“Her fiction is a breath-taking piece of a cinematic art itself. Reminiscent of the world we experienced in Matrix, Inception, and Dark City, still it leads us to this entirely original structure, which is a ground-breaking, mystic literary and cinematic experience. Indeed, powerful and graceful.”—Bong Joon-ho, Oscar-winning director of Parasite
In development into a feature fim by Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (Dune, Forest Gump)
The New York Times 2021 Summer Reading
Time Best Books of the Month
The Times Best Books of the Month
In this mind-expanding work of speculative fiction, one of South Korea’s most treasured writers explores the driving forces of humanity— love, hope, creation, destruction, and the very meaning of existence— in three novellas.
In “I’m Waiting for You” and “On My Way”, an engaged couple coordinate their separate missions to distant corners of the galaxy to ensure—through relativity—they can arrive back on Earth simultaneously to make it down the aisle. But small incidents wreak havoc on space and time, driving their wedding date further away. As centuries on Earth pass and the land and climate change, one thing is constant: the desire of the lovers to be together. In two separate yet linked stories, Kim Bo-Young cleverly demonstrates the idea love that is timeless and hope springs eternal, despite seemingly insurmountable challenges and the deepest despair.
In «To the End of the Universe«, Sung-ha is a time traveler, voyaging endlessly through space, and his destination is the end of the universe, reaching where no one has traveled before. He was born on a spaceship captained by his father, and upon inheriting it he continued to travel through time-warps. Coming back and forth to Earth to fuel, he witnessed the rise and fall of many civilizations. Then one day, someone talks to him. Who or what is speaking? Will he ever be able to complete his journey?
1. I’m Waiting for You 당신을 기다리고 있어
2. On My Way to You 당신에게 가고 있어
3. To the End of the Universe 미래로 가는 사람들
“How long can love endure? Who decides what makes a person good or bad? And is there really such a thing as free will? These are heavy topics, but Kim tackles them with playful prose and a creative eye. Her narratives, which are set in the future, drive us to reconsider our present and all that we take for granted.” — Time Magazine
“I don’t know what went wrong, or when it started, but everything’s a mess. In I’m Waiting for You and Other Stories Kim Bo-Young has perfectly captured the longing and isolation of our contemporary moment, but depicted against landscapes and realms that are utterly fresh. With stories that manage to present fantastical realities, ask philosophical questions, and weave exciting plots, Kim Bo-Young has given us a timely reminder that longing and heartbreak can be as infinite as the universe, but also just as lovely.» – Micaiah Johnson, author of The Space Between Worlds
«This translation will help fill in some of the gaps in the availability of Korean sf in English, as well as please readers who enjoy lyrical, philosophical sf stories.» – Booklist
«Bold, inventive, and utterly unforgettable, Bo-Young’s stories are designed to take your breath away.» – Popsugar
«The epistolary nature of the lovers’ story gives readers a chance to empathize with the characters; to feel the dilemmas, the triumphs, and the lows of the two lovers. The straightforward narrative of the gods’ featurette is a surreal swirl of ideas that weaves the reader through the tale…This is thought-provoking science fiction that will leave readers musing long after the book is finished.» – Library Journal
“Where does humanity end and the universe begin? What are the limits of love and hope? What is the difference between creation and destruction? These are big questions, but Bo-Young’s attempt to bring shape to them in these stories is stunning, humbling and utterly beautiful.” – BookPage
«This is a book as much about the process of translation as it is about science fiction, Buddhism and how to live among people…The purpose of the book is to showcase not so much a collection of narratives but the love and respect between several people working together, sharing their minds across languages and distance to beautiful, dizzying effect.»
– New York Times
“In four paired short stories, Korean science-fiction doyenne Kim imagines the vanishingly distant future….Playing with notions of immortality and toying with improbable transgressions of the laws of physics, Kim delivers a suite of stories that is at once lyrical and full of foreboding, keeping dramatic tensions tight among poetic evocations of a home planet that is ‘our hall of learning, our cradle of experience, our short-term interactive training ground,’ if one we have also destroyed. Much of the best science fiction is coming from East Asia, and Kim’s work ranks high in that emerging tradition.” – Kirkus Reviews (starred review)