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alisarae 's review for:
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
by Ken Liu
This collection of stories blew me away. The author Ken Liu is the translator of [b:The Three-Body Problem|20518872|The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past #1)|Liu Cixin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1415428227s/20518872.jpg|25696480], a Chinese sci-fi book that gained readership in the West after winning the Hugo Award and after Obama cited it as a book that stuck with him. I couldn't get much further than the first couple chapters in that book. But I bring this up because it needs to be said that Ken Liu is an author in his own right, and Western audiences will probably find his stories more approachable than his translations. I am very pro-translation and have embarked on a goal of reading at least one book from every country in the world over the next decade, but Liu understands that we Westerners may need a bit more of a history lesson woven into the story than our Eastern counterparts.
The majority of the stories feature a relational dynamic between an Easterner and a Westerner: in the happier stories, they exchange language, culture, and history, but in the more melancholy stories there are misunderstandings, isolation, and resentment. Either way, the differences are explained carefully and gracefully.
Most of the stories here are set in an alternate reality (What if Japan hadn't lost in WWII?) or the future (What if you could never turn Siri/Alexa off and she spied on you all day, wrapping you ever tighter in a web of capitalism?). These stories are pessimistic and are Black Mirror's view of technology—really though, is there anyone who doesn't have a looming sense of dread of the future with technology megacorps acting in step with dictatorial governments?
The final story, "The Man Who Ended History," is about people who time-travel to Unit 731 in Harbin, China, in order to be eye-witnesses of the tragic atrocities that happened there during WWII. I was unaware of this piece of history before reading the story. Japan operated multiple Auschwitz-style human experiment prisons in China, primarily using Chinese prisoners as test subjects. Unit 731 was used to test chemical and biological weapons, diseases (STDs), and frostbite. Through a plea deal made with the US, no Japanese was ever charged with war crimes related to Unit 731, in exchange for the data from the results of their experiments. It's sickening to realize that the US military used the results of this torture to advance its own weapons technology. The story broaches some interesting topics that we are still grappling with today: How viable is eye-witness testimony? Who gets to control history? Should we dig up the past in order to bring some sort of "justice" or just let sleeping dogs lie? Are words enough of an apology or are reparations necessary? etc. What a wonderful way to use fiction.
The majority of the stories feature a relational dynamic between an Easterner and a Westerner: in the happier stories, they exchange language, culture, and history, but in the more melancholy stories there are misunderstandings, isolation, and resentment. Either way, the differences are explained carefully and gracefully.
Most of the stories here are set in an alternate reality (What if Japan hadn't lost in WWII?) or the future (What if you could never turn Siri/Alexa off and she spied on you all day, wrapping you ever tighter in a web of capitalism?). These stories are pessimistic and are Black Mirror's view of technology—really though, is there anyone who doesn't have a looming sense of dread of the future with technology megacorps acting in step with dictatorial governments?
The final story, "The Man Who Ended History," is about people who time-travel to Unit 731 in Harbin, China, in order to be eye-witnesses of the tragic atrocities that happened there during WWII. I was unaware of this piece of history before reading the story. Japan operated multiple Auschwitz-style human experiment prisons in China, primarily using Chinese prisoners as test subjects. Unit 731 was used to test chemical and biological weapons, diseases (STDs), and frostbite. Through a plea deal made with the US, no Japanese was ever charged with war crimes related to Unit 731, in exchange for the data from the results of their experiments. It's sickening to realize that the US military used the results of this torture to advance its own weapons technology. The story broaches some interesting topics that we are still grappling with today: How viable is eye-witness testimony? Who gets to control history? Should we dig up the past in order to bring some sort of "justice" or just let sleeping dogs lie? Are words enough of an apology or are reparations necessary? etc. What a wonderful way to use fiction.