Liu was born in 1976 in
Lanzhou,
China. His mother is a pharmaceutical chemist who received her Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States, while his father is a computer engineer. Liu immigrated to the United States when he was 11 years old. They lived in
California and
Stonington, Connecticut before settling in
Waterford, Connecticut. Liu graduated from
Waterford High School in 1994, where he ran cross-country and track. At
Harvard College, he studied English Literature and Computer Science, receiving his A.B. in 1998. After graduation, Liu worked as a software engineer for
Microsoft, and then joined a start-up in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. He later received his J.D. from
Harvard Law School in 2004 and worked as a corporate lawyer, eventually becoming a high-tech litigation consultant. He became a full-time writer in 2017. This story would later become part of the AMC series
Pantheon. Liu has said he wanted to become a writer so he could make stories that "turn values upside down and inside out to gain new perspectives". In addition to magazines and online publications, Liu's short story fiction has been published in two collections,
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016), which blends science fiction and fantasy to ask questions about historiography, cultural reinvention, storytelling, and transhumanism, and
The Hidden Girl and Other Stories (2020) which explores ideas such as tradition and progress, the fallibility of memory, and the essence of what it means to be human. He has also written for the
Star Wars universe, including the novel
The Legends of Luke Skywalker (2017), a series of Canterbury-tale like in-universe legends. Along with his original work, Liu has translated the works of several Chinese authors into English, including
Liu Cixin,
Hao Jingfang,
Chen Qiufan,
Gu Shi, and
Xia Jia. His translation of
The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin became a best seller in English. He has also worked as an editor, with two anthologies of translated Chinese fiction,
Invisible Planets and
Broken Stars. His latest translation is a new rendition of ''Laozi's Dao De Jing: A New Interpretation for a Transformative Time''. Some of Liu's work have been adapted into visual media. His short story "Memories of My Mother" was the basis of
Beautiful Dreamer (2016) by David Gaddie. His short story "Real Artists" was adapted into the short film
Real Artists (2017) by Cameo Wood. His short story "Good Hunting", which uses steampunk to interrogate the consequences of Western colonialism and Chinese modernity, was adapted into an animated short as part of
Netflix's
Love, Death & Robots series (2019). Six stories in
The Hidden Girl and Other Stories and "Carthaginian Rose" were adapted by Craig Silverstein into the animated television series
Pantheon. His latest work is a series of sci-fi thrillers starting with
All That We See or Seem (2025), featuring a young hacker named Julia Z. The series engages with the impacts of AI and its consequences on the arts, law, and other aspects of everyday life. Liu lives with his family near
Boston, Massachusetts. ==Awards==