The Hidden Girl and Other Stories

The Hidden Girl and Other Stories is Ken Liu's second collection, gathering nineteen pieces that range from far-future hard SF to historical fantasy. Its centerpiece is a linked Singularity sequence in which humanity uploads itself into digital substrate, and the survivors must work out what a self is once the body is gone, what a parent owes a child across that gulf, and whether the uploaded dead are still themselves. Elsewhere a wuxia assassin steps between folds of space, and a tea ceremony becomes an act of temporal devotion. Liu takes a precise speculative premise and lets it open onto memory, loss, and inheritance, the same move that drives Chiang, while weaving Chinese history and myth through the science.