here<\/a> or through your local independent bookstore or library<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nI’ve been wanting to read Djuna’s stories and novels for a while now, since hard science fiction is my favorite subgenre, and I’ve read that Djuna’s work (especially in Anton Hur’s translation) is excellent. The perfect opportunity came when I was asked to review Djuna’s upcoming collection Not Yet Gods<\/em>. I decided that, while I waited for my review copy, I would tackle Counterweight<\/em> (2023) and Everything Good Dies Here<\/em> (2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\nDjuna is, of course, part of the boom in Korean SFT (especially science fiction and horror) that really picked up in the beginning of this decade. Now, writers like Bora Chung, Kim Bo-young, Bae Myung-hoon, Cho Yeeun, and many others are regularly appearing in English from a number of different publishers, though Honford Star is bringing us about 20% of these new texts. Djuna, a novelist and film critic, remains anonymous both in Korea and the Anglophone world, so readers are left to guess at this writer’s identity. This seems cleverly calculated, and after reading Counterweight<\/em>, it also seems perfectly in keeping with the jaunty, sarcastic, and bold writing style that this author presents us. Indeed, I found that while I was trying to focus on the very complicated story (which, I have to admit, is quite<\/em> difficult to follow, in parts), I was also coming up against my lack of knowledge about the writer’s gender. Which (thanks, Djuna!) kept making me stop and think about why I cared<\/em>. But turning to the story…<\/p>\n\n\n\nYes, as you can read in any blurb about Counterweight<\/em>, it’s a science fiction thriller about a large and powerful corporation that has taken over a small island nation in order to build a space elevator. Space travel, in Djuna’s world, is already a given, and there are other kinds of technologies (like space hooks) that have been putting spacecraft large and small out into the universe for years. This particular space elevator, though, is supposedly going to be one of the best and most efficient once it’s finished. The real story, though, is that the recently-dead CEO (Han Junghyuk) of the company–LK–decided that he wanted his love for a much younger woman (his non-blood-relative niece) to live on forever. The counterweight that holds up the space elevator, and which is composed of space junk (how ironic) apparently holds the data that constitutes his mind. When his memories are implanted into a low-level employee of LK, this sets off a chain of events that involves murder, intrigue, and a race to get to the data in the counterweight.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI was reminded of J. M. Lee’s recent (2025) novel Artificial Truth<\/em>, which similarly took up the issue of AI and human consciousness. What happens when human memory comes into contact with AI? In Djuna’s story, the “biobot” that has allowed someone to place Han’s memories in Choi Gangwu’s brain results in what people start calling the “ghost” of Han driving Choi’s actions. It’s as if we’ve come full circle–ghosts (incorporeal entities) have met AI (also an incorporeal entity), and one person’s memories, when stored as data, makes it seem like that person is still around. At another point, the “niece” is unconscious but her hologram interacts with Mac and Choi as if she were a ghost.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI’ve called Djuna’s story jaunty and sarcastic, and it’s a voice like this (narrated by an External Affairs employee named Mac, of course<\/em>) that drives Counterweight<\/em> straight through to the end. Everything here seems calculated, very few scenes move slowly, and thus the experience of reading the story mirrors the breathless intensity of events that Mac, Choi, Han, Han’s “niece,” the murderers for hire, and everyone else seems to feel.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOne of the most enjoyable strategies for pulling us up out of the story here and there (as if Djuna is gleefully throwing us off by breaking the fourth wall) is the dropping in of references to other books and literary genres: “that’s not science fiction anymore” (31-2), “Like Romeo’s love for Juliet, like Dante’s for Beatrice” (56), “we’re not living in an Agatha Christie novel” (77), “a woman as frigid as a heroine in a nineteenth-century gothic novel” (97), etc. One gets the sense that Djuna wants us always to remember that we’re reading a novel (one that is very twisted and complicated). The author wants us, perhaps, to interrogate why we’re reading a novel at all, what the purpose is, and why humans love stories so much. This, then, is fundamentally a novel about humans and their creations (stories, technology), while the AI and robots and Worms (brain implants) orbit around them like so much space junk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then there are the snarky asides and sarcasm, which are difficult to pull off when they’re written down, but translated<\/em>?! In the beginning of the chapter “A somewhat suspicious new guy at work” (the chapters all have these great titles), Mac describes Choi and comments on how weird it is that he hasn’t lasered off his facial hair like everyone else does now: “Why insist on shaving every day when you’re not even allowed to grow a beard? Look at me I’m so very special among my identical peers” (8). I laughed out loud at that one.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBy the end, Djuna’s brought us to the core questions about what it means to be human in a world where AI is quickly dominating systems and we find that it’s increasingly following its own path. As one of the characters suggests, are humans moving out into the stars in greater numbers because they have less to do on Earth, what with AI taking over things? Is AI going to become the dominant species on the planet, while humans set out into the universe to both remember what it means to be human and embark on their next adventure? Djuna refuses to offer us answers but the questions themselves linger long after the book has ended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next up, Everything Good Dies Here…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"translated from the Korean by Anton Hur original publication (in Korean): 2021 this edition: Vintage, 2023 grab a copy here or through your local independent bookstore or library I’ve been wanting to read Djuna’s stories and novels for a while now, since hard science fiction is my favorite subgenre, and I’ve read that Djuna’s work<\/p>\n
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