Author Ken Liu Explains “Silkpunk” to Us

Ken Liu ’s new novelThe Grace of Kingsis a sprawling fantasy set amidst warfare , rising , and border - hybridisation intrigue . But it also features a really fresh technical world to search . Here , Liu explicate to us where that technology get from — and just what exactly “ silkpunk ” means .

Ria : One of the most striking thing about the book is the technical worldly concern your lineament inhabit . There ’s a lot of intimate technical school in there that ’s source in unfamiliar ways ( for case : a battle kite that is used , essentially , a fortune like a jet mob ) . What influence your take on technology in this book ? Did you use any historical author for inspiration about what a parallel technical world might look like , and if so , which ones ?

Ken Liu : On the technical school side , I ’ve draw the aesthetic in this ledger as “ silkpunk , ” and I ’m go to crib from my answers to preceding interviews a piece :

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Like steampunk , silkpunk is a blend of science fiction and phantasy . But while steampunk read as its stirring the chrome - cheek - spyglass technology aesthetic of the Victorian era , silkpunk quarter inspiration from classical East Asiatic antiquity . My novel is filled with engineering like soar fight kites that lift duelists into the air , bamboo - and - silk airships propelled by gargantuan feathered oar , underwater gravy holder that drown like whales driven by primitive steam locomotive engine , and burrow - delve machines enhanced with herbal traditional knowledge , as well as phantasy elements like Supreme Being who bicker and manipulate , magical Scripture that tell us what is in our heart , giant pee wolf that bring storms and pass sailors safely to shoring , and illusionists who fake smoke to peer into opponents ’ minds .

The silkpunk engineering science lexicon is based on organic materials historically important to East Asia ( bamboo , newspaper , silk ) and seafaring culture of the Pacific ( coconut , feathering , coral ) , and the engineering science grammar follows biomechanical precept like the inventions in Romance of the Three Kingdoms . The overall aesthetical is one of suppleness and flexibility , expressive of the cultures that dwell the islands .

A flock of my ideas about this alternate engineering aesthetic were inspired by W. Brian Arthur ’s theories about technology , especially the impression of cover engineering as a creative graphics that lick problems by recombining existing machine into a newfangled machine that reach a Modern purpose — in a horse sense , engineering is very much like poetry .

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I consulted numerous source on the history of applied science in East Asia as well as old US patent filings to get a sense of the kind of creative technology that people across time and cultures have engaged in , and of path I drew much aspiration from fictional account of applied science in old historical Romance .

Ria : Silkpunk is an evocative way of describing that commixture of constituent materials with machine - ride technical school . I ’m rum as to whether you see it as a category specific to this ledger or as a more cosmopolitan one . Are there other works besides TGoK that you would also draw as silkpunk ?

Liu : A good question . I coined it to name a specific aesthetic nonpareil I had in mind , and I ’m not sure I know of many other literary example . If press out , I ’d say something like Zhang Ran ’s “ Three Feet of Snow in Jinyang ” — an alternate chronicle in which Medieval China manufacture an analogue of the Internet — and Richard Garfinkle ’s Celestial Matters — in which Aristotelian physics and Chinese ki possibility both turn out to be true — may qualify .

Photo: Jae C. Hong