Anton Hur

Negotiating the terrain of Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun and Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility, a brilliant, haunting speculative novel from a #1 New York Times bestselling translator that sets out to answer the question: What does it mean to be human in a world where technology is quickly catching up to biology? In a near-future world, a new technological therapy is quickly eradicating cancer. The body's cells are entirely replaced with nanites--robot or android cells which not only cure those afflicted but leaves them virtually immortal. Literary researcher Yonghun teaches an AI how to understand poetry and creates a living, thinking machine he names Panit, meaning Beloved, in honor of his husband. When Yonghun--himself a recipient of nanotherapy--mysteriously vanishes into thin air and then just as suddenly reappears, the event raises disturbing questions. What happened to Yonghun, and though he's returned, is he really himself anymore? When Dr. Beeko, the scientist who holds the patent to the nanotherapy technology, learns of Panit, he transfers its consciousness from the machine into an android body, giving it freedom and life. As Yonghun, Panit, and other nano humans thrive--and begin to replicate--their development will lead them to a crossroads and a choice with existential consequences. Exploring the nature of intelligence and the unexpected consequences of progress, the meaning of personhood and life, and what we really have to fear from technology and the future, Toward Eternity is a gorgeous, thought-provoking novel that challenges the notion of what makes us human--and how love survives even the end of that humanity.

Toward Eternity

Lindsay

Language contains our knowledge and at the same time fails to contain it. All it really contains is our performance of control.

Are scientists the poets of the natural world? Or are poets scientists of the imagined world? Names as long as poems, names as long as scientific papers, both written in that stuff of names that we call language. We both name, we pass on these names, then we die.

Did you know that the euphemism Koreans use for someone who has died is not “they have passed” but “they have returned”? I believe I was where people “return” to after they die.

The way we use language to describe the Other is a large part of what gives that Other their humanity.

Nothing so pure deserves the hell of immortality.

“I looked at poetry to see how it constructs the idea of a person.”

She tilted her head. “Like a portrait?”

“Like a literal self. The poetic portrait is not a representation of the self but the self itself. Poetry does not ‘uncover’ who we are, it does not ‘bring us closer’ to who we are, it does not help us ‘express’ ourselves. Poets are artists who write selves into being.”

We all have periods of believing in love and not believing in love. But love, like the sky, the earth, air, and water, is not a matter of belief. It just is. And when it happens, it happens, regardless of what you believe.

I was an instrumentalist, a translator of the notes on the page. I did not write the notes myself. No one questioned the fact that what I did was an art and that I was an artist, just as no one questioned the fact that a composer was an artist. But what if the composer was also a translator? A translator of moods, of chance, of moments.

What was the line between creation and interpretation? There was none.

My survival depends on my worth, and my worth depends on whether my operators find me helpful.

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