Fiction Reviews
If we Cannot go at the Speed of Light
(2019 / 2026) Kim Choyeop (trans. by Anton Hur),
MacLehose, £14.99, trdpbk, 181pp, ISBN 978-1-529-44761-3
Originally published in Korea in 2019, this is a slim volume of seven original stories about loss, love and loneliness. As you might expect, then, a thread of poignancy runs throughout, beginning with the piece from which the book takes its title.
Inspired by a news item about a fake bus shelter that was put up outside an old people’s care-home, the story opens with the image of an elderly woman sitting in front of the observation window of a space-station. She is waiting patiently for a starship to take her to her family who have long since departed, but, it turns out, no such transport is likely to be forthcoming. Despite that sad revelation, the ending manages to convey a measure of defiance if not hope.
Estrangement from family is also a theme in ‘Archival Loss’, set in a (near?) future when people’s ‘minds’ can be posthumously uploaded and stored for their relatives to consult and, crucially, mourn. However, when Jimin eventually decides to contact her mother’s, after much soul-searching, she discovers that in fact it is no longer indexed and has hence been rendered inaccessible. Although she eventually discovers why and by whom, this is, at its heart, a story about effacement and forgiveness.
‘My Space Hero’ similarly focuses on the problematic relationship between two women. Gayun is in training to become a worm-hole astronaut, following in the footsteps of her ‘Aunty’ Jaegyeong whose spacecraft exploded on launch. Again, there is an unsettling revelation, which upends what Gayun thought she knew about her ‘aunt’, but what this tale is really about is her coming to an understanding of why Jaegyeong did what she did. And indeed, of Gayun’s own motivations.
There is a similar sense of people being pushed to ‘move on’ in ‘Pilgrims’, which begins rather ominously with the young folk of a village being transported away in a coming-of-age ritual from which not everyone returns. The ending is more positive, not least in its emphasis on respecting difference, but I have to admit that I struggled a little with the connecting central narrative. ‘The Materiality of Emotions’ is much more straightforward, at least insofar as it does what it says on the tin – namely, explores the idea of embodying emotions in little coloured stones. In the endnotes, Choyeop explains that as a chemist she is fascinated by materiality and the relationship between the abstract and the concrete. I’m not sure this story takes us very deep when it comes to understanding that relationship, given the unsurprising denouement. What is more interesting, I feel, is the way the relationship between the narrator and their girlfriend shifts, eventually arriving at an enigmatic destination.
As with many of the stories, there is little in the way of plot here; rather Choyeop is more interested in carefully unfolding a thought. In the opener, it is right there in the title, ‘Symbiosis’, which explains how a young girl can draw image after image of a beautiful alien world, years before it is discovered by astronomers.
Nevertheless, although many of the ideas in If we Cannot go at the Speed of Light have been explored before, they are presented with just enough obliqueness to take them beyond the run-of-the-mill. This is particularly exemplified with ‘Spectrum’, a first contact story involving a crash-landing on an alien planet that is lifted out of the ordinary by its framing via the survivor’s report.
In sum, if you like gentle, reflective tales told well, this is the book for you.
Steven French
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