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Ken Liu

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Ken Liu
Portrait of Ken Liu by Lisa Tang Liu, 2014
Portrait of Ken Liu by Lisa Tang Liu, 2014
Born
刘宇昆; Liú Yǔkūn

1976 (age 49–50)[1]
Lanzhou, Gansu, China[1]
Occupation
  • Author
  • Lawyer
  • Programmer
  • Translator
NationalityAmerican
GenreScience fiction, fantasy
Notable works
  • The Paper Menagerie (2011)
  • The Grace of Kings (2015)
  • The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016)
  • The Hidden Girl and Other Stories (2020)
  • All That We See or Seem (2025)
Notable awards
SpouseLisa Kaiyee Tang Liu[2]
Website
kenliu.name Edit this at Wikidata
Ken Liu
Traditional Chinese劉宇昆
Simplified Chinese刘宇昆
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinLiú Yǔkūn
IPA[ljǒʊ ỳ.kʰwə́n]
Ken Liu in 2016

Kenneth Yukun Liu (born 1976)[1] is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. Liu has won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards for his fiction, which has appeared in F&SF, Asimov's Science Fiction, Analog, Lightspeed,[3] Clarkesworld, Reactor, Uncanny Magazine and multiple "Year's Best" anthologies.[4][5]

Liu's debut epic fantasy novel series, The Dandelion Dynasty, is described as silkpunk, a term coined by him to encapsulate the way it blends the material culture and philosophical roots of East Asian antiquity in an alternative vision of modernity.[6]

Liu has also written a new scifi thriller series, Julia Z, which features a hacker with a specialty in AI and robotics.[7]

In addition to his original fiction, Liu has also translated some notable Chinese science fiction works into English, winning Hugo Awards for these translations as well.[8][9]

Childhood and career

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Liu was born in 1976 in Lanzhou, China.[10] He spent his childhood with his grandparents and credits his grandmother as giving him a lifelong love of storytelling.[11] His mother, who received her Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States, is a pharmaceutical chemist, while his father is a computer engineer.[12] Liu immigrated to the United States when he was 11 years old.[10] 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.[13] At Harvard College, he studied English Literature and Computer Science, receiving his A. B. in 1998.[13][14]

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. He became a full-time writer in 2017.[13][14]

Liu began publishing fiction in 2002. His first published work was "Carthaginian Rose", a short story on mind uploading, part of The Phobos Science Fiction Anthology Volume 1.[15] This story would later become part of the AMC series PANTHEON.[16]

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”.[17]

In addition to magazines and online publications, Liu's short story fiction has been published in two collections, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016), which blends science fiction and fantasy to ask questions about historiography, cultural reinvention, storytelling, and transhumanism,[18] and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories (2020) which explores ideas such as tradition and progress, the fallibility of memory, and the essence of what it means to be human.[17]

After a long career writing and publishing short fiction, Liu turned to a silkpunk epic fantasy series about an alternative vision of how a multi-cultural society can transition into modernity based on both East Asian and Western values, consisting of The Grace of Kings (2015), The Wall of Storms (2016), The Veiled Throne (2021), and Speaking Bones (2022).[19][20]

He has also written for the Star Wars universe, including the novel The Legends of Luke Skywalker (2017), a series of Canterbury-tale like in-universe legends.[21]

Along with his original work, Liu has translated the works of several Chinese authors into English, including Liu Cixin, Hao Jingfang, Chen Qiufan, Gu Shi, and Xia Jia.[22] His translation of The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin became a best seller in English.[23] He has also worked as an editor, with two anthologies of translated Chinese fiction, Invisible Planets and Broken Stars.[24][25] His latest translation is a new rendition of Laozi's Dao De Jing: A New Interpretation for a Transformative Time.[26]

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.[27] His short story "Real Artists" was adapted into the short film Real Artists (2017) by Cameo Wood.[28] His short story "Good Hunting", which uses steampunk to interrogate the consequences of Western colonialism and Chinese modernity, was adapted into an animated short as part of Netflix's Love, Death & Robots series (2019).[29][30] Six stories in The Hidden Girl and Other Stories and "Carthaginian Rose" were adapted by Craig Silverstein into the animated television series Pantheon.[16]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Liu was disturbed by finger-pointing, jingoism, and xenophobia in the face of what he saw as an existential, global threat to all humanity; he began to seek solace in the Tao Te Ching and subsequently released a new translation of the ancient text, Laozi's Dao De Jing: A New Interpretation for a Transformative Time (2024).[31]

His latest work is a series of scifi thrillers, starting with All That We See or Seem (2025), featuring a young hacker named Julia Z. The series engages with the impact of AI, and in particular its consequences on the arts, the law, and other aspects of everyday life.[7]

Liu frequently speaks at conferences, think tanks, and universities on a variety of topics related to the evolving nature of work, machine-augmented creativity, and other aspects of futurism.[32][33]

Liu lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.[34]

Awards

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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.[2] In addition, his short story, "Mono no aware" won the 2013 Hugo Award,[35][36] and his novella "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" was also nominated for a Hugo.[37] The first novel in his The Dandelion Dynasty series, The Grace of Kings, was a 2016 Nebula Award finalist.[38] The novel was the 2016 Locus Award Best First Novel winner.[39]

Besides his original work, Liu's translation of Liu Cixin's Chinese language novel The Three-Body Problem (the first in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy) won the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel, making it the first translated novel to have won the award.[40] Liu also translated Hao Jingfang's novelette, "Folding Beijing," which won a Hugo in 2016.

Winner

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Finalists and nominated

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Bibliography

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Main article: Ken Liu bibliography

Liu is well known for his short story "The Paper Menagerie", his Dandelion Dynasty fantasy novel series, and his translation of Cixin Liu's novel The Three-Body Problem and its sequels. For a more comprehensive list of Liu's works, see the linked bibliography page.

Filmography

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Television

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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.[55]

His short story "Good Hunting" was adapted into an animated short as part of Netflix's Love, Death & Robots anthology series (2019).[56]

References

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  1. ^ a b c "Ken Liu: Silkpunk". Locus Online. 2015-05-10. Retrieved 2025-04-03.
  2. ^ a b Reid, Luc (2013-03-25). "Not Just Vast Armies Clashing on Dark Plains at Night: An Interview with Ken Liu". Strange Horizons. Archived from the original on 2013-05-30. Retrieved 2013-05-15.
  3. ^ Yant, Christie (2013-10-22). "Author Spotlight: Ken Liu". Lightspeed Magazine. Retrieved 2025-04-03.
  4. ^ Anders, Charlie Jane (2012-11-08). "Read Ken Liu's amazing story that swept the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards". Gizmodo. Retrieved 2025-04-03.
  5. ^ Yoachim, Caroline M. "Interview: Ken Liu". Uncanny Magazine. Retrieved 2025-04-03.
  6. ^ "Ken Liu Talks Silkpunk, Old Poems, and Contemporary Chinese SFF in His Reddit AMA". Tor.com. 13 April 2015.
  7. ^ a b "Julia Z". Simonandschuster.com. Retrieved 2025-03-26.
  8. ^ Tatlow, Didi Kirsten (2015-08-24). "Science-Fiction Prize Is Awarded to Chinese Writer for First Time". Sinosphere Blog. Retrieved 2025-04-03.
  9. ^ Alter, Alexandra (2019-12-03). "How Chinese Sci-Fi Conquered America". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-04-03.
  10. ^ a b "MEET THE MAN BRINGING CHINESE SCIENCE FICTION TO THE WEST". Newsweek. 2016-10-30. Retrieved 2019-01-05.
  11. ^ "Ken Liu Talks Silkpunk, Old Poems, and Contemporary Chinese SFF in His Reddit AMA". Tor.com. 13 April 2015. Retrieved 15 March 2019.
  12. ^ "Ken Liu won science fiction awards for best short story". AsiaOne. AsiaOne. 2013-09-09. Retrieved 2019-01-05.
  13. ^ a b c "Waterford alum — and award-winning short story writer — Ken Liu releases his debut novel". The Day (New London). 2015-04-14. Archived from the original on 2019-04-13. Retrieved 2019-01-05.
  14. ^ a b "Fusion Fantasy: Ken Liu's sprawling hybrid fiction". Harvard Magazine. November–December 2016. Retrieved 2019-01-05.
  15. ^ "Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy". Clarkesworld Magazine. Retrieved 2025-04-03.
  16. ^ a b "Sci-Fi Author Ken Liu Discusses TV Series Adaptation & More". 15 March 2025. Retrieved 2025-03-26.
  17. ^ a b Ouellette, Katherine (2020-02-24). "Modern Mythmaking In Ken Liu's 'The Hidden Girl And Other Stories'". www.wbur.org. Retrieved 2020-12-07.
  18. ^ El-Mohtar, Amal (2016-03-13). "No Paper Tiger, This 'Menagerie' Is Full Of Fierce Feeling". NPR. Retrieved 2025-04-03.
  19. ^ 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)
  20. ^ "The Dandelion Dynasty". simonandschuster.com. Retrieved 2025-04-03.
  21. ^ Floyd, James (2017-11-01). "Interview on The Legends of Luke Skywalker". StarWars.com. Retrieved 2019-03-15.
  22. ^ Sullivan, Colin (2016-08-20). "Chinese SF and the art of translation". Nature.com. Archived from the original on 2019-07-02. Retrieved 2019-03-15.
  23. ^ Doctorow, Cory (2019-12-04). "How Ken Liu went from engineer to lawyer to SF writer to the foremost translator of Chinese sf into English". boingboing.net. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
  24. ^ Carroll, Tobias (2016-11-15). "Ken Liu Will Keep an Open Mind". electricliterature.com. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
  25. ^ ""Broken Stars," a New Anthology Edited by Ken Liu, Casts a Fresh Look at Chinese Sci-Fi". Words Without Borders. Retrieved 2025-04-03.
  26. ^ "The Skiffy and Fanty Show: Book Review: Laozi's Dao De Jing (Ken Liu)". The Skiffy and Fanty Show. 2024-08-19. Retrieved 2025-04-03.
  27. ^ "Beautiful Dreamer (2016)". IMDb. Retrieved 2019-03-15.
  28. ^ "Real Artists (2017)". IMDb.
  29. ^ Liptak, Andrew (2019-03-22). "Many of the short stories that inspired Love, Death + Robots are free online". The Verge. Retrieved 2025-04-03.
  30. ^ {cite web | url= https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14797585.2024.2405573#abstract%7C title= 'Krishna and Kumar (2024)' |}
  31. ^ Liu, Ken (30 September 2024). "Why the ancient power of the Dao De Jing is more important than ever". Big Think. Big Think. Archived from the original on 30 September 2024. Retrieved 2 October 2024.
  32. ^ "A conversation with award-winning science fiction author Ken Liu". Illinois Public Media. 2024-10-09. Retrieved 2025-04-03.
  33. ^ "SYNAPSE". synapseconclave.com. Retrieved 2025-04-03.
  34. ^ "A conversation with award-winning science fiction author Ken Liu". Illinois Public Media. 2024-10-09. Retrieved 2025-04-03.
  35. ^ "2013 Hugo Awards". 22 December 2012. Retrieved 4 September 2013.
  36. ^ David Barnett (2 September 2013). "The Hugo awards: 'beauty contest' or prize of the people?". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 September 2013.
  37. ^ "2012 Hugo Awards". 7 April 2012. Archived from the original on 9 April 2012. Retrieved 4 September 2013.
  38. ^ "Nebula Award Winners Announced". 15 May 2016.
  39. ^ "2016 Locus Award Winners". locusmag.com. 25 June 2016. Retrieved 15 March 2019.
  40. ^ "2015 Hugo Awards". 31 March 2015. Retrieved 2015-08-23.
  41. ^ "2012 Winners". sfftawards.org. Retrieved June 1, 2012.
  42. ^ "2015 Hugo Awards". The Hugo Awards. 31 March 2015. Retrieved 2015-10-11.
  43. ^ "2016 Locus Award Winners". locusmag.com. 25 June 2016. Retrieved 15 March 2019.
  44. ^ "2017 Locus Award Winners". locusmag.com. 24 June 2017. Retrieved 15 March 2019.
  45. ^ "2017 Locus Award Winners". locusmag.com. 24 June 2017. Retrieved 19 November 2022.
  46. ^ "2012 Nebula Awards Nominees Announced". SFWA. 20 February 2013. Retrieved 2015-10-11.
  47. ^ "2014 Nebula Awards Nominees Announced". SFWA. 20 February 2015. Retrieved 2015-10-11.
  48. ^ "2014 Nebula Awards Nominees Announced". SFWA. 20 February 2015. Retrieved 2015-10-11.
  49. ^ "2014 Sidewise Award Finalists". Locus. 2014-06-06. Retrieved 2014-06-06.
  50. ^ "Locus Online News » 2014 Locus Awards Finalists". www.locusmag.com. 7 May 2014. Retrieved 2015-10-11.
  51. ^ "Locus Online News » 2015 Locus Awards Finalists". www.locusmag.com. 4 May 2015. Retrieved 2015-10-11.
  52. ^ "Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction News and Events". Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction. Archived from the original on 2012-06-15. Retrieved 2015-10-11.
  53. ^ "2017 Hugo Awards". The Hugo Awards. 31 December 2016. Retrieved 2017-10-11.
  54. ^ "Announcing the 2020 Locus Awards Finalists". Tor.com. 2020-05-29. Retrieved 2020-05-29.
  55. ^ Ramin, Zahed. "Sci-Fi Epic 'Pantheon' Updates AMC+ as a Cool New Animation Destination". Retrieved September 26, 2022.
  56. ^ Cox, Ailsa (2025-01-27), "Love, death and desire", Writing Short Stories, London: Routledge, pp. 133–155, ISBN 978-1-003-44923-2, retrieved 2025-11-08{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
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