The Paper Menagerie

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu

by Ken Liu

Shares rank 18 of 32 short stories by recommenders

People recommend it as a beautiful short story, written by the translator of The Three-Body Problem, and say they loved it.

4 people gave an opinion

Each figure is one person. RecommendsCriticizes

The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works

The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.

Each mark is one comment

Beautiful short story
“a beautiful short story by the Three Body Problem’s translator”
Comment from 30 Sep 2026 in “Ask HN: What are you reading?”
Written by Three-Body translator
“a beautiful short story by the Three Body Problem’s translator”
Comment from 30 Sep 2026 in “Ask HN: What are you reading?”
Readers say they loved it
“I loved the Paper Menagerie”
Comment from 14 Jul 2026 in “Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?”

2 of the 4 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.

“a beautiful short story by the Three Body Problem’s translator”

RecommendsComment from 30 Sep 2026 in “Ask HN: What are you reading?”

“I loved the Paper Menagerie”

RecommendsComment from 14 Jul 2026 in “Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?”

Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.

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The Paper Menagerieby Ken LiuThis page	4	0	100%	3	—	—