The Hidden Girl and Other Stories

This smart collection of speculative short stories by Ken Liu is mostly science fiction, but includes a few works of fantasy (including the titular story, which is what one might call “martial arts-fantasy” – i.e. imagine “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” with more magic.) Depending how one counts up the stories, one could call the collection nineteen stories or sixteen stories and a novella. The novella, broken into three parts, is “storified” enough that its sections are interspersed among the other stories.Liu doesn’t neatly contain his stories within boundaries of genre. In some cases, he jumps through time -- including historical fiction, contemporary / near future, and distant future within a single story. He also takes on social issues like the Japanese internment during World War II in “Maxwell’s Demon” and the blight of technology on social interaction (best shown in “Thoughts and Prayers.”) There are hard sci-fi stories that show intergalactic travelers in a distant future, such as “The Message,” but there are even more that peer into the worries of the near future, such as artificial intelligence or the replicating of human consciousness in computers.The novella imagines a world in which companies have captured the consciousnesses of great, but dying, minds for their own purposes. It then explores considerations such as: what happens when a great mind gets tired of being trapped as an acorporeal intelligence for the benefit of a company, and what does humanity mean in the context of fully replicated human minds?I found these stories to be both intriguing and thought-provoking. I enjoy a good story, but stories that make one think deeply hold that much more allure. I’d highly recommend this collection for fiction readers. Whether or not you read genre fiction, you’ll find stories of great appeal.

Buena recopilación de cuentos, sobre todo para los que somos aficionados al estilo literario de Liu. La mayoría de los cuentos están relacionados con el concepto de singularidad.

Lived it loveditloved it!!!! Captivating and insightful. At the end of each story I had to stop and catch breath to ponder "what just happened". Highly recommend!

I didn't finish this book, it was making me too sad.

Paper Menagerie was and is my favorite modern sci fi short story collection so Ken had some big shoes to fill. It is sometimes hard to believe they are from the same author. I plan on rereading Paper Menagerie to see exactly what made it so much more appealing to me. On one last note I feel like the author was pushing some ideologies in a ham fisted sorta way, which was either non existent or much better done in Paper Menagerie. If you come in with ZERO expectations then your enjoyment may vary widely from mine.Do yourself a favor. If you plan on reading both of Ken's short story collections start with The Hidden Girl and then Paper Menagerie. You'll thank me later.

Overall a good book