"Pockets of sentience glow in the cold, deep void of the universe like bubbles in a vast, dark sea."
THE PAPER MENAGERIE AND OTHER STORIES
Ken Liu
Last weekend, I finally sat down and, over the course of a day or so, watched the ESPN documentary OJ: Made in America. For seven hours, I watched the incisive and scopic examination of the life and career of Orenthal James Simpson, Ezra Edelman using the OJ and the infamous trial for the double murder of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman as the keyhole through which the viewer is passed to then gaze upon the landscape of race relations in the United States. OJ provided as apt a totem for all the intricacies of race in America as one could ever hope for, his arrival on USC campus for a breakout career in football at a time when black athletes were being drafted into the Black Power movement, to varying degrees of effectiveness. OJ's racelessness is incredibly juxtaposed against Muhammad Ali's vociferous rejection of American hegemony in Vietnam, as well as the famous Black Power Fist moment in the Olympics at the time. "I'm not black, I'm OJ," he says at one point, encapsulating so much so concisely. But in telling the story of the Watts riots, in telling the story of Muhammad Ali, in telling the story of Rodney King, the documentary never loses sight of its primary subject. OJ in all his contradictions, a black man celebrated in a white environment, stripped of his skin color, insulated from the unrest and distress right outside his college stadium. Meteoric rise predicated on his success in a lucrative endeavor--college football--which has the effect of de-racializing him, moving him into wealthy Brentwood, putting him in the same room as millionaires, splashing his face onto people's television sets as the mascot for Hertz. Inoculating him, in essence, from the turmoil visited on so many other Americans by virtue of their skin color. Until, of course, a white woman is murdered and, paradoxically, with the LA riots humming noisily in the background and against the backdrop of the LAPD's rampant police brutality, his race plays the greatest role in his defense, and he escapes the wrath of the criminal justice system. (Not wholly without consequence, as he was subsequently found guilty in a civil suit and the psychological weight of containing his own personal contradictions comes to bear with catastrophic results; he suddenly has to deal with being identified not only as black, but as a black domestic abuser, a black murderer. As though he's fallen in a pool of ink and will never wash it all away.) I came away from that documentary convinced that the story of America is the story of race. Or, rather, that the most dynamic narrative thread in the story of America is, to mix some metaphors, the prism of race. The history of English-language storytelling in America means that, these days, nearly any story with a non-white character as its protagonist will complicate and enrich the narrative.
Which is a large part of why I enjoyed Ken Liu's short story collection as tremendously as I did. The skyrocketing popularity of Margaret Atwood's classic The Handmaid's Tale, with its TV adaptation on Hulu, has only highlighted the cavernous blindspot in science fiction and fantasy when it comes to dealing directly with race. Works will contend with class and gender while ignoring the multi-colored elephant in the room. Either racism has been eradicated or all the people of color have been left behind, delegated to the same room as Rosencrantz and Gildenstern.
Here, they take center stage. Not only that, but their history, their ethnicity, their race, all of it matters. In "All the Flavors," we're treated to a magic-infused tale about the Early West in America and Chinese labor on the railroads as well as the communities they build in the pioneer. "The Literomancer" deftly examines how the way we write and communicate opens up our view of the world, a concept illustrated in much more abstract fashion in "An Advanced Readers' Picture Book of Comparative Cognition" and "The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species". The stories like that, the ones that deal most explicitly in the unrecognizably fantastical, for me, seemed more sketches than stories. Bloodless thought experiments, which is appropriate as some of the species described may not even be said to be able to bleed, as commonly understood. The most powerful and moving stories rushed headlong into the identities--racial and otherwise--of their characters. The title story breaks the heart in showing the pain caused by children who rebuff their heritage. And "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" is perhaps the brightest jewel in this crown. That novella can even be said to read as storytelling with a moral imperative.
In many ways, Ted Chiang's influence is felt throughout this collection. There's an incredible erudition to the ideas put on display here, and "The Man Who Ended History" bears the same structural DNA as Chiang's "Liking What You See: A Documentary."
In fact, Ken's novella is how we met. We were both published in the anthology Panverse Three, him with "The Man Who Ended History" and I with a fantastical retelling of Cold War geopolitics with a novella entitled "Dust to Dust". Our editor knew that Ken was a lawyer and had graduated from Harvard Law, and at the time I was preparing to go to Columbia Law; so, he put us in touch and thus began our friendship. So that final story in the collection bears extra sentimental value for me.
But more than anything, Ken's collection speaks of a promise. And that's the idea that there will be more speculative fiction out there that grapples directly and not just metaphorically with the issues of race and ethnicity. That a character can be black or Chinese and that it will matter to the narrative that that character is black or Chinese, that the story would not work were it otherwise.
If one day once again my stories can find a place alongside his, it will be the Olympian height of satisfaction.
Ken Liu
Last weekend, I finally sat down and, over the course of a day or so, watched the ESPN documentary OJ: Made in America. For seven hours, I watched the incisive and scopic examination of the life and career of Orenthal James Simpson, Ezra Edelman using the OJ and the infamous trial for the double murder of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman as the keyhole through which the viewer is passed to then gaze upon the landscape of race relations in the United States. OJ provided as apt a totem for all the intricacies of race in America as one could ever hope for, his arrival on USC campus for a breakout career in football at a time when black athletes were being drafted into the Black Power movement, to varying degrees of effectiveness. OJ's racelessness is incredibly juxtaposed against Muhammad Ali's vociferous rejection of American hegemony in Vietnam, as well as the famous Black Power Fist moment in the Olympics at the time. "I'm not black, I'm OJ," he says at one point, encapsulating so much so concisely. But in telling the story of the Watts riots, in telling the story of Muhammad Ali, in telling the story of Rodney King, the documentary never loses sight of its primary subject. OJ in all his contradictions, a black man celebrated in a white environment, stripped of his skin color, insulated from the unrest and distress right outside his college stadium. Meteoric rise predicated on his success in a lucrative endeavor--college football--which has the effect of de-racializing him, moving him into wealthy Brentwood, putting him in the same room as millionaires, splashing his face onto people's television sets as the mascot for Hertz. Inoculating him, in essence, from the turmoil visited on so many other Americans by virtue of their skin color. Until, of course, a white woman is murdered and, paradoxically, with the LA riots humming noisily in the background and against the backdrop of the LAPD's rampant police brutality, his race plays the greatest role in his defense, and he escapes the wrath of the criminal justice system. (Not wholly without consequence, as he was subsequently found guilty in a civil suit and the psychological weight of containing his own personal contradictions comes to bear with catastrophic results; he suddenly has to deal with being identified not only as black, but as a black domestic abuser, a black murderer. As though he's fallen in a pool of ink and will never wash it all away.) I came away from that documentary convinced that the story of America is the story of race. Or, rather, that the most dynamic narrative thread in the story of America is, to mix some metaphors, the prism of race. The history of English-language storytelling in America means that, these days, nearly any story with a non-white character as its protagonist will complicate and enrich the narrative.
Which is a large part of why I enjoyed Ken Liu's short story collection as tremendously as I did. The skyrocketing popularity of Margaret Atwood's classic The Handmaid's Tale, with its TV adaptation on Hulu, has only highlighted the cavernous blindspot in science fiction and fantasy when it comes to dealing directly with race. Works will contend with class and gender while ignoring the multi-colored elephant in the room. Either racism has been eradicated or all the people of color have been left behind, delegated to the same room as Rosencrantz and Gildenstern.
Here, they take center stage. Not only that, but their history, their ethnicity, their race, all of it matters. In "All the Flavors," we're treated to a magic-infused tale about the Early West in America and Chinese labor on the railroads as well as the communities they build in the pioneer. "The Literomancer" deftly examines how the way we write and communicate opens up our view of the world, a concept illustrated in much more abstract fashion in "An Advanced Readers' Picture Book of Comparative Cognition" and "The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species". The stories like that, the ones that deal most explicitly in the unrecognizably fantastical, for me, seemed more sketches than stories. Bloodless thought experiments, which is appropriate as some of the species described may not even be said to be able to bleed, as commonly understood. The most powerful and moving stories rushed headlong into the identities--racial and otherwise--of their characters. The title story breaks the heart in showing the pain caused by children who rebuff their heritage. And "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" is perhaps the brightest jewel in this crown. That novella can even be said to read as storytelling with a moral imperative.
In many ways, Ted Chiang's influence is felt throughout this collection. There's an incredible erudition to the ideas put on display here, and "The Man Who Ended History" bears the same structural DNA as Chiang's "Liking What You See: A Documentary."
In fact, Ken's novella is how we met. We were both published in the anthology Panverse Three, him with "The Man Who Ended History" and I with a fantastical retelling of Cold War geopolitics with a novella entitled "Dust to Dust". Our editor knew that Ken was a lawyer and had graduated from Harvard Law, and at the time I was preparing to go to Columbia Law; so, he put us in touch and thus began our friendship. So that final story in the collection bears extra sentimental value for me.
But more than anything, Ken's collection speaks of a promise. And that's the idea that there will be more speculative fiction out there that grapples directly and not just metaphorically with the issues of race and ethnicity. That a character can be black or Chinese and that it will matter to the narrative that that character is black or Chinese, that the story would not work were it otherwise.
If one day once again my stories can find a place alongside his, it will be the Olympian height of satisfaction.