In the fall of 2012, Ken Liu received an intriguing offer from a Chinese company with a blandly bureaucratic name: China Educational Publications Import and Export Corporation, Ltd. It was seeking an English-language translator for a trippy science-fiction novel titled “The Three-Body Problem.” Liu — an American computer programmer turned corporate lawyer turned science-fiction writer — was a natu

The playwright David Lindsay-Abaire is one of many authors to have gleaned skills from Dungeons & Dragons, now 40 years old.Credit...Ángel Franco/The New York Times When he was an immigrant boy growing up in New Jersey, the writer Junot Díaz said he felt marginalized. But that feeling was dispelled somewhat in 1981 when he was in sixth grade. He and his buddies, adventuring pals with roots in dist

In most circumstances, the flying squirrel has a brownish color, left. But ultraviolet light reveals them to glow hot-pink.Credit...Northland College One spring night in Wisconsin, John Martin, a biologist, was in his backyard with an ultraviolet flashlight. Suddenly, a hot-pink squirrel flew by. It was a southern flying squirrel, a small, furry creature most active at dawn and dusk. Under most ci

For half a century, the Stanford computer scientist Donald Knuth, who bears a slight resemblance to Yoda — albeit standing 6-foot-4 and wearing glasses — has reigned as the spirit-guide of the algorithmic realm. He is the author of “The Art of Computer Programming,” a continuing four-volume opus that is his life’s work. The first volume debuted in 1968, and the collected volumes (sold as a boxed s

There’s been another mega-breach. Capital One said Monday that a software engineer hacked into one of its servers and stole the personal data of over 100 million people. Answer the questions below to learn which parts of your identity may have been stolen in the last several years. Not all attacks are included here, and many attacks go undetected, so think of your results as a minimum level of exp

“A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic,” the cosmologist Carl Sagan once said. “It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years.” As a physical object and a feat of technology, the printed book is hard to impro

In Japan, the Kit Kat Isn’t Just a Chocolate. It’s an Obsession. The story of how Kit Kats, once a British chocolate export, became a booming business from Hokkaido to Tokyo — and changed expectations about what a candy bar could be. By TEJAL RAO OCT. 23, 2018 Photographs by SPENCER LOWELL The seven-story Don Quijote megastore in the Shibuya district of Tokyo is open 24 hours a day, but it’s hard

The Los Angeles Times’s offices in Los Angeles. The Walt Disney Company has criticized the newspaper’s coverage of the company’s business dealings in Anaheim, Calif.Credit...Emily Berl for The New York Times Amid a growing backlash, the Walt Disney Company on Tuesday reversed its decision to bar The Los Angeles Times from press screenings of its movies following an investigation by the newspaper i

“We have to try new things,” said Junku Soko, a Buddhist priest whose services are booked through Amazon.co.jp.Credit...Ko Sasaki for The New York Times SAKAI, Japan — The stubble-haired Buddhist priest lit incense at a small, cupboardlike altar just as members of his order have done for centuries. As the priest chanted sutras, Yutaka Kai closed his eyes and prayed for his wife, who died last year

In most ways it resembles the hundreds of other reefs, islands, rock clusters and cays that collectively are called the Spratly Islands. But Ayungin is different. In the reef’s shallows there sits a forsaken ship, manned by eight Filipino troops whose job is to keep China in check. Ayungin Shoal lies 105 nautical miles from the Philippines. There’s little to commend the spot, apart from its plenti