Ken Liu is a new and upcoming voice in SF&F these days. Liu’s work has an elegant, heartfelt charm that lulls you into whatever story he’s currently weaving for you. He won the Hugo Award for “The Paper Menagerie”, which you can listen to on Escape Pod; listen, and tell me if his writing has that soul that sits with you and spools a story into your ear—not sly, not pandering, but so open that you fall in.

And just because his work has that comfortable charm about it doesn’t mean that it can’t reach out and strike you through the heart and mind, bite your sensibilities and make you weep. That reach would be incomparably demonstrated in The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary (Free PDF) (Kindle). But perhaps that would not suit your taste today.

Fortunately, today, featured on io9.com is “The Perfect Match”, a story that’s probably been ironically shared through all the social networks by now. If you’re wondering what “Il Sospetto”‘s first movement (Allegro) sounds like, there it is above. Spoiler: if you’re not conversant in Italian, this is what it means. This paragraph is FULL OF IRONY.

Not only is Ken Liu an awesome storyteller, he’s also a pretty boss translator of works such as that of Xia Jia’s “A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight” and Ma Boyong’s “City of Silence” (part 1 and part 2).

You can follow more of Liu’s stories at his website.