Ken Liu is a multi-award winning speculative fiction author and third-time guest of The Wonder Dome. Even if you haven't read one of his dozens of stories, it’s likely you’ve seen work he’s contributed to on places like Netflix and AMC. His writing has reached a tremendous influence in the zeitgeist when we think about questions of humanity; identity; artificial intelligence; creativity; innovation and the future.
In today’s conversation, Ken and I discuss two of his recent pieces of work. The first is an achingly beautiful short story called The Passing of the Dragon. It follows Kay, a painter trying to rekindle her relationship with her own creative muse. It’s a bittersweet story for those of us who are trying to create things in a world that is profoundly noisy, where hot takes and cruel judgements are often dumped gleefully upon artists in an effort to diminish their gifts.
The other story we discuss is Ken’s translation of Laozi’s Dao De Jing. It’s one of the world’s most ancient spiritual texts from China, predating Jesus Christ and Christianity by 400 years. It’s been translated and re-translated many times over the centuries, often by Western writers and thinkers already working from English versions of the text. Ken made a commitment to go back to the original Chinese and create his own fresh, beautiful and moving interpretation for this transformative time we’re living in.
What I love about how I’ve experienced Taoist philosophy is how playful and provocative it is, how much it both invites us into the beauty of language while also saying, language is not the thing — your experience comes first. It’s the paradox of how we need language to communicate this experience, and to point us in the direction of possibility, and yet we can’t show reality with language or art; only gift each other with a perspective or a possibility.
So what does it mean for us to claim responsibility for our own experience, in our own understanding of reality? How do we each of us make a home for ourselves in this world of ours, particularly as so much is breaking down culturally, economically, and politically?
Let’s get settled in and hear what Ken has for us.
Show Notes:
Laozi’s Dao De Jin by Ken Liu (available exclusively on Audible)
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#137 The Dao and the Dragon (with Ken Liu)