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[FEATURED REVIEW] Memories of Places We Have Never Been scrap
by Sarah Pinsker
June 9, 2026
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Author Bio 작가 소개
Kim Choyeop
If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light
We cannot go at the speed of light, and sometimes information travels slowly too. Kim Choyeop’s beautiful story collection If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light is already a sensation in Korea, and it is about to reach English-reading readers for the first time. As an avid reader and writer of the short form, I applaud Korean audiences for seeing what many Americans do not: that some of the most interesting writing in the world is done at shorter lengths.
I’ve long held that short stories are superior to novels on a number of fronts. They are the perfect length for a commute, for starters, allowing the reader a complete experience before work even begins, something they can chew over as they go about their day. The short story has always allowed writers to experiment with ideas and form, to take chances, to provoke, to pare a tale down to its essence. It’s a form of magic, this art of breathing life into characters in only a few words, and sending them forth in such a way that the reader sees the situation quickly, and what’s more, imagines the characters have lived whole lives before the first line of prose.
Last autumn I traveled to Korea for the Seoul International Writers’ Festival, where I had the good fortune to share an interview with Kim Choyeop. At the time we shared the stage I had only read the two stories of hers that had been translated into English, both of which impressed me thoroughly. Now, having read Anton Hur’s English translation of her collection If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light, I am further convinced that her reputation is well-earned.
The stories in this collection are my favorite kind of science fiction, which is to say that they are stories with clever ideas that nevertheless center character. Kim’s stories make me feel the excitement that I imagine the early readers of science fiction experienced, and the first readers of the New Wave half a century ago, and they do so while marrying hard sciences and social sciences, stylistic panache, and memorable characters. She writes about first contact with alien species, posthumous mind-uploading, space travel, and space stations, all of which are among the topics speculative fiction has returned to frequently, and all of which are engaged with in new and interesting ways in this collection.
In Kim’s work, the stories are often told at a remove from the person to whom the events happened, allowing daughters and granddaughters and mothers—women who are biologists and astronauts and translators—to wrestle with their own place in a larger narrative. In “Archival Loss,” a daughter investigates the disappearance of her late mother’s uploaded consciousness from the library where such things are stored. In “My Space Hero,” an astronaut candidate deals with the complicated legacy of her astronaut aunt. In “Spectrum,” the narrator tells the story of her grandmother, a spacefaring biologist who went missing decades earlier. When her grandmother is found, only ten years have passed for her, though forty have passed on Earth; she claims that during her long absence she was the first person to make contact with aliens. Rather than focusing on the political or scientific or cultural significance of that first contact, the story builds a Le Guinian connection between two individuals struggling to communicate across a vast gulf of understanding. At the same time, Kim’s master’s degree in biochemistry is put to good use. These are alien aliens, with unique qualities that invoke science fiction’s sense of wonder.
The collection starts with “Symbiosis Theory,” the piece that also served as my introduction to Kim’s work, thanks to Joungmin Lee Comfort’s 2019 translation in Clarkesworld magazine. “Symbiosis Theory” is the story of Ludmilla Markov, an artist whose life’s work consists of paintings of a strange planet, art that evokes a nostalgic feeling in audiences worldwide. It is only after her death that the real life counterpart of Ludmilla’s planet is located in space, and startling new theories of its significance are identified. The story touches on the power of art, but also on a universal search for meaning and connection.
The title story features a space station, that classic locale that any fan of science fiction recognizes. Here, the space station is empty and run down, having reached the end of its usefulness; the only traveler is an elderly woman in seemingly the same position. It’s a quiet story, mostly consisting of a conversation between the traveler and the one employee left to greet her. It’s also a story about scientific breakthroughs and obsolescence, about the ways that innovations can lead to unintended consequences, about the choices that people (and particularly women) are forced to make for their careers, and about the fact that sometimes a possibly futile gesture can also be an act of hope.
In an article at TheBookerPrizes.com, translator Anton Hur wrote, “Reading, to me, is not about being pandered to or seeking out something I already know I like. Reading is about being surprised, or learning about something I never would have dreamed existed, or enjoying something I wouldn’t have imagined myself enjoying until I picked up a certain book.” In my own career, I’ve often had people approach me and say “I don’t read science fiction, but I love your stories,” or “I don’t read short stories, but I love yours.” This collection has the potential to be a similar ambassador to English-reading audiences for short fiction, for science fiction, for Korean science fiction, and for Kim Choyeop’s work. The story “Symbiosis Theory” begins with the line “Ludmilla Markov had memories of a place she had never been to,” a deceptively simple sentence that simultaneously introduces a character’s present and her past. It’s also a fitting opening for a book that, as with all great fiction, promises its readers indelible memories of places and people they have never been.
Writer 필자 소개
Sarah Pinsker
Sarah Pinsker is the Nebula and Hugo award-winning author of two novels, a novella, and over sixty works of short fiction, some gathered in the collections Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea and Lost Places. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland, where she is the author-in-residence at Goucher College.
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