If what gripped you was how stories like “Mono No Aware,” “The Man Who Ended History,” and “The Waves” wrestle with technology’s human cost and cultural memory, you’ll find that same thoughtful, humane lens in Ted Chiang’s collection. Pieces like “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” explore how recording tech reshapes identity and memory, much like the documentary device in “The Man Who Ended History,” while “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” mirrors the tender, relational focus you saw between Jack and his mother in “The Paper Menagerie,” asking what responsibilities we owe to minds we help create. Throughout, Chiang centers people and ethics over gadgets, delivering idea-rich stories with deep heart—precisely the balance that made Liu’s work resonate.

If Jack’s struggle to reconcile languages, heritage, and love in “The Paper Menagerie” moved you, Ishiguro’s tale of Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy will echo that same slow-blooming ache. At Hailsham, the students uncover what they are—and what the world expects of them—with the same understated poignancy and restraint that gives Liu’s stories their sting. Like the origami animals that carry a mother’s voice, the smallest details—a cassette tape, a boat beached in a field—become touchstones of memory and self. You’ll feel that familiar mix of tenderness and revelation as identity unfolds against an eerie, near-future backdrop.

If “Mono No Aware” and “The Man Who Ended History” spoke to you for how they center cultural survival and the ethics of remembering, you’ll be riveted by Binti’s journey from her Himba home to Oomza University. Her navigation of alien contact with the Meduse—using mathematics, harmonics, and a relic rather than violence—echoes the dignity and cultural fidelity you admired in Hiroto’s preservation of mononoaware and the documentary reckoning with erased histories. Like Liu, Okorafor marries wonder with the costs of assimilation and the power of staying rooted while reaching outward.

If the mother–son bond and bittersweet acceptance in “The Paper Menagerie” left you breathless, Conor’s nights with the yew-tree monster will land with the same emotional force. The monster’s stories push him toward a truth he’s afraid to say aloud, much like how Jack must finally read—and feel—the messages folded into his mother’s paper animals. It’s tender, bruising, and ultimately healing: a compact tale where the fantastical doesn’t distract from the heartbreak, it carries it—just as Liu’s magic does.

If you loved Liu’s range across compact forms—from the fable-like “Good Hunting” to the near-future intimacy of “Simulacrum” and the metaphorical sharpness of “State Change”—Machado’s stories will feel like a daring, resonant echo. “The Husband Stitch” reframes a folktale to examine love and autonomy; “Eight Bites” distills body and memory into haunting myth—each piece a precise, emotionally concentrated hit much like Liu’s most indelible shorts. It’s that same short-form electricity where every page counts and images linger.