Bora Chung

In this collection of stories, Bora Chung speculates about utopias that seem to have more potential for dystopia than one might expect. We tend to think of technology as bringing us ease and happiness, but often we fail to consider its downsides. Not so for Chung. She presents eight sci-fi fantasies that start with dark premises but quickly evolve into dry humor and end with lessons to take home.

Each story has an unnamed narrator, who is either a human or a robot. All of the plots are a little weird but universally engaging. A low level executive assistant struggles with a lot of nitpicking executives while she plans a celebration for a center focusing on immortality research. A group of earthlings embark on a space voyage to find a cure for a pandemic that is turning people into cannibals. Human-tree hybrids confront corporation executives who have pretty much destroyed all plant life on earth with GMOs. A 120-year-old woman is injured in a terrorist attack while in line for a book reading given by a transgendered author. A self-driving, solar powered vehicle roams a devastated landscape with a busted robot in the back seat looking for places to get charged. An AI elevator operator develops a caring relationship with an elderly sick apartment resident. A technician is charged with downloading the dreams of a comatose criminal so the FBI can convict a violent drug gang. And a man discovers that his wife is actually an alien sent to investigate earth as a possible new home. Clearly, there is plenty here to satisfy just about everyone’s taste for the weird. Yet Chung never loses control of her narratives. Instead, she uses quiet prose and humor to guide her readers through these disorienting scenarios to outcomes that can be unsettling but also can provide insights into important moral questions.… (más)

This was my translated book for March 2023.

Excellent! Slow burn supernatural, ghosts, drama, and horror. Cursed Bunny is a collection of short stories that range from exceptionally weird (The Head) to haunting (Reunion).

The title story, Cursed Bunny, is a rift on the idea that family always comes back to haunt you in one way or another. You can change your circumstance, but you can't change your family. Ruler of The Winds and Sands is a gorgeous fairy tale with the same hideous underpinning. I loved the heroine of the story.

There were a few times that the translated text felt awkward in context, but overall it was perfectly fine reading in English.… (más)