From Ken Liu, the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author of The Paper Menagerie and Hidden Girl, comes a dazzling new collection of thirteen stories that explore the boundaries of imagination.
In these tales, dragons soar over small towns, mech-animals dream of freedom, and techno-witches weave spells against a world ruled by machines. A painter wrestles with transcendence, an aging scorpion helps his daughter escape tradition, and a consciousness aboard a starship witnesses the death and rebirth of the cosmos.
Blending science fiction and fantasy with profound meditations on identity, memory, and connection, Ken Liu once again proves himself a master of the short form – offering stories that will linger long after the last page is turned.
Ken Liu is the author of the epic fantasy series The Dandelion Dynasty, as well as short story collections The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and other top genre awards around the world for his fiction. A programmer and lawyer, he speaks and consults on futurism, technology history, and sustainable storytelling. www.kenliu.name @kyliu99
Read: A Sigilary for the Median Human in the Gearwrack by Ken Liu, Uncanny Magazine
First lines: You take a bit of wax and drip it over the em dash fresh out of the printer, working it over, building it up until it’s a little caterpillar crawling on the page, nestled between two words, perhaps burrowing into one—I’m so hungry—ready to eat and eat until it has a stomachache.
There. Done.