Having read and loved Ken Liu's first short story collection, The Paper Managerie and Other Stories, several years ago, I was eager to see where he is stories went in this new collection. I was not disappointed; his writing and imagination remain as active as ever.

The Hidden Girl and Other Stories did take a slightly new direction, however: many of the stories in this book build on one another, without most being dependant on previous stories, so most can be read on their own. This is particularly evident in the "The Gods Will Not Be…" stories which traces the evolution and consequences of uploading individual consciousnesses to the web. Many stories assume this up.lading as a given, so the book feels of a piece - rather than 27 all- new from scratch worlds, Liu presents a more coherent human universe exploring the ramifications of that idea, and individual responses to it. What happens if your wife wants to be uploaded, but you don't? Does your opinion change if your quality of life changes? Should sick or dying people be uploaded? What kind of world will silicon citizens build when they're freed from the material constraints of the physical world?

Although set in a completely different context, the title story, "The Hidden Girl," was one of my favorites, centering on the space-bending talents of a young martial artist. Wonderfully done.

Because I don't read read fantasy, one story I wasn't really looking forward to Reading was "A Chase Beyond the Storms," which is an excerpt from the third book of Liu's The Dandelion Dynasty, The Veiled Throne. I surprised myself by actually enjoying it and wishing more of the story was included.
Overall, a great book of SciFi short stories. Recommended, particularly for those who enjoy pondering what It is, Exactly, that makes us human.

Review posted on LibraryThing, GR, and links on Litsy
https://www.librarything.com/work/23564712/details/177155187

I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher Saga Press for allowing me to receive this E-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

The Hidden Girl and Other Stories
by Ken Liu

This is like most short stories collections in the way that I really loved some and others were just good or ok, I think it is nearly impossible to find a collection that is 100% stories you absolutely love and connect with.

That being said I need thoroughly enjoy a lot of the stories that this included, I thought there were great world-building and characters, with thought put into the messages that each story conveys, it was highly enjoyable and the writing.

The highlight of The Hidden Girl and Other Stories was without a doubt the originality and the depths of the worlds and ideas that Liu created on the page.

4 Stars / A-

Each story in this volume plumbs the depths of human depravity and our worst instincts. Yet, somehow, hope remains at the end of each tale. I hope Grey Rabbit is turned into a full-length novel. I would love to spend time with the characters in that story again. Liu has a gift for world building and narrative economy that are beautifully married throughout this collection. I will put this in the hands of hardcore sci fi lovers and people who are new to the genre. This is a great entry point for a newbie, but people who only read this genre will also be satisfied.

You know how you can read something and recognize that it's perfectly good and know exactly which other people will like it a lot and simultaneously not like it at all? That's how I feel about the scifi stories in this collection. (I did actually quite like the handful of fantasy stories!) They're very interested in the ethical quandaries caused by scientific advances -- "what if we figured out how to upload human consciousness to a computer" is the jumping-off point for a lot of them, there's one that's about how guilt/punishment would work in a society with the capability of erasing all knowledge of a crime from the perpetrator's memory, and probably my favorite of the lot, a faux longform article about a climate change activist who is campaigning <i>against</i> trying to revert the earth back to a previous temperature because it will destroy the organisms and societies that have adapted to the new status quo. I'm just not terribly interested in ethical debates, I guess. But it's definitely a matter of personal taste! The stories are good even if they're not up my alley.

The Hidden Girl and Other Short Stories by Ken Lui, 432 pages. SHORT STORIES, LGBTQIA+
Saga Press, 2020. $26.
Language: R (17 swears, 2 “f”); Mature Content: PG13; Violence: PG13
BUYING ADVISORY: HS - OPTIONAL
AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE
The future is uncertain. Will we end up destroying our planet? Will we continue to progress and evolve until we no longer recognize where we came from? How involved will technology be? In these 19 short stories, Lui explores avenues of a future that might be and highlights problems that we will face if we aren’t careful with our present.
These scifi and fantasy stories filled my mind with food for thought, and the element of tragedy that permeates most of them only made them feel more realistic and relatable. I found that I could not sit down to read several of the stories in one sitting because of the thought I wanted to give them, and I enjoyed reading most of the stories. Stories later in the book became more exciting to read as I started to notice connecting threads and wanted to know what came first in these imagined futures. The mature content rating is for nudity, mentions of pornography and rape, and implied sex; the violence rating is for war, suicide, and murder.
Reviewer: Carolina Herdegen

If you haven't heard of Ken Liu yet, I promise that you'll hear his name everywhere soon.

This collection is breathtaking. I read (and enjoyed) Liu's first collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. It's excellent, but this assembly of stories enthralled me. I cried on an airplane, in a coffee shop, on the beach. Hope, for the future, for humanity, for the possibility that we can be better people is the throughline through all these stories. I simply can't say enough positive things about this book and I'm sure I'll annoy everyone I know by singing its praises.

If you are in the mood for some hopeful, soul-searching sci-fi this is the collection for you. Even if his Dandelion Dynasty series didn't appeal to you, give this a shot.


For fans of Ted Chiang, Becky Chambers, This review is based on the Netgalley ARC.

A very strong set of stories from a very talented and increasingly well-known author. It has a good variety of stories and characters and settings. You don't have to be a sci-fi fan to enjoy. Recommended.

I really appreciate the advanced copy for review!!

This is, I think, THE best book I've read in years -- which is saying a lot, since I read many books! Each of these stories is a stand-alone gem, and they intertwine in a way I haven't seen before in short story collections.

These short stories are so realistically crafted (even if set in the future) that I'd love to ask the author where he met all these interesting people and how he convinced them to tell him their tales...except, of course, the people are all characters inside his head. I highly recommend this book!

I had no idea what to expect going into Ken Liu’s book The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, but I had no need to be worried: I enjoyed this book.

Most of the stories in this collection are Science Fiction, though a few verge on fantasy, and personally I really liked the spot this collection found on that spectrum. Each story was ambiguous and strange while also being interesting and compelling. So many of Liu’s stories make us ask ourselves essential questions about the future: as humans, with technology, about even the galaxy. There are big questions and even bigger ideas in this book and I really enjoyed being able to mull over them through the lenses of each novella.

The structure of the book itself was also a nice touch. The “main story” The Hidden Girl is scattered throughout in chapters, broken up by the other stories, and for me this gave it a sense of longer continuity and unity. They all seemed to be somehow striving for the same goal at the end of the book.

I’m not usually a short story huge fan, though I enjoy them sometimes, and this was certainly one of those times.

Thanks so much to Netgalley for my advanced copy of this ebook, I enjoyed it immensely.

I was first introduced to Ken Liu through his translations of Chinese SciFi short stories when we were preparing potential classes on comparative universes as one of our teaching units, so I was very interested to read The Hidden Girl and Other Stories and gain a better understanding of his own original work. Ken Liu fits in that section of SciFi that I really prefer to classify in the speculative fiction range since a lot of his developments are based on real (or at least in the research phase!) movements, inventions, and concepts.

Through his stories, Liu explores the ideas behind what the future for the human race holds, the role of digital technology in our lives and in the potential to save our world, manipulate our galaxy, explore the universe, including the question of whether we should.

The book itself is wonderfully structured with a novella divided up into chapters scattered throughout. Returning to this story was an absolute delight each time. The title story, The Hidden Girl, is perhaps the most 'odd one out', and borderlines on fantasy. Despite the difference it provides, or perhaps also because of it, it is a delightful tale. I have read/heard that is has been optioned for film/series, so make sure you read the original first! While there does seem to be a distinct genre difference between The Hidden Girl and much of the rest of the short stories, there is one commonality between all of them - the exploration of our humanity and what it means to be human. Since I finished the stories, they have stayed with me (despite reading other books in between!) and I have made so many links to many of the stories in conversations. This book is a must-read.