Liu has also written an epic fantasy novel series, The Dandelion Dynasty, which he describes as silkpunk. The series is published by Simon & Schuster.[3]
Childhood and career
Liu was born in 1976 in Lanzhou, China.[4] He spent his childhood with his grandparents.[5] His mother, who received her Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States, is a pharmaceutical chemist, while his father is a computer engineer.[6] The family immigrated to the United States when Liu was 11 years old.[4] They lived in California and Stonington, Connecticut before settling in Waterford, Connecticut. Liu graduated from Waterford High School in 1994, where he ran cross-country and track.[7] At Harvard College, he studied English Literature and Computer Science, receiving his A. B. in 1998.[7][8]
After graduation, Liu worked as a software engineer for Microsoft, and then joined a start-up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He later received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2004 and after working as a corporate lawyer, eventually became a high-tech litigation consultant.[7][8]
Liu has said he wanted to become a writer so he could make stories that “turn values upside down and inside out to gain new perspectives”.[10]
After a long career writing and publishing short fiction, Liu turned to epic fantasy novels, starting with The Grace of Kings (2015).[11] He has also written for the Star Wars universe, with The Legends of Luke Skywalker (2017).[12]
Along with his original work, Liu has translated the works of multiple Chinese authors into English, including Liu Cixin, Hao Jingfang, Chen Qiufan, and Xia Jia.[13] His translation of The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin helped the book become a best seller to English readers.[14] He has also worked as an editor. While editing the anthology Invisible Planets, Ken Liu translated the stories contained within it from Chinese into English.[15]
Some of Liu's work have been adapted into visual media. His short story "Memories of My Mother" was the basis of Beautiful Dreamer (2016) by David Gaddie.[16] His short story "Real Artists" was adapted into the short film Real Artists (2017) by Cameo Wood.[17] His short story "Good Hunting" was adapted into an animated short as part of Netflix's Love, Death & Robots series (2019).[18] Several of the stories in The Hidden Girl and Other Stories were adapted for the animated Pantheon.[19]
Liu's short story collection The Hidden Girl and Other Stories (2020) explores ideas such as tradition and progress, the fallibility of memory, and the essence of what it means to be human.[10]
Liu's short story "The Paper Menagerie" is the first work of fiction, of any length, to win all of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards.[1] In addition, his short story, "Mono no aware" won the 2013 Hugo Award,[21][22] and his novella "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" was also nominated for a Hugo.[23] The first novel in his The Dandelion Dynasty series, The Grace of Kings, was a 2016 Nebula Award finalist.[24] The novel was the 2016 Locus Award Best First Novel winner.[25]
Thoughtcrime Experiments, edited by Sumana Harihareswara and Leonard Richardson, 2009; International Speculative Fiction, edited by Roberto Mendes, December 2013;
Beidou
2010
The Dragon and the Stars, edited by Derwin Mak and Eric Choi, May 2010.
The End Has Come (Book III of the Apocalypse Triptych), edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey, May 1, 2015
The Hidden Girl and Other Stories
Crystal
2015
Daily Science Fiction, October 15, 2015
Article I, Section 8, Clause 11
2015
War Stories From the Future, edited by August Cole, November 2015.
Compatibility
2015
Ecotones, December 2015.
White Hempen Sleeves
2016
After the Fall, edited by Jaym Gates, 2016
Of Trees
2016
Part of Herman Chong's exhibit "Ifs, Ands, or Buts" (January 23 to May 3, 2016 at the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai)
An Advanced Reader's Picture Book of Comparative Cognition
2016
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, March 8, 2016
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
The Snow Train
2016
Genius Loci: the Spirit of Place, edited by Jaym Gates, June 2016
Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit — Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts
2016
Drowned Worlds: Tales from the Anthropocene and Beyond, edited by Jonathan Strahan, 2016.
The Hidden Girl and Other Stories
A Brief And Inaccurate But True Account of the Origin of Living Books
2016
Tales of Our Time, November 4, 2016.
Seven Birthdays
2016
Bridging Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan, November 8, 2016
The Hidden Girl and Other Stories
Shanghai in 48 Hours, a Weekend Itinerary for International Visitors by Roaming Planets Guides, 2116
2017
Part of the Shanghai Project, an exhibit by the Shanghai Zendai Himalayas Museum, April 22, 2017; reprinted in Deep Signal, June 2019.
Ticket
2017
Stanford Anthology for Youth, June 2017.
An Open Letter to the Sentient AI Who Has Announced Its Intention to Take Over the Earth
2017
Unidentified Funny Objects 6, edited by Alex Shvartsman, October 2017
The Sith of Datawork
2017
From a Certain Point of View (Star Wars), October 3, 2017
The Hidden Girl
2017
The Book of Swords, edited by Gardner Dozois, October 2017
The Hidden Girl and Other Stories
Novelette
Alter
2017
The Eugene Studio, Japan, published on November 20, 2017; reprinted in subTerrain, 2020.
The Explainer
2017
CBN Weekly, published on December 21, 2017; English version published in Lightspeed's special 100th issue, September 2018.
Quality Time
2018
Robots vs. Fairies, edited by Navah Wolfe and Dominik Parisien, January 2018
Novelette
Cosmic Spring
2018
Lightspeed, March 15, 2018
The Magic Paintbrush
2018
Jali, edited by Ellah Wakatama Allfrey for Audible, April 2018
Byzantine Empathy
2018
MIT Technology Review’s Twelve Tomorrows, edited by Wade Roush, May 2018
The Hidden Girl and Other Stories
Novelette
The Trustless
2018
Wired, December 17, 2018
Thoughts and Prayers
2019
Slate, January 26, 2019
The Hidden Girl and Other Stories
Love's Mirror
2019
Deep Signal, June 2019
BookSavr
2019
F&SF, September/October 2019.
The Moon Carver
2019
The Other Animals, Audible Original edited by Rachel Hamburg, November 14, 2019.
How to Survive the Next Science Fictional Disaster, A Guide for the Wise
2020
L'Uomo, February 2020.
How to Build a Dragon at the End of Time
2020
Sub-Q, February 2020
Interactive fiction
Grey Rabbit, Crimson Mare, Coal Leopard
2020
The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, February 25, 2020.
The Hidden Girl and Other Stories
Novelette
Uma
2020
Avatars, Inc, from XPrize, edited by Ann VanderMeer, March 13, 2020.
Idols
2020
Made to Order: Robots and Revolution, edited by Jonathan Strahan, March 17, 2020.
A Whisper of Blue
2020
The Book of Dragons, edited by Jonathan Strahan, July 7, 2020
Novelette
50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know
2020
Uncanny, November 3, 2020
The Cleaners
2020
Liu, Ken (2 December 2020). "A Time to Reflect". kenliu.substack.com. Retrieved 2020-12-07.
Excerpt from Theuth, an Oral History of Work in the Age of Machine-Assisted Cognition
2021
Philosophy Through Science Fiction Stories, Bloomsbury Press, edited by Helen De Cruz, Johan De Smedt, and Eric Schwitzgebel, January 2021.
The Armies of Those I Love
2021
Audible Original (February 25, 2021)
Novella
Jaunt
2021
Make Shift: Dispatches from the Post-Pandemic Future, edited by Gideon Lichfield, published by MIT Press (part of the Twelve Tomorrows series), March 2021.
Evaluative Soliloquies
2022
Part of Google’s experimental AI Wordcraft Writers Workshop, November 2, 2022.
Timekeeper's Symphony
2022
Clarkesworld, September 2022
Invasive Species
2023
Newsweek Japan (Japanese translation), February 7, 2023.
Collaboration?
2023
Uncanny, January 3, 2023
co-written with Caroline M. Yoachim
The Emperor’s New Servers
2023
The Oracle, Story Summit 2022, hosted by Alexandria Labs, March 27, 2023.
The Edges of Wilderness
2023
The Continental Literary Magazine, April 18, 2023.
Good Spells
2023
Book of Witches, edited by Jonathan Strahan, August 1 2023.
The Passing of the Dragon
2023
Tor.com, September 13, 2023
Good Stories
2023
The Digital Aesthete: Human Musings on the Intersection of Art and AI, edited by Alex Shvartsman, November 2023.
"Gathered in Translation", an essay on the process and subtleties of translating Chinese SF to English, and the reverse: online at Clarkesworld Magazine, April 2013
Book 3: Death's End, Tor Books, September 2016 by Liu Cixin (originally the Chinese language novel Death's End, 死神永生, 2010 by Liu Cixin)
Book 4: The Redemption of Time, Tor Books, 2019 by Baoshu (originally a Chinese fanfic by Li Jun that was regularized by the original publisher Chongqing Press and series creator Cixin Liu; and published in 2011)[41]
Liu's works in translation
Many of Liu's short stories have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, and multiple other languages and published in short stories collections:[42]
Chinese
爱的算法 ("Algorithms for Love and Others"), published by SFW Publishing, September 5, 2012
思维的形状 ("The Shape of Thought and Others"), published by Tsinghua University Press, November 11, 2014
杀敌算法 ("In the Loop and Others"), published by SFW Publishing, March, 2015
奇点遗民 ("Staying behind"),published by CITIC, 2017
Japanese
紙の動物園, published by Hayakawa, edited by 古沢嘉通 (Yoshimichi Furusawa), April 2015
French
La Ménagerie de papier ("The Paper Menagerie") published by Editions du Bélial, edited by Ellen Herzfeld and Dominique Martel, 2015.
Jardins de poussière ("Dust gardens") published by Editions du Bélial, edited by Ellen Herzfeld and Dominique Martel, 2019.
Spanish
El zoo de papel y otros relatos ("The Paper Menagerie") published by Runas, Alianza Editorial, edited by María Pilar San Román Navarro, 2017.
Filmography
Television
Pantheon is an animated television series based on Liu's sci-fi short stories "The Gods Will Not Be Chained", "The Gods Will Not Be Slain", "The Gods Have Not Died in Vain", "Staying Behind" and "Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer" from the short fictions collection The Hidden Girl and Other Stories. It premiered on AMC+ in 2022.[43][44]
^Kirtley, David Barr (2015-04-24). "Interview: Ken Liu". Wired (via Lightspeed). Archived from the original on 2019-02-19. Retrieved 2019-03-15.((cite web)): CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)