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
This set of short stories was first published in 2019 in the author’s native South Korea. This edition (2026) is its first translation and publication in English, the translator being Anton Hur. The combination of the original stories and the translation (always an important factor with books written in a different language) is very good. A most enjoyable collection!
‘Symbiosis Theory’ explains that throughout her life Ludmilla Markov had memories of a planet she could not have been to (there being no space flight). As she grew up she became famous for her paintings set on this alien world which she insisted she remembered, and she could even describe the planet in detail, how it worked, and even the life upon it. Some time after her death, astronomers found a new planet round a distant star and its properties were identical to Ludmilla’s description - could it really be the same place? Even as they gathered more data, they saw it destroyed by a solar flare, an event which had actually happened many tens of thousands of years before. Then research into the minds of children at the Institute for Neurointerpretation made a discovery; it seemed that the minds of babies were not alone.
In ‘Spectrum’ we learn the adventures of biologist Heejin, who had departed on a spaceship bound for a voyage of scientific exploration. Nothing further was heard from it and they were presumed lost, but forty years later she was found in an emergency shuttle somewhere near Pluto. She was only ten years older (the effects of near-lightspeed travel) but in a frail condition, and she told of how her spaceship had crashed and she alone had survived. She had been befriended by the local sentient life form and lived with them for some years before discovering some of the wreckage and a working emergency shuttle. To the end of her days, she was resolute that, whilst unable to prove it, she was the person who made First Contact with an intelligent alien life form. For reasons she would not explain, she would never say where they were.
‘If we Cannot Go at the Speed of Light’ introduces us to Anna, who is sitting alone in a space station, waiting for a flight to the colonised world of Slenfonia III, where she will join her husband and son. She is the only person there, other than the newly arrived space station employee. She has been waiting a very long time, far longer than should be possible, and they want to close the station which has been defunct for years. At one time journeys between the stars was achieved through warp travel, though even then the journey times could be enormous. When wormholes were discovered and stabilised, travel became almost instantaneous and warp drive was discarded. However, this limited journeys to locations where there were wormholes whilst those far distant planets which required long, long journeys of warp travel were deliberately forgotten about; the Slenfonia system was one such. The final warp ship for Slenfonia left many decades ago but she is determined to get there somehow.
With ‘The Materiality of Emotions’ we follow Jungha, who works for a magazine, and is in the office when an unusual new product arrives for review. The Materiality of Emotions comes in many forms, each with its own emotions, some positive but some negative, and they become very popular with the public. But not everything goes well.
‘Archival Loss’ tells of how Jimin never got on with her mother and was glad to leave home but, now that she is about to be a mother herself, she discovers that she wishes to speak to her mother even though she has since died. So she visits the library, wishing to speak with the mind of her mother, which is stored in a digital archive. It should not have happened but she finds that all the indexes to it have been deleted; her mother’s mind is in the library somewhere, it is just that they cannot find it. As she tries to find a way of accessing it, she learns much about her parents and why they were the way they were.
We meet young Daisy in ‘Pilgrims’; she lives in a village where life seems idyllic and everyone is perfect. Every year at the Coming of Age ceremony, the new adults travel via an ancient vehicle to a place known as Origin; exactly one year later they return, though not all of them Those that do not return are never seen again. Adults tell their children that one day, when they have grown up, they will understand. Daisy is very curious and sets off to find out the truth.
In the final story, ‘My Space Hero’, we follow Gayun who has been accepted for astronaut training. It is a long, hard process which will involve being transformed into a cyborg in order to survive the intense rigours of the journey. She had been inspired in her endeavours by her ‘aunt’ Jaegyeong, even though she had died when her spacecraft was destroyed entering the Tunnel (a wormhole to a far distant part of the galaxy). But, as Gayun discovers, Jaegyeong had not died in the accident, she had jumped off a high cliff into the ocean just before the launch. But did she really commit suicide, as the authorities insist? As Gayun’s training and adaptations increase, she comes to realise the real reason why Jaegyeong jumped - and it has nothing to do with cowardice.
This is an imaginative set of stories, each of them refreshingly different. They are well written and run for about twenty to thirty pages each, long enough to tell a well crafted story without unnecessary complications. I enjoyed all of them and I hope we see more from Kim Choyeop – keep them coming!
Peter Tyers
See also Steven French's review.
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