Today it is difficult not to imagine a future where human intelligence will function in tandem with artificial intelligence. South Korean writer Djuna takes us along one such mind-bending futuristic journey at a breakneck pace in their gripping sci-fi thriller Counterweight. The novel, originally published as Pyoenghyeongchu in 2021, has been skilfully translated into English by Anton Hur.
Several years ago, two revered figures of sci-fi came up with the same theme for their respective novels that were published almost simultaneously in 1979. The resemblance was so uncanny that one of them, Arthur C Clark, wrote an open letter to the Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America to defend the other writer, Charles Sheffield, against any possible charges of plagiarism. The novels in question were Clarke’s Fountain of Paradise and Sheffield’s The Web Between the World – the pioneering works that popularised the idea of the “space elevator” in science fiction.
“Space elevator” was first put across as a scientific concept in 1895 by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and revisited by another Soviet engineer, Yuri Artsutanov, in 1960 who thought of it as an “electric train to cosmos”. The concept involves the development of a transportation system where people and payloads from Earth can travel up along load-bearing cables to reach outer space. The structure can be kept in position employing a force between the earth and a counterweight, the latter being a heavy mass beyond the geosynchronous orbit.
Race to space
Djuna’s novel unfolds in a future where an obscenely powerful and rich Korean conglomerate “LK Group” is manically pursuing the construction of the world’s first space elevator on the fictional island of Patusan. Its mad ambition to reach space has uprooted the indigenous population and wreaked havoc on the environment. The political conniving schemes of the LK Group have additionally earned it the wrath of the Patusan Liberation Front.
As the stakes are high, a shady industrial espionage organisation named Green Fairy also operates sans scruples in this chaos to milk the most out of it. But the worst threat to LK group probably lies within its own company. Despite its clout and moolah, the organisation is a stinking quagmire of corporate politics, secrets and conspiracies.
Clues to cracking the secrets dangle in myriads of speculations and narratives. But who is to be trusted? In this baffling maze, we meet characters with different motives and philosophies – Rex Tamaki, a hot-headed LK employee who doesn’t get along with Mac; Ross Lee, a brilliant engineer hired by LK to “avoid anti-chaebol prosecution”, and the cold yet talented Kim Jae-in who heads the LK Space Development Research Centre and has a mind of her own.
The former president of the LK Group Han Junghyuk, who started the space elevator as his dream project, is dead. But his deep attachment to this megastructure made him create a life for himself after death. He has stored his memories in the junkyard of Counterweight before he died. This memory bank is crucial for the future of LK and the world.
The narrator, Mac, chief of LK’s External Affairs, earlier worked for Junghyuk. However, he senses something fishy about the recent state of affairs in the organisation. After one of his routine operations in California, LK gives him a list of employees to be surveilled for internal spying. His attention is drawn to one particular suspect, Choi Gangwu, an employee whose hobby is butterfly-watching.
Gangwu, who prima facie comes across as a dimwit received an exceptionally high score on LK’s entrance tests – thanks to biobots he injected himself with for cheating. But what catches Mac’s attention is the fact that Gangwu’s memories are entangled with those of the former president of the corporation, who is long dead.
The action-packed drama hurtles through a world where hackable neural implants called “worms” are installed inside human brains, where AIs have organically founded corporations, where fake employees are created by organisations to get away with dirty deeds, and where Hollywood shoots Spacewar reality programmes in the orbit of the moon. As they navigate a swamp of all things untrustworthy, Mac and Gwangwu are pitted against unknown villains and a complex love triangle. This race to retrieve Han Junghyuk’s memories is a wild cosmic adventure.
Future tense
The plot is intense and ingeniously structured. The narration is taut and immensely engaging. The wide range of themes Djuna touches upon makes the story actually seem plausible when we look at the possible future projections in the context of our world. The novel is also evocative of cult classics like Star Wars and Matrix, questioning ethics and free will in the times of AI, imagining a future where humans are reduced to “lumps of desires” and dispensable bio machines.
Several far-reaching concerns overwhelm us. How will capitalism and neo-imperialism drive our world with exponential progress in space technology? Will technology drive humans to seek god-like powers or will the sun set upon humanity? Will humans relentlessly destroy nature and end up aligning with Han’s idea that the “best thing humanity can do for nature is to sequester itself from nature”?
There are no easy answers to these grave questions, but Djuna’s storytelling has a levitating ring to it. Their craft is powerful enough to keep the adrenaline pumping right up to the last line, simultaneously suffusing tenderness in an otherwise cold world of machines and space debris.
Djuna has published several works in South Korea in a career spanning more than 20 years – and still they remain a faceless writer whose personal details are unknown to readers. They are a former chair of the Korean Science Fiction Writers Union and have ten short story collections and five novels to their credit. The translator, Anton Hur, who was double-longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize, has masterfully brought Djuna’s work to life in English, with the belief that “non-mainstream Korean literature deserves an audience outside of Korea”.
After the stellar success of K-pop and K-drama, K-sci-fi could well prove to be the next big Hallyu wave, shooting for the stars and sweeping earthlings along on a cosmic tide.
Counterweight: A Novel, Djuna, translated from the Korean by Anton Hur, Pantheon.
