Among the most exciting changes in the South Korean literary scene is the fact that the nation’s science fiction works are gaining notable access to a global audience. A decade ago, most of the leading lights of Korean speculative fiction remained untranslated and inaccessible abroad, but all that has changed. It’s now unsurprising that powerhouse author Kim Bo-young has had multiple books appear almost simultaneously in English translation, including I’m Waiting for You.  

      This book is unusual in several ways, not the least of which is its pairing of two very disparate literary diptychs. The first, comprising the title story and its sequel, “On My Way To You,” is an epistolary narrative translated by Sophie Bowman that explores how well love stands up to the “cold equations” of the universe. An engaged couple is challenged by the inexorable forces of physics as they travel at light speed, finding themselves separated from one another by the relativistic effects of time dilation, even as time rushes past back on Earth. Is love enough to sustain them in their struggle to be reunited? Love challenged by time dilation is, of course, a concept that has been explored before in SF—nothing is new under this or any other sun—but the execution is what matters, and this pair of stories share a wonderful interplay, contrasting the hell of being alone with the hell of being with others. It is a surprisingly pessimistic story in the big picture, and yet this serves as a fitting test of the love expressed in the couple’s letters to one another. The overall effect is moving, even more so when one realizes that the title story was commissioned as a proposal gift from one of Kim’s fans to another. (The story quite literally “worked”: the two are now very happily married!) 

      The other pair of stories, translated by Sung Ryu and including “The Prophet of Corruption” and “That One Life,” explore different narratives. These tales focus on the philosophical and ethical struggles of consciousnesses in a universe that, at least to this reader, feels like an intriguing amalgamation of Buddhist cosmology and the simulation hypothesis—the idea that our universe is an immersive simulation of some sort, and we are individual programs existing only within it. Although the simulation hypothesis is not explicitly mentioned, it’s impossible to miss the parallels between it and the alternative Buddhist cosmology Kim explores here. What if samsara—the unending cycle of birth, death, and reincarnation—were a massive self-learning project for a living, conscious universe, and that along the way, the architects of this project learned enough to begin disputing the assumptions of the project itself? The story is a worldbuilding extravaganza of speculative creativity, playing the same kind of games invention with Buddhist cosmology that hard SF authors typically play with physics, astronomy, and biology. Here science-fictional tropes like spaceships take on special relevance, tied to the questioning of the underpinnings of the story’s universe itself. In this diptych, the novella “The Prophet of Corruption” is definitely the standout, as both a memorable and a deeply challenging read. 

      Given the scope and breadth of Kim’s oeuvre and the marked differences between these sets of stories, one might wonder regarding the rationale behind this specific pairing. However, I found a surprising affinity between the two diptychs. An epigram prefacing the book offers a suggestion as to why. It reads, “The way I see it, loving one person means loving the universe.” Another link between these stories, of course, is that both present the reader with characters that cross staggering vistas of time and navigate radical change and loss driven on by unwavering passion and commitment. These stories somehow manage to be grand epics despite focusing on only a small handful of characters. 

      The translation here is deceptively lucid and smooth: like the best musicians and acrobats, Bowman and Ryu make difficult, daunting work appear surprisingly easy and natural. Kim’s writing can sometimes be profoundly challenging to render in English, and I felt nothing short of admiration while reading the text, noting often where the translators deftly preserved ambiguities that, while natural in Korean, are much more difficult to maintain in English. (One example is the indeterminacy of gender for many of Kim’s characters, which Bowman mentions in her notes.) Especially impressive was Ryu’s convincing and fluid rendering of the intermingling of Buddhist and scientistic language in “The Prophet of Corruption.”

      Worthy of mention are the translator’s notes, which are presented in unusual epistolary form, mirroring the letters of the title story and “On My Way To You.” Although initially dubious about this approach, ultimately I appreciated the decision to convey their notes in this way. The letters are as polyphonic as are the stories in this book, a polyphony amplified by the inclusion not only the author’s notes on the tales but also the reader responses of the original audience for “I’m Waiting for You,” the couple whose marriage proposal was intimately tied up with the story. The overall effect is a reminder that all experience and storytelling is multivocal and multi-perspectival. 

      So it is with the genre as a whole—for SF authors are in constant dialogue with one another through their works—and I am genuinely happy that English-speakers are now being afforded greater access. I’m Waiting for You is a great starting point for exploring that dialogue in the sure hands of one of Korea’s most celebrated and thoughtful SF authors.

Gord Sellar

Author/Translator and Professor 

Institute for General Education

Korea University (Sejong Campus)