★★★☆☆ Clever, cruel stories

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

Ken Liu

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories contains 15 stories, selected from more than 70 (according to the Reader's Guide) written by Ken Liu. Although they are diverse, there are recurring themes and they have what I will vaguely call a consistent feel -- I suspect that if I read another Liu story without knowing who wrote it, it would feel familiar. Most but not all of the stories use elements of Speculative Fiction (F&SF). Some of the stories concern aliens as weird as Liu can think up, but most are about humans and Earth. Most in one form or another concern the meeting of cultures, and in most cases those cultures are China, Taiwan, Japan, and the USA.

My favorite two stories were the title story, "The Paper Menagerie", and "Good Hunting", which was the basis for my second-favorite episode of the animated series "Love, Death, and Robots". (My favorite episode was "Three Robots" because it was funny, but Liu is a serious person who doesn't do humor.) "The Paper Menagerie" is one of the shortest stories in the book. It is firmly in Liu's wheelhouse, being about the relationship between a Chinese-American mother and her son, growing up American. It has a light fantasy element. "Good Hunting" combines traditional Chinese folklore -- fox spirits, 狐狸精, huli jing -- with steampunk. And it is about how Chinese people fared under the English colonization of Hong Kong. It's a good rousing F&SF story that I think most lovers of Speculative Fiction would enjoy.

At least five of the stories, "The Literomancer", "Good Hunting", "A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel", "The Litigation Master and the Monkey King", and "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" are about historical atrocities. In two of those ("Good Hunting" and the alt-history story "Trans-Pacific Tunnel") the specific atrocities described are fictional, although they are reminiscent of real things that happened. The other three describe real atrocities. Two of them, "The Literomancer" and "The Man Who Ended History" describe atrocities in sickening detail. I use the word "sickening" not as a judgment, but a literal description -- reading these stories may literally make you feel sick. "Trans-Pacific Tunnel" contains a kind of an explanation: "Make the secret a bit harder to keep. That counts for something." In my opinion, these are good stories, but they are not easy to read.

Indeed, most of the fifteen are good stories. But the bottom line is, Ken Liu has published another collection of stories, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, and I have no plans to read it.

Amazon review

Goodreads review

Comments

★★★★☆ Making heroes of Rednecks and Hillbillies

Demon Copperhead Barbara Kingsolver You already know that Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver is a retelling of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens . Indeed, it is so faithful a retelling that, if the publisher had not already spilled the beans, I would feel compelled to mark this review a spoiler because of mentioning David Copperfield . If you have read David Copperfield at all recently, then you will recognize the characters and the major plot points as you read Demon Copperhead . (I last read David Copperfield when I was a kid in the late 1960s, so I was blessedly free from this detailed anticipation as I read Demon Copperhead . I did, however, check out the Wikipedia plot summary of David Copperfield on finishing Demon Copperhead , so I'm up to speed on both plot outlines.) And this, I say, is absolutely fine! If you're going to steal, by all means, steal from the best! I am co...

★☆☆☆☆ Petty Evil 101: Corporate edition

Power Jeffrey Pfeffer I read this eleven years ago (21-Sep-2011). At the time, I wrote this brief note to myself: Based on the first chapter or two, a singularly repulsive little book. It's basically "Petty Evil 101: Corporate edition". Amazon review Goodreads review

★★★☆☆ Advice I am not going to follow

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals Michael Pollan Michael Pollan is a person who cares deeply about food. I am not (which is a little strange, since I worked 31 years as a neuroscientist studying feeding behavior). “Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.” ― Socrates I am definitely a person who eats to live. There are a few books in what I call the "history of substances" genre, for instance The True History of Chocolate , A Perfect Red , or A History of the World in 6 Glasses . I find these fascinating and would be happy to find more. I picked up The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World and The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals because I thought they were books in this vein, and The Omnivore's Dilemma was getting a lot of love from my friends. Well, my hopes were not completely disappointed. The Omnivore's Dilemma does indeed contain fascinating information a...

★★★★☆ Alana in show-biz

Saga, Volume 4 Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples (Illustrator) If you're like me, your first question on seeing Saga, Volume 4 is, "Who is that woman on the cover?" That, my dear friend, is Alana. About halfway through Volume 3 Alana and Marko had a brief conversation about The Circuit, which is a performance venue of some kind that people can tune into with a virtual reality helmet. Before she became a soldier, Alana harbored ambitions of performing on the Circuit. Now that their lethal pursuit has been temporarily distracted or put out of commission, they're focused on making some kind of living. Marko encouraged her to audition. So now Alana is performing on the Circuit, and what you see on the cover is her bewigged with wings bound and hidden in order to perform. She's the family breadwinner. Marko is a househusband, staying home and taking care of Hazel. The Marko-Alana-Hazel story in this volume is a bit dull. Without giving away any spoilers, it's kin...

★★★☆☆ Drivel with occasional brilliance

Songs of Innocence and Experience William Blake I have to begin with a disclaimer. Usually I read poetry very slowly, one or two poems a day. This gives me the time to savor it. However, I had surgery two days ago and brought William Blake 's Songs of Innocence and Experience along to read while waiting for the surgeons to slice me open. It is possible that these are not the best conditions for appreciating Blake . With that caveat, I was more disappointed than pleased by this volume of poetry. It consists mostly of drivel like this: When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it; interrupted by occasional flashes of brilliance like this O rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm, That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. or this The human d...

★★★☆☆ Lacking the common touch

100 Selected Poems: John Keats John Keats Well, that was disappointing. I am ready to admit that this is an "It's not you -- it's me," case. Since I suspect that some other readers, even readers who love poetry, may likewise find Keats disappointing, I will try to explain why he disappointed me. Thus you can judge whether you, too, might suffer the same fate. First thing to say is that the young John Keats was not really that great a poet. (By "young", I mean up to and including Endymion .) That, of course, is a judgment many readers will disagree with, but don't discount it! It was Keats 's own judgment. In his preface to Endymion , he says "I apologize for the lousy work, but I just had to get this out of my system." (Obviously I'm paraphrasing.) You may dismiss that as false modesty, but I am more inclined to accept it as the judgment of a man who knew what he was talking about, especially because the quality of his poetry abr...

★★★☆☆ What is it like to be an octopus?

Children of Ruin Adrian Tchaikovsky There is a famous essay called What is it like to be a Bat? / Wie ist es, eine Fledermaus zu sein? by philosopher Thomas Nagel . (Although I am not a philosopher, I am a neuroscientist, and as a neuroscientist it is almost impossible to avoid knowing a little of the nonsense philosophers think about how minds work.) Nagel attempts to make an argument about consciousness. He argues that the consciousness of a bat is an experience a human cannot possibly have or understand, because echolocation is so unhuman. I have a little fantasy about Adrian Tchaikovsky 's Children of Time series . I imagine he read Nagel 's effusion and said to himself, "Utter nonsense! I'm gonna show that I can imagine not only what it's like to be a bat, but even what it's like to be a spider or an octopus!" ( Nagel in fact raises the question of invertebrate experience in his essay, only to make the point that it is an even h...

★★★☆☆ Good-bye Earl, or Small powers do great things

Nettle & Bone T Kingfisher I believe the first T. Kingfisher book I ever read was A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking , and the second Minor Mage . (I had, however, read some of her middle grade works published as Ursula Vernon , and I was aware that Kingfisher and Vernon are the same person.) Nettle & Bone feels to me very like those two novels, but with a little of the joy let out. Both A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking (irresistible title!) and Minor Mage feature child wizards with very limited powers who are called on to do far more than anyone has a right to expect of them, and who rise to the challenge. The first quarter of Nettle & Bone is exceedingly grim. It's the all-too-familiar story of a wife suffering, as the publisher's summary says, "at the hands of a powerful and abusive" husband. She's a princess and he's a prince, but that matters only in that it accen...

★★★★☆ Matrimonial predators

The Brides of High Hill Nghi Vo We catch up with Chih, who is accompanying the Pham family -- Mr and Mrs Pham and their daughter Pham Nhung to the castle of Lord Guo. The Phams are a family of merchants down on their luck, and Nhung has been proposed in marriage to Lord Guo. She and Chih met cute, and she asked them to accompany her to Lord Guo's castle for the marriage negotiation. Chih appears to have a mini-crush on Nhung, which she appears to encourage. Chih desperately misses their neixin Almost Brilliant, who is mysteriously absent. Nhung is naturally worried about being married. Chih, who knows many stories, true and fictional, about husbands and wives, would like to reassure her, but cannot honestly do so. Stuff happens. You will recognize the story pretty quickly. It's Bluebeard. You probably already figured that out -- the plural "Brides" in the title kind of gives it away. In this one Chih faces serious personal danger, more immediate than in any other S...

★★★★★ Tactical Assault Clown

Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass—How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up Dave Barry There is one living human who can write prose that makes me laugh so hard I can't breathe. That person is Tactical Assault Clown Dave Barry . Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass—How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up had that effect on me at least twice -- an automatic five-star rating. ("Tactical Assault Clown" is right up there with "Combat Epistemologist" ( The Jennifer Morgue ) on my list of creative military specializations. And if you're one of those people who get their knickers all in a twist when someone uses parens inside of parens, you know what you can do about it.) (Yes, I know I'm not funny.) It's not all ROFL funny. In fact, he tells about his father's alcoholism ( that story has a happy ending ) and his mother's suicide ( that one obviously does not ). Later in the book he tries to convince us that his real li...

Search This Blog