Month: August 2010

I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick by Emmanuel Carrère (Trans. Timothy Bent)

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This is, as the author himself puts it, “a very peculiar book,”  but for me, it was an unusually quick read, I think partly because of its very oddness. First, the good: I found it fascinating. I found it fascinating how Carrère sketches out what he understands to be the relationship between Dick’s life and his writing, a pattern that immediately brought to mind Rudy Rucker’s notion of transreal fiction — fiction that is essentially SFnalized autobiography — as he discusses it in this essay. Well, and as I mentioned recently, Wikipedia claims Rucker came up with the idea after reading …

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박민규의 지구 영웅 전설과 카스테라

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This entry is part 34 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Park Min Gyu is a Korean author that has been recommended to me by several people, independent of one another. After hearing about my novella “Wonjjang and the Madman of Pyongyang,” Stephen Epstein recommended Park’s book 지구 영웅 전설, which I’ll render here sloppily as World Hero Legend or, a little less sloppily, as The Legend of the Earth’s Superheroes, a novel featuring a Korean supe who supposedly sets out to become a superhero and ends up calling himself “Banana-man” and ends up being a kind of gopher or page for American heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman (who sends …

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Subways and Culture

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Once again, I’m linking to Matt’s site, this time where he links an article on how the seats reserved for the old, pregnant, ill, weak, and disabled are, well… some old people seem to think those seats are just for old people, and doing things like shouting at pregnant women for sitting in those seats. Or, in one case, getting into a fight to the death over who gets to sit there. And, well, you know how it is: nobody’s really stepping up to tell them, “No, you have it wrong you crotchety old bastard, now STFU before someone knocks …

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Ev’rything I’ve Got

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I have fond memories of Holly Cole’s dark and seductive version of this song (on Don’t Smoke in Bed), but that’s not online, and I found something even better — in a sense… Truly bizarre: the music is… well, it feels like a cross between a high school marching band and some TV network’s in-house orchestra. And then there’s the video, which looks like it cost a few hundred bucks to put together, plus the (can’t be too much!) wages for the dancers. What is that, some kind of abandoned train yard or something? Vikki Carr definitely ain’t no Ella …

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The Immersion Book of SF — Available for Preorder on Amazon

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Yes, the Immersion Book of SF (edited by Carmelo Rafala and published by Immersion Press) is now available for preorder on Amazon.com. Along with Tanith Lee, Lavie Tidhar, Aliette de Bodard, and others, I have a story included in it, titled “The Broken Pathway” — a tale not only set in Korea, but in the very area where I have lived for the past five years (except, of course, it’s not set in the present day). It’s a tale of geomantic warfare, colonialism, love, regret, and harsh justice. You can find out more about my story here, and you can find out …

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The Broken Pathway

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“The Broken Pathway” is available in The Immersion Book of SF, edited by Carmelo Rafala and published by Immersion Press, which will be coming out at the end of September. (But you can preorder it on Amazon now!) This is a story that’s especially fun because it’s set in the neighborhood where I live, featuring Wonmi-san (Wonmi Mountain) the small mountain where I have, several times in the last few years, gone hiking daily, and which was also the setting for a few stories by the inestimable Korean author Yang Kwi-Ja in her collection 원미동 사람들 (or, as the English …

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Bible as SF?

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I must thank Emmanuel Carrère for this lovely little anecdote about SF in, I presume, the 1950s: Terry Carr, the Ace paperback editor, used to joke that if the Bible had been published as science fiction, it would have had to be cut down to two volumes of twenty thousand words each; the Old Testament would have been re-titled “Master of Chaos,”, and the New Testament “The Thing With Three Souls.” — Emmanuel Carrere I Am Alive And You Are Dead; A Journey Into The Mind Of Phillip K. Dick Terry Carr, the Ace paperback editor, used to joke that …

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Students: Do They Have Human Rights?

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The answer to the above question is such that one would hope everyone working with kids would say, “Yes.” And to their credit, some teachers, parents, and students agree, as they showed by hosting an event back in July: Seven chapters of the progressive Korean Teachers and Education Workers’ Union, the Parents Association for True Education, and the youth human rights group Asunaro will host an event Wednesday to launch the Seoul headquarters for rules on students’ human rights. Can you imagine who disagreed? In response, the conservative Korean Federation of Teachers’ Associations released a commentary Tuesday saying, “Legislating laws on …

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“… For Your Nation…”

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Okay, so, imagine you’re a trilingual Korean. When you’re interviewed by a certain nationalistic, ridiculous TV station — not that I’ll name it specifically, ahem — and they explain the ridiculously low pay they’re offering by explaining that you are, in being offered this job, given a chance to do work “for your nation,” which of the following do you do? (a) laugh in the their face (b) politely ask for more money knowing you won’t get it, and say, “Well, I can make more money teaching in a hakwon, so I think that would be wiser for me.” (c) …

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World War Z by Max Brooks

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I am, I know, a few years behind most people in reading this novel by Max Brooks, but I picked it up on the recommendation of a friend, Mike. He commented on how he was fascinated by how a disaster — a violent, worldwide epidemic of zombie virus — transformed individuals: how a nobody could become a leader, or a leader (or group of leaders) could persist in folly and be taken down by it. I think that’s the gist of what he said. Well, for me, that was one of a few fascinating things about this book. Another was …

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