2.5
Counterweight
ByPublisher Description
A WIRED "BOOK YOU NEED TO READ" • For fans of the worlds of Philip K. Dick, Squid Game, and Severance: An absorbing tale of corporate intrigue, political unrest, unsolved mysteries, and the havoc wreaked by one company’s monomaniacal endeavor to build the world’s first space elevator
An “antic, madcap noir with flair" (Wired) and “fast-paced cyberpunk story” (The New York Times Book Review) from one of South Korea's most revered science fiction writers, whose identity remains unknown.
***
On the fictional island of Patusan—and much to the ire of the Patusan natives—the Korean conglomerate LK is constructing an elevator into Earth’s orbit, gradually turning this one-time tropical resort town into a teeming travel hub: a gateway to and from our planet. Up in space, holding the elevator’s “spider cable” taut, is a mass of space junk known as the counterweight. And stashed within that junk is a trove of crucial data: a memory fragment left by LK’s former CEO, the control of which will determine the company’s—and humanity’s—future.
Racing up the elevator to retrieve the data is a host of rival forces: Mac, the novel’s narrator and LK’s chief of External Affairs, increasingly disillusioned with his employer; the everyman Choi Gangwu, unwittingly at the center of Mac’s investigations; the former CEO’s brilliant niece and power-hungry son; and Rex Tamaki, a violent officer in LK’s Security Division. They’re all caught in a labyrinth of fake identities, neuro-implants called Worms, and old political grievances held by the Patusan Liberation Front, the army of island natives determined to protect Patusan’s sovereignty.
Originally conceived by Djuna as a low-budget science fiction film, with literary references as wide-ranging as Joseph Conrad and the Marquis de Sade, Counterweight is part cyberpunk, part hard-boiled detective fiction, and part parable of South Korea’s neocolonial ambition and its rippling effects.
An “antic, madcap noir with flair" (Wired) and “fast-paced cyberpunk story” (The New York Times Book Review) from one of South Korea's most revered science fiction writers, whose identity remains unknown.
***
On the fictional island of Patusan—and much to the ire of the Patusan natives—the Korean conglomerate LK is constructing an elevator into Earth’s orbit, gradually turning this one-time tropical resort town into a teeming travel hub: a gateway to and from our planet. Up in space, holding the elevator’s “spider cable” taut, is a mass of space junk known as the counterweight. And stashed within that junk is a trove of crucial data: a memory fragment left by LK’s former CEO, the control of which will determine the company’s—and humanity’s—future.
Racing up the elevator to retrieve the data is a host of rival forces: Mac, the novel’s narrator and LK’s chief of External Affairs, increasingly disillusioned with his employer; the everyman Choi Gangwu, unwittingly at the center of Mac’s investigations; the former CEO’s brilliant niece and power-hungry son; and Rex Tamaki, a violent officer in LK’s Security Division. They’re all caught in a labyrinth of fake identities, neuro-implants called Worms, and old political grievances held by the Patusan Liberation Front, the army of island natives determined to protect Patusan’s sovereignty.
Originally conceived by Djuna as a low-budget science fiction film, with literary references as wide-ranging as Joseph Conrad and the Marquis de Sade, Counterweight is part cyberpunk, part hard-boiled detective fiction, and part parable of South Korea’s neocolonial ambition and its rippling effects.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesCounterweight Reviews
2.5
“I don't know if I'm missing something or if it's the book's fault, but I have no idea what I just listened to. It felt like a pointless mystery, and I barely know anything about the characters. I'm confused why the space elevator was necessary to the plot because, although it's pretty cool and I would have liked to know more about it, this story could have taken place at any company ever. The rest of the sci-fi elements like the brain implants was very interesting, but ultimately this book was a bust.”
“Weird little cyberpunk sci-fi novella featuring a space elevator, AI robots, a murder mystery, and a deadly race to the elevator’s counterweight to retrieve the data left behind by the deceased CEO that may be the secret to the future of humanity.”
“Bold. Fast. Strange.
A Korean sci-fi novel built around a space elevator, a corporate conspiracy, and an island fighting back. The world Djuna constructs is layered and inventive, full of fake identities, neuro-implants, and a corporation with no interest in being held accountable. What stayed with me was the ambition of it all and the sharp critique of corporate power running underneath the action.
Go in for the ride.”
About Djuna
DJUNA is a novelist and film critic, and a former chair of the Korean Science Fiction Writers Union. For more than twenty years they have published as a faceless writer, refusing to reveal personal details regarding age, gender, or legal name. Widely considered to be one of South Korea’s most important science fiction writers, Djuna has published ten short-story collections and five novels.
ANTON HUR was double-long-listed for the 2022 International Booker Prize and short-listed for his translation of Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung. He has also won PEN translation grants transatlantically and has taught at various institutions in both South Korea and abroad, including the National Centre for Writing in the U.K. He lives in Seoul.
ANTON HUR was double-long-listed for the 2022 International Booker Prize and short-listed for his translation of Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung. He has also won PEN translation grants transatlantically and has taught at various institutions in both South Korea and abroad, including the National Centre for Writing in the U.K. He lives in Seoul.
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