"The Man Who Ended History" by Ken Liu

[nwhyte]

I have nearly finished my reading of the Hugo nominees in the fiction categories, and reached Ken Liu's fascinating story, "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" (available here in PDF). It is a sparsely told but emotionally wrenching tale of a Japanese-American/Chinese-American couple who develop a technology that allows one to experience

Comments

[duck2ducks]

What do you think about the Vonnegut novel Slaughterhouse Five? Do you find that similarly problematic, or is that a different case?

[nwhyte]

Slaughterhouse-Five is an eyewitness account by someone who is there, so there is no question of using a historical atrocity that happened to other people to make an artistic or rhetorical point.

[duck2ducks]

That's a notable distinction! I recalled Kurt's introduction mentioning that he got some criticism at the time for centering a time-travel story around such a horrific event, so I wondered. But you make a very good point!

[inuitmonster]

By far the most interesting bits of Slaughterhouse 5 are the ones that are straight narrative of the events Vonnegut went through - it's not really obvious that the SF angle is bringing much to the table except maybe to illustrate that the fictional analogue of Vonnegut has lost his marbles as a result of going through such terrible events.

[inuitmonster]

Is it specifically the time travel aspect you don't like or is it a more general thing about whether or how real life terrible events should be represented in fiction?

[i_ate_my_crusts]

Thank you. This encapsulated my difficulty with both this and "macs".