Ken Liu

Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Ken Liu, author of The Paper Menagerie, a short story that is the first work of fiction to sweep the Hugo, the Nebula, and the World Fantasy awards. Ken is the author of an epic fantasy series called The Dandelion Dynasty, in which the heroes are engineers, not wizards. Some of Ken’s stories have been adapted for animation or film, and AMC is making a TV show based on his stories in The Hidden Girl. Liu is trained as an attorney and worked as a software engineer. His work translating many Chinese sci-fi authors into English has helped many of these authors become huge successes in the U.S., most notably Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem, which Netflix just announced it acquired with several other books for what is rumored to be close to $1B. Ken says his fiction often projects East Asian history and culture onto the backdrop of the modern American Empire and says our traditional association with Roman History in the U.S. is an artificial rigidity he hopes to bend. "We just have a refusal to accept that the story of America includes Asian voices," says Liu. Finally, Ken speaks about one of my favorite subjects—how our mind and our sense of Self or Soul—is actually a continuous construction process. I ask Ken to do a little experiment with me and reflect on his own mind’s construction process listening to me read back to him some of his own writing. Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922 My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow ​Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at [email protected].