The Hidden Girl and Other Stories

About

Inter-dimensional assassins, steampunk dystopias, AI-generated folk tales, and a woman who discovers that the pattern on her grandmother's quilt is a map to somewhere real. Ken Liu's second story collection ranges across genres and centuries, but the connective tissue is a deep interest in how technology changes the stories cultures tell about themselves — and what gets lost in translation. Liu writes science fiction that is as interested in history and anthropology as in technology, and his best stories operate as thought experiments about empathy: what does it mean to understand a person, a culture, a species not your own? The range is extraordinary, from epic to intimate, from devastating to quietly hopeful. Stories that prove the best science fiction is really about the oldest human questions — asked from angles no one thought to try.