Ken Liu

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American writer

title: "Ken Liu" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1976-births", "living-people", "american-male-novelists", "american-male-poets", "american-male-short-story-writers", "american-science-fiction-writers", "american-short-story-writers", "american-speculative-fiction-translators", "american-writers-of-chinese-descent", "analog-science-fiction-and-fact-people", "asimov's-science-fiction-people", "chinese–english-translators", "harvard-college-alumni", "harvard-law-school-alumni", "hugo-award–winning-writers", "nebula-award-winners", "sidewise-award-winners", "world-fantasy-award–winning-writers", "writers-from-gansu", "people-from-lanzhou", "chinese-emigrants-to-the-united-states", "writers-from-connecticut"] description: "American writer" topic_path: "law" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Liu" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American writer ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox writer"]

FieldValue
nameKen Liu
imageKenLiuPortrait.jpg
captionPortrait of Ken Liu by Lisa Tang Liu, 2014
birth_name
birth_date
birth_placeLanzhou, Gansu, China
occupation{{flatlist
nationalityAmerican
genreScience fiction, fantasy
notableworks
spouseLisa Kaiyee Tang Liu
awards
website
::

| name = Ken Liu | image = KenLiuPortrait.jpg | caption = Portrait of Ken Liu by Lisa Tang Liu, 2014 | birth_name = | birth_date = | birth_place = Lanzhou, Gansu, China | occupation = {{flatlist|

  • Author
  • Lawyer
  • Programmer
  • Translator | nationality = American | period = | genre = Science fiction, fantasy | subject = | movement = | notableworks=
  • The Paper Menagerie (2011)
  • The Grace of Kings (2015)
  • The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016)
  • The Hidden Girl and Other Stories (2020)
  • All That We See or Seem (2025) | spouse = Lisa Kaiyee Tang Liu | children = | relatives = | influences = | influenced = | awards =
  • Hugo Awards (×4)
  • Locus Awards (×3)
  • FantLab's Awards (×2)
  • Nebula Award (×1)
  • Sidewise Award (×1)
  • World Fantasy Award (×1) | signature = | website = | portaldisp = | t = 劉宇昆 | s = 刘宇昆 | p = Liú Yǔkūn | mi =

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Ken_Liu_2016.jpg" caption="Ken Liu in 2016"] ::

Kenneth Yukun Liu (born 1976) Clarkesworld, Reactor, Uncanny Magazine and multiple "Year's Best" anthologies.

Liu's debut epic fantasy novel series, The Dandelion Dynasty, is described as silkpunk, a term coined by him to encapsulate the way it blends the material culture and philosophical roots of East Asian antiquity in an alternative vision of modernity.

Liu has also written a new scifi thriller series, Julia Z, which features a hacker with a specialty in AI and robotics.

In addition to his original fiction, Liu has also translated some notable Chinese science fiction works into English, winning Hugo Awards for these translations as well.

Childhood and career

Liu was born in 1976 in Lanzhou, China. He spent his childhood with his grandparents and credits his grandmother as giving him a lifelong love of storytelling. His mother, who received her Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States, is a pharmaceutical chemist, while his father is a computer engineer.{{cite web |url=http://www.asiaone.com/ken-liu-won-science-fiction-awards-best-short-story?nopaging=1 |title=Ken Liu won science fiction awards for best short story |work=AsiaOne |access-date=2019-01-05 |date=2013-09-09 |publisher=AsiaOne |url=https://www.newsweek.com/man-bringing-chinese-science-fiction-west-514893 |title=MEET THE MAN BRINGING CHINESE SCIENCE FICTION TO THE WEST |access-date=2019-01-05 |date=2016-10-30 |publisher=Newsweek |url=https://www.theday.com/article/20150414/ENT02/150419746 |title=Waterford alum — and award-winning short story writer — Ken Liu releases his debut novel |access-date=2019-01-05 |date=2015-04-14 |publisher=The Day (New London) |archive-date=2019-04-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190413153812/https://www.theday.com/article/20150414/ENT02/150419746 |url-status=dead |url=https://harvardmagazine.com/2016/11/fusion-fantasy |title=Fusion Fantasy: Ken Liu's sprawling hybrid fiction |access-date=2019-01-05 |date=November–December 2016 |publisher=Harvard Magazine

After graduation, Liu worked as a software engineer for Microsoft, and then joined a start-up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He later received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2004 and after working as a corporate lawyer, eventually became a high-tech litigation consultant. He became a full-time writer in 2017.

Liu began publishing fiction in 2002. His first published work was "Carthaginian Rose", a short story on mind uploading, part of The Phobos Science Fiction Anthology Volume 1. This story would later become part of the AMC series PANTHEON.

Liu has said he wanted to become a writer so he could make stories that “turn values upside down and inside out to gain new perspectives”.

In addition to magazines and online publications, Liu's short story fiction has been published in two collections, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016), which blends science fiction and fantasy to ask questions about historiography, cultural reinvention, storytelling, and transhumanism, and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories (2020) which explores ideas such as tradition and progress, the fallibility of memory, and the essence of what it means to be human.

After a long career writing and publishing short fiction, Liu turned to a silkpunk epic fantasy series about an alternative vision of how a multi-cultural society can transition into modernity based on both East Asian and Western values, consisting of The Grace of Kings (2015), The Wall of Storms (2016), The Veiled Throne (2021), and Speaking Bones (2022).

He has also written for the Star Wars universe, including the novel The Legends of Luke Skywalker (2017), a series of Canterbury-tale like in-universe legends.

Along with his original work, Liu has translated the works of several Chinese authors into English, including Liu Cixin, Hao Jingfang, Chen Qiufan, Gu Shi, and Xia Jia. His translation of The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin became a best seller in English. He has also worked as an editor, with two anthologies of translated Chinese fiction, Invisible Planets and Broken Stars. His latest translation is a new rendition of Laozi's Dao De Jing: A New Interpretation for a Transformative Time.

Some of Liu's work have been adapted into visual media. His short story "Memories of My Mother" was the basis of Beautiful Dreamer (2016) by David Gaddie. His short story "Real Artists" was adapted into the short film Real Artists (2017) by Cameo Wood. His short story "Good Hunting", which uses steampunk to interrogate the consequences of Western colonialism and Chinese modernity, was adapted into an animated short as part of Netflix's Love, Death & Robots series (2019). Six stories in The Hidden Girl and Other Stories and "Carthaginian Rose" were adapted by Craig Silverstein into the animated television series Pantheon.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Liu was disturbed by finger-pointing, jingoism, and xenophobia in the face of what he saw as an existential, global threat to all humanity; he began to seek solace in the Tao Te Ching and subsequently released a new translation of the ancient text, Laozi's Dao De Jing: A New Interpretation for a Transformative Time (2024).

His latest work is a series of scifi thrillers, starting with All That We See or Seem (2025), featuring a young hacker named Julia Z. The series engages with the impact of AI, and in particular its consequences on the arts, the law, and other aspects of everyday life.

Liu frequently speaks at conferences, think tanks, and universities on a variety of topics related to the evolving nature of work, machine-augmented creativity, and other aspects of futurism.

Liu lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

Awards

Liu's short story "The Paper Menagerie" is the first work of fiction, of any length, to win all of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards. In addition, his short story, "Mono no aware" won the 2013 Hugo Award, and his novella "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" was also nominated for a Hugo. The first novel in his The Dandelion Dynasty series, The Grace of Kings, was a 2016 Nebula Award finalist. The novel was the 2016 Locus Award Best First Novel winner.

Besides his original work, Liu's translation of Liu Cixin's Chinese language novel The Three-Body Problem (the first in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy) won the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel, making it the first translated novel to have won the award. Liu also translated Hao Jingfang's novelette, "Folding Beijing," which won a Hugo in 2016.

Winner

Finalists and nominated

Bibliography

Main article: Ken Liu bibliography

Liu is well known for his short story "The Paper Menagerie", his Dandelion Dynasty fantasy novel series, and his translation of Cixin Liu's novel The Three-Body Problem and its sequels. For a more comprehensive list of Liu's works, see the linked bibliography page.

Filmography

Television

Pantheon is an animated television series based on Liu's sci-fi short stories "The Gods Will Not Be Chained", "The Gods Will Not Be Slain", "The Gods Have Not Died in Vain", "Staying Behind" and "Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer" from the short fictions collection The Hidden Girl and Other Stories. It premiered on AMC+ in 2022.

His short story "Good Hunting" was adapted into an animated short as part of Netflix's Love, Death & Robots anthology series (2019).

References

References

  1. (2015-05-10). "Ken Liu: Silkpunk".
  2. Yant, Christie. (2013-10-22). "Author Spotlight: Ken Liu".
  3. Anders, Charlie Jane. (2012-11-08). "Read Ken Liu's amazing story that swept the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards".
  4. Yoachim, Caroline M.. "Interview: Ken Liu".
  5. (13 April 2015). "Ken Liu Talks Silkpunk, Old Poems, and Contemporary Chinese SFF in His Reddit AMA".
  6. "Julia Z".
  7. Tatlow, Didi Kirsten. (2015-08-24). "Science-Fiction Prize Is Awarded to Chinese Writer for First Time".
  8. Alter, Alexandra. (2019-12-03). "How Chinese Sci-Fi Conquered America". The New York Times.
  9. (13 April 2015). "Ken Liu Talks Silkpunk, Old Poems, and Contemporary Chinese SFF in His Reddit AMA".
  10. "Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy".
  11. (15 March 2025). "Sci-Fi Author Ken Liu Discusses TV Series Adaptation & More".
  12. Ouellette, Katherine. (2020-02-24). "Modern Mythmaking In Ken Liu's 'The Hidden Girl And Other Stories'".
  13. El-Mohtar, Amal. (2016-03-13). "No Paper Tiger, This 'Menagerie' Is Full Of Fierce Feeling".
  14. Kirtley, David Barr. (2015-04-24). "Interview: Ken Liu". Wired (via Lightspeed).
  15. "The Dandelion Dynasty".
  16. Floyd, James. (2017-11-01). "Interview on The Legends of Luke Skywalker".
  17. Sullivan, Colin. (2016-08-20). "Chinese SF and the art of translation".
  18. Doctorow, Cory. (2019-12-04). "How Ken Liu went from engineer to lawyer to SF writer to the foremost translator of Chinese sf into English".
  19. Carroll, Tobias. (2016-11-15). "Ken Liu Will Keep an Open Mind".
  20. ""Broken Stars," a New Anthology Edited by Ken Liu, Casts a Fresh Look at Chinese Sci-Fi".
  21. (2024-08-19). "The Skiffy and Fanty Show: Book Review: Laozi's Dao De Jing (Ken Liu)".
  22. "Beautiful Dreamer (2016)".
  23. "Real Artists (2017)".
  24. Liptak, Andrew. (2019-03-22). "Many of the short stories that inspired Love, Death + Robots are free online".
  25. "'Krishna and Kumar (2024)'".
  26. (30 September 2024). "Why the ancient power of the Dao De Jing is more important than ever". Big Think.
  27. (2024-10-09). "A conversation with award-winning science fiction author Ken Liu".
  28. "SYNAPSE".
  29. (2024-10-09). "A conversation with award-winning science fiction author Ken Liu".
  30. Reid, Luc. (2013-03-25). "Not Just Vast Armies Clashing on Dark Plains at Night: An Interview with Ken Liu". [[Strange Horizons]].
  31. (22 December 2012). "2013 Hugo Awards".
  32. David Barnett. (2 September 2013). "The Hugo awards: 'beauty contest' or prize of the people?". [[The Guardian]].
  33. (7 April 2012). "2012 Hugo Awards".
  34. (15 May 2016). "Nebula Award Winners Announced".
  35. (25 June 2016). "2016 Locus Award Winners".
  36. (31 March 2015). "2015 Hugo Awards".
  37. "2012 Winners". sfftawards.org.
  38. (31 March 2015). "2015 Hugo Awards".
  39. (25 June 2016). "2016 Locus Award Winners".
  40. (24 June 2017). "2017 Locus Award Winners".
  41. (24 June 2017). "2017 Locus Award Winners".
  42. (20 February 2013). "2012 Nebula Awards Nominees Announced".
  43. (20 February 2015). "2014 Nebula Awards Nominees Announced".
  44. (20 February 2015). "2014 Nebula Awards Nominees Announced".
  45. (2014-06-06). "2014 Sidewise Award Finalists". Locus.
  46. (7 May 2014). "Locus Online News » 2014 Locus Awards Finalists".
  47. (4 May 2015). "Locus Online News » 2015 Locus Awards Finalists".
  48. "Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction News and Events".
  49. (31 December 2016). "2017 Hugo Awards".
  50. (2020-05-29). "Announcing the 2020 Locus Awards Finalists".
  51. Ramin, Zahed. "Sci-Fi Epic 'Pantheon' Updates AMC+ as a Cool New Animation Destination".
  52. Cox, Ailsa. (2025-01-27). "Love, death and desire". Routledge.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

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