a selection of favourite short stories

this list is by no means exhaustive, it's just a few stories that i wanted to talk about.

main list:

• Hao Jingfang - "Invisible Planets"
• Yoon Ha Lee - "A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel"
• Ken Liu - "Le peuple de Pélé"
• Ken Liu - "The Paper Menagerie"
• Fox Benwell - "The Courage of Dragons"
• Ted Chiang - "Hell is the Absence of God"
• Ted Chiang - "Story of Your Life"
• Liu Cixin - "Mountain"
• Liu Cixin - "For the Benefit of Mankind"

i decided to limit it to two stories by the same author on the list (otherwise it would have had almost every Ted Chiang story i've ever read). some specific thoughts:

Hao Jingfang - "Invisible Planets"
translated by Ken Liu, read in Invisible Planets
i love Invisible Cities -style sci-fi stories! this one has two characters talking, one of them is telling stories about planets to the other. the cool thing is that i imagine the two figures and their relationship differently each time. also, Pimaceh is my favourite planet.

Yoon Ha Lee - "A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel"
read on tor.com
another Invisible Cities pastiche. comes with Yoon Ha Lee's fantastic writing style. i want to live in every sentence he writes.

Ken Liu - "Le peuple de Pélé"
translated by Pierre-Paul Durastanti, read in La Ménagerie de papier
a reflection on the relationship between planets separated by a vast gulf of space (and therefore a twenty-seven year one-way single delay), and what claim America (and Earth in general) can have on settlers who live "dans le passé de l'Amérique, dans son futur aussi, mais en aucun cas dans son présent."

Ken Liu - "The Paper Menagerie"
read in The Paper Menagerie and in La Ménagerie de papier (translated by Pierre-Paul Durastanti)
it made me cry so much the first time i read it. parts of it stayed with me until i reread it; it made me bawl my eyes out again and i remember thinking, "yes, i understand why it has won so many awards"

Fox Benwell - "The Courage of Dragons"
read in Proud!
this one isn't so much in the deep and thought-provoking range, but it's cute and fun and has a nonbinary main character. the word nonbinary is even mentioned on paper, multiple times! also, i wish i had a friend group like that.

Ted Chiang - "Hell is the Absence of God"
read in Stories of Your Life and Others
so i am not a believer. i come from a christian background, but i am at most agnostic and know hardly anything about the Bible. however, due to the environment where i grew up i am culturally christian, and this story hit extremely hard. part of it's very likely Ted Chiang's absolute mastery with playing with concepts in an extremely convincing and thought-provoking way, but i think part of it's also the deep meaning that the religious elements have in my society (whether i like it or not).

Ted Chiang - "Story of Your Life"
read in Stories of Your Life and Others
Ted Chiang is just super good at turning my universe inside down and upside out, okay? the kind that makes me stop and wonder about, like, everything. (like when you read on wikipedia about what ontology is and you start physically feeling your grasp on reality peel like velcro. this is exactly like that.) i haven't seen the film based on this story, so i have a limited frame of reference, but i don't understand why this is hyped as being about linguistics? like sure, it does have Sapir-Whorf elements, but really it is more about free will and our understanding of physics. and i am fascinated by the question of free well and how it interacts with physics/causality, and whether such a thing is even possible.

Liu Cixin - "Mountain"
translated by Holger Nahm, read in The Wandering Earth
another story with "think about the universe" qualities. extremely memorable.

Liu Cixin - "For the Benefit of Mankind"
read in The Wandering Earth. frustratingly, i am unable to find who translated this story - the anthology only has a list of translators in the beginning, but doesn't mention anywhere who translated what. so, this story was translated by one or more of the following: Ken Liu, Elizabeth Hanlon, Zac Haluza, Adam Lanphier, Holger Nahm.
a grim prediction on where capitalism is heading. fun fun fun. i was going to say that i thought it's unrealistic that rich people would act this way, that they'd remain selfish even when it's so clearly and transparently against their own interest, but i guess it's possible that a few of the criminally rich would have enough sense of self-preservation. there's always someone.

honourable mentions:

• all of Proud!, compiled by Juno Dawson. lots of beautiful and cute stories by queer artists, illustrated by more queer artists.
• Hao Jingfang - "The New Year Train". on of my most reread stories because it makes me think
• Liu Cixin - "The Wandering Earth"
• Ted Chiang - "Exhalation"
• Ted Chiang - "Dividing by Zero"
• pretty much everything else i've read by Ted Chiang. seriously, his stories are So Good
• Xia Jia - Tongtong's summer

milky

i'm trying to reduce my tea collection, and today i had the brilliant idea of using the last of my osmanthus green tea to make milk tea. unfortunately, it tasted absolutely wonderful. this is a problem in that it makes me want to buy more osmanthus tea. the fruity/flowery aroma is really fantastic in milk tea.