This was a book that was first put on my radar when a respected co-worker handed me this book. I respect her opinion, but I admit my TBR was so nuts I didn't make it a priority. IT was inching closer when Brian Evenson, as a guest on my podcast, suggested it. So that pushed me to read it on the train back from SFAM in LA.
Speaking of Evenson, Bora Chung is an author from Korea who reminds me of Brian, Dennis Etchison, or Han Song, all authors whose strength is short fiction. Like Evenson, Chung has not been forced into the genre ghetto despite all the stories in this collection being SF or, as Richard Matheson would have said, off-beat.
Every story was delightfully weird, the prose was very tight, so it had me wondering about the translation and how much I was missing when it traveled from its original language. The storytelling is wonderful. Some of the best stuff I have read this year. I keep hearing that Cursed Bunny is better, that the stories are more original.
Since it appears to have the mainstream respect, I must point out that it is laughable to deny this book's SF nature. It was nominated for the PKD award for good reason. The story The End of the Voyage, is second, and it is straight up on a spaceship. It is good SF too. I mean, some authors build their stories on fear of isolation, or the struggles of living in various economies, deep-rooted personal issues…Bora Chung seems to be exploring our evolving relationship with technology, what is more Science fiction than that?
“I was standing on the rubble of a fallen world, looking around me. The only warm thing was the sunlight. The concrete debris I was sitting on was hot to the touch because of it but that was all.
As far as the eye could see, there was only shattered concrete, twisted steel bars, broken bricks, and cracked asphalt. There wasn't so much as a tree or a blade of grass, much less a living animal. The sky was clear and the clouds looked peaceful, but the sun poured down its light on the landscape that was nothing less than desolate.
Should I go back to the spaceship?”
Come on, marketing homies, it is OK to admit this author who has broken planets and massive space ships is a science fiction writer. I have no idea if Chung is team Leguin (proud to be a SF writer) or Atwood (refused the distinction), but I feel like her stories so embrace the setting, why not? I mean the first story “The Center for Immortality Research,” is a story about technology that helps people live forever and an anniversary party. Seed is a story about human plant hybrids.
Back to End of Voyage…
“I was not a part of either side. Because I already knew there was no point in debate period from the moment the events on the bridge began, I was informing earth of our situation, as per captain's orders. Map of expected anyone on earth to present us with suitable alternative but as soon as I could convey the exact nature of what was going on in the spaceship, the control towers on earth stopped communicating with us. I tried every three minutes to reestablish links, but to no avail.”
The dynamic of the story is built on this lack of communication. The void of space, the waste of the planets, the island of isolation, the ship has become…powerful stuff. This is more surrealist than hard SF. It has more it common with James Reich’s Skinship or River Solomon’s generation ship than Clarke or Asimov but it is still SF. I read a few reviews who thought this book was one note compared to her last collection, Cursed Bunny. Some of the readers who thought these stories were one-note are probably the Lit readers who lack imagination for SF settings. Just saying.
That’s OK because stories like Maria, Gratia Plena has got the weird for them. : “In my dream, I am a planet. A small, unmanned spacecraft comes up to me, certainly me. Whenever it moves its tiny bright lights sparkle. In that vast bleakness that is the black of space, the spacecraft twinkles its little lights and stays by my side. I am a happy planet.
But a few days after our first encounter the spacecraft begins to move away and they showed after it.
“But why?”
The spacecraft does not reply blinking its tiny lights that I love so much it goes further and further away.”
I love the idea of this and found this meditative and powerful. Coming before the title story that explored a planet that humans have left, leaving behind technological artifacts. The machines that can think and tell stories discover something powerful.
“Ever since humans left this planet, it's been only machines like 314 and me. The humans dismantled the generator and took it with them. The machines that needed charging lost power 1 by 1, only those with renewable energy sources like me and survive. Not that my solar cells will last forever, either. This planet was always on the cold side, and it's getting colder the days when it doesn't snow or fog are becoming increasingly rare. Whenever the wind blows my auto body is rocked so hard that I feel like I'm gonna flip over.”
I do, however, discover “utopia” in the database. It is the name of the first fully automated factory constructed by the 1st settlement on this planet. The factory produced all sorts of equipment needed to develop human life on the planet, including construction tools and medical apparatus.
Utopia.
Humans had thought they could build a paradise on this merciless planet.”
That is not the only story from the technological point of view. A Song for Sleep is a powerful little tale about a smart elevator that is watching a resident and ask, “-Is a “disease' similar to a 'malfunction”? The all-knowing nest firms. Next line in a general sense, yes.”
Surveillance is a major theme here. This story of a smart elevator trying to determine if one of the residents in the building is sick. This is a new twist on the theme. Maybe Cursed Bunny is more impressive, but this is my FIRST Bora Chung and it won’t be the last. I would love t interview her, she went to grad school in my hometown, and she is a hell of an author. Your Utopia will likely be on my best of the year list.
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