The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

Ken Liu

Mar 2016 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

Featured in the Netflix series Love, Death & Robots

Bestselling author Ken Liu selects his multiple award-winning stories for a groundbreaking collection—including a brand-new piece exclusive to this volume.

With his debut novel, The Grace of Kings, taking the literary world by storm, Ken Liu now shares his finest short fiction in The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. This mesmerizing collection features many of Ken’s award-winning and award-finalist stories, including: “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” (Finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards), “Mono No Aware” (Hugo Award winner), “The Waves” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” (Nebula and Sturgeon Award finalists), “All the Flavors” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King” (Nebula Award finalist), and the most awarded story in the genre’s history, “The Paper Menagerie” (The only story to win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards).

Insightful and stunning stories that plumb the struggle against history and betrayal of relationships in pivotal moments, this collection showcases one of our greatest and original voices.

Ratings and reviews

Multiple stories, some more engaging than others but all of them including interesting science fiction into well-documented alternative realities

I enjoy reading sci-fi and fantasy novels but I feel that authors often make the mistake of placing too much focus on the technology, or on fictional universes full of fictional beings. Ken Liu is able to write sci-fi and fantasy that keeps the focus on the characters and the relationships between them, so the reader can actually relate to the amazing stories he tells.

A fantastic and not often explored collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy works, with a distinctly Eastern background. Emotional, thought provoking, with a rare skill to immerse the reader in a few pages and yet feel as though they know the characters intimately. Will absolutely recommend this to others, and explore more works involving the author, Ken Liu.

About the author

Ken Liu is an award-winning American author of speculative fiction. His collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, has been published in more than a dozen languages. Liu’s other works include The Grace of Kings, The Wall of Storms, The Veiled Throne, and a second collection The Hidden Girl and Other Stories. He has been involved in multiple media adaptations of his work, including the short story “Good Hunting,” adapted as an episode in Netflix’s animated series Love, Death + Robots; and AMC’s Pantheon, adapted from an interconnected series of short stories. “The Hidden Girl,” “The Message,” and “The Oracle” have also been optioned for development. Liu previously worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. He frequently speaks at conferences and universities on topics including futurism, machine-augmented creativity, the history of technology, and the value of storytelling. Liu lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.