Koffee & Kpop

This book is the holy trifecta for me: Korean speculative fiction, translated by my favorite translator (Anton Hur), and with a cover blurb from one of my favorite authors (Bora Chung).

“If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light” is Kim Choyeop’s first short story collection. Otherwise, she has a master’s degree in biochemistry.

“Spectrum,” about first contact between the narrator’s grandmother and an alien lifeform known as Louey, was spectacular. The very first paragraph pulled me in because it’s rare to have a story looking back at the future’s past, to imagine someone’s grandma donning a space suit and helmet.

The titular story in the collection was also fantastic and worthy of having the collection named after it. The cover art, done by Jisu Choi, depicts the main scene of the story: an old woman, watching out the window of a space transit station, waiting for a ship that hasn’t yet arrived… and for how long will she continue waiting?

Another favorite was “Archival Loss,” in which exists a future world where Minds of the deceased are kept in a library, able to be interacted with. Unfortunately for our protagonist, her mother’s Mind is seemingly lost in the library, and she sets out to find a way to help the librarians find it.

The last story in the collection, “My Space Hero,” was a lighter story that rounded out the collection nicely.

Without a doubt a five-star read for me.

(I did not plan on having the cafe I went to having the same name as one of the stories in the book.)