Readymade bodhisattva : the Kaya anthology of South Korean science fiction / Sunyoung Park & Sang Joon Park, editors ; illustrations by Hongmin Lee.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781885030573 (paperback)
- ISBN: 1885030576 (paperback)
- Physical Description: 429 pages : illustrations ; 20 cm
- Publisher: Los Angeles : Kaya Press, 2019.
- Copyright: ©2019.
Content descriptions
Formatted Contents Note: | Readymade bodhisattva / Park Sunyoung -- Perfect society / Mun Yunseong -- Empire radio, live transmission / Choi In-hun -- Cosmic Go / Jeong Soyeon -- Along the fragments of my body / Bok Geo-il -- Quiz show / Kim Young-ha -- Storm between my teeth / Lim Taewoon -- The sky walker / Yun l-hyeong -- Between zero and one / Kim Bo-Young -- The bloody battle of Broccoli Plain / Djuna -- Roadkill / Pak Min-gyu -- Where boats go / Kim Jung-hyuk -- Our banished world / Kim Changgyu -- A brief history of South Korean SF fandom / Sang Joon Park. |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Science fiction, Korean > 20th century. Science fiction, Korean > 21st century. |
Genre: | Science fiction. Short stories. |
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Gibsons Public Library | SF FIC READ (Text) | 30886001064886 | Adult speculative fic hardcover | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2019 March #2
*Starred Review* Science fiction in Korea is relatively new, initially imported from the West via early-twentieth-century translations. By the late-1950s, the rapid modernization of postwar South Korea proffered considerable fodder for sf-writer wannabes. Over the following decades, Korea's ongoing political, socioeconomic, and technological reinventions created fertile conditions to nurture a distinctly homegrown sf community of writers and readers. Tenaciously indie Kaya Press launches its Magpie Seriesâwhich showcases Korean titles-in-translation that encapsulate "a reflexive picture of Korea and the breakneck speed of its changing interactions with the world"âwith this collection of 13 diverse sf stories originally published in the 1960s to the 2010s. Standouts include the titular "Readymade Boddhisattva," about an enlightened monastery robot; "Storm between My Teeth," featuring secret alien warriors eliminating one another while living among humans; "The Sky Walker," about a trampoline athlete with lofty dreams; "Between Zero and One," featuring family relationships further complicated by time travel; "Bloody Battles of the Broccoli Plain," in which North/South aggressions carry into the future; and "Our Banished World," about teens deducing their fatal simulation universe. Editors Park and Park have assembled a village of translators and academics to provide additional, insightful context for each story and author, bestowing upon readers a multilayered introductionâpresented in a unique layoutâto contemporary Korean science fiction. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews. - PW Annex Reviews : Publishers Weekly Annex Reviews
Sang Joon Park, president of the newly launched Korea SF Association, and scholar Sunyoung Park present a history of literary science fiction in South Korea to Anglophone readers through this thoughtfully annotated selection of 13 stories and excerpts of "discursive significance" published since the 1960s. A postapocalyptic, dystopian aesthetic and a sense of the individual's self-exploration in the face of huge forces threads through almost all of the work. Those forces include alien invasion, as in Kim Jung-Hyuk's eerie "Where Boats Go," and corporate interest, as in the title story's thought experiment on what it means for a robot to be enlightened. Several of the newer stories explore issues of gender, including Kim Bo-Young's powerful "Between Zero and One," which addresses competitive mothering and the Korean education system alongside quantum physics and time travel. Extensive introductions to the short excerpts of older works do an admirable job of supplying helpful historical and cultural context, but those snippets don't deliver the emotional punch of the more recent stories. Readers used to American SF's notions of Asian technology will be challenged by seeing how related ideas manifest in Asian fiction, and this collection makes that challenge accessible and enjoyable while lifting up some voices new to this side of the world.
Copyright 2019 Publishers Weekly Annex.(Mar.)