also be found in the anthology Lightspeed: Year One (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams and the collection The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Polyphony: Volume 4 (2004), edited by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake. It was reprinted in Lightspeed, August 2014 and can also be found in the collection The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #61 October 2011. It can also be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Six (2014), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

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.

Read this story online for free at Lightspeed Magazine.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, January 2012.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology The End Has Come (2015), edited by Hugh Howey and John Joseph Adams. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1 (2016), edited by Neil Clarke.

From stories about time-traveling assassins, to Black Mirror-esque tales of cryptocurrency and internet trolling, to heartbreaking narratives of parent-child relationships, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories is a far-reaching work that explores topical themes from the present and a visionary look at humanity's future.

>This collection includes a selection of Liu's speculative fiction stories over the past five years--seventeen of his best--plus a new novelette.

Contents:

• xi - Preface (The Hidden Girl and Other Stories) - essay
• 1 - Ghost Days - (2013) - novelette
• 27 - Maxwell's Demon - (2012) - short story
• 49 - The Reborn - (2014) - novelette (variant of Reborn)
• 77 - Thoughts and Prayers - (2019) - short story
• 97 - Byzantine Empathy - (2018) - novelette
• 135 - The Gods Will Not Be Chained - [Maddie (Ken Liu) - 1] - (2014) - short story
• 157 - Staying Behind - (2011) - short story
• 173 - Real Artists - (2011) - short story
• 185 - The Gods Will Not Be Slain - [Maddie (Ken Liu) - 2] - (2014) - short story
• 209 - Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer - (2011) - short story
• 223 - The Gods Have Not Died in Vain - [Maddie (Ken Liu) - 3] - (2015) - novelette
• 249 - Memories of My Mother - (2012) - short story
• 255 - Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit - Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts - (2016) - short story
• 273 - Grey Rabbit, Crimson Mare, Coal Leopard - novelette
• 315 - A Chase Beyond the Storms: An excerpt from "The Veiled Throne", Book 3 of the Dandelion Dynasty - short story
• 335 - The Hidden Girl - (2017) - novelette
• 363 - Seven Birthdays - (2016) - short story
• 383 - The Message - (2012) - short story
• 409 - Cutting - (2012) - short story
• 413 - Acknowledgments (The Hidden Girl and Other Stories) - essay

The tiny cottage at the edge of Sanli Village--away from the villagers' noisy houses and busy clan shrines and next to the cool pond filled with lily pads, pink lotus flowers, and playful carp--would have made an ideal romantic summer hideaway for some dissolute poet and his silk-robed mistress from nearby bustling Yangzhou.

Read this story online for free at Lightspeed Magazine.

Winner of the 2014 Sidewise award for best alternative history short form. The story was originally published in Clarkesworld Magazine, #98 November 2014. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine (2015), edtied by Jonathan Stahan, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2015 Edition, edited by Rich Horton, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection (2015) edited by Gardner Dozois, and Clarkesworld Year Nine: Volume One (2018), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Hugo-, Nebula-, and Sturgeon-nominated Novella

Unit 731, a Japanese-run biological and chemical warfare research facility in Pingfang district of Heilongjiang's provincial capital Harbin, where war crimes were carried out against Chinese citizens during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45).

Liu's story imagines a world in which a Chinese-American scientist and his Japanese wife (also a scientist) have devised a time machine, allowing the family members of Unit 731 victims to witness the crimes in person. The catch is that the trip can only be made once for any time period in question.

"The story is inspired by the experiences of Iris Chang, who, as a result of her efforts to bring attention to the Rape of Nanking, roused fierce opposition from denialists," Liu says. "More than just discussing the atrocities, the story is also about memory, the limits of historiography, our collective responsibility to history, the hold of the past on the present, the ways that contemporary politics affect historical interpretation and the duty owed by all of us to the victims of past atrocities and their descendants."

The story patches together the imaginary accounts of those who have made the trip with the responses of academics, average citizens and critics on both sides of the issue in Japan and China. Although the piece comes down heavily on the side of the Chinese, those medical personnel who participated in the experiments are also given an opportunity to justify their behavior in the name of science.

In one passage, a character writes: "Every time we tell a story about a great atrocity, like the Holocaust or Pingfang, the forces of denial are always ready to pounce, to erase, to silence, to forget. One has to be careful, whenever one tells a story about a great injustice. We are a species that loves narrative, but we also have been taught not to trust an individual speaker.

"Yes, it is true that no nation, and no historian, can tell a story that completely encompasses every aspect of the truth. But it is not true that just because all narratives are constructed, that they are equally far from the truth ... There are some narratives that are closer to the truth than others."

Liu also notes that Japan has actually publicly apologized on several occasions for war crimes committed against the Chinese, if only in vague terms.

-- Kelly Chung Dawson, China Daily USA

Read this story online for free at the author's website (PDF).

A gentle fantasy. Love, paper tigers, mail order bride, culture clash. A Chinese mail-order bride literally blows life into tiny paper animals for her American son. The story, which won the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards in 2011, puts Liu in exclusive company with only a few other prestigious science fiction authors who have won all of these awards.

Read this story online for free at io9, or listen to an audio reading at Escape Pod.

A publishing event: Bestselling author Ken Liu selects his award-winning science fiction and fantasy tales 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. This mesmerizing collection features all 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).

A must-have for every science fiction and fantasy fan, this beautiful book is an anthology to savor.

Table of Contents:

• Preface
• The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species
• State Change
• The Perfect Match
• Good Hunting
• The Literomancer
• Simulacrum
• The Regular
• The Paper Menagerie
• An Advanced Reader's Picture Book of Comparative Cognition
• The Waves
• Mono no aware
• All the Flavors
• A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel
• The Litigation Master and the Monkey King
• The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary

A woman who fears she's failing as a painter and as an artist seeks inspiration from one of her favorite poets--finding something even more wondrous, but also more impossible to capture on canvas...

Originally published on 13 September 2023, read it for free at Tor.com

This short story appeared in Lightspeed, December 2012. It can also be found in some editions of the anthology Brave New Worlds: Dystopian Stories (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams and the collection The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Nature, May 16, 2013. It has been anthologized in Paula Guran's The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2014 and Gardner Dozois' The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection (2014).

Read the full story for free at Nature or Tor.com.

Nebula-nominated Novella

"The Regular" by Ken Liu seamlessly blends futuristic technology into detective noir. It shares the tropes of the typical pulpish P.I. novel; the main character has a shattered family and a contentious relationship with law enforcement. It's also got one of the most interesting speculative elements in the book; while most of the stories deal with replaced limbs and body systems and such -- what we tend to visualize when we think "cyborg" -- one of several available "upgrades" in this story is a Regulator, which stabilizes adrenaline, dopamine, and serotonin for optimal emotional performance. It's dependence on this device that puts a twist on the typical P.I. addiction narrative, and it's the ocean of grief that threatens to overwhelm detective Ruth that gives her the wisdom to overcome desperate odds when all the electronic advancements on Earth can't help her.
(synopsis by The Skiffy and Fanty Show)

Read this story online for free at Neil Clarke's Forever magazine (mobi or epub).

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Genius Loci: Tales of the Spirit of Place (2016), edited by Jaym Gates, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, April 2018.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Beast Within 4: Gears & Growls (2014), edited by Jennifer Brozek, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, April 2015.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

"The Waves" follows waves of humanity as they spread out from Earth, each succeeding wave overtaking the one before it. And so the biologically immortal are taken over by cyborgs, and mechanical post-humans are, in turn, taken over by beings of light and energy.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #52 January 20110. The story can also be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Five (2013), edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

As a cargo ship rockets across the galaxy to Canto Bight, the deckhands on board trade stories about legendary Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker. But are the stories of iconic and mysterious Luke Skywalker true, or merely tall tales passed from one corner of the galaxy to another? Is Skywalker really a famous Jedi hero, an elaborate charlatan, or even part droid? The deckhands will have to decide for themselves when they hear The Legends of Luke Skywalker.

A collection of myths and tall-tales about the legendary Jedi Luke Skywalker, written by Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy award-winning author Ken Liu.

One of three stories inspired by the same painting by Richard Anderson. Anthologized in The Anderson Project.

Ken Liu is among the most prominent new award-winning SF writers of the last decade, and this vision of a really uncanny alien invasion set in Boston, MA, is a stunner, with echoing reverberations, of love, identity, resistance and revolution.

This story can also be found in the anthology Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo, and Not One of Us: Stories of Aliens on Earth (2018), edited by Neil Clarke.

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

Two men rebel together against tyranny--and then become rivals--in this first sweeping book of an epic fantasy series from Ken Liu, recipient of Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards.

Wily, charming Kuni Garu, a bandit, and stern, fearless Mata Zyndu, the son of a deposed duke, seem like polar opposites. Yet, in the uprising against the emperor, the two quickly become the best of friends after a series of adventures fighting against vast conscripted armies, silk-draped airships, and shapeshifting gods. Once the emperor has been overthrown, however, they each find themselves the leader of separate factions--two sides with very different ideas about how the world should be run and the meaning of justice.

Fans of intrigue, intimate plots, and action will find a new series to embrace in the Dandelion Dynasty.

In the much-anticipated sequel to the magnificent fantasy epic ;Grace of Kings, Emperor Kuni Garu is faced with the invasion of an invincible army in his kingdom and must quickly find a way to defeat the intruders.

Kuni Garu, now known as Emperor Ragin, runs the archipelago kingdom of Dara, but struggles to maintain progress while serving the demands of the people and his vision. Then an unexpected invading force from the Lyucu empire in the far distant west comes to the shores of Dara -- and chaos results.

But Emperor Kuni cannot go and lead his kingdom against the threat himself with his recently healed empire fraying at the seams, so he sends the only people he trusts to be Dara's savvy and cunning hopes against the invincible invaders: his children, now grown and ready to make their mark on history.

Princess Théra once known as Empress Üna of Dara; yielded the throne to her younger brother in order to journey to Ukyu-Gondé to war with the Lyucu, and has crossed the impenetrable Wall of Storms with a fleet of ships and ten thousand people. Constantly facing adversity, she faces new challenges by doing the most interesting thing and not letting the past dictate the present

In Dara, the Lyucu leadership bristles with rivalries as power and perspectives change between the remains of the Dandelion courts. Here, mothers and daughters, Empress and Pékyu alike, nurture the seeds of plans that will take years to bloom. As the conquerors and the conquered jockey for position in these new regimes, tradition gives way to new justifications for power.

The concluding book of The Dandelion Dynasty begins immediately after the events of The Veiled Throne, in the middle of two wars on two lands among three people separated by an ocean yet held together by the invisible strands of love.

Harried by Lyucu pursuers, Princess Théra and Pékyu Takval try to reestablish an ancestral dream even as their hearts grow in doubt. The people of Dara continue to struggle against the genocidal Lyucu as both nations vacillate between starkly contrasting visions for their futures. Even the gods cannot see through the Wall of Storms, for only mortal hearts can decide mortal fates.