I’m Waiting for You and Other Stories by Kim Bo-Young is an immersive, sci-fi short story collection that takes you to another time and place. Find out what a talking wall and Artificial Intelligence have in common, and how AI and gods share some similarities.
Location: linked to South Korea, but not necessarily taking place there (aside from some sightseeing in a scifi version of Seoul)
I'm Waiting for You and Other Stories synopsis
A stunning collection of short fiction by one of South Korea’s most treasured writers, available in English for the first time.
In the title story, an engaged couple working in distant corners of the galaxy plan to arrive on Earth simultaneously and walk down the aisle together. But small incidents wreak havoc on their vast journeys, pushing the date of their wedding far into the future. As centuries pass on Earth and the land and climate change, one thing is constant: the desire of the lovers to be together.
Through two pairs of interlinked stories, Kim Bo-young explores the driving forces of humanity – love, hope, creation, destruction, and the very meaning of existence.
Book review
When a computer shows more humanity and sympathy than humans…. In these stories you’ll read what a talking wall and Artificial Intelligence have in common, and how AI and gods share some similarities. Because you can apparently convince mythical creatures and AI in the same way; just try blackmailing a computer into following your commands!
Hopeful desperation
I’m Waiting for You and the follow-up story On My Way to You show some impressive relationship goals and commitment. You can be together, even when you’re apart, as long as you live in the same time stream or in someone’s memory. Time and space are relative. If you fast-forward fifty years into the future, it may seem like you’ve traveled the world, even though you’ve stayed in the same place.
Imagine emigrating to another time, rather than another place. This is the perfect solution if you think you were born in the wrong era or if you want to skip the line. But beware, it can be quite difficult to find each other in the same era. Knowing that the first story was originally used as a marriage proposal adds another layer to the story. These two stories are sad, funny, full of hope and desperate at the same time.
The Prophets of Corruption is a wildly imaginative story about individualism and collectivism. Individuality is seen as a broken, incomplete state. When prophets come together they merge their experiences and viewpoints, adding to their identity. What defines their identity? Their size? And when they come together, what happens to their identity?
The prophets see Earth as their school, their hall of learning and a cradle of experiences. Earth is a fully functioning world with its glitches, patches and targeted updates. As the prophets and their children experience more, they change. Naban’s transformation is especially interesting to follow.
The follow-up story That One Life provides a different perspective.
Origin and notes
The fact that the four stories are in one book makes all of them stronger and more meaningful. At the end, you will find notes from the people for whom the stories were initially intended and more about the origin of the stories in the author’s notes.
The translators (Sophie Bowman and Sung Ryu) share some insight into how the translations of the genders came about and they do so in style! Fortunately, they still seem to be in the same time stream and may run into each other again in the future!
Final thoughts
I’m Waiting for You and Other Stories is an immersive, sci-fi short story collection that takes you to another time and place. The stories blend future technology and mythology, climate and humanity. I especially enjoyed reading about the identity questions and transformations in the second and third stories. It’s funny to read about – and sad to think about – how everyone plays god and sees the earth as a big sandbox. This applies not only to gods and computers, but also to humans.
After reading all four stories and the notes, you continue to think about what you use as a playground for learning and experimentation. Both in a positive and negative way. Maybe your own life, or other people’s? Or a school you attend, a project at work, or a hobby? Will you manage your family like a ruler in Crusader Kings 3?
Interested?
Get your copy of I’m Waiting for You and Other Stories from Amazon (available 15 April 2021).
Book details
Title: I’m Waiting for You and Other Stories
Author: Kim Bo-young
Translators: Sophie Bowman and Sung Ryu
Publisher: Harper Collins UK
Pages: 336
ISBN (13): 9780008433796
Publication date: 15 April 2021
About the author and translators
Kim Bo-Young is one of Korea’s most unique and important authors. Her first published work of fiction, a novella titled ‘The Experience of Touch’, unanimously won the award for the best novella at the Korean Science & Technology Creative Writing Awards in 2004. In 2010 she published a two-volume collection of short stories, The Story Goes That Far and An Evolutionary Myth. 2013 saw the publication of her first novel, The Seven Executioners, which won the South Korean SF Award. Kim Bo-young’s work enjoys widespread popularity in Korea.
Sophie Bowman is a PhD student at the University of Toronto where she studies and translates Korean literature. Her research focuses on women authors writing during the post-Korean War dictatorships and her translations of Korean fiction have been published in Clarkesworld, Guernica, Koreana and Korean Literature Now magazines.
Sung Ryu is a translator based in Singapore. Her translations include Shoko’s Smile by Choi Eunyoung (2021), Tower by Bae Myung-hoon (2021), and the Korean edition of Grandma Moses: My Life’s History (2017) by Anna Mary Robertson Moses. She translated the Jeju myth “Segyeong Bonpuri” (Origins of the Harvest Deities) for her MA thesis.
Many thanks to Harper Collins UK and NetGalley for a digital ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
