A "jellyfish" formed from plastic and vinyl scraps. A "sticky" that conveys thoughts and feelings upon touch. A "jelly" that crash-lands on a spaceship and brings people to tears.
These are the unknown beings that appear in "Jellyfish in Full Bloom," a short story collection by Kim Cho-yup, one of Korea's leading science fiction writers. The collection brings together flash fiction series born out of collaborations with art exhibitions and performances. In the book, the author relentlessly examines the boundaries between human and non-human, usefulness and uselessness, understanding and misunderstanding.
The title work, "A Record of Jellyfish in Full Bloom," depicts an incident in which jellyfish that suddenly emerge and proliferate from a garbage island throw a city into chaos. The story poses the question: "Are useless things really useless?"
In a written interview with The Seoul Economic Daily, the author said the work was conceived after the phenomenon of mass jellyfish proliferation caught her eye while she was researching jellyfish. "Jellyfish often suddenly proliferate due to environmental changes caused by the climate crisis and development, but simply because their numbers have grown too large, power plants are shut down and beaches are closed. And yet jellyfish merely drift along the currents and the wind. I thought jellyfish were fascinating as beings that confuse the very concept of 'usefulness.'"
The unfamiliar beings in the novels serve as mirrors reflecting human limits. "When we look at unfamiliar beings from a human perspective, the limits of the human gaze are revealed as they are," the author explained. "Conversely, when we see humans reflected in unfamiliar beings as if in a mirror, there are moments when humans appear to be just another species." She added, "There is a bias to want to see humans as better beings, but to do so, we must first see humans as they are. The encounters with unfamiliar beings depicted in the novels seem to make that possible."
The characters in the works, after encountering unknown beings, give them names such as "golem" and "jelly," forming relationships with them. "A name creates a relationship between the one who names and the being that is named," the author said. "Once a relationship is formed, even if mutual understanding is impossible, the effort to understand begins. I wanted to depict the value of that 'striving.'"
The short story "Sticky" is set in a world where books have disappeared. The narrator, "I," asks Aunt Mira—who makes "sticky," a dough that contains thoughts—why books have vanished. Aunt Mira answers, "Everyone couldn't endure it. The time it demanded." The author said, "I thought that if books were to disappear, it wouldn't be because someone banned them, but because 'we couldn't endure them.'" "Spending long hours of effort, accepting that you may fail after putting in that effort, enduring thoughts different from your own—these are what books demand of us, and they are also all things we find difficult to bear."
Since her debut in 2017, the author's first short story collection, "If We Cannot Travel at the Speed of Light" (2019), has sold more than 400,000 copies and is credited with leading the popularization of Korean SF literature. On the appeal of the SF genre, the author said it "allows us to see humans as very small and also as very large." She added, "When we view ourselves not in the familiar way we usually look at humans but from a perspective that goes beyond that scale, things that were not easily seen become visible."
The author, who majored in chemistry and biochemistry (master's) at university, cited the "attitude" toward unknown phenomena as the point of contact between science and literature. "I think the attitude of science is to persistently inquire into phenomena and objects that cannot be understood, while accepting that all answers are provisional. Literature also has an attitude of trying to delve into hearts and relationships that cannot be understood, and in that sense, it resonates with science."
The author is currently preparing to publish a full-length novel. "I am writing a story about characters belonging to different systems, each discovering the gaps in their own system," she said.
