Introducing English readers to the speculative fiction of pseudonymous author Djuna, whose writings and interventions into internet culture have attracted a cult following in South Korea
The stories brought together in this collection introduce for the first time in English the dazzling speculative imaginings of Djuna, one of South Korea's most provocative SF writers. Whether describing a future society light years away or satirizing Confucian patriarchy, these stories evoke a universe at once familiar and clearly fantastical. Also collected here for the first time are all six stories set in the Linker Universe, where a mutating virus sends human beings reeling through the galaxy into a dizzying array of fracturing realities.
Blending influences ranging from genre fiction (zombie, vampire, SF, you name it) to golden-age cinema to Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Djuna's stories together form a brilliantly intertextual, mordantly funny critique of the human condition as it evolves into less and more than what it once was.
Film critic and speculative fiction writer Djuna, who first appeared as an online presence in the early 1990s, has steadfastly refused to confirm any personal details regarding age, gender or legal name, or even whether they are one person or multiple. Djuna is widely considered one of the most prolific and important writers in South Korean science fiction. They have published nine short story collections, three novels, and numerous essays and uncollected stories.
"Everything Good Dies Here presents the wide-ranging speculative fiction of pseudonymous author, film critic, and internet cult hero Djuna, whose strange and wondrous tales and early interventions into digital culture have helped shape the South Korean imaginary. The stories brought together in this collection span the author's career from the 1990s through the 2010s. In addition to five stand-alone stories that draw upon influences from 19th-century Korean Confucian literati culture to the early days of the internet to future societies light years away, this volume collects for the first time in a single volume all six stories set in a distant universe governed by a mutating virus that has sent human beings reeling through a dizzying array of fracturing realities. Blending influences ranging from popular genre fiction to the golden age of Hollywood to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Djuna's stories evoke a universe that's at once familiar and clearly fantastical. Made up of fragments, half remembered possibilities, and longings, Everything Good Dies Here provides a sharp, brilliantly intertextual, and mordantly funny critique of the human condition as it evolves into both less and more than what it once was"--
