If you love AI, you'll love Ken Liu's new cyberpunk thriller In Ken Liu's All That We See or Seem, a once-famous hacker must find a missing dream-weaver. The latest novel by Ken Liu, All That We See or Seem, is the near-future story of the mysterious disappearance of a professional dream-weaver called Elli. It is being marketed as a cyberpunk thriller . Full disclosure: I don't generally seek out thrillers or cyberpunk books, so I may not be the target audience for this. But I was keen to read it because Liu has not one but two claims to fame: as well as being the author of a celebrated fantasy series called The Dandelion Dynasty, he is also the translator of the sensationally good Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy by Cixin Liu .

In episode 61 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Ken Liu. Ken is an author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he is the author of silkpunk epic fantasy series Dandelion Dynasty and short story collections The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories. Prior to writing full-time, Ken worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)?

It's 6:30 already, Katie,

If your resolution for the coming year is to spend less time on your commute scrolling through Twitter or playing "Puzzler on the Roof," there's no shortage of fantastic and fantastical new books you can use to take a break from mindless screen time. Curating this year's new arrivals was tough, but we managed to narrow the list down to our top-ten favorites. Patient H.M. by Luke Dittrich There's a certain poetic intrigue to the story of Henry Molaison, the most important neuroscience subject of the 20th-century, as told through the eyes of science writer Luke Dittrich. In the 1950s, it was Dittrich's grandfather, William Scoville, who tried to cure Molaison of his epileptic seizures by removing signifiant portions of his brain. Instead, the lobotomy turned Molaison into a profound amnesiac, living the rest of his life in a series of 30-second increments.

Sophia, a young animator is offered what should be her dream job. But when she discovers the truth of the modern "creative" process, she must make a hard choice about her passion for film. Set in an unsettling tomorrow, REAL ARTISTS, is the new sci-fi short film from award-winning director/screenwriter Cameo Wood (DUKHA IN SUMMER) and based on the short story by Hugo/Nebula/World Fantasy winning author Ken Liu (THE GRACE OF KINGS) and stars renowned actress Tamlyn Tomita (FOUR ROOMS, JOY LUCK CLUB, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW) and marks the debut of Tiffany Hines (BONES) in a sci-fi indie role. Help us bring this story to life. We need 1000 followers on Seed&Spark in order to be eligible for distribution on Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, and Amazon - If we get 1000 followers, we also get a grant of filmmaking products and services worth 8,500.

China's search engine giant Baidu launched a project to bring scientists and sci-fi writers to collaborate on imaginative research on Friday. The project, named the Verne Institute after French writer Jules Verne, aims to blend wild imagination and solid science to bring more possibilities, Zhang Yaqin, president of Baidu, told Xinhua in an email interview on Friday. Verne famously said "Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real." Baidu chose to launch the project on April Fool's Day for a sense of contrast to underline the reality of it, Liu Chun with the company's marketing department said. Bridging science and sci-fi may be new in China but is a common way of collaboration elsewhere in the world, Zhang said.