The Paper Menagerie
This book is stunning. It made me cry and laugh and think critically about who I am and what is my place in the world. Ken Liu writes with the alacrity of a classicist, the technical expertise of an engineer, and the moral conscience of a lawyer. Every story in this book I loved. This book made me feel proud to be Chinese-American - to have the cultural legacy of two of the most powerful and storied countries in the world; it made me fall in love with Cambridge all over again (see you in four years?); it helped me see the broad connections between ethics and technology.
I think that’s the beauty of science fiction - by building worlds that do not yet exist, we are preparing ourselves for them. We know that the past is linked inextricably to the present, so the present is also linked to the future. We can’t predict what the future can be, but we can only hope.