In 2018, Chinese biophysics researcher He Jiankui edited the genomes of human embryos which provoked international controversy. During recent years, we witnessed not only a global pandemic, but also the disastrous impact of climate change. The extreme drought in Europe in the past summer, for instance, revealed the so-called “hunger stone” in a Czech town near the German border. On the rock, the engraving from 1616 read: If you see me, weep. Around the same time, NASA announced plans to return astronauts to the moon, but this time, the moon would be only a mid-way stop on our trip to Mars.

All these news reports make the sci-fi world that Kim Choyeop presents in If We Can’t Go at the Speed of Light feel eerily close and real: the wealthy pay science labs to modify their embryos and distinguish them forever from the poor; a temporary family parting may become indefinite due to a sudden change in interplanetary travel policy; talking to deceased family members may become possible by checking out their brain data in the library.

I read Kim’s stories as reckonings on human nature. She cares deeply about women, immigrants, people with disabilities, and other marginalized groups. Profound empathy leads her to resist a simplistic binary view of our impending future: utopia or dystopia. Discrimination and bias will unfortunately but surely remain. In “About My Space Hero,” the public still casts doubt on a forty-eighty-year-old woman being selected as the astronaut for a pioneering space mission despite science’s ability to re-engineer human bodies and hence minimize the physical differences between men and women. In “Why Did Pilgrims Always Leave Without Return,” the genius scientist can crack the world’s most challenging scientific problem but cannot stop others from staring at the birthmark on her face.

However, Kim soberingly points out the other side of the coin. Perhaps because we are attached first and foremost to our families and those who share our identity, we cannot possibly avoid being ignorant and prejudiced against others. Yet, this discriminating sort of love renders our loved ones special. In “If We Can’t Go at the Speed of Light,” Anna—now over a hundred and seventy years old—is still determined to jump aboard a shabby spaceship and steer to a remote planet in hopes of reuniting with her family despite the odds against her. In “Why Did Pilgrims Always Leave Without Return,” Kim proposes an answer to the title’s question: Because our human world is horrific, our lives seethe with passion and are therefore worth living.

My favorite story in the collection is “Irretrievable.” The protagonist’s late mother suffered from postpartum depression. Her failure to play the role of a normal mother broke the family apart. As the daughter becomes pregnant herself, she struggles as she sees her career slipping away. Later, she discovers that the same thing happened to her mother decades ago, from which her mother never recovered.

As the famous saying goes, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” How cruel it is to realize what went wrong in a relationship only after it is over! How brutal it is to understand our parents only after they are gone! In Kim’s future world, the retrievable brain data of loved ones seems to be a safety net of belated reconciliation. But the story also reminds me of an ancient Shamanistic ritual in rural parts of China. If people want to communicate with a deceased family member, they often seek out a Shaman to summon the person. After murmuring a few sacred phrases, the Shaman will speak and behave exactly like the soul being called. That way, the family can pour out the words that have been burning inside their hearts. Still, whether Shamanism or a brain data base, are the souls of the dead really alive? Do the dead really receive our messages, or are we comforted merely by our one-sided confession? Perhaps, the title “Irretrievable” is already hinting at the excruciating reality: No matter how advanced our technology is, nothing cannot be undone.

Kim’s collection is stunningly ambitious and bold. The story “Symbiosis Theory” even attempts to hypothesize that we gain our humanity during childhood from some extraterrestrial beings who come to live inside our brains. In a way, Kim is asking why humanity is so extraordinary. Singer-songwriter Chang Kiha says that Kim’s stories have relieved him of anxieties about the future and restored his hope in the present. After finishing Kim’s collection, I looked outside my window in Los Angeles. Everything in the world—the trees, the people on the street, or just the air—never appeared so beautiful.

Jianan Qian
Author, 29 Letters (2019), Say No to Eggs (2018)
“To the Dogs” (Winner, The O. Henry Prize, 2021)