Elysium's Ken Liu and The Grace of Kings featured on Boston's 90.9 WBUR

When Ken Liu isn't consulting on areas of computer science such as software development and mobile devices, he's busy writing award-winning science fiction. His recently published first novel, The Grace of Kings, was featured yesterday on The ARTery, the arts and culture website connected with Boston's 90.9 WBUR.

In the interview with WBUR's Greg Cook, Ken discusses how he sees The Grace of Kings fitting into (as well as challenging) the genre of sci-fi and fantasy as a whole. As a child, Ken and his grandmother listened to “The Chu-Han Contention,” a version of the Han Dynasty history; his novel reimagines that history in new ways. He wanted to write something that diverged from the tradition of Lord of the Rings style of epic fantasy, in which, as he describes it, “the world is stable and then it becomes chaotic because something has disrupted the stability of the order and the hero’s job is to restore order to that world and make things to go back to the status quo, to go back to that golden age.” Ken says, “I tend to not really like that kind of story because I think a lot of times fantasy has the potential to represent revolutions and change and we don’t use it to do that.”

He describes the world of his novel as “Silk Punk”—sort of like steampunk, but “reliant on materials of historical importance to East Asia... and seafaring cultures of the Pacific.” Those of us who have worked with Ken at Elysium also know that the Silk Punk imagery in The Grace of Kings—in the form of “silk-bamboo airships... submarines... people jumping out of airships”—demonstrates two of Ken's amazing talents: creativity and technological expertise.

To read the full text of the interview, click here.

Elysium's Ken Liu and The Grace of Kings featured on Boston's 90.9 WBUR

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June 26, 2015