I speak with Ken Liu, author of The Paper Menagerie, a short story swept the Hugo, the Nebula, and the World Fantasy awards. In his fantasy series The Dandelion Dynasty, the heroes are engineers, not wizards.
Liu's work translating many Chinese sci-fi authors into English has helped many of these authors become huge successes in the U.S., most notably Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem.
Ken says his fiction often projects East Asian history and culture onto the backdrop of the modern American Empire.