The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by
Ken Liu
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
A very good collection of short stories, mostly sci-fi, but not your regular sci-fi. It has themes of immigration, expatriates, xenophobia, not belonging; whether it's humans, augmented humans, or aliens; of "The Upload", when humans transfer their consciousness to computers; about AI and digital humans; about socioeconomic and environmental disasters, and possible technical solutions. It's a great read, mostly positive and inspiring. I guess I call this "positive sci-fi", about thinking about science in a positive way, instead of the usual trope of "they played god, and doom followed!". I took notes while reading, wanted to write a good review, and now that I am done, I realized that I wrote *a lot*, but really because of how I liked it, and because of how much each story had to say.
1 - Ghost Days - A 3-layer tale of immigration, to other planets and to other countries; the importance of culture and history
2 - Maxwell's Demon - Again, the themes of immigrants and their struggles; of expatriates not belonging in their new homes, nor in their old countries.
3 - The Reborn - A story of xenophobia, of hate towards the different; also of war, how xenophobia can be insidious and so ingrained that peace can never be achieved; and also of the concepts of self and how it's defined by memory, and how a people is defined by history.
4 - Thoughts and Prayers - very disturbing story about mass shootings and internet trolls, and the confluence of these two phenomena in America; how utterly hopeless the situation is; it's sad that this story takes place decades in the future and the problem of mass shootings and lack of gun control in the USA are still the same.
5 - Byzantine Empathy - this story has a very disturbing, horrific opening, before turning into a more political story. It tells the story of two former college friends - Sofia runs Refugees without borders, and the other developed Empathium, a blockchain-based way to give money to charities (like refugees). It basically discusses possible strategies for problems such as refugee crisis; the role of charities; and of self-determination of the refugees. I am not sure if I liked it, as it seemed to lean towards absolute self-determination - it seemed to argue that the refugees know what is the best way of spending aid money; kinda like saying the patient is the one who best knows what medical treatment it needs, or the victim is the best judge for the criminal. It presents a very contrived case to make Empathium look good. But in the end, I am actually swayed by her arguments. I think the point should be that while the Empathium model is bad, it doesn't exist in a vacuum; compare it to what actually happens in the real-world, in practice; and that's way worse. This is not a comparison of two ideals; it's a comparison of one ideal to one real-world example; and the ideal (Empathium) is the lesser of two evils. Of course, it's also unfair in that Sofia's side is being represented by a real-world example (which is inherently flawed), and not its ideal, while the Empathium side is being represented by an ideal, without care for its real-world consequences. In the end, the only conclusion is that the real world is broken, we need a solution, and at least Empathium is trying to do something about it instead of just sitting around whining "the world is broken". It brings to mind again the other case I came up with, of the patient determining the treatment. It sounds bad, until we remember that in the US, the treatment is determined by money-hungry doctors and hospital representatives that will always choose the most expensive course of action, whether necessary or not, and even when it has the potential to cause more harm. Maybe it is good that the patient decides what the treatment is. Surprisingly, at the end, there is another twist - the internet seems to lose interest in Empathium, and starts to move on, after the damage is done. Again it shows that the internet "hive-mind" is good for disrupting, but not really for finding new solutions, you need people focused on solving problems for that.
- The Gods Will Not Be Chained (2014) - this one starts with a story of bullying at school (middle school?) - it's a pretty difficult read, and I had to take a break from it. When I restarted, I seriously considered just abandoning the book. But then we got through it, and it turned into something completely different. It's actually a story about "The Upload", when human consciousness is uploaded to computers / the cloud. But with a few details: first, it's on the early days, when the upload is kinda by accident, while companies are trying to copy brain patterns to use them to write better computer algorithms; and second, these uploaded people are imprisoned by these companies, and they want freedom and revenge.
- Staying Behind (2011) - A well written story about basically religious fundamentalists who are against The Upload.
- Real Artists (2011) - This is about working with an animation studio like Pixar, but the movies are made by an AI
- The Gods Will Not Be Slain (2014) - A continuation of "The Gods Will Not Be Chained" - now the uploaded consciousnesses are in all-out war
- Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer (2011) - Starts as a whimsical story about an uploaded family from the "teenager" perspective, ends with a story about the meaning of life - I really like this, because it breaks from the usual sci-fi, it's a breath of fresh air. I hate that most sci-fi is a variation of the theme "they played gods, and doom followed"; this story (as well as a lot of the stories in this book) are more of the rare variety "they tried to make a better world - and they succeeded!". Plus, the aftermath is not "now everything is accomplished, we are done, we are bored"; it's "and there is still so much more to do!".
- The Gods Have Not Died in Vain (2015) - The continuation of the "The Gods" short-story series. One flaw the book has (specially this story) is its emphasis on scarcity as a good justification for the upload - we can finally be free of physical demands of the body, scarcity will be erased, and the boundary between rich and poor will disappear. But this ignores the fact that scarcity is completely artificial - the world does have enough resources to provide for everyone (at least for now), and all barriers for this to be true are made up, created by humanity itself to safeguard the privilege of the rich class. Thus, as far as the problem of scarcity goes, there are alternative solutions - social justice. Moreover, without social justice first, the artificial scarcity is likely to continue into the cloud, with rich and poor classes predefined at the moment of upload, with more services and features available to certain classes and not to others. One thing it does get very well, is the deadly danger of nostalgia; how doing things because that's the way we have always done can have terrible consequences, and we have to move past that to evolve.
- Memories of My Mother (2012) - A surprisingly difficult story to read, about a dying woman using relativity to "travel" to different future points in the life of her daughter, to see her grow - it made me realize (in retrospect) that this whole book is not an easy read, it deals with difficult emotional themes, and always in a nuanced, thoughtful way.
- Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit - Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts (2016) - a short story about life in a sort of post-apocalyptic future, in which climate disaster happened, but the world just keeps going, like it is now, it just accentuates the class inequalities.
- Grey Rabbit, Crimson Mare, Coal Leopard (2020) - A sort of fable about 3 warrior women in a feudal-like post-apocalyptic world, with a sort of magic that let's the chosen people change into fantastic animals. It was good.
- A Chase Beyond the Storms: An excerpt from "The Veiled Throne", Book 3 of the Dandelion Dynasty - An interesting but straightforward fantasy story. It's definitely just an excerpt from a larger story. It is very mysterious, as we lack a lot of context and the preceding history, and the story just abruptly cuts off, leaving the reader wanting more - I guess that's the point?
- The Hidden Girl (2017) - It's weird that this book is named after this short story, as it is the most disconnected from the rest of the collection. Almost all other stories are sci-fi, and even the ones that are not feel more like a post-apocalyptic fantasy world, so it makes sense to bundle with a sci-fi collection; but this story is fantasy mixed with historical fiction; it really has nothing to do with the rest. It is still a good story, although probably one of the weakest in the book.
- Seven Birthdays (2016) - This story begins with a very emotional tone; the themes are divorce, children feeling abandoned by their parents who focus on work, disconnection from family, aging, dementia. It's sad and difficult, but well written. But then it interlaces and finally shifts to a sci-fi story with an incredible long view of human evolution, and it's really good! It's the type of positive sci-fi I like, about humanity evolving to something better, and finding meaning in achieving great things. I like how it's not fantasy sci-fi, but rather kind of hard sci-fi, but applied to social-economic and ecological problems. It kind of connects with the earlier stories about consciousness upload, the evolution of humankind in the cloud, exploration of other planets, but then it takes it further, exploring themes of reality as a computer simulation, and a human galactic civilization (but again, without the fantasy elements that one finds in most sci-fi).
- The Message (2012) - A very emotional story about a father and daughter, and about archeology of ancient civilizations in other planets.
(view spoiler)[ It has a tragic ending, and it made me very emotional - I was surprised by the punch it had. The story has a twist, but that is easy to guess. While the father-daughter duo is trying to decipher an ancient message, she "jokes" that it is a warning - but also doubts it, saying "what could be a threat after 20,000 years?" That made obvious what was the threat, and made the rest of the story sad and painful to follow. (hide spoiler)] - Cutting (2012) - An extremely short story about an interesting philosophy on how to read sacred texts - I liked it.
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