The Wall of Storms - Ken Liu

The Wall of Storms by Ken Liu is the second volume his Dandileon Dynasty series. It weighs in at nearly 860 pages in hardcover, driving home once again how insanely productive Ken Liu is. This book appeared a year and a half after the first volume. In that space of time Liu also produced a number of translations and short stories. Besides his family and day job of course. I wonder if the man ever sleeps. What Liu seems to have been aiming at in this novel is bigger, better, faster, more, and in many ways that is exactly what it is. If you liked The Grace of Kings, this book will not disappoint.

It has been several years since Kuni Garu betrayed his friend Mata Zyndhu and claimed the throne. His reign is now established, but whether he will be remembered as the founder of a dynasty remains to be seen. The emperor struggles with the conflicting interests of various groups in his empire. Tradition, prejudice and competing interests of various factions in his vast empire keep the emperor from pushing though the reforms he desires. Slowly but surely he tries to create an empire that moves away from the traditional order of things towards a meritocracy. His choice of successor is to be the final move in this development. His plans are soon derailed by internal strife and an invasion from overseas. Beset by enemies o all sides, the continuation of the young dynasty hangs in the balance.

One of the criticisms levelled at the first volume in the series was that the female characters played very modest roles in the novel. Liu changes that around in The Wall of Storms and puts them in the spotlight. Five women from different walks of life pretty much drive the story. Empress Jia is the oldest of them. She is a ruthless politician, the power behind the throne. She also proves herself to be an absolutely horrible human being. Her ambition and sense of duty make her sacrifice everything. One of the interesting aspects of this is the way she accepts that many people would think her inhuman and is willing to let history be her judge. Accepting the consequences of her actions is small comfort to those who lose their lives in her political machinations.

One of those victims is Marshal of the Empire Gin. She is a much better soldier than politician and steps right into the trap Jia sets her. She is too useful to discard however, the empress hasn't foreseen an invasion, and so she lives to fight another war. There is something bitter about Gin. She is uncomfortable in her new role and increasingly suspicious of the imperial court. She needs a cause to fight for and it takes most of the novel before she finds one.

The three other women are of a younger generation and have different outlooks on the  world. Fisherman's daughter and scholar Zomi is one of the few who manages to seize the opportunities the reign of the new emperor offers. Her superior intellect takes her far. There is more than a bit of irony in the fact that her desire to make the lives of ordinary people better makes her end up developing new weapons of war. It also introduces her to Théra, daughter of the emperor. Her life is a struggle against the sexism ingrained in society. She wants to be more than an imperial bargaining chip. The emperor recognizes his daughter's drive and talent but has to move carefully so as not to endanger her. Théra does not share her father's appreciation for the long game however, and soon takes matters in her own hand.

The fifth woman shaping the story is one of the invaders. She grew up among a people shaped by the harsh environment of their homeland. Driven by the need to find a more fertile land, they invade Dara. Her father is the ruler of the invaders and operates by the maxim might makes right. It has shaped her view of the world and forms a stark contrast with the Dara characters, all of whom are exposed to the teachings of the many Daran philosophers. It is a directness that some of the characters who meet her find hard to resist.

Besides these five, there is a large cast of other characters. As with the previous novel, Liu follows events in different locations. I did feel he managed to stay a bit closer to his characters in this novel. The Grace of Kings gave us a great view of what was going on but at times it leaned towards a history more than a novel. In that area, Liu certainly improved. Another thing I liked about the book was the non-linear nature of the narrative. We jump around the timeline of Dara quite a lot to fill in the backstory of some of the characters. It is a very cleverly plotted novel, showing us exactly what we need to know, when we need to know it.

Although the story is partially inspired by one of China's oldest dynasties, Liu introduces a lot of fairly modern science. Characters tinker with electricity, primitive batteries, airships, submersibles and modern biology. Although the gods play their part, for the characters it is technology and strategy that shape the course of the war. I felt that at times Liu did a bit too much explaining of how things worked, slowing down the story perhaps a tad. That being said, the way this war spurs invention and establishes a framework for a modern research institute was fascinating to read.  Whether or not Théra and Zomi succeed in their other exploits, this might well be their legacy.

The Wall of Storms is an epic tale of war, political intrigue and scientific exploration. Betrayal, triumph and the (sometimes not very subtle) intervention of the gods make it a novel that will do well with fans of epic fantasy. It is a story that keeps you reading. Although it is a formidable tome, it reads fairly quickly. The novel is a step up from the first volume, especially in terms of characterization. I enjoyed it more than the first volume in the series. Like The Grace of Kings, this book is recommended reading.

Book Details
Title: The Wall of Storms
Author: Ken Liu
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Pages: 860
Year: 2016
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-7849-7325-4
First published: 2016

Death's End - Cixin Liu

Death's End is the concluding volume of a science fiction trilogy that started with The Three-Body Problem. These novels have been translated from Chinese, and that alone makes them stand out. Translations into English are rare in science fiction. Translations that win awards - The Three-Body Problem won a Hugo Award - are even rarer. Slowly, more attention for science fiction from outside the anglophone sphere is emerging and this series certainly played a part in that. Death's End takes Liu's vision to extremes. It is a book with a scope grander than we have seen in the previous volumes and as such, a fitting conclusion to the series.

The threat from the Trisolarans has, at least for the moment, been neutralized. By finding a way to expose the position of their home world to the galaxy, Earth now has a powerful weapon of deterrence. It is, in a sense, back to the cold war. The Wallfacer project was not the only one humanity started to deal with the crisis however. In this age of deterrence, a young Chinese aerospace engineer wakes up after many decades of hibernation. Her knowledge of one of these programs upsets the carefully maintained balance between the two species. Soon, Earth plunges into another crisis. This one even more lethal than anything they have encountered before.

The translation is once again in the hands of Ken Liu. As far as I can tell he did a splendid job. Liu translated the first novel, before handing over the reigns to Joel Martinsen for the second book. They obviously compared notes because the English version appears seamless to me. Although many of the characters are Chinese, the story takes place on a global scale or even beyond. Liu only needs eleven footnotes in a 600 page book, to explain a few phrases where the context might escape the western reader.

The main character is the Chinese engineer Cheng Xin. She is born in the twenty-first century and lives pretty much through the entire period of the Trisolaran crisis. Cheng takes a decidedly different approach to dealing with the crisis than Luo Ji, the main character in The Dark Forest. Where he sets humanity on a ruthless path of mutually assured destruction, Cheng doesn't care for the responsibility to condemn whole species to death and decide over the fate of whole solar systems. Her compassion proves to be costly in a universe where everybody is out to destroy everybody else.

I must say the parallel Liu draws between society and his main characters annoyed me a bit in this novel. Society swings from 'masculine' values to 'feminine values' and back again. From bellicose and ruthless, to compassionate and passive, and back again. These qualifications will have feminists all over the world up in arms. The idea that humanity needs an utterly ruthless man to survive the crisis and that by not following the examples of Luo and Wade (another powerful figure in the story, and a man devoid of any sense of morality), our species condemns itself to extinction. Whether or not it is desirable to follow a tyrant in wartime is debatable but surely this theme could have been handled without making it into a gender issue.

In the previous novel, the Trisolarans imposed limits on human technological development. After the start of what Liu calls the deterrence age, these limits disappear and humanity once again progresses in great strides. Liu's cosmology becomes ever more complex. His fondness for playing with dimensions and perspectives is given free reign in the book, leading to a number of memorable scenes. Once again, some parts of the novel reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke (Rendezvous with Rama and the Fountains of Paradise in particular) but there is also a bit of Poul Anderson in the book. Specifically his novel Tau Zero.

Although we follow Cheng for most of the novel, Liu inserts sweeping passages where he explains global developments. They are none too subtle for the most part. Humanity in Liu's vision moves as a whole. There is little room in the narrative for dissent or debate. When presented with irrefutable evidence (something not many people in the west seem to believe in these days), the Earth as a whole decides to follow the inevitable path. Liu breaks the show-don't-tell rule on a massive scale in this novel. If that bothers you as are a reader, this novel is clearly not for you. Personally it didn't bother me beyond the fact that humanity seems to behave a bit more rational than I would expect them to do.

Liu takes the story to the end of the universe and beyond. It is a dark journey, one that offers little hope for any of the creatures inhabiting it. There is just a glimmer at the very end though. While this universe may be doomed, from its ashes, a new one may arise. Since it is a worst case scenario, the salvation of the universe relies on many parties doing something completely selfish. Given all that has gone before, it is no more than the barest hint of light in the dark forest universe.

Liu's trilogy evolves into space opera on the largest possible canvas. It is a trilogy that will awe the reader with grand vistas of the universe. While not flawless, the series has already shown that it is more than capable of finding a global audience. This novel manages to raise the stakes to dizzying heights, and forms a worthy conclusion of the series. I suspect it will turn out to be a favourite for many readers. If I had to pick a favourite it would probably be the first book. It shows us a bit more of Chinese society and that adds to the story in my opinion. For the pure science fiction fan, Death's End is probably more appealing. I do hope that the success of this series has opened the door a bit further for other translations. If anything, these novels show that there is a wealth of material to discover beyond what is written in English.

Book Details
Title: Death's End
Author: Cixin Liu
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 604
Year: 2016
Language: English
Translation: Ken Liu
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-765-7710-4
First published: 2010

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories - Ken Liu

Chinese-American author Ken Liu's star is rising in speculative fiction. He started selling stories in 2002, but the bulk of his work appeared from 2010 onwards. He has nevertheless managed to produce around a hundred short pieces in that time.  At the moment the focus seems to be on novels. His début, The Grace of Kings, appeared last year to much critical acclaim. Later this year a sequel titled The Wall of Storms will be published. It is one of the most anticipated books of 2016. As if he wasn't busy enough already, Liu also works as a translator, bringing Chinese science fiction to a western audience. Last year's Hugo Award winning novel The Three Body Problem was translated by him. Liu, one could say,  is on a roll and publishing a collection seems like an obvious thing to do.

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories contains fifteen pieces of short fiction, ranging from short story to novella. There is one original piece to the collection, the short story An Advanced Readers' Picture Book of Comparative Cognition. All the others were published before between 2004 and 2014. The selection contains some of his best known stories as well as a few pieces that received less attention. It contains stories that have been nominated for Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Sturgeon and World Fantasy Awards, with a few winners among them. It is, in other words, a collection I expected a lot from. And for the most part, Lui delivers.

His fiction is hard to categorize, it ranges across genres and subgenres without ever fully being caught in one. As Liu states in the introduction, genre or mainstream is not something he pays attention to. In that same introduction he states: "For me, all fiction is about prizing the logic of metaphors - which is the logic of narratives in general - over reality, which is irreducibly random and senseless." That is certainly an approach readers will encounter in this collection. Liu loves metaphors. Some of his best stories are built around them.

Perhaps Liu meant to underline this with the opening story of the collection. The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species (Lightspeed, 2012), is certainly filled to overflowing with that. The story doesn't really have a plot, it is more a collection of descriptions on how various intelligent species around the universe store information, relay it to future generations and how all of it is eventually lost. Liu comes up with some fascinating possibilities in the story. There is something very sad about the all things must pass theme but on the whole I thought it was a good opening.

Given Liu's background it is not surprising that a number of stories contain Chinese elements. The most well known of these is probably the story that gave the collection its name. The Paper Menagerie (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 2011) deals with the growing distance between and American born Chinese man and his mother. I've read it before and commented on it here. Another example is the longest story in this collection. All the Flavors (Giganotosaurus, 2012) tells the tale of an ancient Chinese warlord Guan Yu as well as that of the Chinese man that at one time made up a large part of the population of the Idaho territory. Structurally it is probably not the most refined novella but the history he discusses is fascinating.

The Literomancer (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 2010) is also a story with two strands. It introduces the reader to a (much simplified) Chinese fortune telling using written characters. It is set on Taiwan and set in 1961, at the height of the cold war between an American backed Taiwan and mainland China. It's a brutal story but I thought it was also a bit predictable. Where many of these stories have a Chinese and western element to them, The Litigation Master and the Monkey King (Lightspeed 2013), is set in Qing dynasty China and deals with a repressed bit of Chinese history. It is again a brutal story with interesting historical roots. The book the main character tries to save would later play a part in the final rebellion against the Qing dynasty.

Chinese influences may be dominant in the collection but Japan pops up regularly too. China and Japan have a long and complicated history and they have not always been on the best of terms to put it mildly. Liu examines Japan's aggressively imperialistic politics of the late 19th and early 20th century in a few of them. Particularly harrowing is The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary (Panverse Three, 2011). It deals with Japanese war crimes in the 1930s and 1940s. I've read it before and commented on it here.

A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 2013), takes a different approach. It is an alternative history in which Japan avoided being defeated in the second world war. To combat the economic crisis of the 1930s they strike a deal with the USA and build a trans-Pacific tunnel. Although not as violent as some stories, the Japanese nationalism is very clearly present, and human rights abuses are mentioned several times. The main character is scarred by them, both as a victim and perpetrator. The story contains a wonderful alternative timeline but the characterization is perhaps even better.

Mono No Aware (The Future Is Japanese, 2012) has a Japanese main character in a more positive role. It is a post-apocalyptic tale in which a Japanese boy is one of the few survivors on board a spaceship with a mostly American  population. It's a story about sacrifice and heroism. One might say the act of sacrifice and the main character's heritage are a bit too obviously linked in the story. It won a Hugo but I'm not sure it is Liu's finest work.

As with all collections some stories worked better for me than others. The two stories I had read before are some of the strongest Liu produced and The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species is another strong one too. Liu doesn't reach that level in many of the other stories. They are good stories, often thematically very interesting but not always as refined where they might have been. That being said, there are some fine examples in this collection of the excellent short fiction the genre is producing at the moment. Liu at his best is an author to keep an eye on.

Book Details
Title: The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
Author: Ken Liu
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Pages: 450
Year: 2016
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-784975-67-8
First published: 2016

The Grace of Kings - Ken Liu

Ken Liu has produced an impressive number of high quality short stories in the past few years. His stories have won him several awards and gathered a whole bunch of nominations. His first collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, is expected later in the year and I am really looking forward to getting my hands on that. Given the name he's been making for himself lately, it is no wonder that many people have been eagerly awaiting his first novel. The Grace of Kingswas released in April and is the first book in The Dandelion Dynasty series. He sold a total of three of them to Saga Press, the new Simon & Schuster SFF imprint that launched this year. The Grace of Kings is a secondary world fantasy but, as you would expect from Liu, heavily influenced by Chinese culture and history.

The Dara archipelago once housed seven kingdoms. Then a man rising up from the lowliest of the seven, conquered them all and unified them into one empire. In his search for greatness and eternal life, he neglected the needs of his people and failed to provide a secure throne for his heir. The boy unfortunate enough to take the throne is kept ignorant of what goes on in  his kingdom. As rebellion brews, he is distracted with games. Soon rebellions spring up all over the empire. Two men in particular, the great warrior Mata Zyndhu and the clever rogue Kuni Garu will shape the future of Dara in their search for justice, revenge, power and prosperity.

The Grace of Kings is an epic fantasy containing all that you might expect in one of those. The main difference with a lot of epic fantasy that is being written today, is that where most would use medieval Europe as a model, Dara is clearly inspired by China. You have your blond, blue-eyed characters but the whole novel breathes China. The food, the writing system, the political structure, the scholarship, the buildings, the symbols, it is inescapable. To be more precise, Liu was inspired by the rise of the Han dynasty. It was preceded by the brief Qin dynasty, the first imperial dynasty in China's history. Liu follows history loosely. It is not so much a retelling as a novel that takes history as a starting point. Liu's influences from Chinese history are taken from other periods as well.

One of his most obvious influences is The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a fourteenth century historical novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest works of Chinese literature and tells the history of the demise of the Han until the reunification under the Jin dynasty. It is part history, part legend and severely romanticized and Liu seems to have used many of the same storytelling techniques in his novel. I have been told The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is about twice the size of The Lord of the Rings and has more characters than The Wheel of Time. It sounds like a fascinating but challenging read. I'm not familiar with it, which makes me wonder what someone who is more familiar with this work would make of Liu's effort.

The thing that most readers will notice right away about this novel is the manner in which Liu tells his story. The story covers about two decades and involves a lot of military campaigning. Liu is not afraid to skip the boring bits. He imparts a lot of what happens in a few brief sentences without lingering on the details, and mixes in brief bits of dialogue to keep us connected to the main characters. He zooms in on them and then retreats to show us the big picture. It is a huge contrast to some of the more recent and wildly popular epic fantasy out there. They focus on character, making the reader feel an emotional bond with them.Guy Gavriel Kay's recent novels inspired by Chinese history, Under Heaven (2010) and River of Stars (2013) focus much more on the personal drama of the main characters.  Liu keeps more distance and counts on the reader's curiosity to find out what happens to Dara next to keep them hooked. The tragedy that unfolds in this novel is that of a whole nation rather than the troubles of an individual character. I guess that more than a few readers in our individualistic society will have a problem with that style of storytelling.

As a result of Liu's stylistic choices, The Grace of Kings is a pretty fast paced book. I had expected to need more time to read it but the story flows in such a way that it is an almost effortless read. In this single volume, Liu stuffs a conflict comparable to the war in the Seven Kingdoms that George R.R. Martin expects to need seven volumes to finish. The way he prevents the story from bogging down in detail is really quite refreshing.

What The Grace of Kings does have in common with a lot of popular epic fantasy is the cynical view on power, gaining it, using it and especially holding on to it. Both the main characters are basically decent people who find it necessary to do horrible things to achieve their goals. The two main characters are very different men, united by a common goal. Events soon drive them apart however. What they do have in common is the belief that the other will inevitable try to force them from power. When it comes to ruling, it is all or nothing, nobody in this novel ever sets for a part of the whole. Which makes me wonder if we will see another betrayal by one of the secondary characters in the next novel.

I've seen a number of comments on the fact that women play second fiddle in this book, which surprised me a bit since Liu is an author associated with the call for more diverse fantasy and science fiction. This criticism seems valid enough though. Most of the women in this book are subordinate to men, are cast in traditionally feminine roles and do not play a part in the actual fighting. There is one notable exception but she doesn't change the general picture much. Not yet anyway, there would appear to be some interesting possibilities for this character in the second novel. Hopefully Liu can do a bit better on that front in the second volume. It seems like a shame to write a trilogy that could change the way epic fantasy is told and yet remain stuck in traditional gender roles all the same.

All in all I thought The Grace of Kings was a marvelous read. It remains to be seen how the series will develop of course but it is definitely off to a good start. Liu managed to deliver a debut novel that lives up to the promise shown in his short fiction, and that is no mean feat. The year is not nearly done and there are a few more big fantasy titles expected still, but The Grace of Kings will probably turn out to be one of the big releases of 2015. His short fiction already made Liu a writer to keep an eye on, this novel makes it clear there is much to be expected from him in the long form as well. The Grace of Kings is definitely recommended reading.

Book Details
Title: The Grace of Kings
Author: Ken Liu
Publisher: Saga Press
Pages: 623
Year: 2015
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-4814-2427-1
First published: 2015

The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu

Note on Chinese names: Tor has chosen to put the name of the author in the western order. In (tradition) Chinese the family name would come first. Doubleday, for its edition of The Fat Years, has chosen to leave the Chinese order as it is. The translator of The Three-Body Problem uses the Chinese order in the entire novel, with the cover being the only exception. I always use the title of the novel and author name as they appear on the cover but in the rest of the review I've chosen to use the Chinese order for the author and the characters mentioned. Also note that the translator Ken Liu uses his western name - I don't know what it is but I'm pretty sure he has a Chinese one as well -  so I've followed that in the review.

We tend to think of Science Fiction as a largely Anglo-Saxon affair. Most of the big names are from the US, with a bunch of Brits mixed in. This overemphasis on English-language works is a bit misleading however. Science Fiction is written all over the world and one of the largest markets is currently in China. Only very rarely does something of this vast body of work make it into western bookshops but recently a number of initiatives to sell Chinese Science Fiction to a western audience have appeared. Clarkesworld ran a Kickstarter project to make it possible for them to include translated stories in their magazine, stories have shown up in the three volumes of The Apex Book of World SF and a couple of years ago Doubleday published Chan Koonchung's novel The Fat Years, which I must admit is the only Chinese-language Science Fiction novel I've read to date. Now Tor has spotted the possibilities as well and bought Liu Cixin's Thee-Body trilogy. The Three-Body Problem is the first volume and it has been translated by the Chinese-American author Ken Liu, someone with a keen interest in Chinese Science Fiction. Not surprisingly, this publication has attracted a lot of attention, and after reading the book, I can only add my voice to the chorus of reviewers out there telling you to read it. It really is one of the most exciting books published recently.

Amid the turbulent events of the Cultural revolution, astrophysicists Ye Wenjie's life is turned upside down. She witnesses her father, a once well-respected professor, be killed by the Red Guard, and is branded an enemy of the revolution after being caught reading the subversive novel Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Her knowledge is too valuable to waste away in some reeducation camp however. She is assigned to a military base that serves as a Chinese answer to the SETI project. There, she witnesses what without a doubt is the most important event in human history.

Tor hit the jackpot with this novel. There is of course a large cultural gap between China and the western audience, and that is apparent in the novel. The story and themes clearly reach back to classics of the genre however. Liu's novel is firmly grounded in science. The title refers to a well known mathematical problem in both classical and quantum mechanics. On top of that there is quite a bit of astronomy and references to nanotechnology. I was surprised by the inclusion of ecology in the novel. I must, to my shame, admit to never having read Carson's Silent Spring. A great sin for someone who studied environmental science. It is a very influential novel in the field. Of course the Cultural Revolution and a number of other developments in Communist era China did great damage to the environment so perhaps it is not that surprising.

Chinese novels tend to contain an awful lot of references to the long history of the nation and the literary traditions that go back more than two thousand years. Much of which would be lost on the reader without a little explanation now and then. In fact, when I read Chan's novel I did have the feeling I was missing quite a lot. Translator Ken Liu has tried to help the reader a little bit with a series of footnotes explaining some of the details. In an afterword he also explains some of his choices in translating the novel. There is always a lot of tension in translation between the literal meaning and the intent of the words and I suspect Ken Liu has been a bit more liberal in his translation than Michael S. Duke has been for his translation of The Fat Years. It is a novel that reads very smoothly for the western reader. I did note some things that you don't come across in many western novels, most notably the way the writer conveys the information the reader needs to follow the plot. It borders on infodumping at times and it is something I also noticed in Chan Koonchung's writing. That being said, the differences in this novel are not so obvious that I got the feeling I was missing things.

Liu tells his story out of chronological order. We have sections covering the 1960 to the 1980 that tell the story of Ye Wenjie and her discovery in the military observatory. Her views on humanity and the decision she makes on behalf of the species is the mystery that forms the centre of the plot. The man to unravel it is the nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao. His part of the story is set sometime in the early twenty-first century. Liu doesn't mention a specific year but around now feels right. Near future from the perspective of the novel. The Chinese edition was published in 2007. Wang is caught in a web of mysteries, manipulations of a global movement with, to him, unknown goals and seemingly impossible manipulations of the physical reality at the quantum level. It drives Wang to desperation and many prominent theoretical scientists to suicide. The very foundations of natural science are shaken. This part of the story reminded me of the short story Division by Zero written by Ted Chiang.

The scope of Liu's tale is much larger than that of Chiang of course. Over the course of the novel the meaning of the Three-Body Problem, the mysterious computer game so many of the characters are playing and Ye's discovery and subsequent actions fall into place. Liu has built a story out of these and many other elements that fans of classic science fiction will appreciate. It is also very much a first book in a trilogy.  Ye's view on humanity is not overly positive, shaped as her life has been by violence and political insanity. She feels the human race is not capable of cleaning up the mess it has created and takes drastic action. This novel mostly deals with the motivations for that action and Ye's secrets becoming public knowledge. The full impact, it is to be expected, won't be felt until the next volume of the trilogy.

Ye is definitely the star of this novel. Her character is by far the most well rounded of the bunch, for the most part skilfully navigating the political minefield she finds herself in. Wang is a spectator by comparison. With his actions mostly guided by others he is not a very interesting man to read about. I would have liked to see him break away from the suggestions of others which he unfailingly follows up on. His scientific world view crumbles to the very foundation but he doesn't think this is enough to put a toe out of line. Around him, many of the secondary characters have less problems with rash action. It lends some parts of the novel an almost thriller like level of suspense.  I can't help but wonder what The Three-Body Problem could have been if the uncovering of this enormous secret would have been a bit less orderly.

The Three-Body Problem is not a flawless novel but it is certainly a very good one. So good in fact, that I wouldn't be surprised if it shows up on a few award shortlists. Ken Liu has obviously put his heart into the translation, as well as his impressive knowledge of both the English and Chinese language. As someone writing is a second language, I cannot emphasize enough how hard translating is. The linguistic and cultural differences that find their way into the text and the shades of meanings and connotations that words can carry in one language but not in another make translating an art as much as writing. The novel itself has many elements of classical science fiction to make it familiar to the reader and enough Chinese culture and history to make it different to the reader, but not overwhelmingly so. It was probably a very good choice picking this novel to bring Chinese science fiction to a western audience. I enjoyed reading it a lot. Bring on the second volume!

Book Details
Title: The Three-Body Problem
Author: Cixin Liu
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 399
Year: 2014
Language: English
Translation: Ken Liu
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7706-7
First published: 2007

Nebula Nominated Short Fiction by Ken Liu

This year's Nebula nominees were announced last week and as usual, I've read almost nothing of the entire list. In fact, the only piece I've read until this weekend was Jo Walton's magnificent novel Among Others. I very much doubt I'll get around to reading any of the other nominated novels any time soon but the short fiction is another matter. As usual, most of the nominated shorter works appeared online for free shortly after the announcement (if they weren't already) and I took the opportunity to expand my library some. One of the nominees that attracted my attention was Ken Liu, partly because he's the only author to be nominated twice and partly because I've never read anything by him before.

Liu is a Chinese American short fiction writer, poet and translator. I understand he is working on a novel with his wife Lisa Tang Liu, of which I know very little beyond that the first draft is almost done. Quite a few of his stories are available online in various places on the net, some of which I will probably end up reading at a later date. Right now I am focusing on his nominated works, the short story The Paper Menagerie and the novella The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary.

The Paper Menagerie - available here (PDF)

The Paper Menagerie was published in March/April 2011 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It is a heartbreaking story about a young man's memories of his mother. She came to the US as a Chinese mail order bride. Illiterate and speaking just a few words of English she has serious trouble adapting to her new life. Her son is the joy of his life and he loves the magical folded paper animals she makes him. Until the boy begins to understand his appearance and toys mark him as an outsider. When he starts pushing his Chinese heritage away his mother desperately tries to keep communicating with him.

Children are cruel, apparently as much to their parents as to each other. The moment when the boy starts to see his shabby little paper tiger though the eyes of his friend and compares it with the Star Wars toys all the cool kids are playing with, is a deeply emotional scene. You can feel something change, a connection break beyond repair. To have something like that happen must be the nightmare of any parent. Liu makes the consequences of the event painfully clear. It is definitely one of those stories that will end up making you cry if you are in the right mood. The relationship between mother and son is the focus of the story but between the lines it is made clear the main character doesn't understand his father's motivations either. It would have been too much to tackle in a short story but I wonder what Liu would have made of that.

The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary - available here (PDF)

The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary first appeared in Panverse 3 and is quite a different creature. Liu got the idea from Ted Chiang's story Liking What You See: A Documentary, which can be found in the collection Stories of Your Life and Others. This collection is obligatory reading material for any fan of science fiction. Liu uses more or less the same format and writes out a documentary. It includes transcriptions of testimonies and interviews, descriptions of the images being shown and of course the occasional voice over. It's a format that takes some getting used to. Perhaps fifty-five pages of it is a bit too much. That being said, I thought it was a very impressive bit of writing.

Liu chooses a difficult subject for his documentary. The history of the Unit 731, Japanese research unit during the second Sino-Japanese War, that did large scale horrific experiments on humans to test biological and chemical weapons, as well as a whole range of medical experiments that rival anything that went on in Nazi Germany's concentration camps. Japan has always been very reluctant to discuss it's world war II history, let alone admit and apologize for any wrongdoing. It is a discussion that flares up once in a while in the Netherlands as well. Especially in regard to the 'Troostmeisjes' (comfort women), Dutch women forced into prostitution alongside tens of thousands (or more, depending on which source you care to believe) women from all over south-east Asia.

The story is centred around historian Evan Wei and physicist Akemi Kirino, who discover a technique to witness the past using an exotic offshoot of quantum mechanics. The method is destructive, each moment in the past can only be visited once. When Wei tries to use this technique to shed some light on the history of Unit 731, he quickly meets with resistance of people who would rather let the past be forgotten. An attitude that is directly opposed to Wei's own convictions.

The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary is a pretty depressing story. Liu obviously put in a lot of research and in the testimonies the documentary contains, many gruesome descriptions of war crimes are discussed. Although the people testifying are, as far as I can tell, all fictional, many of the events are not. It is without a doubt one of the black pages in the history of China and Japan. What makes this story so strong is the way in which Liu manages to convincingly add so many visions on the same set of events. From the historian who questions Wei's methods on academic grounds, to the politician who reminds everybody of the importance of good relations with Japan and from the woman whose aunt ended up being used in the experiments to the Japanese doctor who feels the research done by Unit 731 was valuable. Liu conveys the full complexity of the issue as well as the enormous implications of having a technique that would allow us to revisit historical events. As the story unfolds, it is quite obvious that Wei didn't foresee many of the issues that would arise.

Our relationship to the past is complex, coloured by current political realities and muddied by cultural differences and Liu captures this all in his story. It is a lot to take in for the reader, a very intensive read, but when I finished it I was deeply impressed by the picture Liu constructs of the stories of these different people. I can't really do justice to all the elements this story contains in a few hundred words but I guess I was most impressed by the way Liu shows the influence of cultural background on the various views on history presented. I guess that is one thing it has in common with The Paper Menagerie, where the differences between Chinese and American ways of thinking are also driving the story.

Not having read any of the other stories nominated, I don't really want to speculate on Liu's chances of winning either category but I can say he is an author whom I will be keeping an eye on. I recently read The Fat Years by Chinese author Chan Koonchung and after finishing it I felt I didn't really know enough about Chinese culture to really appreciate it (despite a long preface and translator notes by people who obviously were very knowledgeable on the subject). These two stories were much more a synthesis of Chinese and American culture and as such less impenetrable for someone with a western (but not American) cultural background. These two stories make me very curious about how he will handle a full novel.