{"id":21847,"date":"2016-05-19T07:00:30","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T14:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rachelswirsky.com\/?p=1425"},"modified":"2016-05-19T07:00:30","modified_gmt":"2016-05-19T14:00:30","slug":"silly-interview-with-ken-liu-who-has-the-schematics-for-a-time-turner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=21847","title":{"rendered":"Silly Interview with Ken Liu who HAS THE SCHEMATICS for a Time Turner!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"KenLiu_Full_Size\"<\/a><\/strong>Ken Liu<\/a>\u00a0came onto the short story scene a few years ago, and then dominated it, and has continued to dominate it since. If you’re interested in contemporary short science fiction, Ken is an author you can’t miss. One of my favorites: Mono no aware<\/a>. And his first major award winner: Paper Menagerie<\/a>.<\/p>\n

RS:\u00a0You have a full-time job, a family with young children, a career as a successful short story writer and novelist, and a career as a translator. How? What demonic trick of time have you unleashed? I must ask if you have a time turner of the kind from Harry Potter which allows you to move back six hours in time. Do you have a time turner?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KL: Ah, the “time turner,” that most wondrous of artifacts. \u00a0Did you know that “time” is etymologically related to “tide”? And in fact, “tide” only acquired the sense of “flood and ebb of the sea” fairly recently (as in, less than seven centuries ago) …<\/p>\n

Also, it seems to me that “time-turner” could be a kenning for “office drone”?<\/p>\n

Speaking of time-turning, I have to thank you for your recent recommendation of “Ghost Trick<\/a>” (available for the Nintendo DS and iOS). That game involves multiple sessions of reversing time’s flow for four minutes at a time and trying to change fate.<\/p>\n

What was the question again?<\/p>\n

RS:\u00a0If you do not have a time turner, what magic time-traveling device do you have? I will not believe the answer “none” so you may as well be honest.<\/strong><\/p>\n

KL: Ahem. Yes, you got me\u2026<\/p>\n

So I practice the ancient magic of \u201cSaying No.\u201d Basically this involves being very careful about what projects I choose to work on. There are far too many interesting ideas for stories and far too many exciting anthology calls to say yes to all of them. I have to prioritize.<\/p>\n

Because my writing time is so limited, I can\u2019t afford to pursue all leads and just hope some of them work out. I have to be ruthless and say no to the vast majority of ideas and invitations I get so that I can focus on the few projects where I think my contributions will actually be unique, interesting, and artistically rewarding.<\/p>\n

Many other writers write faster and write more than I do, but I think I have the advantage of picking a larger percentage of projects where my interests and talents are a good match for the projects\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n

RS:\u00a0Speaking of Harry Potter, if you could send your kids to Hogwarts, would you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KL: I\u2019d have to ask my kids. Personally, I\u2019m not a big fan of sending them away to boarding school because I want to spend more time with them. Parents get so little time with their children as is\u2026 But if they really want to go and learn magic, I\u2019ll support them. And I hope they work hard to challenge the rather authoritarian system at Hogwarts and engage in campus activism.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019d have to do a lot of work to supplement their knowledge of the non-magical world.<\/p>\n

Finally, I want them to bring a note to Hogwarts\u2014more like a treatise\u2014on how the rules of Quidditch make no sense.<\/p>\n

RS:\u00a0Many of your stories hook into important parts of East Asian history. I’m thinking of the ones that take place around World War II in particular. I know as a Jew the events of World War II were something that caught in my mind and stayed there. Was that an experience you had as well?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KL: Absolutely.<\/p>\n

The terrible events around World War II in East Asia and Europe are searing experiences that should never be forgotten. Yet, in the years since, the forces of denial and repression have tried again and again to make us forget. In the case of East Asia, they base their arguments either on the needs of geopolitics or on high-minded (but false) claims that somehow forgetting is the same as reconciliation. Some have also resorted to despicable attempts to discredit survivors and to deny the facts of historical atrocities, thereby committing a fresh round of violence against the memory of the victims and the peoples of East Asia.<\/p>\n

\u201cForgetting\u201d history is a luxury that belongs to the privileged winners of history. The rest of us tread on bones and walk through ghosts, and we must not forget the past, which shapes the present and the future.<\/p>\n

RS:\u00a0I think of your stories as having an old-fashioned science fiction feel and structure, while being leavened with a modern approach toward emotion and character (and a broader idea of what constitutes interesting subjects). Does that ring true for you at all? How would you characterize your aesthetic?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KL: I like hearing you describe my stories that way. You\u2019re, without a doubt, one of the sharpest readers of my work, and when you point out something about my fiction\u2014whether positive or negative\u2014I sit up and listen.<\/p>\n

I think authors are often the least accurate summarizers of their own work, for they\u2019re too close to it. Still, for what it\u2019s worth, I think of what I write as primarily the fiction of rhetoric, of story-as-argument\u2014not as persuasion, mind you, but as meditation.<\/p>\n

My stories, as all fiction must, follow the logic of metaphors, and because I like to work with literalized metaphors, this practice draws me to employ the tropes and techniques of science fiction and fantasy. I enjoy working with literalized metaphors, exploring their nooks and crannies, finding shears and drops, bridging them and chaining them and laddering them into a structure that will reveal something of what we feel in our lives but cannot put into words.<\/p>\n

At the same time, I have a deep ambivalence about our contemporary apparent-consensus over what makes a \u201cgood story\u201d\u2014despite all the aesthetic disagreements in the field, the science fiction and fantasy genres do seem to experience strong normative pressures concerning _how_ to tell a story. Characters need to be \u201creal\u201d and \u201cdeep\u201d (by which we mean psychological interiority as popularized by the Modernists); points-of-view need to be consistent; exposition should be carefully blended into characterization and plot advancement; plots and characters need to arc and follow discernible shapes and patterns \u2026 and so on and so forth.<\/p>\n

In a time when everyone is taught to appreciate oil paintings done in a classical European style, brush paintings in the style of Song Dynasty masters will seem spare, unrealistic, \u201cflat,\u201d unbelievable, \u2026 \u201cnot a good picture.\u201d But I don\u2019t believe there is just one way to tell a good story\u2014we have had too much variation over time and across the globe in what narratives speak to particular peoples in particular contexts for me to accept that.<\/p>\n

I like to construct stories in a way that evokes far older narrative traditions and techniques, and perhaps bring to bear tools learned from outside the core scifi\/fantasy experience. Whether these efforts work for readers is not something I can control, but at least I enjoy telling stories the way I want to.<\/p>\n

RS:\u00a0You translated Three Body Problem whose author, Cixin Liu, seems to have definite opinions on this topic. (From his American author’s note: “The stories of science are far more magnificent, grand, involved, profound, thrilling, strange, terrifying, mysterious, and even emotional, compared to the stories told by literature.”) Is science more important than art?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KL: I like Liu Cixin\u2019s work, and it is completely in line with his own aesthetic that prizes science and scientific speculation as the core of a good SF story.<\/p>\n

While I enjoy reading stories written in this vein, I don\u2019t always enjoy writing stories like that. I feel that the techniques of science fiction and fantasy can be used for many other types of stories, including stories in which the scientific speculation primarily serves as a literalized metaphor.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t to say science is more important than art, or vice versa. Both science and art are human enterprises, ways of knowing, and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s impossible to create compelling narratives that draw on both\u2014and I also think there\u2019s nothing wrong with creating stories that emphasize one over the other.<\/p>\n

RS:\u00a0I think a lot of us envy your ideas and how neatly you fit them into stories. Can you describe your process of developing a story from idea to draft?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KL: I don\u2019t have a single process that applies for all stories. In a lot of cases, my stories begin from a single image or phrase that I find evocative. In other cases, they come from some scientific paper I read that I find particularly interesting.<\/p>\n

I then take that story seed and let it sit in my head for a while. Once I begin thinking about something, I notice other things in my life that are related to it: books I read, web pages I come across, other papers cited in the first paper, illustrations and photographs that seem to speak to the seed, and so on. I let all of this churn in my head, and sometimes I discover that there\u2019s no interesting story there, despite my best efforts, but at other times the seed grows into a sapling that I can envision as a tree someday.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when actual drafting starts. I don\u2019t outline or plan, but prefer to explore the idea as I write. This means that I tend to draft slowly (because I\u2019m using the drafting process to think) and it also means that I have to do a lot of work in revisions. Overall, the way I write short stories is a bit like sculpting, where the story slowly emerges as I carve away the excess key by key.<\/p>\n

RS:\u00a0You love the video game\u00a0<\/a>Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney<\/a>! Me, too. But you’re an actual lawyer. What do you enjoy about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KL: I love the way the law\u2019s tendency as a game of rhetoric is highlighted in these games. The process of parsing words carefully to find \u201ccontradictions\u201d is actually quite similar to the way lawyers craft their arguments\u2014not in the details, of course, but in mindset and approach.<\/p>\n

I also like the fact that Phoenix\u2019s clients are always innocent and that he\u2019s never had to defend someone who isn\u2019t a good person. If only real lawyers are so lucky.<\/p>\n

RS:\u00a0Is there anything else you’re excited to share? Bonus points if it’s silly and\/or a lie and\/or a silly lie.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Wall<\/a>KL: I\u2019ve been working on the copyedits of my second novel, The Wall of Storms<\/a>, and I\u2019m super excited to share this book with readers come October. There\u2019s lots more intrigue and politics and crafty battle strategies and oodles of silkpunk technology. I literally dream about these machines some nights\u2026<\/p>\n

Okay, but more seriously, I have discovered the secret of time-turning, and I have a proof and a set of schematics that I\u2019m excited to share. Okay, let me find it on my hard drive \u2026 Darn it, it is too lengthy to fit into the space allotted me here, and the pictures are too big to send through email. Next time?<\/p>\n

Obligatory “If You Were a Butt, My Butt<\/a>” Update<\/strong>:\u00a0<\/strong>The fundraiser’s doing really well! And if we get to $600,\u00a0Ken Liu<\/strong> will join authors Ann Leckie, Brooke Bolander, Juliette Wade, Alyssa Wong, and me, in writing a round robin story about dinosaurs. (I didn’t plan to run this interview to coincide with that; it just happened.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ken Liu came onto the short story scene a few years ago, and then dominated it, and has continued to dominate it since. If you’re interested in contemporary short science fiction, Ken is an author you can’t miss. One of my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[171],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21848,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21847\/revisions\/21848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}