Ken Liu

Ken Liu
Liu at the 2016 Texas Book Festival
Born	1976 Lanzhou, China
Occupation	Author, Translator, Lawyer, Programmer
Nationality	American
Genre	Science fiction, Fantasy
Notable works	The Paper Menagerie (2012), The Grace of Kings (2015), English translation of The Three Body Problem (2015)
Notable awards	Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy
Spouse	Lisa Tang Liu[1]
Website
kenliu.name

Ken Liu (born 1976) is an American science-fiction and fantasy writer and translator of science fiction and literary stories from Chinese into English. His short stories have appeared in F&SF, Asimov's, Analog, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and multiple "Year's Best" anthologies.^[2]

His short story "The Paper Menagerie" is the first work of fiction, of any length, to win the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards.^[1] His short story, "Mono no aware" won the 2013 Hugo,^[3][4] and his novella "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" was also nominated for a Hugo.^[5] His translation of the novel The Three-Body Problem won the 2015 Hugo Award, the first translated novel in history to win that honor.^[6]

Biography

Liu was born in 1976 in Lanzhou, China, and immigrated to the United States when he was 11 years old, initially living in Palo Alto, California, and later moving to Waterford, Connecticut.

Liu earned his A.B. in English from Harvard College and worked in the technology field for several years before earning his J.D. at Harvard Law School and entering the field of tax law.^[7] More recently, he has switched to a career as a litigation consultant in technology cases, where he can use both his legal and technology skills.

He currently lives in Massachusetts with his wife Lisa Tang Liu and their two daughters.

Bibliography

Novels

• The Grace of Kings (2015)
• The Wall of Storms (2016)

Short stories

• "The Paper Menagerie" (online at io9), The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2011.
• "The Long Haul: From the Annals of Transportation, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009" (online), Clarkesworld Magazine, November 2014
• "Presence" (online), Uncanny, November/December 2014
• "Saboteur", Analog, December 2014
• "The Regular", Upgraded, edited by Neil Clarke, September 2014
• "The Gods Will Not Be Slain", The End is Now (Book II of the Apocalypse Triptych), edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey, September 2014
• "Running Shoes" (online), SQ Mag, Issue 16, September 2014
• "Homo Florensis", Solaris Rising 3, August 2014
• "In the Loop", War Stories, edited by Andrew Liptak and Jaym Gates, August 2014
• "Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon" (online), Kaleidoscope, edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios, August 2014
• (with Lisa Tang Liu) "Hark! Listen to the Animals", Galaxy's Edge, Issue 9, July 2014
• "What I Assume You Shall Assume", Dead Man's Hand, edited by John Joseph Adams, May 2014
• "Knotting Grass, Holding Ring", Long Hidden, edited by Rose Fox and Daniel José Older, May 2014
• "Lecture 14: Concerning the Event Cloaking Device and Practical Applications Thereof" (online), Cosmos, April 2014
• "The Ten Suns", Dark Expanse: Surviving the Collapse, March 2014
• "The Gods Will Not Be Chained", The End is Nigh (Book I of the Apocalypse Triptych), edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey, March 2014
• "None Owns the Air", Lightspeed Magazine, February 2014
• "What Is Expected of a Wedding Host" (online), Daily Science Fiction, February 2014
• "The Reborn" (online), Tor.com, January 2014
• (with Mike Resnick) "The Plantimal", Asimov's, March 2014
• "Second Chance" (online), Nature, January 2014
• "The Clockwork Soldier" (online), Clarkesworld Magazine, January 2014
• “You’ll Always Have the Burden With You”, republished, Perihelion Science Fiction, December 2013
• "The Litigation Master and the Monkey King" (online), Lightspeed Magazine, August 2013
• "The Plague", Nature, May 16, 2013
• "The Messenger's Tale", Aoife's Kiss, Issue 43, Winter 2012/2013 issue, December 2012
• "The Perfect Match" (online), Lightspeed Magazine, December 2012
• "Good Hunting", (online), Strange Horizons, October 9, 2012
• “The Perfect Book”, Analog, December 2012 issue, September 22, 2012
• “Arc”, F&SF, September/October issue, September 2012
• “Summer Reading”, Daily Science Fiction, September 4, 2012
• “Cutting”, Electric Velocipede, Issue 24, July 30, 2012
• “You’ll Always Have the Burden With You”, In Situ, Dagan Books, July 10, 2012
• “Dear Emily”, The Memory Eater Anthology, July 5, 2012
• “The Silk Merchant”, Apex, Issue 38, July 3, 2012
• “Celestial Bodies”, Nature, June 28, 2012
• “Real Faces”, F&SF, July/August issue, June 22, 2012
• "The Illusionist" (online), Goldfish Grimm's Spicy Fiction Sushi, Issue 4, June 2, 2012
• "Mono no aware", The Future is Japanese, May 15, 2012; republished (online), Lightspeed Magazine, June 2013
• "The Tome of Tourmaline" (online), Daily Science Fiction, May 9, 2012
• "The Shadowcrafter", Nine, Issue 1, April 2012
• "Intelligent Design" (online), Schrodinger's Mouse, April 2012
• "Monkeys" (online), Nature's * "Futures" feature, April 19, 2012
• "To the Moon", Fireside, April 17, 2012
• "Memories of My Mother" (online), Daily Science Fiction, March 19, 2012
• "All the Flavors" (online), GigaNotoSaurus, February 2012
• "The Five Elements of the Heart Mind" (online), Lightspeed Magazine, January 24, 2012
• "Maxwell's Demon", The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January/February 2012
• "The People of Pele", Asimov's, February 2012
• "The Last Summer", 10 Flash, January 2012
• "The Necrocracy", Penumbra, December 2011
• "The Countable", Asimov's, December 2011
• "Justice FAIRBOT", 140 And Counting, edited by Joanne Merriam, December 11, 2011
• "Life Plus Seventy" (online), Kasma SF, November 23, 2011
• "Safe Empathy", Daily Science Fiction, November 21, 2011
• "Staying Behind" (online), Clarkesworld Magazine, October 1, 2011
• "Golden Years in the Paleozoic", Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Issue #52, September 2011
• "Real Artists", TRSF (September 2011), a special publication of MIT's Technology Review
• "The Last Seed" (online), Daily Science Fiction, September 26, 2011
• "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary", Panverse Three, edited by Dario Ciriello, September 2011
• "Music of the Spheres", Mirror Shards: Exploring the Edges of Augmented Reality (Volume One), 2011
• "The Box That Eats Memories" (online), Daily Science Fiction, August 10, 2011
• "Hark! Listen to the Animals", The ePocalypse: e-mails at the end, co-written with Lisa Tang Liu, August 2011
• "The Caretaker", Digital Science Fiction, June 2011
• "Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer", The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2011.
• "Ad Block", (online), Kasma Science Fiction, March 19, 2011
• "The Visit" (online), On the Premises, March 2011 (Issue 13)
• "Simulacrum" (online), Lightspeed Magazine, February 15, 2011
• "To the Stars" (online), Nature's * "Futures" feature, co-written with Shelly Li, February 3, 2011
• "The Chase", Every Day Fiction, January 28, 2011
• "Tying Knots" (online), Clarkesworld Magazine, January 2011
• "Saving Face" (online), Crossed Genres, co-written with Shelly Li, January 1, 2011
• "The Letter" (online), Every Day Fiction, December 5, 2010
• "The Literomancer", The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September/October 2010
• "The Phoenix" (online), On the Premises, July 2010 (Issue 11)
• "Beidou (北斗)", The Dragon and the Stars, edited by Derwin Mak and Eric Choi, May 2010.
• "Single-Bit Error", Thoughtcrime Experiments, edited by Sumana Harihareswara and Leonard Richardson, 2009 (read) (buy); International Speculative Fiction, edited by Roberto Mendes, December 2013;
• "Beneath the Language" (online), On the Premises, July 2007 (Issue 2)
• "State Change", Polyphony 4, edited by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake, September 2004.
• "The Algorithms for Love" (online), Strange Horizons, July 2004; International Speculative Fiction, edited by Roberto Mendes, July 2012;
• "Gossamer", Writers of the Future, Vol. 19, 2003.
• "Carthaginian Rose", Empire of Dreams and Miracles: The Phobos Science Fiction Anthology (v. 1), edited by Orson Scott Card and Keith Olexa, 2002.
• "The Waves", December 2012; Asimov's Science Fiction (Volume 36 Issue 12)

Translations into other languages

Some of Liu's short stories have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, and French, and published in short stories collections:^[8]

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

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.

Translations

• Three Body (三体, 2008) by Liu Cixin, published by Tor Books as The Three-Body Problem, November 2014
• "The Flowers of Shazui" by Chen Qiufan, Interzone, November 2012
• "Taking Care of God" by Liu Cixin (online), Pathlight, March 2012
• "A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight" by Xia Jia (online), Clarkesworld Magazine, February 2012
• "The City of Silence" by Ma Boyong (online), World SF Blog, November 2011
• "The Mark Twain Robots" by Ma Boyong, TRSF (September 2011), a special publication of MIT's Technology Review
• "The Fish of Lijiang" by Chen Qiufan (online), Clarkesworld Magazine, August 2011

Awards and honors

• 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel, winner, "The Three-Body Problem (三体)" by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu^[9]
• 2015 Sidewise Award for Alternate History, winner, "The Long Haul: From the Annals of Transportation, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009"
• 2015 Locus Award for Best Novella, finalist, "The Regular"^[10]
• 2015 Theodore Sturgeon Award, finalist, "The Regular"^[11]
• 2014 Nebula Award for Best Novel, nominee, "The Three-Body Problem (三体)" by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu^[12]
• 2014 Nebula Award for Best Novella, nominee, "The Regular"^[13]
• 2014 Sidewise Award for Alternate History, nominee, "A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel"^[14]
• 2014 Locus Award for Best Short Story, finalist, "A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel"^[15]
• 2013 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, winner, "Mono no aware"
• 2013 Locus Award for Best Short Story, finalist, "Mono no aware"
• 2013 Nebula Award for Best Novelette, nominee, "‘‘The Litigation Master and the Monkey King"
• 2013 FantLab's Book of the Year Award for best Translated Novella or Short Story, winner, "Mono no aware"
• 2013 FantLab's Book of the Year Award for best On-line publication in Small Form', winner, "The Paper Menagerie"
• 2013 Theodore Sturgeon Award, finalist, "The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species" and "Mono no aware"
• 2012 Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards, Short Form winner, translation from the Chinese of "The Fish of Lijiang" by Chen Qiufan^[16]
• 2012 Nebula Award for Best Short Story, nominee, "The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species"^[17]
• 2012 Nebula Award for Best Novelette, nominee, "The Waves"
• 2012 Nebula Award for Best Novella, nominee, "All the Flavors"
• 2012 Theodore Sturgeon Award, finalist, "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" and "The Paper Menagerie"
• 2012 Locus Award for Best Short Story, finalist, "The Paper Menagerie"
• 2012 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction, winner, "The Paper Menagerie"
• 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novella, nominee, "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary"
• 2012 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, winner, "The Paper Menagerie"
• 2011 Nebula Award for Best Short Story, winner, "The Paper Menagerie"
• 2011 Nebula Award for Best Novella, nominee, "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary"

References

External links

• Ken Liu, Writer (official website)
• Ken Liu at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Ken Liu's science fiction awards bring global attention to Chinese authors of the genre at China Daily, 2012-10-22
• Interview: Ken Liu, The Asian American Literary Review, August 16, 2012
• EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Ken Liu Talks About Humanistic Fiction and More, SF Signal, February 7, 2012
• Interview with Ken Liu, Scapezine, January 2012
• Author Spotlight: Ken Liu, Lightspeed Magazine, January 2012
• 140 And Counting, Upper Rubber Boot Books, anthology, December 11, 2011
• " Liu, Ken" (The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction; by Jonathan Clements)