Ken Liu is an American author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he wrote the Dandelion Dynasty, a silkpunk epic fantasy series, as well as the short story collections The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, and The Passing of the Dragon and Other Stories. His latest novels, the Julia Z series (All That We See Or Seem and What Birds Have Vanished) feature a hacker who uses her extraordinary technical skills to save the world.

Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Liu worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. Liu frequently speaks on a variety of topics, including futurism, the history of creative technologies, bookmaking, and the mathematics of origami.

“A Sigilary for the Median Human in the Gearwrack” is his fourth appearance in Uncanny, a story—illustrated with sigils—that dissects the relationship between technology and human craft.

Uncanny Magazine: “A Sigilary for the Median Human in the Gearwrack” is a neatly structured story, told in second person, that examines the interplay between technology, language, and art. What was your starting point or inspiration for the story?

Ken Liu: “A Sigilary” began with my fascination with “lorem ipsum”—the ubiquitous filler text used to show off layouts, typefaces, designs, and software for processing language. The more I studied the history of this bit of universal nonsense text, the more I realized that it presaged the modern era of LLMs. Like text generated by an LLM, “lorem ipsum” was also constructed from existing text, “tokenized” and rearranged, useful for its statistical resemblance to human-created texts, accompanied the rise of mechanical imitation of human craft, and most of all, capable of giving the appearance of sense without the substance. It encapsulated a whole history of our complicated relationship with machines that imitate human craft and concentrate power in the hands of those who own them. The idea of writing a story about this history then followed.

Uncanny Magazine: Each section starts with a different sigil—what was your process for designing and creating these?

Ken Liu: The sigils usually came before the accompanying section. Some began as visual puns, while others were attempts to compress a whole argument or historical movement into a mark that felt half logo, half magical seal. I played with pen and paper (and later, stylus and tablet) until I came up with some designs that spoke to my own feelings about this potent moment, and then I turned those feelings into words.

Uncanny Magazine: What was your favorite thing about writing this story? What was the most challenging part?

Ken Liu: The most fun part was coming up with the sigils. It really felt like an act of power, of drawing the arcane into the quotidian. The most challenging part was mimicking LLM patterns in the writing in order to subvert them. This required riding a very fine line, and it’s very difficult to imitate the machines without falling into the lure of their smooth patter and giving up your own agency—you can feel yourself drifting.

Uncanny Magazine: One thread of the story is doing things by hand: writing longhand, drawing without machine assistance. “At some point, you must make something.” What is something that you’ve made by hand that you’re particularly pleased with (or, alternately, something that you’d like to learn to make by hand)?

Ken Liu: This year, I made birthday cards for my daughters by hand. They weren’t especially accomplished, but I’m unreasonably proud of them. I think they felt truer than anything I could have bought.

Uncanny Magazine: Who are some of your literary influences? What’s something you’ve read recently and loved?

Ken Liu: I’ve mentioned in past interviews my love for Milton and Melville (I’ll never turn down an opportunity to go on a digression). I haven’t said as much about my love of modern poetry: John Ashbery, Adrienne Rich, John Berryman, and most of all, James Merrill—all were difficult poets who resisted the temptation to be merely confessional in favor of formal play, persona, allusion, and artifice without sacrificing sincerity. Read into that what you will about my own aesthetics. More recently I re-read The Road by Cormac McCarthy and loved it.

Uncanny Magazine: What are you working on next?

Ken Liu: I just completed a novelette and a novella set in the same universe: a world in which ghosts are real and demand our attention. I’m currently working on the third Julia Z novel (the second one, What Birds Have Vanished, is scheduled to come out in May 2027).

Uncanny Magazine: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us!

© 2026 Uncanny Magazine

Caroline M. Yoachim is a four-time Hugo and seven-time Nebula Award finalist. Her short stories have been translated into several languages and reprinted in multiple best-of anthologies, including four times in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her short story collection Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World & Other Stories and the print chapbook of her novelette The Archronology of Love are available from Fairwood Press. For more, check out her website at carolineyoachim.com.