VISIT AUTHOR: 
SHOP AUTHOR: 
TIP AUTHOR: (4958 words, 25 minutes)
read moreRina imagined her ice cube in the dark, cold cocoon of the freezer. Stay calm, she thought. Block it out. This is your life. This bit of almost-death.
Ken Liu 24 stories >>
A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, Ken Liu (http://kenliu.name) is the author of The Dandelion Dynasty, a silkpunk epic fantasy series (The Grace of Kings + sequels), as well as The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories....
Staying Behind
(4989 words, 25 minutes)
read moreWe die to make place for our children, and through our children a piece of us lives on, the only form of immortality that is real.
Gossamer
(6475 words, 33 minutes)
read moreThe ships gave off a dark metallic blue sheen in the sun. They dwarfed the 747s beside them. There were three ships, all identical, with no external protrusions or indentations to mar the smooth cigar shape.
The Box That Eats Memories
(984 words, 5 minutes)
read moreTendrils of red mist rose from within the box and curled around her, pushing at her nostrils. She took a deep breath.
Tying Knots
(5540 words, 28 minutes)
read moreThe spirits like to play jokes on us. I have seen more in my lifetime than any Nan in recorded history, and yet I am also the most shortsighted, practically blind.
Exotic Pets
(7583 words, 38 minutes)
read moreA werk is a work of art. It is a chimera made from the genetic material of two zygotes, a mixture of tissues from two species. It is a creature sprung from the mind and curiosity of Man.
The Silk Merchant
(2064 words, 11 minutes)
read moreSo this was the secret of shimmer silk. Not silkworms, but spiders.
“I want this,” I said.
The Perfect Book
(894 words, 5 minutes)
read moreHe glanced at the display on the dock. “I see there’s a bit of Woolf, a bit of Joyce, and a lot of this new author from Taipei, Annie W. She’s popular. Very malleable prose, I understand, adaptable to lots of books.”
The Litigation Master and the Monkey King
(7881 words, 40 minutes)
read moreEver since Tian was a little boy, he had been obsessed with the exploits of the Monkey King, the trickster demon who had seventy-two transformations and defeated hundreds of monsters, who had shaken the throne of the Jade Emperor with a troop of monkeys.
Build-A-Dolly
(985 words, 5 minutes)
My body, made out of a plastic skeleton covered by stuffing and soft cloth skin, is flat and wide. My legs are short and thick. My eyes are wide open and smiley.
The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species
(2648 words, 14 minutes)
Yet every species has its unique way of passing on its wisdom through the ages, its way of making thoughts visible, tangible, frozen for a moment like a bulwark against the irresistible tide of time. Everyone makes books.
Celestial Bodies
(960 words, 5 minutes)
So there I was, a new gas giant just waking up. The disk of nebular dust surrounded me like a fresh blanket of snow. Along with the rest of the planets, I marched around that dust cloud, absorbing everything I could, growing and loving every second.
Then I saw her.
Good Hunting
(7164 words, 36 minutes)
She held up her finger against my lips. So close to her, I finally noticed her scent. It was like her mother’s, floral and sweet, but also bright, like blankets dried in the sun. I felt my face grow warm.
Golden Years in the Paleozoic
(938 words, 5 minutes)
But the Carboniferous Period, 350 million years before civilization, is the perfect time to retire.