李允夏

Yoon Ha Lee (born 1979 in Houston, Texas) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer, known for his Machineries of Empire space opera novels and his short fiction. His first novel, Ninefox Gambit, received the 2017 Locus Award for Best First Novel.

Life

Lee attended high school at Seoul Foreign School, an English-language international school, as his Korean American family lived in both Texas and South Korea. He went to college at Cornell University, majored in mathematics, and earned a master's degree in secondary mathematics education at Stanford University. He has worked as an analyst for an energy market intelligence company, done web design, and taught mathematics. Lee is a trans man.

Career

Since his first sale in 1999, Lee has published short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed and elsewhere. Three of his stories have been reprinted in Gardner Dozois's The Year's Best Science Fiction anthologies. Dozois wrote that Lee is "one of those helping to move science fiction into the twenty-first century".

In 2012, Lee wrote Winterstrike, a browser-based text adventure game, for Failbetter Games.

Lee's short fiction has received praise from fellow authors and from literary awards organizations. Aliette de Bodard wrote the introduction for Conservation of Shadows and has twice recommended one of Lee's stories in her best of year-round-ups: she selected "Ghostweight" as a favorite of 2011 and "The Knight of Chains, the Deuce of Stars" was chosen in her 2013 eligibility and recommendations post as "the one that most blew me away this year". "Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain" and "Ghostweight" were nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. "Extracurricular Activities", "The Starship and the Temple Cat", and "The Mermaid Astronaut" have been finalists for the Locus Award for Best Short Story. The Mermaid Astronaut was also a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

His debut novel, Ninefox Gambit, was the first novel in the Machineries of Empire series. It received the 2017 Locus Award for Best First Novel, and was a finalist for the 2016 Nebula, 2017 Hugo, the 2017 Compton Crook Award, and the 2017 Clarke award. The sequel novels Raven Stratagem and Revenant Gun also received awards nominations, and the entire series was a finalist for the 2019 Hugo Award for Best Series.

Dragon Pearl, the first book of the middle grade Thousand Worlds series, was released on January 15, 2019, and published by Disney Hyperion under the "Rick Riordan Presents" publishing imprint and became a New York Times bestseller. Dragon Pearl won the 2020 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book and the 2020 Mythopoeic Award for Children's Literature. It was a finalist for the 2020 Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book and the 2019 Andre Norton Award.

Lee's young adult novel Moonstorm was published in 2024 and was also well-received critically. It won the 2025 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book and was a finalist for several other accolades. It was followed by a sequel, Starstrike, in 2025.