Ken Liu's Blog, page 3

A New Story and Pantheon Premier

Happy September! Let’s dive right into the updates:

“Timekeepers’ Symphony” out in Clarkesworld

It’s been forever since I last published a short story in Clarkesworld (it turns out that working for years on an epic fantasy series spanning thousands of pages will sort of reduce the time available for everything else … who knew?). I’m super excited to say that I’ve now returned to this fantastic magazine with a new story, “Timekeepers’ Symphony.”

In the same way “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” is about books, this story is about clocks and watches and other ways we keep time. But it’s also about our place in time, our responsibility to time, and ultimately, our hope in time. Thank you for giving it a read.

Pantheon Premiers on AMC+ and HIDIVE Today

The AMC animated series, Pantheon, created by Craig Silverstein from my “Singularity” stories in The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, premiers today on AMC+ and HIDIVE. You can watch the first episode for free! I really loved what the team has done with my story, and I hope you do too.

TV Show + Speaking Bones Event

Hello! Hope your summer is going well (if you’re in the northern hemisphere). Two big updates for you.

Speaking Bones Event with Alex Shvartsman at An Unlikely Story

On August 18, 7:00 PM, An Unlikely Story Bookstore and Cafe will host an online event for Speaking Bones with me and my friend Alex Shvartsman. Alex, the author of the delightful urban fantasy novel, The Middling Affliction, was one of my earliest beta readers. I’m really looking forward to our discussion.

Please register for the event at the above link and consider supporting a wonderful local indie bookstore by buying a copy of one of our books!

Pantheon, the AMC+ TV Show Based on My Stories, Is Coming in September

The “Singularity” stories in The Hidden Girl and Other Stories became the basis for a brand new TV show from AMC, created by Craig Silberstein. Here’s the full announcement from AMC:

AMC Networks’ first traditionally animated series, Pantheon, premieres Thursday, September 1 with weekly episodes on AMC+. A sci-fi drama based on a collection of short stories by award-winning author Ken Liu, this thrilling speculative is centered on a bullied teen (Katie Chang) who receives mysterious help from someone online: a stranger soon revealed to be her recently deceased father, David (Daniel Dae Kim), whose consciousness has been uploaded to the Cloud following an experimental destructive brain scan. David is the first of a new kind of being – an “Uploaded Intelligence” or “UI” – but he will not be the last, as a global conspiracy unfolds that threatens to trigger a new kind of world war. The series writer, creator, showrunner and executive producer is Craig Silverstein (TURN: Washington’s Spies, Nikita, Terra Nova), and animation is by Titmouse (Motorcity, Big Mouth, Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-Head).

And here’s a first-look clip:

The show is terrific. I had a blast working on this, and I can’t wait to share it with you.

Thank you, as always, for supporting my work. Until next time!

Ken

Reddit AMA Today!

I’m doing an AMA with r/books today. So if you want to ask me questions about the Dandelion Dynasty, the Paper Menagerie, video games, old handheld consoles, wizard-engineers, whatever else you want, this is your chance :D

I’ll start at 1:00 PM US Eastern and keep going the rest of the day. Get your questions in now!

Link: https://redd.it/vyzo85

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July Update

I love July: the aromas of a charcoal grill, vacations to faraway lands, long days that last forever. And it’s even better when you’ve just released a big, thick tome.

Reader response to Speaking Bones has been incredible. My absolute favorite part of being a writer is when readers take the time and effort to reach out and tell me how my fiction has brought joy to them. When I learn that Dara has come alive in their imagination, I feel true magic has been done.

More news:

In-Person Event at the Brookline Booksmith

I’m doing an event to celebrate the launch of Speaking Bones at the Brookline Booksmith on July 7 at 6:00 PM. If you’re in the Boston area, please register and come to talk about the Dandelion Dynasty with me and get your signed copy! Should be a lot of fun.

If you can’t make this one, there are more events scheduled for Speaking Bones later in the summer. More details to come.

The Age of Stories

As part of Orion magazine’s special 40th anniversary issue, themed around the idea of reimagining the Anthropocene, I wrote an essay for them. Now, “The Age of Stories” has been published online.

History, story, spell—there is in this etymological record a fable on the relationship between the human mind and the cosmos. However much we dislike the epistemological mess, facts are not, and have never been, perfectly distinguishable from fiction. For our species, interpretation is not so muchapplied to reality as bound up with it.

It summarizes some key ideas about storytelling that have motivated my fiction, including the Dandelion Dynasty. Give it a read when you can.

Thank you, as always. And may your July be joyous and lazy.

Speaking Bones Is Out!

Publication Day

At long last, the concluding volume of The Dandelion Dynasty, Speaking Bones, is available. Published by Saga Press in North America and Head of Zeus in the UK and the Commonwealth, you can grab it from your favorite physical or online retailer.

I’m beyond excited. The road through Dara has been long and winding, and it’s hard to believe that we’re finally approaching the end. (The obstacles that had to be overcome during its ten-year composition would make a fine saga by themselves.) Thank you for accompanying me on this voyage—really, your good cheer and support have kept me going far more than you can know—and I hope you find this last leg moving and delightful in equal measure.

Dara will always be my second home, and may it be yours as well. It is your imagination, no less than mine, that brings it and its people, heroes and villains, thanes and engineers, teachers and students, litigators and soldiers, monks and princesses, the native-born and newcomers, the Blossom Gang and the Dyran Fins … to life.

Get the book and read — and then come back and tell me about what you found in Dara!

May you always take the most interesting path.

The concluding book of The Dandelion Dynasty begins immediately after the events of The Veiled Throne, in the middle of two wars on two lands among three people separated by an ocean yet held together by the invisible strands of love.

Harried by Lyucu pursuers, Princess Théra and Pékyu Takval try to reestablish an ancestral dream even as their hearts grow in doubt. The people of Dara continue to struggle against the genocidal Lyucu as both nations vacillate between starkly contrasting visions for their futures. Even the gods cannot see through the Wall of Storms, for only mortal hearts can decide mortal fates.

Award-winning author Ken Liu fulfills the covenants first laid out a decade ago in a series delving deep into the connection between national myths and national constitutions in this ambitious, “magnificent fantasy epic” (NPR).

ARC Giveaway: Speaking Bones

Hello!

Thank you for being one of my readers. You make this lonely, sometimes frustrating, often confusing, always unpredictable business of sending brand new stories out into the world worthwhile.

Since today is pub day for the trade paper edition of The Veiled Throne, and the conclusion of the Dandelion Dynasty, Speaking Bones, will be out in just six weeks (release date: June 21, 2022), this is a good time for a giveaway of signed Advance Reader Copies.

All you have to do to enter is to reply to this email before May 17, 2022 and say “I want a copy of Speaking Bones!” (or, if you’re signing up for the newsletter after seeing this issue posted on social media, reply to the “welcome” email with that message). Five winners will be randomly selected from all the entries, and if you’re picked, I’ll contact you for your mailing address (and to personalized your signed copy). Note: To be eligible, you must have a mailing address in the US as international shipping is not possible with my budget.

(If you’re a BookTuber or Bookstagramer with a US mailing address, please let me know. I may have extra ARCs that I can send you even if you don’t win the giveaway.)

Photo credit: Lisa Tang Liu

I put all of myself into this series, and this final volume represents the culmination of a decade of striving, first to create the world of Dara, and then living in it. Thank you for being a part of my journey, and may you always do the most interesting thing.

Be well!

Ken

The Veiled Throne Is Out! (And Some Dynastic Commentary)

Book Launch

Hello! Today is the US release day for The Veiled Throne, the penultimate entry in the Dandelion Dynasty. The UK release happened last month. Here are the gorgeous covers.

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a.image2.image-link.image2-1840-728 { display: inline; padding-bottom: 252.74725274725273%; padding-bottom: min(252.74725274725273%, 1840px); width: 100%; height: 0; } a.image2.image-link.image2-1840-728 img { max-width: 728px; max-height: 1840px; } UK cover for The Veiled Throne

You can order the book from your favorite retailer right now. (Saga page. Head of Zeus page.)

There’s also the audio book, narrated once more by the amazing Michael Kramer.

Thank you so much for going with me on this journey through Dara. Just six more months for the conclusion in Speaking Bones!

Extras — Behinds the Scenes on The Wall of Storms

I have one more treat for you. Goodreads allows authors to post commentary on the most-highlighted passages from their books (as indicated by Kindle readers who choose to share their highlights). It’s a little like those filmmaker DVD commentary tracks, which I’ve always liked. I previously did this for passages from The Grace of Kings, and now I’ve done the same for The Wall of Storms. It’s a great way to remember your thoughts on the second book before going into the third entry.

An excerpt:

As I mentioned in the comments to passages from The Grace of Kings, The Wall of Storms is what I consider to be the start to the series proper (with TGOK serving as a prequel). In TGOK, I was largely concerned with laying the foundations of the silkpunk aesthetic and setting up a pre-modern society on the cusp of the leap into modernity. Why did I do this? Well, a driving impetus behind this series is my desire to challenge and interrogate the conventional narrative of modernity, which is often modeled on a particular telling of the story of my country, the US of A. The Story of America is most often told using allusions to “Western” models such as Rome and Britain (just think of how many aspects of American politics and national culture evoke images of America as a “New Rome”). But when you are constrained to one set of allusions, there’s a limit how much you can push readers to see something new in a familiar tale or, even bolder, to change the narrative.

Something radical had to be done. I decided to depart from the “New Rome” model and instead evoke East Asian models in this fantasy epic recasting of the Story of America — and by extension, the narrative of modernity. Thus, I borrowed much of the plot of TGOK from the Chu-Han Contention, as interpreted by the historian Sima Qian, and built up a vocabulary of non-Western political allusions and precedents that could then be drawn on in the re-imagining of the epic of modernity.

Enjoy!

I expect this to be the last newsletter of 2021. May you have a restful and joyous holiday season, and I’ll see you next year.

Ken

Cover Reveal for the US Edition of Speaking Bones

As I’ve mentioned before, I wrote The Veiled Throne and Speaking Bones as a single book, but it was too large to publish in one volume. So that’s why the conclusion of the Dandelion Dynasty is coming out as two books spaced six months apart.

Today, I’m excited to share with you the US cover of Speaking Bones. (For the UK cover, which is part of a continuous painting for all four books, please see this earlier update.)

Speaking Bones is scheduled to come out in the US on June 21, 2022 (reminder: The Veiled Throne is already out in the UK and will be out in the US on December 7, 2021). Tor.com just posted a cover reveal.

a.image2.image-link.image2-2184-1456 { padding-bottom: 150%; padding-bottom: min(150%, 2184px); width: 100%; height: 0; } a.image2.image-link.image2-2184-1456 img { max-width: 1456px; max-height: 2184px; } Artist: Tony Mauro

The image is based on a design idea from me: against a murky background, a heap of fruits and grains (from all over the globe, for the land of Dara is not based on any single location in our world) covered by a fanged and antlered skull, as though the signs of plenty were emerging from a skeletal cornucopia. In the foreground, a few spotlit pomegranates, spilling forth the vivid red seeds that bring to mind fertility and new beginnings. And high above, a drifting dandelion seed.

It gives you a sense of the story without spoiling it, and I wanted it to fit into the designs of all the US covers.

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I’m really lucky to have such lovely covers for the Dandelion Dynasty (US as well as UK). When put together, they give you a sense of the mood shifts between the different books in the series, and evoke the themes of the individual books as well as the overall series without saying too much. And they’re full of details that will reward careful examination.

Thank you, as always, for supporting my work. (And if you’re the in the US, have a great Thanksgiving!)

Ken

The Veiled Throne Is Almost Here!

Hi everyone! I hope your November is going well.

I wanted to let you know about yet another update on the publication date of The Veiled Throne. (And this time, it’s not a delay. Woohoo!) Because of supply chain issues, my book will be getting a split release in the UK and the US, instead of a worldwide simultaneous English release. I’ve never had this happen to me before, so I don’t really know what to expect. Thank you for sticking with me through all these churns and turns.

My UK publisher, Head of Zeus, will bring out the third book in the Dandelion Dynasty series on November 11, 2021 (link). Yes! If you’re in the UK, you’ll be able to get the book almost a month before it’s out in the US. Here’s the cover for the UK edition (more on the new covers for the UK edition of the series here.)

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Also in the UK, The Broken Binding is bringing out a special signed limited edition of all three Dandelion Dynasty books published so far.

@HoZ_Books! Check out out special editions of The Dandelion Dynasty by @kyliu99 😍😍 ","username":"binding_broken","name":"The Broken Binding","date":"Tue Nov 02 15:38:03 +0000 2021","photos":[{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/FDMv7x...The Broken Binding @binding_brokenIncredible stuff from @HoZ_Books! Check out out special editions of The Dandelion Dynasty by @kyliu99 😍😍

November 2nd 2021

11 Retweets101 Likes

My US publisher, Simon & Schuster, will bring out the book about a month later, on December 7, 2021 (link).

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I know that it will be yet another six months before the final book in the series is out, but we’re almost there!

I can’t tell you how lucky I feel that I got to write these books and see them in print. And to have you as my readers … Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Ken

Publication Dates

Happy October!

A quick update on the publication dates for The Veiled Throne (Book 3 of the Dandelion Dynasty) and Speaking Bones (Book 4 — the last book — of the Dandelion Dynasty).

You’ve probably heard about the supply chain issues plaguing publishing. Well, I’ve been struck by them as well. As a result of all the problems getting new books printed, The Veiled Throne’s publication date has been pushed back to December 7, 2021. And since we don’t anticipate these issues going away magically after the new year, Speaking Bones, the final volume, has been pushed back to June 21, 2022.

Yes, I’m disappointed, since I really want to see these books out there for fans as soon as possible. But I’m choosing to celebrate the fact that we’re still making new books in a challenging time, when the world itself seems to be passing through a wall of storms of the unknown. I got to tell the story I wanted to tell, and that’s no small thing.

Since the publication date is so late in the year, I’m going to take a hit in sales. If you can preorder The Veiled Throne from a retailer linked by Simon & Schuster in the US or Head of Zeus in the UK, that would be really really helpful to me.

Thank you.

Ken