The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

The Paper Menagerie isn't just a collection of some writer's short stories. It's Literature. (Yes. With a capital "L"!)
Some stories deal with China; some deal with being Chinese American. But I think anyone who has ever felt like an outsider in any situation can identify the feelings expressed here.
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 history, as in "All the Flavors".
In short: Thoughtful, insightful. Great reading for a serious reader.

Paper Tiger is my new favorite short story collection. The title story and "Mono No Aware" are worth the price of the book (and I bought the hardback)! Liu develops complex characters faster than anyone I've ever read, and his stories have interesting plots. Some of them are science fiction, folkloric, strange, or fantastical. Others are pure literary. Either way, it's a tough book to put down because each story is better than the last. He employs rich language and complex themes that made me reflect on the stories long after reading them. It's a must read, and I'll be following Liu's career from here on.

A collection of short stories of all sorts with a definite "Asian" vibe. The book starts out absolutely fantastic, but about half way through the stories start to loose the magic of the first few. By about 3/4 of the way through, I gave up hope it was going to get better. By the end, I was disappointed in the book over all.

Having said that, it is worth purchasing if only for the first group of stories. Maybe in paperback.

I adored this book. I ordered it on a whim considering I do not usually gravitate toward short story collections, but I was so pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed almost every single short story (except maybe like 2) and could not put the book down, a surprise considering it it short stories not a novel. I read this book in about 4 days, and loved every bit of it. I read it about 2 months ago and still sometimes find myself thinking of some of the stories. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone.

What a wonderful writer. I am jealous of his talent.

I wish he had provided some pronunciation guidelines for those of us lacking a useful background in a Chinese dialect, but that quibble aside, reading this collection was a wonderful experience. I am on to his longer work ...

Ken Liu is probably the best new writer I have discovered in years.

I have yet to finish the book, but from what I have read it is very enjoyable. The reason that I am giving this four stars is the book was bent and damaged when it arrived. But I did buy it used so that is a self inflicted wound. Other than a few want corners and bent cover it seemed alright.

I really wanted to like the book after all the accolades of him as a writer but the continued theme of women looking for cheap sex and Chinese spirituality was not my thing. Wish I new that before I wasted 10 bucks. I have to remind myself there is a big difference between someone having talent (which he does) and something having entertainment value. Not for everyone.

A good book, and literary. But the fact that so many prizes were showered on it comes to show how poor SF writiing usually is, not that this book is outstanding. However, I enjoyed it, particularly when the author tapped on his Chinese culture.

With his new book, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, Ken Liu shows that he is capable of vast range. Sure, in some of the stories you see the comic master who orchestrated coups and wondrous escapes in Dara, in others you see a thoughtful, poignant writer, who asks tough questions and leaves you with no certain answers. Many of these stories, such the one that gives the collection its title, ‘The Paper Menagerie’, have been published, read and loved before, and this book brings them together, to give it what Liu calls ‘the flavour of a retrospective’, a brief look at his career as a short story writer. Indeed, the idea of memory, and memory as a source of conflict and confluence in communication, seems a running theme in many of these narratives, most powerfully in the last story of the collection, ‘The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary’.

Though many stories are indeed stitched around the common theme of memory, recording, and how we retell stories, what I can say about Liu’s work is this: it is remarkably wide ranging. From the space-opera-like ‘The Waves’ to ‘All the Flavors’, the magical-realist novella set in early twentieth century Idaho, Liu presents a vast range of readerly experiences. The stories slip between science fiction and fantasy, and indeed, Liu confesses at the start that he doesn’t ‘pay much attention’ to the distinction between the two genres. He builds worlds that contain elements of both: for instance, in ‘Good Hunting’ (a story that reminded me inexplicably of Gaiman’s work) a young demon hunter meets a hulijing, a spirit who tests his ideas of good and bad. As the world changes around them, he adapts to it with the help of science, learning new principles of engineering and physics, while others, most notably his father, struggle to find a new place in this world without mystery, seemingly without magic. What results is a beautiful blend of the best elements of myth, fantasy and science fiction, the author moving us seamlessly between all three.

What I really like about Liu’s work is the seeming effortlessness of his writing, of being able to introduce a whole new section of readers to worlds and mythologies that have remained ‘outside’ the Western canon for a long time. Rather than explaining painstakingly any references to a non-Western/non-white culture, or consciously building himself up to be a ‘representative’ of anything, Liu works these elements into his stories and allows readers to either learn more about them from the context, or look them up online in they’re really interested. For me personally, this is an extremely welcome and emulation-worthy style. Coming from a culture (or cultures, I should say) that is not as well-known to readers of epic fantasy as say, medieval England, it’s sometimes hard to know when to draw the line between fantasising and exoticising. Liu never makes that mistake. When he narrates martial exploits of soldiers from the many now-Chinese kingdoms, or even talks of the encounters between East and West, whether in the gold-springs of the Midwest or the paddy fields of US-held Taiwan, Liu never seems to consciously present one side as more or less ‘real’ or ‘normal’ than the other. ‘…the individual is the intersection of multiple spheres of identity,’ he had said in the same interview, and he bears that out in his writing. His characters, whether they hail to pasts far distant, or futures beyond our imagining, are all composites of multiple cultures, influences, tastes.

The stories in this volume moved me, none more so than the last, ‘The Man Who Ended History’. I feel it is an especially important story for the time we live in, the sort of conflicts over ‘ownership’, nation and culture that rage around us. Again, perhaps because of where I come from, where these questions have gained even more immediacy, I felt drawn to this story more than any other in his collection. Liu uses the structure of a transcribed documentary to tell the story of a man who, with the help of his physicist wife, builds a time machine, that takes people back to the past, literally, and allows them to observe it for themselves. The period he selects is a controversial, horrifying one in Manchu, China during the Second World War. The conflicts the testimonials give rise to, and the old wounds they dredge up, bring the two countries, China and Japan, and belatedly the US, to the brink of another battle, and I can honestly say that the story definitely kept me on the edge of my seat, and made me think a lot about how we deal with the past, who it can be said to belong to, if anyone at all.

To sum up, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories is a brilliant read. Savour it, sink into Liu’s words, and allow yourself to be carried away by a master storyteller. He is definitely one of my favourite fantasy authors working today, and inspires me as few others do.

This is one of those books that is effortless to review and recommend, simply because it is as close to a self-recommending volume as you are ever going to find. The last SF short story collection that I can recall as being as strong as this one was Connie Willis's a couple of years ago, which is saying a lot, since I personally regard her as the finest living SF writer, and on the short list of the finest SF short story writers ever. Liu is not quite in Willis's league as a writer, at least not yet, mainly because she has, in addition to a string of stunning short stories, also written some of the most unforgettable SF novels of recent years. I will acknowledge that she has her detractors, mainly from those who insist that SF means hard SF. I will even cede that she may be more weird fiction than SF, since while many of her most famous novels involve time travel, no attempt is made to ground it in science. Let me just say that I regard SF writers as those who write for SF audiences, broadly conceived. There is no question that even if you prefer hard SF (which I don't), both Willis and Liu write for a SF audience.

Several of the stories in this story are simply brilliant. The title story swept the major SF awards for short stories, all the more remarkable because it is not terribly long, and too many stories that manage that kind of success tend to be more in the way of novellas than short stories. He manages in 15 pages to achieve an emotional density usually reserved for longer works. I had previously read several of the stories in the collection, but most of them were new to me. What impresses me most is the quality going from one story to another. In fact, most of the stories I had read previously - like a couple from The Apocalypse Triptych edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey - while good are not nearly as good as the stories included here. I knew "Mono no aware" from its having won a Hugo and "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" from having been nominated for one. And I know a couple from annual Best of short story collections. But I liked some, like "All the Flavors" more than nearly anything else I had read read of his, while "Simulacrum" stands comparison with the many other works to use that word in either its single or plural forms in their titles. I enjoyed the first story in the volume, "The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species," in part because it reminded me so much of the kind of thing that Borges was so extraordinary at.

I have not yet read Liu's first novel, the well-reviewed The Grace of Kings, mainly because it has sounded to me from reviews to be pretty close to straight fantasy. I can't confess to being much of a fan of fantasy novels as a rule. I may make an exception in this case, but what I really look forward to is seeing Liu write a SF novel. He has actually won a Hugo for a SF novel, but as translator. Ken Liu translated The Third Body Problem by Cixin Liu, which became the first translated novel to ever win the Award. I have been intentionally putting off reading this. Like a lot of people, I prefer to binge read series, and the third novel of which this was the first in a trilogy (Ken Liu has translated the third novel, which is scheduled for publication later this year; the second novel The Dark Forest was translated by Joel Martinsen). One of my reading goals for 2016 is to read both the trilogy and some of the short stories by Cixin Liu, who is the most celebrated Chinese SF writer ever.

Meanwhile, I await Ken Liu's first SF novel. The stories in this collection cement his status as one of the finest SF writers in the world today. He is, by the way, not a full time SF writer. In his day job he is a successful attorney. I hope that all of his recent successes in SF encourage him to put away his law books and write full time.

As much as I wanted to love The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, I have to be honest in that I only thought it was okay. I mean, I can see how these stories established a reputation for Ken Liu, and there’s no doubt that some of them are indeed award worthy, but I didn’t connect with nearly as many as I would have liked.

Before you start getting disappointed, however, let me say that I blame the format, not necessarily the content. I’ve always been drawn to doorstopper fantasy novels like The Grace of Kings, where we have six or seven hundred pages to immerse ourselves in the world, so it’s not a surprise that many of these stories fell flat or felt a little shallow.

Having said all that, I’d be remiss if I didn’t heap some praise on those stories that did work for me.

“State Change” hooked me from the start, with a young woman’s strange obsession with freezers, glaciers, and ice cubes. Rina lives in a world where our souls physically manifest as small items that we must keep close at all times, which is easy enough if your soul is a rock or a cigarette package, not so much when it’s something as fragile as an ice cube. It’s the subtle twists at the end, however, where there magic happens.

“Good Hunting” was probably my favorite in the collection, being a story about ghosts, demons, steam-trains, and eternal change. Once a world of magic and monsters, China has seen all of that disappear as the railroad makes its way across the land. Faced with the loss of his family’s legacy, Liang befriends a young shapeshifter and comes to understand the nature of change and the mechanics of being an agent of change.

“The Regular” is a story I didn’t expect much out of, as crime stories and murder mysteries really aren’t my thing, but then we learn that Regulators are . . . and what they’ve done to Ruth’s capacity for emotion. There is a lot going on in this story, with much of it either in the past or beneath the surface of the narrative, and the climax is one of the most powerful scenes in the collection.

“A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel” is comprised of stories within stories, with excerpts from A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel (1960) and The Ignoramus’s Guide to American History (1995) interspersed within the tale of interracial romance, with one man’s reminiscing being the final, darkest piece that brings it all together.

An uneven collection (for me, at least), that was far heavier on politics, history, and sociology than I anticipated, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories didn’t amaze me like The Grace of Kings did, but it may be the perfect appetizer for those not yet ready to commit to one doorstopper with another on the way later this year.

I find that I don't enjoy Liu's straight science fiction as much probably because his sci-fi veers towards a dryer, hard-science style and I don't really have much a feel for his aliens. The more spec-fic mash ups are pretty good, but it's his Asian fantasy that really comes alive.

At the top of the list is, obviously, The Paper Menagerie -- it's hauntingly beautiful; the poignancy of a boy torn between his Chinese roots and his American reality and a man finally coming to terms with being both. Similarly, in All the Flavors, Liu seems to be creating a new mythology for the Chinese-American, combining Chinese-type myths with the story of Chinese migration to America in the 1800s. The Literomancer, in turn, brings you to Taiwan where Mr Kan extends a magical world and an odd sense of belonging to Lilly Dyer, a Texan transplant.

I suppose it's this sense of transience that Liu manages so well -- his characters are in-betweens, never quite fitting in, never quite finding who they are, always searching and yearning. Even in Good Hunting and The Waves there's an unsettling sense of change -- whether it's because the magic is leaving the land, or that science is changing humanity.

There's also a sense of guilt and the need for redemption -- Liu bases his some of his stories (The Litigation Master and the Monkey King, The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary) on injustices long hidden in history, as if he is apologising for them.

The stories in this collection are mostly hard-hitting. They're not light, bubbly type reads; but shorts with depth, often reaching into the dark sides of humanity. It's about balance and how humans can't, won't. It's past and future, hope and fear. And that muddly thing between that makes humanity what it is.

This is my first adventure in Ken Liu’s works and it does not disappoint! Liu really shows off his diversity in this collection. From historical fiction to fantasy to science fiction to murder mystery to contemporary literature – Liu does it all well.

Below is my summary and thoughts on each story. I do my best to avoid spoilers. Most of the stories have a pretty serious ending, though there are few that use humor here and there. This is a thought provoking collection of stories. Several cultures are represented and many of the stories carry culture clash themes.

“The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary”

Evan and his wife Ming Ping discover an atomic particle that lets humans view a snapshot of history. As their discovery is put into use, lots and lots of questions are raised. The initial focus is given to an atrocity carried out by a Japanese experimental science group (Unit 731) during WWII. This story was chilling and thought provoking. Should the past be laid to rest so that future generations can move forward? Or should we bear witness to every atrocity of the past, keeping them close in memory? 5/5

“Mono No Aware”

Hiroto lives on a space ship, the Hopeful. The story moves back and forth in time as our main character has flash backs to his time as a kid. His family packed up and went with all their neighbors to a tent city awaiting to board a space ship. However, not enough were available. Yet kid Hiroto gets a seat on an American space ship that launches in time to avoid the asteroids that slam into Earth. His past weighs heavily on him as he makes decisions in the present. While this story was interesting, it didn’t hit me as hard as several of the others. 4/5

“The Waves”

Earth has become polluted and the Sea Foam carries humanity outward to another habitable planet. In Earth’s last transmission to the ship, they send the specs on how to build a microscopic virus that allows one to become immortal. The ship occupants decide to let each person decide for themselves. However, because of how things are on the ship, for every immortal, there must be someone who chooses to age and die. Since the ship is traveling for generations, this was common sense. Maggie is the main character we follow through the story. When Sea Foam does arrive at their destination, there’s a surprise waiting for them and folks have yet another choice to make. There were several creation myths woven into the story quite cleverly, bringing up the question of whether they could be true. 5/5

“The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species”

This story explores the vast ways the peoples of the universe write and read books. Some use a proboscis to both write and read books, like a record player. Some do so through scents and flavors. Another species are large strung out wisps that float through the universe reading planets and black holes. There’s a few others, but I don’t want to spoil it for you. This story was a big info dump, but a very interesting info dump, like an encyclopedia entry. I really enjoyed this one! 5/5

“All the Flavors”

Set in the gold rush era of 1860s in Idaho, Lily Seaver and her dad Jack make friends with the local Chinamen. Lao Guan (or Logan to his American friends) tells Lily Chinese stories of Guan Yu, a glorified or perhaps mystical warrior of old. However, the Chinamen butt heads with some locals, Obie and Crick. Eventually, Obie brings charges against Logan. I really thought I would enjoy this story more, as I typically like Old West tales. I found the pace slow and my mind kept wandering. 3/5

“The Litigation Master and the Monkey King”

The litigator Tian is considered lazy but when a widow comes to him for aid, he stands up for her at the local court. He succeeds only to have the widow come to him again for assistance on another matter. The entire time he chats away with the Monkey King in his head. The story starts off a little comical as Tian was dreaming of enjoying a big feast with the Monkey King. Then the story gets serious and then it gets a little brutal. Still, I liked it. Tian has some idea of what his good deed will cost him and even though he has a quick tongue and a quicker wit, he doesn’t make it out of this story unscathed. 5/5

“The Paper Menagerie”

Jack’s mom is a mail order Chinese bride and his dad is American. Jack has to muddle through growing up with all the comments from neighbors and friends about mail order brides. His mom is a paper artist, making him origami animals to play with. As a small kid, he adores these animals. But as he ages, the insults start getting to him. He packs away his animals and demands real toys. He wants American meals and for his mom to speak good English. He starts ignoring her and is ashamed of her and doesn’t want to look anything like her. The story was rather sad but poignant. I think anyone who has struggled with cultural identity can relate to this story, no matter what your heritage is. 5/5

“State Change”

Rina was born with an ice cube for a soul. Her college friend Amy has a pack of cigarettes for a soul. Each character has their soul manifested as an object that must be protected. Rina lives in constant fear that her cube will melt and her soul will be no more and her heart will cease to beat. Going out for anything requires a thermos and a freezer at the destination, which limits her socializing. It was a fun little piece though a bit slow moving. 4/5

“The Perfect Match”

The AI Tilly and the Centillian Corporation control info. They are in nearly everyone’s house via their electronics, monitoring all their wants and needs. Tilly is helpful in making suggestions and in offering up directions and coupons and even playing match maker. However, a small group of people (including Jenny), believe this kind of data gathering to be wrong. Tilly is so pervasive in Sai’s life, he no longer knows if what he wants is truly what he wants. This story held my attention throughout and was a bit relevant to today’s arguments on government monitoring of phone and internet. 5/5

“Good Hunting”

Liang and his father are demon hunters and they start this story off hot on the trail of two hulijing. Yan and her mother can shape shift into foxes. Liang corners Yan but then lets her go, continuing to meet in secret a few times a year. As the railroad progresses into their area, magic begins to fade out. Liang and Yan each have to find a way to reshape themselves or fade away. The story was a bit haunting, a little sad, but with hope at the end. 5/5

“Literomancer”

Lilly Dyer is going to school in Taiwan during the Communist craze. She and her dad are from Texas but she’s constantly teased at school for her Chinese lunches. One day she meets Mr. Kan and his adopted grandson Teddy. Mr. Kan has a bit of magic – literomancy – which means he can tell fortunes from words looking at the hidden meanings in the characters. Lilly inadvertently gets Mr. Kan and teddy into trouble when she shares some innocent stories with her parents over dinner. I did not see that ending coming! It was a sweet story about building friendships despite vast cultural differences and then it ended so harshly. 4/5

“Simulacrum”

This story is told in 3 voices, like written letters. Paul and Erin were traveling a lot for work but then had Anna Larimore, their accident baby. When Anna is a teen, she catches her dad at home having sex with his 4 simulacrum of his past infidelities. Paul helped create the simulacrum and he didn’t see any difference between them and other virtual tech. Anna becomes estranged from him and eventually her mother leaves her a message about how one weak moment shouldn’t define a person for the entirety of their life. It was an interesting story but a bit short. I felt more could have been done with the simulacrum and how their wide-spread use has affected society. 3/5

“The Regular”

The Watcher has killed yet another prostitute in the Boston area. This time, the prostitute’s mom, Sarah Ding, hires PI Ruth Law to find the killer. Ruth used to be law enforcement, but then tragedy struck and she went into the private sector. She has various enhancements, as many folks do in the story. Some strengthen her grip or give her muscles speed. She also has a regulator, which controls her adrenaline spikes and suppresses her sorrow. This was a pretty good murder mystery. Additionally, I like all the tech. I ached for Ruth and her loss and her inability to cope, relying heavily on her regulator to block out emotions. 5/5

“An Advanced Reader’s Picture Book of Comparative Cognition”

This tale starts off talking about aliens who can join together, experiencing each other’s dreams, fears, hopes, memories, feelings, etc., but when they separate, they are basically copies of one another. The story is a bit rambly, kind of broken up, and makes large leaps. There is this bit about a couple and their child, but it doesn’t really anchor the story. There’s lots of talk about what is love and such. This tale didn’t really work for me. 2/5

“A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel”

In this little bit of alternate history, a great tunnel was built in the early 1900s connecting US pacific coast with Japan and China. The story follows a now old, retired tunnel worker Charlie, and Betty, an American woman with grown children (who are off doing their thing). The story flashes back and forth between their blossoming relationship and his memories of digging the tunnel. He has nightmares sometimes about the things he had to do while building the great tunnel. This story made me think of some of the early construction in the US, such as the Hoover dam and some of the big New York buildings. There’s a human cost to such success. 5/5

I received a copy at no cost from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The Narration: Corey Brill did a fine job with all the Japanese words and accents. For some stories, only a few character voices were required but each was distinct. Joy Osmanski also did a nice job. When there were only a few character voices required, I could easily tell the difference between them. Although when singing the Irish wake song, her voice lacked masculinity (in “All the Flavors”). for “Simulacrum”, the two narrators tag teamed it, which was well done.

What science fiction fan would not be interested in reading the most awarded short story in science fiction history? This collection by Ken Lui is a speculative collection of stories set in science fiction and fantasy settings, but the values and emotions he writes about are contemporary and very human. “The Paper Menagerie”, which won the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award, is about a young Asian boy living in Connecticut whose mother is a mail-order bride with a special power: the origami paper animals she makes to amuse him are living, animated things. After her death, boy loses touch with his mother’s love and the origami creatures she made for him, but when, as an adult, she finds a letter she left for him, he rediscovers the magic and the love that encompassed their relationship. Each of the stories and novellas contained in this collection revolve around the terrible things people do to one another in relationships, racial, and technological divisions and in society as a whole, and how love and compassion can cure the worst ills of humanity. Beautiful and touching, this is a collection that will make Rabid Puppies weep with despair (Google Rabid Puppies for more information).

I am not a fan of short stories, in general. I normally pass them by, even in publications that I know publish good ones. I do love the work of some great writers of short fiction--Flannery O'Connor, Henry James, Philip K. Dick, James Joyce, Nathaniel Hawthorne, E.A. Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and a few more, but the genre has never appealed to me. With that disclaimer, let me say that I have added a new name to the list of writers whose short fiction I will read with eagerness--Timothy Liu. This collection of stories and nearly novella length narratives is almost uniformly superb, and I would recommend it to anyone, whether the reader loves or dislikes or just ignores short fiction. Liu provides serious, clever, carefully plotted, fully developed, stories that feature characters worth reading about. I won't list favorites nor summarize plots--these stories range in genre from fantasy to nearly hard science fiction, with some fanciful but almost realistic stories, as well. The writing is always clean and elegant, appropriate to the subject of the story. I can only say that I encourage any reader who loves fine fiction to give this book a chance. There will be no disappointments, I think.

While I never made it through The Grace of Kings, I’ve discovered that I quite like some of Ken Liu’s shorter fiction. The Paper Menagerie is an anthology of his shorter fiction, much of which has science fiction or fantasy elements.

The stories tend to be concept focused rather than character focus, and they are generally very well written and told. However, they tend to have a melancholy tone, and I think I would have enjoyed the collection more if there was more variation in tone.

The first story, “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species,” is a series of vignettes describing how various alien species craft books. It’s a short and lovely piece, and I think it works well as an introduction to the rest of the tales.

Probably my favorite story of the collection is the titular “The Paper Menagerie,” his short story that won the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award. That story always makes me tear up. The narrator is the son of a Chinese mail order bride and an American man. When he was a child, his mother would make origami animals that she would breath life into, so that they moved on their own. It’s a story about relationships between parents and children and about assimilation and immigration. It’s incredibly powerful, and I can see why it won so many awards.

Other stories deal with the ideas of cultures colliding and changing. In “The Waves,” Earth makes contact with a generation ship, offering them the formula for eternal life, and each individual on the ship must decide whether to stay as they are or to change and adapt. “Good Hunting” is a steampunk tale where the laying down of railroad tracks disrupts chi flow and gradually removes magic from the land, leaving those dependent on it adrift. “A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel” is an alternate history tale where the Great Depression is staved off with a giant building project: an underground tunnel beneath the Pacific Ocean, connecting the East with the West.

Some stories contain no or few speculative elements and are instead historical fiction. “The Literomancer” is an incredibly dark tale about a little girl living in Hong Kong who befriends a Chinese boy and his grandfather. Another very depressing historical tale is “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King,” about the Manchu slaughter of Yangzhou and then the repression of any mention of the massacre. On a bit of a lighter note (although still not light exactly), “All the Flavors” is a historical novella about Chinese immigrants to the Midwest.

While the story “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” is entirely in the realm of science fiction, it deals with some of the same ideas about remembrance of historical tragedies as some of the historical fiction stories. In this story (which is told in a documentary format, akin to Ted Chiang’s “Liking What You See: A Documentary”), a physicist invents a way for one person to re-experience a historical event… but each event can only be re-experienced once, by one person. Who does history belong to?

“The Regular” is a longer cyberpunk, sci-fi noir crime thriller about a serial killer murdering prostitutes and a private investigator trying to catch him. It was all right, but I feel like it resembled other stories I’ve read. However, it was more original than “The Perfect Match,” a dystopian about a future where one corporation guides your every desire, without you ever knowing it. It ended up feeling like a rehash of so many different stories, where a mediocre man meets a woman who shows him how to resist, but resistance ends up being futile.

“State Change” is a conceptually driven story where each person is born with an object that houses their soul. If the object is destroyed, you die, a real difficulty for a woman who’s born with ice cubes housing her soul. This story is almost the literal embodiment of the Defrosting Ice Queen, a trope I’m not super fond of, especially as it can be not great to aro and ace people.

None of the three other stories in the collection made much of an impression. I can hardly remember what happened in “An Advanced Readers Picture Book of Comparative Cognition,” aside that it had some similarities to the very first story. “Mono No Aware” is the tale of the only Japanese man on a generation ship. “Simulacrum” is another conceptual driven story, this time about the idea of record keeping and reality.

All in all, I’m glad I took the time to read this collection, although the only story I see myself returning to again is “The Paper Menagerie.”

From near future detective noir to outer space and the gold rush years this collection of short stories covers an incredible gamut of styles by an incredible author. . . except for the last story in the collection 'The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary', reading that was like carrying a hundred pound pack through a hip deep swamp and by the time you realize it's become a terribly long and boring slog. There's no sense in turning back you've already gotten as far as you have, you might as well keep walking and get to the other side. I'm glad this was at the end of the book. Had they led off with this I might have quit and then I would have missed 'The Paper Menagerie', 'Mono No Aware' and all the other amazing stories in this collection. Yes, I understand the importance of telling ''The Man Who Ended History' and shining more light on the atrocities that happened at Unit 731 but it just felt wrong as part of this collection. It's your choice to read it or not. I'd have been happier having skipped it. Still, the rest of this collection kept me up late at night reading long past I should have gone to sleep.

There are two things I dislike about Ken Liu's writings. His oversimplified treatment of Asian characters, and his lack of subtlety and finesse in prose.

As an Asian I had high hopes that stories written by an Asian author would lend more depths to Asian characters, give them personalities beyond "Asianness", but instead, I find that Ken Liu repeatedly resorted to stereotypically Asian symbols as a crutch in his character exposition (haiku, go, origami, random Asian words...). The racist tension between Asians and Westerners was also too black and white, which 1. makes his Western characters seem uncultured and ignorant (which in itself is a form of racism to me) and 2. fails to relate to the modern Asian Americans. The message would've been appropriate maybe thirty years ago? Not that racism no longer exists, but that it has taken on newer, more subtle forms, that the blatantly racist comments Liu included in his stories like "slanty eyes" seems cliche and misses the bulls eye.

The above passage may be the result of my own unreasonable expectation (alright, there's no law stipulating that Asian writers must write good Asian characters), but Liu's prose at times is cringe-worthy to readers across all cultures. Although poetic, his writing is peppered with over-the-top obvious metaphors, as if he feared that the readers would not be able to appreciate the message he is trying to convey. Take "Mono no aware" (by the way, I disagree with this term's appropriateness in the context of this story) for example. "We'll leave the sun that gave birth to us behind like a forgotten memory" is perhaps the most egregious example, waxing unnecessarily maudlin on a situation whose gravity and emotional implications ought to speak for itself. The end of the story where he iterates through each person and explains how everyone is a hero in simple, direct sentences also felt weak, unconvincing to me. Too much telling and not enough showing, as one would have learned in an English writing class. I would have appreciated the stories much better if I didn't feel like I was being spoon-fed its themes/take aways.

This is a beautifully crafted collection of short stories that crosses and transcends genres. You will find some sci-fi, some fantasy, some historical magical realism. Always throughout there is the evocative whisper of Chinese dialect; a faint taste of the sweet and the sour; the brush of silk, leaving a trace of orchid in the air and glimpses of not just another culture, but other times and even other worlds; leaving the reader with the feeling of a brief insight into something exotic but intimately and familiarly known.

Personally I enjoyed most of the stories presented. My particular favourites included ‘State Change’, with its different take on souls and what makes us ‘me’; ‘The Perfect Match’, with its eerily prescient depiction of personal mobile technology; and ‘The Litigation Master and the Monkey King’, which reads like a fable or fairytale for more recent times.

Many of the stories are sad. All of them made me think deeply. After nearly every story I put the book down and sat mulling it over, turning the words and ideas in my mind, tasting them and absorbing them.

Some of the stories are graphic, horrific and not for the squeamish. I particularly noted ‘The Literomancer’ and ‘The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary’ in this regard. The most disturbing thing in both these stories is that the violence depicted is the least fantastic and most true-ringing aspect of each. What does that say about human society?

Overall I would say that these stories, whilst short, are not an easy read, but they are well worth the effort and as much thought and heart swells out of them as was obviously poured into them.

In this superbly told set epic human themes are served as short stories under the guise of science fiction. I read the title story first and went aww (magical fiction set to Chinese sensibility) and then skipped to the last story on time travel to a Japanese concentration camp("The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" which is its own novella and a mashup of at least three genres) ....and pow! had to scrape my brains off the pages, pages I sometimes dreaded to turn but just had to---best time travel story I have read, and you owe the characters all your attention, besides. Yes, it is that kind of collection. These stories see a lot of humans need and bleed against intricate cultural and technological backdrops. No review of Liu will do the prose and integration of Chinese thinking and American prose justice. Science takes second seat to the tales' humanity but even in its second seat, it purrs.

Also, I was humbled to find out how almost NOTHING I know about a culture (China) that has been around longer than the store and all of us nice white American or European masters of the universe :). Which of us knows or remembers that World War Two began for the Chinese in 1931. This book's breadth is truly humbling: it puts the "world" back into the word "world" which we bandy about so loosely.

I don't read science fiction but if this is the only book I ever read, I am glad. It's a real book. Oh, I mean, hold it in your hand and feel its bookness. Then buy it. It's a keeper.

If you like SF and F short stories, get this book.

This may be the first collection of short stories I've ever finished beginning to end.

I discovered Liu organically several years ago. I'd read one of his stories in Analog (or one of the other digests) then another online a few months later. I didn't connect the name but the tales stood out. By the time I read "The Man Who Ended History" I was like: Isn't that the same guy who wrote those other two stories? It was.

From that point on, if I saw Liu's name I bought the magazine or read the story. Never has he disappointed. Strangely, almost all the stories in this collection were new to me.

Each story has its own unique voice and theme. yet maintains a consistent thread of voice and quality that tie them back to Liu.

I literally teared up after reading the titular story The Paper Menagerie.

I don't know where the SF/F market is headed. I don't know if authors still rise to greatness anymore. But if they do, I predict Liu will one day join the ranks of Asimov, Bradbury, Borges and Dick.

I wish I could say I loved this book, and I feel like I ought to be able to because it checks off a lot of the boxes I usually require in a SF short story collection.

Character-driven? Check.
Reflective? Check.
More concerned with ideas than laser guns? Check.

In some ways, Liu's writing reminds me a lot of Ted Chiang's, and I have no doubt Liu is a big fan. The two share a detached bemusement with humanity and its foibles, its quest to understand itself. Liu is a bit more concerned with futurism than Chiang tends to be—several of these stories play out like episodes of Black Mirror—but the same probing of history and human communication suffuses his writing.

When he's not dabbling in near futurism ("The Regular"), history figures in especially heavily, and the history of Asia in particular. Perhaps that's to be expected, since unlike Chiang, Liu is a first-generation Asian-American. Several of the stories here dive back into the real and fictional history of China, Taiwan, and Japan, either asking what would happen if we were able to directly confront the horrors of the past ("The Man Who Ended History"), addressing real history with a sheen of magic ("The Literomancer"), imagining history that could have been in our own timeline ("All the Flavors"), or inventing alternative history ("Good Hunting," "A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel"). Ultimately more than half of the stories are immersed in Asian culture, which is a welcome change of pace in a genre dominated by monoculture, for all its weirdness.

The book is also extremely heavy, though Liu's detached style keeps the endless murders, mass-murders, rapes, and tortures from becoming too soul-draining. At times I was reminded of 2666's "The Part About the Killings," though nothing here is nearly that brutal. Many of the stories revolve around genocide, hate crimes, war crimes, or the darker aspects of the human character. I have a pretty high tolerance for such stuff, but it became numbing after a while.

Liu's stories tend to be long, which lets you get comfortable inside his worlds, but also makes it more painful if they fail to deliver any surprises or revelations. Time and again, these stories progressed more or less as I expected, hitting satisfying but unsurprising plot beats before coming to a soft stop. The exceptions, like "The Waves," still often felt overlong and overwritten.

It's obvious that Liu has talent and a gifted mind, and he's willing to plumb the depths of an idea to work out all its implications. That can make for a riveting story, sure, but not when he methodically spells out all of those implications under the guise of storytelling (as in "The Man Who Ended History").

I've heard great things about The Grace of Kings, and I'll probably get around to reading it, but I have to admit that this collection dampened my enthusiasm just a bit.

I first ran into Ken Liu in his Hugo-Award winning translation of "The Three Body Problem" by Cixin Liu where I saw his talents of combining beautiful (English) language, a unique Asian flavor and technological accuracy. This multi-talented laureate of the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy awards, is also a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School and an accomplished technologist. Here I was able to dig into his talent for original fiction which could best be described as thoughtful and in-depth rather than either hard science fiction or fantasy. I was most amazed and drawn into hid "Bookmaking Habits of Select Species" where he describes the intimate relationship between written and recorded information and Karl Popper's Third World of Human Knowledge. That is the world of thought and that of recorded knowledge in all forms, physical, embedded in space and embedded in thought.

A masterwork.

I have to confess, I don’t expect a lot when I go into a collection of short stories. Rarely have I read a collection where I’d rate the vast majority of stories, say 80+ percent, very good or excellent. It’d be nice, but I don’t expect it. And that’s OK. If I can get 50 or 60% that are very good or better, a few that are average or a bit better, that’s enough to get me by the bad or “meh” ones. And sometimes, I don’t even need that 50-60% if the author can really wow me with just a few select tales. Well, Ken Liu both wowed me with several of the stories in his collection The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and hit that rare 80+ percent mark, making this one of the best single-author anthologies I’ve read in some time. That’s pretty much all you need know, that and the fact that you should pick this up immediately, but here are some brief reactions to some of the stories in a rough order of preference.

The Great Stories
“The Paper Menagerie:” A first-person POV story of a boy whose mother (a catalog bride) has a particular talent with regard to the origami animal creations she makes for her son — “She breathed life into them so that they shared her breath, and thus moved with her life. This was her magic.” As the boy grows up and seeks to just be a “normal American kid,” the kind who eats American food and plays with Star Wars figures rather than origami animals, his mother can only watch in silent anguish as the distance opens between them. There’s a reason this is the title story, and a reason it won a Hugo award; the story is absolutely brilliantly executed. Heartbreaking, moving, realistic, almost too painful to read, it alone makes this a collection worth picking up.

“State Change” The premise of the story, that one’s soul physically manifests itself at birth as an object unique to that child (T.S. Eliot’s is a tin of coffee, Cicero’s a pebble), would have made this story wonderfully fresh and a good read just for that. But by choosing a protagonist (Rina) whose soul takes the form of an ice cube, forcing her to worry incessantly about its fragility (she never goes out for lunch at work for instance, fearing a sudden power failure that might shut down the freezer she keeps her soul in under her desk), Liu offers up a tender, beautifully quiet character-driven story.

“The Litigation Master and the Monkey King:” In a “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,” lives the litigator Tian Haoli, a fifty-some year old man who “smelled of the cheapest rice win and even cheaper tea” and who conversed regularly with the Monkey King in his head. This began as a light comic “trickster” sort of story, but quickly turned darker and more serious, to powerful effect.

“The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” A wonderfully original, imaginative short story describing, as if in an academic encyclopedia, the way “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.” This one has a real Italo Calvino feel to it and makes for an especially apt opening story.

“A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel:” An alt-history tale set 25 years after the Trans-Pacific Tunnel was built to connect the Japanese Empire (they control most of Asia) to America. The narrator, a Formosan named Charlie, worked on the tunnel and we learn of his specific experiences and the tunnel construction in general via a mix of his conversations with an American waitress, and various document excerpts from sources including travel guides, newspapers, and “The Ignoramus’s Guid to American History, 1995.” The story builds wonderfully and has an absolutely killer ending.

The Good Stories
“The Waves:” A generation ship story that intersperses various creation myths (told by the ship’s captain, Maggie Chao, to her children) with the journey of the ship and (quickly) the discovery of a means to immortality that forces hard choices upon the crew. The story spins out far into the future and we get to see immortality’s impact on humanity. This could have just been a nicely structured story, or a cool look at far-distant humanity, but in Liu’s hands it becomes a warm story of love, family, and the desire for company.

“An Advanced Readers’ Picture Book of Comparative Cognition” Similar to “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” in its encyclopedia-like format, this story focuses on how various species think and remember. Another highly imaginative story, this one stands out as well for its lovely lyricism.

“Good Hunting:” The story follows a father-son (Liang) demon-hunting duo in China, specifically opening with their tracking of a “hulijing . . . a demon who stole hearts,” who turns out to have a daughter (Yan) whom Liang takes pity on and befriends. As time passes, they notice that the magic of the land is waning, being overcome by Western industry (steam power, railroads, automatons), and so as the world changes around them, they must change/adapt as well. A deeply layered, serious story

The other stories I’ve not included are only “weak” in relation to the above ones, but there’s nary a bad one in the bunch. “Simulacrum” was well written but didn’t feel particularly fresh, “The Regular” had strong details, but the ending was a bit too neat. But even if each of the ones not covered above is flawed in some (usually singular way), they’re all well executed and well written, often filled with vivid detail, sharp prose, and a good sense of voice/tone. Easily one of the best collections of the past several years, if not longer.

originally appeared on fantasyliterature.com

When I picked up this book of short stories, I had no idea that the contents would be so eye-opening. In story after story, the author leads you on a journey of illumination of Chinese history, culture, and humanity. The stories use fictional accounts to reflect honest, personal, and even-handed perspectives on periods in Chinese history. Most influential are the episodes involving Japanese incursions into Chinese territories. The stories will most certainly grab your attention. You are guaranteed to learn because the topics are not normally available or emphasized in the Western sphere of learning. Books like this one demonstrate how very much alike people are around the globe. Books like this lead to better understandings between people of differing origins. I highly recommend you take the time to read these intriguing stories.

I’ve never read Ken Liu’s novels, but for some years I’ve been enjoying his prolific output of stories (and translations of other authors’ stories) in print and online magazines. The Paper Menagerie contains a well-selected, interestingly varied group of fifteen. These include fantasy, science fiction, and essays about imaginary topics, such as “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species.” Some stories verge on the sentimental, such as the much-lauded title story. I hope it’s not politically incorrect to say that as an American of European heritage, I find Liu’s Chinese-American outlook exotically appealing. (As a reader of an advance review copy, I hope it’s OK to say that the running heads would have been more useful if the book designer had chosen story titles for one side, rather than the author’s name on the left and the book title on the right. I already know which book I’m reading; I want to find my place in it.) I do wish more stories had been included. I’d also someday like to see a collection of Liu’s translations.

A long time coming doesn’t seem to quite sum it up. His first short story appearing in 2002, fourteen years and more than eighty stories later, Ken Liu’s first collection finally hits shelves in 2016. The delay is to the point that when things were finally settled, editors were able to compile a collection of which two-thirds is either an award winner or nominee. More a best-of than a representative sample of a certain period of work, for those waiting and waiting for Liu’s lauded short works to appear in one place, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (Saga Press) is finally here.

The short stories collected in The Paper Menagerie trace many lines, from exercises in imagination to pure science fiction, sensationalism to didacticism, but most often cling to Liu’s cultural heritage, Chinese, and most often Chinese culture in the context of other culture or cultures. The title story “The Paper Menagerie” finds Liu playing the pity card on the last hand, but playing it with respect, or at least a real world correlation. The story of a boy born to an American man and Chinese woman, the resulting culture tension plays itself out in poignant, and at least initially playful terms, toward its emotional if not manipulative conclusion. “Good Hunting” is a story set at the turn of the 20 th century. A time when China too was transitioning into the industrial age, it tells of a traditional Chinese ghost hunter and the evolution he witnesses and undergoes in technology around him. Another morally simplistic story, this one moves in unexpected, steampunkish directions.

There is a lot of bad blood between the Chinese and Japanese, and Liu does not waste the opportunity to plug Chinese interests in the matter. Having successfully played the pity card in “The Paper Menagerie,” Liu applies the same tactic in “A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel.” A story about a transportation tunnel being built beneath the Pacific, for as lucidly as it is written, it nevertheless reopens old wounds. The final handful of pages an obvious ploy for justice, it does little to progress relations between the two sides. That being said, it could be construed as raising awareness for an atrocity that is not well known in the West. “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” uses the same Japanese atrocities as foundational story material, but presents a wider variety of perspectives. A device invented that allows people to re-live moments of the past, Liu uses it to give modern people the chance to view Japanese actions in China during WWII. The story more didacticism, it does, however, do a better job of representing the differing views, even if the underlying sentiment remains one-sided. Perhaps the most thought-provoking piece in the entire collection, see here for a longer review.

Setting aside cultural interests (but not the simplistic approach), scattered throughout the collection are a handful of stories less historical and more futuristic, science fictional as it were. Black and white storytelling that gives a moment’s pause thinking how deep google has infiltrated our lives and could in the future, “The Perfect Match” is the story of Sai and his computer assistant Tilly. Unable to do anything without her voice in his ear guiding him, Sai learns some hard lessons after turning his life over to a data network. Not the most profound of stories, it nevertheless retains its relevancy. Something of PKD in the story, “Simulacram” tells of the inventor of simulacrams. The next phase in photography and video, it captures 3D renderings of people and things, and is able to inject the simple essence of the real person or thing into the reproduction. A cautionary tale a la Ted Chiang, the story exposes the dark side of the inventor’s mind, juxtaposing it against his daughter’s reaction. (Robert Charles Wilson’s “The Cartesian Theater” remains the superior story in the simulacra vein.) “The Regular” is about a private eye investigating a dead prostitute and the serial killer who murdered her. Though lucidly described, contrived scenes move the story away from original and toward conventional—save the real world bit of modern science that ‘breaks the case’. And finally is “Mono no aware.” A story that presents an interesting view to American culture (“Then we’ll improvise,” Mindy says. “We’re Americans, damn it. We never just give up.”) that hinges upon a heroic act. Telling of a space mission gone wrong, the cultural heritage of the main character, and how it plays into said heroic act, the import of the story seems more Hollywood than refined (hence the awards?).

At some point in The Paper Menagerie, the reader senses a pattern forming: build a sympathetic character, then chop them off at the knees—figuratively or literally—for dramatic effect. After reading the opening pages of “All the Flavors,” it’s possible to guess that the main character will be wronged in some violent fashion before the end. Liu does not disappoint. A partially successful splicing of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, western pulps, and American history, the ending does not quite have the tenor sought—despite the likable character and “knee-chopping.” Likewise with “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King,” the reader may guess the personable village lawyer who enjoys playing games with the local magistrate will eventually meet his match. Again, Liu does not break formula. While it’s possible to appreciate the placement of Chinese history into the crosshairs of criticism (in the context of the collection), the appreciation is offset by the fact the reader knows what is going to happen to the main character beforehand. Good man trod by the system, going down with righteous words…

In perhaps the most purely fictional aspect of The Paper Menagerie, there are a small number of stories that show Liu’s flights of imaginative fancy. Stanislaw Lem observing on the wings, the collection opens with “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species.” Pointing indirectly at the manner in which humans transpose ideas into written form, it is as much interesting commentary as it is an abstract example of writing in itself. Again working with thought, “An Advanced Reader’s Picture Book of Comparative Cognition” is another exercise in imagination intended to shed light on the human condition. In this previously unpublished story (the only in the collection), Liu achieves a relatively unique vision describing alien modes of sentience, but with less synergy than “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species.”

In the end, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories is a solid yet simplistic collection that plays itself into the hands of mainstream genre readers. I personally have several hang ups regarding the lack of a conciliatory approach in some of the stories’ reflection of Japanese-Chinese relations (the tone more victim/justice oriented than progressive/forgiving), they are nevertheless very readable, even stimulating, for the reaction they induce. For this, it would seem Liu in long form, e.g. The Grace of Kings, has the space he needs to properly build and locate profound ideas.) Thus, while most of the stories are less sophisticated morally and culturally than what some of Liu’s peers are producing these days, there is no denying their appeal—as contrived and manipulative as they can be. After all, that so many of the stories are award winners and nominees is indicative of their popularity beyond my miniscule voice on the web.

I've read short stories from time to time, but have rarely been really into them. This book contains quite a variety of stories, from hardly any fantasy to a lot of it. My favorite story was The Perfect Match, as it explores possibilities of social media with rather unchecked elements. It was clever, interesting, and enjoyable. I also like that the author doesn't go with a single truth, often, but explores multiple sides of things. As to the many awards, I don't come away from this book in awe, but I do see how the awards were won. The writing quality is truly top-notch, and it presents innovation at the same time. That's quite the combination. Overall, on a pure enjoyment level, I think I prefer the author's book, The Grace of Kings, but more because its a novel and not because The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories is any less in quality. If you're not convinced to buy this, I suggest seeing about reading some stories by the author and if you like them, then get this one.

Note: I went to high school w/the author, and have seen him on occasion in recent years (about 30 minutes twice in the last 4 or 5 years, perhaps), so I'm including this note since I've reviewed this book in comparison to other short stories instead of on a pure enjoyment level.
Note 2: I experienced this book as an audio book. It was narrated by two different people, depending on the story, and well done by them.

There are some really great stories in here. You'll almost certainly find these stories to be different from what you're used to, even if you read a lot of science fiction / fantasy. Ken Liu definitely brings a different perspective.

A few of the early stories seemed a little weak to me - perhaps from earlier in his career? - but many of the stories in here completely captured my attention - Good Hunting, The Paper Menagerie, and Mono No Aware especially. I want to tell you about them but I don't want to spoil them for you! All of the stories are at least worth reading (by my judgement), so it's worth the purchase for sure and there's a good chance you'll bookmark a few of them to give to a friend and say "You should read this one".

This collection of short stories covers a wide range of topics and styles. Veering from far future science fiction to historical fiction it deals with issues of family, race, memory and language. For the most part, these are not easy stories, the characters suffer, sometimes horribly. The namesake story is emotionally devastating to the point where I had to put the book down after finishing it. The writing throughout is excellent, although a few of the stories could use some tightening up. It is no surprise that many of the stories in the collection have won or been nominated for awards. It is a collection that is well worth reading and that will stick with you long after you are done.

This is my first experience reading Ken Liu having heard great things about his novel The Grace of Kings. The Paper Menagerie did not disappoint! Featuring many award winning stories ranging from space opera to fantasy, Liu's stories often explore the human nature of memory and storytelling. Ken Liu has obviously mastered the art of the short form... no small feat.

Because I usually read a collection of short fiction over time, digesting one story for a while before moving on to the next, I have only ready about half this book, but I find my self jonesing for the next story before I would usually turn back to the collection for more.

I knew of Ken Liu because he translated the Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novel The Three Body Problem by the Chinese science fiction writer Cixin Liu. The Paper Menagerie is the first book I have read by Ken Liu.

Wikipedia tells me that Ken Liu was born in China and immigrated to the United States. He attended Harvard College as an undergraduate and then, later, Harvard Law School. Apparently between his two stints at Harvard he worked in technology and has a background in programming.

Ken Liu's writing is strongly influenced by his Chinese heritage. Some of the stories are set in Taiwan, China and the Gold Rush era in the United States.

Compared to the short stories of Larry Niven or Robert Heinlein, Ken Liu's stories are less science fiction and fantasy than speculative fiction. What would happen to classic Chinese magic when trains and the modern era start to encroach? What would happen if simulacra could be created the way that we take pictures, capturing not only the look of the person, but also some of their characteristics?

Some of the stories have only modest fantastical elements, like a story of early Chinese immigrants in the American West, during the Gold Rush era.

Ken Liu is a student of both classical Chinese literature and of history. A few of the historical stories are so dark and recount events so terrible that I skipped over some scenes. Tragedy and sadness runs through many of the stories in The Paper Menagerie.

When I started reading Paper Menagerie I did not find Ken Liu's writing style compelling. But as I read his stories, I was slowly pulled into his stories. Ken Liu's creativity in the structure of his stories is compelling, as is his ability to describe characters. In The Paper Menagerie the difficulty experienced by some adult Chinese immigrants is starkly clear and tragic.

In several stories Chinese people are victims of others: the Americans in Taiwan, the Japanese in the early twentieth century, the Manchus and prejudice in the late nineteenth Century United States. All of this is historical fact. The Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese women and property ownership are shameful parts of United States history.

When I had finished the book I was left thinking that while the Chinese have been oppressed in the past, the Chinese are not an innocent culture, as few human cultures are. There was China under Mao, where tens of millions died. And China's ongoing attempt to destroy Tibetan culture. China is now a world power and its expanding power is making its neighbors nervous.

I was completely blown away by this short story collection. Generally when I read short story collections there are one or two stories (or even a handful) that I could do without. Each story here felt necessary to the collection as a whole and BOY were they amazing. Liu's writing is incredible, and even in the limited space of short fiction each character felt fully realized. Can't recommend this book enough.

but wow! This collection of short stories is something else entirely. This is by far the most interesting, creative, and exciting book I have read in a long time. I saw the book on a summer reading list and decided to give it a shot. Somehow, Ken Liu manages to bring together science and historical fiction and relates it to modern day problems.

I will say, the first story was too out there for me so I skipped ahead to the titular story. I cried three times within a very short time frame. That was when I knew this was a winner.

This book will make you think and feel. Thumbs up.

This was my first experience reading Ken Lui, and it was absolutely unique and incredible. That's not hyperbole--in fact, just a couple of pages into the very first story, I found myself whispering "Ohhhhh," out loud to myself as I had that rare, thrilling realization that in my hands was something so special; one of those beautiful books that you can't put down, but dread reaching the end of because it's such an experience to read. I wanted to savor every sentence, paragraph, story. I am not typically a "science fiction" fan, but this isn't your stereotypical science fiction at all....this book is for readers, for lovers of story and imagination and philosophy. Absolutely an instant favorite, a real beauty.

The Paper Menagerie shows the versatility of Liu's writing and no matter the subject or style each story was well done and entertaining. I would put this collection up there with Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others and Link's Magic for Beginners, which are my two favorite author collections.

Wonderful collection of stories by the remarkable Ken Liu. In one book, he manages to take you so many different places with varied and interesting characters. I was especially impressed by his ability to evoke different cultures and reflect on cultural issues while never once compromising his compelling tales. The stories are a little dark and/or melancholy at times, but it's all in service of the stories Liu is telling. I would definitely recommend this book!

Ken is not afraid to cast his emotions and experiences as a Chinese immigrant into vivid fantastical universes in the past, present, and future.
A masterful fusion of hard science fiction and stories of love, compassion, regret. Fans of Black Mirror will enjoy these.

This is a wonderful collection of stories. Some speak to me more than others, of course, but I love the variety of the stories and the sense of genre-exploration encapsulated by them. Many seem to be in a near future, but some seem to be more of an alternate present. Some seem steampunk to me, but then I learned of the word silkpunk, which I believe Liu himself coined, and that does seem to fit better: a sort of cyborg-alternate historical-Chinese world. Most of the of the stories have something Chinese about them, which is a neat and fresh device in sci-fi, at least to me. But I truly enjoyed how the stories flit from sub-genre to sub-genre (crime mystery? fantasy? cyborgs? panopticon? steampunk? shapeshifters? what's next?). It made the collection really compelling and made me eager to pick up the next one soon after finishing one story.

The goal here is definitely not just entertainment, clearly, as there are political messages in a number of the stories. Several bring to mind privacy issues with current technology, with thinly-veiled references to Google ("Centillion") or Siri ("Tilly"). Some of the stories bring up historical time periods in China and Taiwan or even current issues, which I don't feel like unraveling but I can tell he's taking a stand on contentious issues. "The Paper Menagerie" (the short story) is truly beautiful and brought tears to my eyes, for the message which is much bigger than that of children of immigrants. It is a short but heartrending story, and definitely one of the standouts in the collection.

If you've read The Three-Body Problem, I can say that the style here is similarly direct and easy-to-read. Having enjoyed Liu's work as a translator, I was happy to see his success as an original writer as well.

I confess I rarely short stories, or, honestly, sci-fi any more (I used to be a die-hard fan, but have in recent years moved over to what is commonly called literary fiction, although I dislike that term because it seems to disparage scifi). But this collection has an admirable literary (and very writerly) quality, as well as (for the most part) compelling narratives that swept me along.

If you're even thinking about this book, I recommend taking the plunge. Highly recommended.

This is an incredibly moving collection of stories. I adored stories like the titular "The Paper Menagerie" and "All the Flavors." The collection itself does have all the flavors. Horror, sorrow, anger, joy, bitterness, and pride swirl together. Each story should be savored. Finish one and sit back for at least ten minutes to digest the full impact and implications of the story.

Book was okay, but not really my cup of tea (i.e. didn't really feel like science fiction to me). I'm more of a hard sci-fi guy and when I think of great prose, I think of the likes of Alastair Reynolds and Iain Banks. This book was bland by comparison. While this book had some interesting concepts, some just struck me as idiotic. For example, a girl's soul manifesting as an ice cube is something I expect my stoner friends to come up with, not a Hugo award winner. But then again, most of the Hugo/Nebula "award winning" books these days aren't good science fiction either.

The Paper Menagerie is a beautifully written book of short stories. Each story is unique and leaves you thinking well after you are done reading it. This book is definitely a favorite addition to my library.