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How Ken Liu Translates, and Why He Writes - Public Books

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K en Liu is a celebrated author of American speculative fiction and a pathbreaking translator of Chinese science fiction into English. He has won the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, and he translated the first two Asian winners of the Hugo prize, Liu Cixin and Hao Jingfang. He is the author of the short-story collection The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016), the Dandelion Dynasty trilogy (2015–), and The Legends of Luke Skywalker (2017); he has also worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. In 2019, he visited Cornell University’s Contemporary China Initiative, where the following interview was recorded. A video of the event is available here. Nick Admussen (NA): I want to start by asking about time, and specifically about different models of time. Most of Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem trilogy, which you translated, seems to be a story of one kind of linear, progressive time: threat, progress, change, adaptation, new threat, and new pro

Ken Liu is a celebrated author of American speculative fiction and a pathbreaking translator of Chinese science fiction into English. He has won the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, and he translated the first two Asian winners of the Hugo prize, Liu Cixin and Hao Jingfang. He is the author of the short-story collection The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016), the Dandelion Dynasty trilogy (2015–), and The Legends of Luke Skywalker (2017); he has also worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. In 2019, he visited Cornell University’s Contemporary…

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