Upcoming Korean SF Film: AM 11:00

This entry is part 55 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Well, there have been a few Korean SF film projects going on lately, and the most recent film in process now is a time-travel effort titled AM 11:00. I don’t know when it’s supposed to come out, though I feel like I saw an ad for it already — but that can’t be, as they only started shooting in May, right? Anyway, according to Hancinema, here’s the deal: “AM 11:00” is about a scientist who invented a time machine and went to the next day’s 11:00 AM, but witnesses a mass murder of his colleagues and comes back to the …

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Seoul SF&F Library — Relocated!

This entry is part 54 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

So, recently, the Seoul SF & Fantasy Library relocated to Mapo-gu. The new location is near Hong-Ik Dae University, and is a wonderful space: large, bright, and very versatile, as well as above-ground — it is on the third floor of the building in which it is located. I was meaning to take some photos of the wonderful place, but it slipped my mind before I left, so that will have to await an update for this post. I attended a reception there, where many of Seoul’s SF fans, authors, and other personalities were in attendance, and we celebrated the …

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Childish Employers

Just to be up-front, I’m not talking about my own current employer in this post. I’m talking about the experiences of those around me, including Miss Jiwaku but also a number of other people I’ve known in Korea over the years. One of the things I will never understand — and this is a cultural difference — is the poor respect that so many Korean employers have for their employees’, and the incredible amounts of respect they seem to think they have the right to demand from them. Take the process of quitting a part-time job. As far as I …

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Note to Brewer Self: CaCl in the Mash/Boil, and a Student Brew

So I’ve sampled some of the Mild ale I made for Miss Jiwaku, and my impression is that it’s not bad, but could use more… more of the maltiness, which is supposed to define the character of the beer. I was looking up some mash chemistry info to reply to a query by another homebrewer and realized that I hadn’t done any water treatment in making my Mild, but that adding Calcium Carbonate (CaCl) could help emphasize the maltiness of the brew. I shall have to remember that next time. My use of Windsor yeast certainly helped (the wort stopped …

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Who Thought Dryco Wasn’t Plausible?

Well, I just cracked open the novel Heathern, by Jack Womack, which pretty much describes a world on its way from our familiar, 1980s world into the horror of the most dystopian of his Dryco novels. Here’s the first couple of paragraphs: A baby almost killed me as I walked to work one morning. By passing beneath a bus shelter’s roof at the ordained moment I lived to tell my tale. With strangers surrounding me I looked at what remained. Laoughter from heaven made us lift our eyes skyward. The baby’s mother lowered her arms and leaned out her window. …

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