Ken Liu - The Wall of Storms

- There’s always a first time for everything.

cashima : a scholar who has passed the second level of the Imperial examinations. The Classical Ano word means “practitioner.” A cashima is allowed to wear his or her hair in a triple scroll-bun and carry a sword. Cashima can also serve as clerks for magistrates and mayors.

cruben : a scaled whale with a single horn protruding from its head; symbol of Imperial power.

cüpa : a game played with black and white stones on a grid.

dyran : a flying fish, symbol of femininity and sign of good fortune. It is covered by rainbow-colored scales and has a sharp beak.

firoa : a cashima who places within the top one hundred in the Grand Examination is given this rank. The Classical Ano word means “a (good) match.” Based on their talents, the firoa are either given positions in Imperial administration, assigned to work for various enfeoffed nobles, or promoted to engage in further study or research with the Imperial Academy.

géüpa : an informal sitting position where the legs are crossed and folded under the body, with each foot tucked under the opposite thigh.

jiri : a woman’s bow where the hands are crossed in front of the chest in a gesture of respect.

kunikin : a large, three-legged drinking vessel.

Mingén falcon : a species of extraordinarily large falcon native to the island of Rui.

mipa rari : a formal kneeling position where the back is kept straight and weight is evenly distributed between the knees and toes.

moaphya : an ancient Ano instrument of the “metal” class, consisting of rectangular bronze slabs of various thicknesses suspended from a frame and struck with a mallet to produce different pitches.

ogé : drops of sweat.

pana méji : a scholar who has done especially well in the Grand Examination and is given the chance to participate in the Palace Examination, where the emperor himself assesses the qualities of the candidates and assigns them a rank. The Classical Ano phrase means “on the list.”

pawi : animal aspects of the gods of Dara.

Rénga : honorific used to address the emperor.

thakrido : an extremely informal sitting position where one’s legs are stretched out in front; used only with intimates or social inferiors.

toko dawiji : a scholar who has passed the first level of the Imperial examinations. The Classical Ano phrase means “the elevated.” A toko dawiji is allowed to wear his or her hair in a double scroll-bun.

tunoa : grapes.

-tika : suffix expressing endearment among family members.

kyoffir : an alcoholic drink made from fermented garinafin milk.

garinafin : the flying, fire-breathing beast that is the core of Lyucu culture. Its body is about the size of three elephants, with a long tail, two clawed feet, a pair of great, leathery wings, and a slender, snakelike neck topped with a deerlike, antlered head.

tolyusa : a plant with hallucinogenic properties; the berries are essential for the garinafins to breed successfully.

Much of the magic of Dara consists of what we might term “technology.” I’m indebted in my thinking about this subject to W. Brian Arthur, whose book, The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves , provided many of the core ideas that guided the engineer-heroes of this series.

For a wonderful introduction to the amazing inventions of the age of electrostatics, consult Michael Brian Schiffer’s Draw the Lightning Down: Benjamin Franklin and Electrical Technology in the Age of Enlightenment . While writing this book, I shocked myself multiple times with a Wimshurst machine and multiple Leyden jars—not an experiment I recommend to readers.

Bronze mirrors that reflect embossed patterns on the back of the mirror onto a screen even though they appear perfectly smooth are real, and they existed during the Han Dynasty. To learn more about them, see M. V. Berry’s “Oriental Magic Mirrors and the Laplacian Image,” in European Journal of Physics 27.1, 2006 (page 109).

Slam-rod fire starters like those used by the Adüans have been used by the people of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands for generations. The same principle lies behind the diesel engine.

The spinning shanty sung by the crew of Silkmotic Arrow was adapted from “The Silk-Making Woman,” by Zhang Yu, an eleventh-century poet of the Song Dynasty.

Special thanks to Igor Teper, who helped me come up with the idea of using the garinafin gut as the insulator in an especially powerful Leyden jar to shock the winged beasts, and to Amal El-Mohtar, who taught me the kenning “the word-hungry animal.”

As always, my beta readers gave me invaluable feedback and proffered many wonderful suggestions to improve the novel: Anatoly Belilovsky, Dario Ciriello, Anaea Lay, Usman Malik, John P. Murphy, Erica Naone, Alex Shvartsman, Carmen Yiling Yan, Florina Yezril, and Caroline Yoachim. I am deeply indebted for their help.

My editor, Joe Monti, and my agent, Russ Galen, guided me with calm and steady hands through the wall of storms that threatened to capsize this book. Joe, especially, helped me through some particularly thorny passages. Everyone at Saga Press and Simon & Schuster pitched in to make this book as good as possible, and I’m grateful for their efforts. Among the large cast are Jeannie Ng and Valerie Shea, who caught the errors in the manuscript during copyediting; Michael McCartney, Sam Weber, and Robert Lazzaretti, who provided the beautiful art design, cover, and maps; Elena Stokes, Katy Hershberger, and Aubrey Churchward, who built the publicity campaign.

Last but not least, my family played perhaps the most important role of all. My mother-in-law, Helen Tang, pitched in to help with the kids so that I could have time on the weekends to write. My wife, Lisa, was the most critical beta reader of them all, and gave me the confidence to finish what seemed an impossible task. And above all, the wonder my daughters expressed at the world was the spark that lit up the heart of this book.

Ken Liu ( http://kenliu.name) is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , Asimov’s , Analog , Clarkesworld , Lightspeed , and Strange Horizons , among other places.

Ken’s debut novel, The Grace of Kings —the first volume in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, the Dandelion Dynasty—was a Nebula Award finalist and a winner of the Locus Award. He also released a collection of short fiction, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories . He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

In addition to his original fiction, Ken is also the translator of numerous literary and genre works from Chinese to English. His translation of The Three-Body Problem , by Liu Cixin, won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015, the first translated novel to ever receive that honor.

For more about Ken and the Dandelion Dynasty series, visit his website at kenliu.name and sign up for his mailing list at kenliu.name/mailing-list.