I'm Waiting for You and Other Stories

I love Asian inspired fantasy for the freshness that it provides and I have been dabbling a bit in the Asian SciFi scene, trying to find similar fresh takes on things. So far I have struggled to find anything that matches. This is dry, flavourless scifi, lost in its own mythologizing. This book comprises 4 novellas, two pairs of linked stories. The first and the last story are a set of love letters written through the perspective of relativistic space travel - the idea that by travelling close to the speed of light you will age at a different rate to those who are not travelling. The base concept is clever - two people hopping through time trying to catch up with each other. The problem is that they are self centered and unlikable in their character. Their travails become overwrought and boring. This idea was done better in ‘How to Lose the Time War'

The other two stories are even dryer. Here we encounter beings known as prophets struggling with the idea of self. It is dry metaphysical bullshit wrapped in quasi religious trappings. The whole thing is confusing as hell and a struggle to get through.

I did not enjoy this - I do wonder if the translation caused me issues, or the audiobook version was more difficult than the text version, but all the same I was left frustrated and bored by it. There are some clever ideas buried within it but it is all lost within its own grandiose mythologizing leaving a stodgy porridge of blandness.

Three stories. The first and last are embarrassing, let's not talk about them. Let's not even read them.The middle one, though... that pressed a lot of buttons for me. An enjoyable what-if riff on the nature of consciousness, echoing [b:Lord of Light 13821 Lord of Light Roger Zelazny https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1330127327l/13821.SY75.jpg 1011388] and Andy Weir's The Egg: in the beginning, there was a Consciousness, sober and staid. It decided to divide itself; those divisions then began differing. Along the way they created a little blue-green planet, invented and fine-tuned a thing called Life, and started sending themselves down to incarnate and reincarnate in those living beings; to learn and then return, over and over. The differences between the Consciousnesses grew radically: some chose to collect lives of pleasure or wealth, others chose humility and suffering. The Consciousnesses, unable/unwilling to merge back into One, communicating only in the limited ways of differentiated selves, grew apart, each convinced that their ways of learning are the One And Only True Ones.(We are all One. Humans, insects, trees, air. I've felt this, and know it deep down, but some days it can be hard to remember. We inhabit separate bodies, with the (pretty convincing) illusion of separate minds, and sometimes we forget that there are no Others. Even Buddhist monks incite and foment violence sometimes.) (And then again, some of the best moments of my life have involved communion — mental and emotional as well as physical — with Others. So I'm full of contradictions.)Anyhow. No real answers. No closure. Just... a lot of questions, and uncertainty, and kindness. The first-person narration (from the perspective of one of the Consciousnesses, flawedly self-aware) was remarkably effective. This is the kind of story that you really, really want to discuss with a close friend.

The title story is a proposal commission - something meant for one person to read to his prospective bride. It tells of a groom-to-be on an 8 week Orbit of Waiting rocket that sees him travelling at the speed of light for an equivalent 4 years Earth time. He's hoping to precisely time a reunion with his travelling bride who is headed on a round trip to Alpha Centauri with her family. Things go wondrously awry.

The collection is bookended with On My Way To You that details the story from the bride-to-be's perspective, written as an anniversary gift to the original couple since married and with a 2 year old. Both are wonderfully realized stories following a familiar narrative structure unlike some of the more oblique Korean short stories I've read in the past. Loved them both for what they are.

Sandwiched between is The Prophet of Corruption which was a little more challenging for me to parse. I loved the concept of our mortal Lower Realm as a school inhabited by members of the the Dark Realm. These handful of fourth dimensional Prophets become each other's mothers and sons, tormentors, saviours and killers - a vast interconnection of lives. It reminded me of a Buddhist spin on Andy Weir's classic sci-fi short The Egg.

Just some great old-school feeling sci-fi reads — and I really appreciated the copious author and translator notes that round out the collection.