The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

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This anthology of short stories by Ken Liu is a mixed bag of satisfying and unsatisfying. The stories with a more traditional structure are, for the most part, the more satisfying of the collection. Some of the earlier stories in the collection are more experimental in subject matter and narrative but are less engaging because they either read like a text book or require the reader to make some decisions on the author's intentions for themself. Overall it's an interesting set of stories with a few that range from fever dream to thought experiment, with varying results for this reader.

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a year ago

Imminent

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Imminent is a glimpse into the government's investigations into UAPs (UFOs once upon a time), authored and narrated by a purported key player, Luis Elizondo. Facts become muddied in the telling in the closing chapters when the expected discrediting occurs, but we recently had disclosures of sorts that support the thesis of this exposè. A tad dry in the telling and some governmental alphabet soup thrown in does not detract from the point, much, but it does require the reader to at least follow the acronyms enough to know when a group/ organization mentioned earlier is the same one being discussed in a later passage. Recommended to enthusiasts, but aside from an assertion that those in the government in the form of a retired department head are lending some bona fides to things the open-minded already suspected, there isn't much new here. It reads like the exploits of an operative left out in the cold capitalizing on disclosing what they can for a needed payday. But hey, we've all got to eat, and the PTBs left the author little choice.

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a year ago