Sci-fi Writer and Futurist Ken Liu's Creative Journey

Ken Liu, a science fiction writer and futurist, has embarked on a remarkable creative path. His first collection of short stories, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories was published in Taiwan in 2018 and immediately caused a sensation. With 15 short stories that traverse the realms of soft and hard science fiction and historical fantasy, the collection boasts diverse themes, profound emotions, and elegant prose. It captivated not only the demanding science fiction fans but also touched numerous non-science fiction readers—revealing that science fiction can be written and read in such a compelling way. Now, his second collection of short stories, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories has arrived. The title story is a retelling of the renowned Tang dynasty legend Nie Yinniang which gained fame through the film directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. Many of the chapters repeatedly examine how humanity and "post-humanity" continuously repeat past mistakes and foolishness. Writing science fiction that looks toward the future while constantly drawing from history and complementing it with philosophical contemplation is a prominent feature of Liu's work, which is profound and enchanting. In a written interview conducted by the Central News Agency, this influential science fiction writer reflects on his creative journey over the past 20 years.

Things My Grandmother Taught Me: Good stories not simply told

Q1: You dedicated The Hidden Girl and Other Stories to your grandmother who taught you "how to tell stories." Could you share with us some of the memories with your grandmother? What did you learn from your grandmother of how to be a good storyteller?

A1: I was lucky that my grandmother was the one to give me my first stories, my personal mythos. I wish the story of my life is worthy of her.

My grandmother told me my first stories: fairy tales, folktales, stories she made up, family history. She also read me my first books: Sherlock Holmes, Journey to the West, Dickens, the Handbook of Mathematics. She was the one who proudly showed her friends my first book, written when I was in kindergarten and illustrated with crayons. But more than anything else, she taught me that good stories are not told, but embodied.

The Legendary "Re-Folding": Reshaping Nie Yinniang's Moral Courage

Q2: The Hidden Girl is quite different from other collected stories in the book. The plot is mostly adapted from a Tang Dynasty story, with fantastical supplements of details left blank in original text, and with a novel interpretation of Yinniang's romance with the mirror maker. What's your consideration of it?

A2: The Hidden Girl is best understood, I think, as a "re-folding" of the Tang Dynasty romance. In a topological re-folding, the elements of the original may still be present in various ways but are mathematically transformed into a new configuration.

The original story is notable for its sparse, stark style, as well as its deeply subversive conception of the role of extra-judicial vigilante justice: xiake. The only character with agency is Yinniang, and all the men in the story are essentially powerless, mere vessels through which she—and, to a lesser extent, her teacher the nun— exercises her will.

In my re-folding, I wanted to preserve that sense of unbounded agency, of self-righteous fury, but I wanted to complicate it and to connect it to our modern world. This obsessions with our "role," with the idea that we can simply carry out our duty and let someone else sort out the moral consequences, is what permits the banality of evil.

When we feel our most free is also when we may be, inadvertently, following the unjust sinews of the world and taking the easy way out. We should be on guard especially when we are told to do our duty.

Q3: The Hidden Girl and Other Stories along with The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories share the common scientific elements such as time dilation and artificial emotions. However, one can also hear the whisper of history echoes behind it – and sometimes it's rather heavy-hearted. Behind the stories of The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary, The Litigation Master and the Monkey King and The Reborn hide a common historical concern: the conflicts of memory and oblivion, if I could put it this way. The winners get the power to conceal their crimes and rewrite the history, and these things happened again and again in all countries, cultures, and times.

Could we regard your continuous scientific-historical writings as an action to reflect the reality with writer's eyes? What actions do you expect readers to take after reading your books?

A3: I don't expect my readers to do anything in response to my stories. I hope, but don’t expect, that they’ll engage with it as independent moral agents. The weight of history is a fact, but how we respond to that weight is a part of the story each of us must write about our own life, and to be judged thereby. A good piece of art should embody something of the creator's soul: his moral judgment, understanding, compassion, empathy, love. And readers will respond to it in the same way their souls respond to the bared soul of another, stripped of artifice, of deflections, of decoration.

In that honest engagement, soul to soul, the reader is a fully empowered moral being.

The Core of Creation: the Meaning of Being Human

Q4: After reading the whole book, I went back to the front and reread the opening story Ghost Days, and found it intensified dramatically than the first time I read. Published in 2013, Ghost Days came out rather earlier than many works in the book, but it seems to organize as an overall idea to the collection. In Ghost Days, Ona herself is a mixture of two civilizations. Humans' trying to leave some legacies against the oblivion, the relationship between humans and post-humans, and the paradoxes of self-identification, all these problems are unsolvable... Is that suitable to put that these issues reflect your main cares in recent 10 years?

The themes that have occupied me for my entire career have revolved around one core idea: What does it mean to be human?

A4: Technology, history, science, social media, mythology, the Singularity, genetic engineering, climate change, criminal justice, philosophy, artificial intelligence… all these topics are just more ways to ask questions about what it means to be human. Are we what we do or what we remember? What is our responsibility toward history? What is our responsibility to future generations? How can we live a just life? Are we mainly emotions or reasons? Are we biological machines or spiritual animals? As you note, these questions have no ready answers and are unlikely to ever be resolved.

Which is good: it means I'll never run out of stories.

Impact of COVID-19: Global Political Restructuring and the Rise of Conspiracy Theories

Q5: The pandemic of Covid-19 has been lasted for over 2 years, and the world is forced to change in many ways. What is the biggest change for you in your daily life and writing?

A5: I miss in-person literary festivals and workshops. The sooner we can get back to those the better.

As for the long-term impact of Covid-19, I think it's far too early to tell. With major events like this, often the most immediate changes don't last, but the more subtle things will turn out, in the long run, to be significant. I don't expect the various debates over masks and vaccination to have a long-lasting impact, but the political reconfiguration of the world and the prevalence of conspiracy theories… I expect those to alter the years to come.

But meanwhile, we'll continue to tell stories about the world we live in, before history has erased its messiness and tamed the unpredictability in neat little just-so stories.

About Ken Liu

About the Interviewer

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