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    The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
    The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
    The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
    Audiobook15 hours

    The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

    Written by Ken Liu

    Narrated by Corey Brill and Joy Osmanski

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    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.

    Editor's Note

    Award-winning, original collection…

    The titular story of this collection has won every single prestigious speculative fiction award — the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award. One of the most original collections of sci-fi short fiction around.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateMar 8, 2016
    ISBN9781442397200
    Author

    Ken Liu

    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

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    Reviews for The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

    4.5/5

    579 ratings27 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Ken Liu is my new favorite author. These are such well crafted stories that I was disappointed each time one ended because I didn’t want it to stop. The Paper Menagerie story is one of the best I’ve ever read/listened to.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Somewhat disappointing, even though the creative ideas and some of the writings are quite good. Not sure what the targeted audience (readers) are but the entire book was not easy for me to read through. I guess people who wrote good reviews for this book must have finished reading the entire book and not just did it for some other reasons. On the other hand, I do see the potential of some of the stories, with modifications, being made into a movie.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant. Touching. And to think, he could have been writing instead of going to law school. Provocative sci-fi and folk tales all in one engaging story after another.
    • 4/5
      I really liked most of the stories. The combination of history, science fiction and fantasy makes for a delightful read.
      I also learnt a lot about China's history as I looked up a lot of things he mentions and that I, shamefully, did not know. This western world's ignorance of China's history is also denounced in this book. Finally!
    • 4/5
      Some of the best storytelling I’ve ever read. However, the stories ( 3 of them) that had torture and human depravity really threw me off and lessened my enjoyment of the book. They were well told but I would have preferred the book without them .
    • 5/5

      Somehow the book searches outside of time period reveals deep conflicts. Make sure that we are going back, and appreciating the past. The narrators were excellent. I felt like I was listening to a real person in my living room. Give us book a chance you’ll love it.
    • 5/5
      Wonderful set of stories. Thought provoking and lot insights into Chinese, Taiwanese and Japanese culture.
    • 5/5
      All these stories are so unique in concept and so interesting, I’d definitely recommend this to SFF fan
    • 5/5
      Interesting short stories. Great for keeping my short attention span
    • 5/5
      Happily unexpected and deeply interesting. Many stories feature Asian characters and gives an introspect to real traits. Some stories are very relateble and sound possible. Some are strongly fascinating. Truly enjoyed this book.
    • 5/5
      it's the best book that I have read for a very long time, and I don't even mean science fiction, it deals with a whole range of human issues and sentiments, and I will remember this book for my lifetime
    • 5/5
      An excellent collection of science-fiction and magical realism stories. Enough magic or sci-fi tech to be mesmerizing,but human enough to be grounded and emotional.
    • 2/5
      A promo for China and a award winning book as away for West book rewie authority to reach the china market. Overall I can't be partial ang give this more stars in any areas where it outshine other wtiters current or dead. Hype as tiktok is a hype. With a team of helpers what could a regular collage auther write? book politics.
    • 5/5
      Wow, this was really good! Believe the hype! "Good Hunting," "Mono No Aware," "All the Flavors," and "The Litigation Master and the Monkey King" were particular standouts for me.
    • 4/5
      A collection of science fiction and fantasy stories by Ken Liu. Recurring themes include Chinese mythology, Chinese (and sometimes Japanese) history and culture, Chinese-American identity, the literal and figurative magic of language, and historical injustices (some of which, fair warning, are extremely disturbing) and how we respond to them.As with most story collections, I liked some of these much better than others, but even the ones that didn't work as well for me still had a sense of poignancy and the ability to make me stop and think a bit. And the best ones are very good. The title story, in particular, is a heartbreaking little gem, and the final piece, "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary," is a rough read, but a powerful one.
    • 5/5
      This made my heart sink to the bottom of my stomach. A main character I related to but yet wanted nothing to do with. He was ignorant on who he was, I thought this was going to be about finding himself, but by the time he could it was too late.

      Family secrets suck and this story shows you why.
    • 5/5
      Short story collections present an acute challenge to reviewing, and this one is no exception. Each stands uniquely on its own: these stories include fantasy, science fiction, and one purely historical fiction, each imaginative and very different. Some would be considered "own voices," others not as main characters are Chinese, Japanese, and white American. All of these stories had a similar, almost melancholic, and wholly original tone to them that strands them together in a way that their wide-ranging themes, styles, and subjects do not. Several of the stories were award winners or finalists, and my personal favorite is the title story "The Paper Menagerie."
    • 5/5
      First word that springs to mind: wow. I turned the last page and considered just starting right back over at the beginning. Lovely, deeply affecting, thought-provoking short stories. I'll be coming back to this one often, I have no doubt.
    • 5/5
      I cried a little.

      I had heard of this short story some time ago, but only recently when I discovered the podcast, Lavar Reads (Lavar Burton from Star Trek) did I actually get a chance to partake. First of all, Lavart did a wonderful job with the narration. The story itself was very moving, covering the lifespan of a Chinese-American boy dealing with the effects of race/fitting in. There's an element of magic, and it worked.

      Great story.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this collection of short stories by Ken Liu. I stumbled upon this collection from listening to Levar Burton Reads - he read The Paper Menagerie and it was magical (and also incredibly heartbreaking - I bawled at the end). I loved it so much I worked it into a few English lessons (and the kids adored it as much as I did). Such a good one - highly, highly recommend!
    • 4/5
      The easiest way to look at "The Paper Menagarie," Ken Liu's collection of short stories, is that it will probably do for many what "District 9" did: cleverly subvert the cultural furniture they carry around when they think about science fiction and fantasy. This isn't just a question of setting or subject matter, but a real cognitive shift. In the same way that that movie posited that aliens didn't have to make first contact over the skies of New York or Paris, that it was just as likely -- more likely, really -- that they'd touch down on some impoverished part of the planet, these economic and geographical margins have to be taken seriously by science fiction. In "The Paper Menagerie," the axis of the science fiction world is shifted to Asia and Asian culture: a tunnel stretches from San Francisco to Korea, steampunk is invented in early-twentieth century Hong Kong, and the future of space travel belongs solely to a Japan that faces the apocalypse in a rational, emotionally controlled way. Once you get past this shakeup of the genre's traditional assumptions, you're left with Liu's writing, which is high-quality stuff: erudite, literary, flowing, and, when it needs to be, beautiful and heart-tugging. It's true that many of these stories could be slotted into certain established story types: we meet sexbots and machine-women, legendary beasts, and cyborgs. Humans launch spaceships and try to travel back in time. This isn't a bad thing, I think: well done stories that ring manage to ring a few bells in many readers' memories are still, after all, good stories. In the end, Liu always seems to come back to displacement -- both spacial and cultural -- and remembrance. These are fine themes for a writer -- of science fiction or any other genre -- to work around, and Liu does so with uncommon grace and skill. I expect that some readers will complain that his stories seem more like novellas than short stories: the guy likes to take his time getting to the end. Also, as some of these stories seem inspired by real historical circumstances -- Chinese mining camps in the American West, for example, or the activities of Japan's infamous Unit 731 -- some readers will some of Liu's stories too obviously didactic or even too overtly political for their taste. But for other readers, these they'll just be opportunities that the author saw to describe the breadth of human experience and the enormous possibilities for its future development. For this SF dabbler, who tends to stick to the more literary, less pulps-inspired side of things, "The Paper Menagerie" provided a really excellent reading experience.
    • 4/5
      While I never made it through The Grace of Kings, I’ve discovered that I quite like some of Ken Liu’s shorter fiction. The Paper Menagerie is an anthology of his shorter fiction, much of which has science fiction or fantasy elements.The stories tend to be concept focused rather than character focus, and they are generally very well written and told. However, they tend to have a melancholy tone, and I think I would have enjoyed the collection more if there was more variation in tone.The first story, “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species,” is a series of vignettes describing how various alien species craft books. It’s a short and lovely piece, and I think it works well as an introduction to the rest of the tales. Probably my favorite story of the collection is the titular “The Paper Menagerie,” his short story that won the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award. That story always makes me tear up. The narrator is the son of a Chinese mail order bride and an American man. When he was a child, his mother would make origami animals that she would breath life into, so that they moved on their own. It’s a story about relationships between parents and children and about assimilation and immigration. It’s incredibly powerful, and I can see why it won so many awards.Other stories deal with the ideas of cultures colliding and changing. In “The Waves,” Earth makes contact with a generation ship, offering them the formula for eternal life, and each individual on the ship must decide whether to stay as they are or to change and adapt. “Good Hunting” is a steampunk tale where the laying down of railroad tracks disrupts chi flow and gradually removes magic from the land, leaving those dependent on it adrift. “A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel” is an alternate history tale where the Great Depression is staved off with a giant building project: an underground tunnel beneath the Pacific Ocean, connecting the East with the West.Some stories contain no or few speculative elements and are instead historical fiction. “The Literomancer” is an incredibly dark tale about a little girl living in Hong Kong who befriends a Chinese boy and his grandfather. Another very depressing historical tale is “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King,” about the Manchu slaughter of Yangzhou and then the repression of any mention of the massacre. On a bit of a lighter note (although still not light exactly), “All the Flavors” is a historical novella about Chinese immigrants to the Midwest.While the story “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” is entirely in the realm of science fiction, it deals with some of the same ideas about remembrance of historical tragedies as some of the historical fiction stories. In this story (which is told in a documentary format, akin to Ted Chiang’s “Liking What You See: A Documentary”), a physicist invents a way for one person to re-experience a historical event… but each event can only be re-experienced once, by one person. Who does history belong to?“The Regular” is a longer cyberpunk, sci-fi noir crime thriller about a serial killer murdering prostitutes and a private investigator trying to catch him. It was all right, but I feel like it resembled other stories I’ve read. However, it was more original than “The Perfect Match,” a dystopian about a future where one corporation guides your every desire, without you ever knowing it. It ended up feeling like a rehash of so many different stories, where a mediocre man meets a woman who shows him how to resist, but resistance ends up being futile.“State Change” is a conceptually driven story where each person is born with an object that houses their soul. If the object is destroyed, you die, a real difficulty for a woman who’s born with ice cubes housing her soul. This story is almost the literal embodiment of the Defrosting Ice Queen, a trope I’m not super fond of, especially as it can be not great to aro and ace people.None of the three other stories in the collection made much of an impression. I can hardly remember what happened in “An Advanced Readers Picture Book of Comparative Cognition,” aside that it had some similarities to the very first story. “Mono No Aware” is the tale of the only Japanese man on a generation ship. “Simulacrum” is another conceptual driven story, this time about the idea of record keeping and reality.All in all, I’m glad I took the time to read this collection, although the only story I see myself returning to again is “The Paper Menagerie.”Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
    • 5/5
      4.5 stars.

      After finishing "The Three-Body Problem", I was curious to know more about Ken Liu, the book's translator. And I picked up this collection. I've always thought short fiction is harder to write than longer works. And what a choice it was. Not all of the stories are clear winners, but the ones that are, oh my.

      When I'm driving and the sun sets over the huge fields around me and the music's just right and the warm wind in my hair and my wife next to me and conversations go quiet and the long winding road ahead and my mind goes suddenly blank and I find myself staring into the distance and then I snap out of it, everyone knowing I've had – but can't keep – that moment that just passed.

      If you're into SF of a superior kind, read the rest of the review on my blog
    • 5/5
      These stories may be the best literary science fiction/fantasy I've read in years. Each story is superb and each is unique, and most are intensely moving. The characters are wonderful.Liu incorporates history and classic fiction into some of his stories, for example, the story "The Litigation Master and the Monkey King," which brings the Journey to the West and the Chinese detective story tradition (e.g. Judge Dee) together with the historical Manchu Army massacre of Yangzhou at the start of the Qing Dynasty.The story "The Man Who Ended History" incorporates the grotesque history of Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army in Pingfang, outside of Harbin, in north China, during World War II. The story is structurally interesting, as is the fictional science. The title story, "The Paper Menagier," is sad, magical, and beautiful. "A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel" is terrifying; in an alternate history in which World War II was averted, the people are still frighteningly and tragically human.I've already reread some of the stories; if I could give this book 6 stars, I would.
    • 5/5
      It took me a while to read this one because I had to pause at the end of each story, sometime for days, to think about it, mentally study it, and allow it to enter my memory stores where it wanted to reside. The stories are varied in length, are wide in range and subject, and are all unforgettable. When I started with "The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species", I knew this would be unlike anything I'd read lately. And it just got better from there. A sly combination of history lesson, science fiction, revisionist history, and social commentary, Liu deserves every award and accolade he has received for this compilation, which are numerous. I highly recommend this gem. Here are a few memorable quotes:•"We have always faced a precarious existence, suspended in a thin strip on the surface of this planet between the fire underneath and the icy vacuum above." Mono No Aware•"The desire to freeze reality is about avoiding reality." Simulacrum•"...a boy stands in darkness and silence. He speaks; his words float up like a bubble. It explodes, and the world is a little brighter, and a little less stiflingly silent." A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.
    • 5/5
      “Every night when you stand outside and gaze upon the stars, you are bathing in time as well as light.”“The best telescopes we have today can see back as far back as about thirteen billion years ago.”I had not read Ken Liu but I had been hearing some positive chatter about this story collection, so I gave it a try. It was a wonderful surprise, in every way. There is science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, steampunk and allegories on war, suffering and exploration, all told in smart, fluid prose, that will have your mind buzzing with joy and reflection. Liu is a major talent and will not be confined or defined by any single genre. I will be reading everything I can find by him, including his translated works. I can not recommend this collection high enough.
    • 5/5
      (posted at the same time via my Amazon.com profile)I first ran across the author, Ken Liu, as translator from Chinese to English of the Hugo award winning novel The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu. Out of curiosity I looked up his primary work and initially read his 2012 short story, "The Paper Menagerie" which was also a winner of the Hugo AND Nebula awards. Note: The Hugo is voted on by fans, the Nebula is voted on by writers.The titular work, "The Paper Menagerie" is one of the most wonderfully evocative tales in this collection. In all of Mr. Liu's works I consistently see echos of other writers. In the case of "The Paper Menagerie" I am reminded of the fantasy short stories of Orson Scott Card. This story reminded me specifically of Mr. Card's "The Porcelain Salamander," a tale of a young girl's magical porcelain lizard that should it ever stop moving it will die. "The Paper Menagerie" is a tale of a similar gist with a similar bitter sweet story arc.The opening short story in this collection, "The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species," resonates of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities by describing fantastic methods of creating books by alien species. If I have any quibbles, one would be that I wish "The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species" were a longer piece.Whether Mr. Liu is explicitly standing on the shoulders of literary giants that came before him, or whether he merely evokes them naturally, is not that relevant. More relevant is that his best writing is every bit as good as short stories by Italo Calvino and Orson Scott Card, as well as the soft breezes of Ray Bradbury, the humorous cybernetic convolutions of Stanislaw Lem, and the literate socio-cultural awareness of an Ursula K. Le Guin.I truly believe he's that good. Not because of the numerous writing awards he's already acquired, but because I have read the work of these (and many others) and he stands beside them as well as on their shoulders.