South Korean Sci-Fi!

Are you bored of always seeing Tokyo presented as the city of the sci-fi future? Had enough of Japan and Hong Kong being the epitome locations of dystopian, cyberpunk fiction?

You’re in luck my friend, as my new article on Neon Dystopia looks at the representation of Seoul and South Korea through TV and film like Sense8, Colossal and Okja, along with science-fiction literature such as W.G. Marshall’s Enormity and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.

Another book I didn’t mention is the intriguing curio Angry Young Spaceman by Jim Munroe, which imagines South Korea as an alien planet playing host to a human TEFL teacher spreading the word of ESL. This is yet another example of a sci-fi story talking about Korea, yet shirking away from representing Koreans themselves as anything other than The Other in a Westerner’s eyes.

You could also do worse than read this Korea-set chapter of utopian sci-fi tale Star Rover by Jack London, written in 1915 and shared by Gusts of Popular Feeling back in 2013.

And finally, if you enjoyed Anne Hathaway’s Colossal movie and want to find more post-modern kaiju indie films, than do watch Hitoshi Matsumoto’s Big Man Japan from 2007.

-Giacomo Lee, author of Funereal

giacomolee.net