Not all the stories are equally gripping, but some jolted my imagination and gave some food for thought (my favourite combination in a book). The audio version was excellent, too! I recommend it to be taken in small doses, it definitely works better!

I received this book from Net galley, in exchange for an honest review.Ken Liu has a very accomplished writing style and I found myself enjoying stories about AI and computer code that I normally find quite boring.The first few stories are for the most part barely fiction, set in the present time or the very near future illustrating the most appalling and repellant uses of what is now every-day technology. Stories designed to provoke discussion.Then there is a group of stories concerned with upl...

I won this via goodreads giveaways in exchange for an honest review. All my opinions are my own. ----If you want to see my individual ratings for the stories, its all in my status updates :)This was a fun collection. Some stories were more interesting than others, but all of them kept my attention and a few got me thinking about what it would be like if they actually happened. A couple did have me scratching my head and wondering why it was in the collection (didn't dampen my enjoyment at all).O...

Reading this excellent short story without getting goose bumps is not possible. Utterly realistic and horrifying. In my opinion a must read for anybody who engages in social media (and who doesn't nowadays?)

Ken Liu is one of my top five favorite short story writers working today. And he is really the only one of the bunch being prolific. I believe he has published over 80 stories in most reputable speculative fiction magazines over the past 10 years. He attained the remarkable feat of gaining popularity in the supersaturated medium of speculative fiction magazines. The reason he was able to rise above the rest, I believe, was his storytelling ability, which often combines traditional Chinese storyt...

Thought provoking, and often chilling, collection of soft sci-fi and fantasy, with many stories examining the unimaginable ramifications of human technological progress spun out of control. A number of stories revolve around the concept of uploaded human consciousness, AKA the "Singularity", where human minds become digitized, no longer requiring physical bodies. The three linked "The Gods.." stories in particular are fascinating looks at this, with the absolutely riveting story "Staying Behind"...

Ken Liu is becoming one of my favorite short story writers. It's one thing to drop names like Harlan Ellison or Ted Chiang, but it's another thing to see such stories rise up out of so many other writers and still stick with you after years.I guess I've been blessed to read a number of these stories from other collections, and it's great to find out that reading them again is still a pleasure. For the most part, the tone of the tales moves away from Chinese mythology or the social bits or the ho...

ARC provided by the publisher—Saga Press—in exchange for an honest review.3.5/5 starsKen Liu is incredibly good at writing short stories.I’ve been waiting for The Dandelion Dynasty to be completed for years now so I can binge read the epic fantasy series. During my waiting time, I have read The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and also some books Liu has translated: The Three-Body Problem and Death’s End by Cixin Liu. I loved them all; The Paper Menagerie, in particular, is one of the two best

There are about a dozen new stories here in Ken Liu's second collection. I felt that it was less interesting than his extraordinary The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, but still good reading. Many of the stories are set in a dystopia called "the Singularity" where, like in a few episodes of Black Mirror such as 'San Junipero', folks can decide to upload their consciousness into the cloud and live as digital entities. In these stories, there is a massive social pressure for folks to assimilate...

AVERAGE RATING: 3.6 stars➤ Ghost Days - 4 stars➤ Maxwell’s Demon - 3.5 stars➤ The Reborn - 4 stars➤ Thoughts and Prayers - 4 stars➤ Byzantine Empathy - 2 stars➤ The Gods Will Not Be Chained - 5 stars➤ Staying Behind - 3.5 stars➤ Real Artists - 3 stars➤ The Gods Will Not Be Slain - 4 stars➤ Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer - 3.5 stars➤ The Gods Have Not Died in Vain - 3.5 stars➤ Memories of My Mother - 3 stars➤ Dispatched from the Cradle: The Hermit-Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Mas...

Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Amazon || PinterestThis is my first work of fiction by Ken Liu, so I had no idea what to expect going in. THE HIDDEN GIRL is a collection of short stories, most of which are science-fiction, that dwell on themes of artificial intelligence, the transmittance of culture over time (memes), global warming and climate change, and at its most fundamental level, what it means to be human.Reading these stories made me think of the TV show Love, Death + Robots. Not

Quite a lot of heavily conflicted characters. Culture - do you love your own or do you readily embrace the strange one? Be it Ancient China or a mesh of space genetics...This actually could be on par with Bradbury if only the weaker essays were taken out: the politics-based one, the VR one, the algorithmic bullying one... Seriously, it's all so very childish.Excellent stories:The 'Ghost Days', a story about Ona, the half-alien girl, about bubis and else. A lot of else. 'The Reborn' - wowser. Uni...

My only experience with Ken Liu thus far has been in his translation of Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem and Death’s End.  But I know he has a few beloved books already published out there, so I jumped at the chance to read this.I generally try to read the introduction whenever one is included, and I definitely recommend reading the intro to The Hidden Girl and Other Stories.  Liu talks a little about his writing process and how he went about selecting stories for this book.  He says that stor...

Updated March 26: 5 Stars. I went through the stories to put in my reading list of short stories for the year and realized that I really liked the vast majority of these.A lot of stories tied together and a lot of them about singularity / uploading consciousness into a network. I always enjoy those type of stories. I may update this review with favorites and individual story thoughts. Grey Rabbit, Crimson Mare, Coal Leopard was the new story and it was pretty good but not amazing.

3.5ish stars. This is a collection of fantasy and SF short stories by the very talented Ken Liu, many of them set in a future where humans choose to be “uploaded” into a virtual world, like a voluntary Matrix. Liu is great at focusing on relationships while also exploring ideas.RTC. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. Thanks!

Quite a satisfying collection of stories. I am typically a fan of sprawling space operas with a lot of character development and the fate of human existence at stake. But my early love of Borges and his portrayal of mystifying ideas in a small package has primed my readiness to pursue the best of sci fi short stories. Liu is in the running for that with tales replete with elements used by classic masters of the form: ironic twists, poignant contrasts, potent microcosms, ambiguous endings that po...

Exceptional collection from one of our very best SF authors. At his best, he’s as good as any writer in the business. As always, I liked some stories more than others. Rating based on my favorites, all SF: 4 stars. Most of the fantasies didn’t work for me.Highlights:● Seven Birthdays (2016), http://www.tor.com/2016/11/15/reprint... A million or so years in the life of Mia and her Mom. Ken Liu dreams big in this meticulous, breathtaking hard-SF tale of the transition from organic to silicon-based...

Ahoy there me mateys!  I received this short story  collection eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  So here be me honest musings . . .One of the best short stories I have ever read was Ken Liu's the paper menagerie which in 2012 was the first work to win the Hugo, the Nebula and the World Fantasy Award.  Ye can read it for free by clicking here.  This lovely cover for his second short story collection caught me eye and I was excited to read more of his work.  This book has 16 s...

While I had my ups and downs with the author’s previous collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, I had my downs and ups with this book, meaning more downs than ups this time. While the other collection was the proverbial box of chocolates with me liking the variety, this collection had too much of one flavor I didn’t care for, called “The Singularity” which even hints at a sameness in the name. Part of the concept had to do with certain segments of humanity uploading their consciousnes...

Average Rating : ⭐️⭐️⭐️.9After really enjoying Ken Liu’s previous short story anthology a lot, there was no way I was letting this ARC go and I jumped at the opportunity to be able to review it. This is another collection of fascinating stories by the author, most of them sci-fi/dystopian but a couple of them are fantasy as well. There are also multiple stories which are interconnected but told in no particular order, so it was fun trying to find the connections between them. One theme that