The duvet of “Towards Eternity” by Anton Hur / Courtesy of HarperVia
“Towards Eternity,” the debut novel by Anton Hur, who has constructed a worldwide repute as a star Korean-to-English literary translator, borrows closely from the concepts of technofuturists. They theorize some extent — the singularity — at which superintelligent machines tilt issues towards a posthuman sci-fi future, and human-machine hybrids begin to substitute us. Hur’s story begins on the cusp of that revolution.
Those that have heard the technofuturist gospel will readily acknowledge the premise behind the novel. Ray Kurzweil, laptop scientist and the real-world chief prophet of technofuturism, predicted superintelligent machines by 2045 in his 2005 magnum opus, “The Singularity is Close to.”
“[T]he social and philosophical ramifications of those adjustments can be profound,” Kurzweil wrote, “and the threats they pose appreciable.”
With these concepts in thoughts, “Towards Eternity” grapples with an more and more well timed query: How can human that means survive in a world of superintelligent machines?
The primary central character in “Towards Eternity” resembles Hur himself: a cosmopolitan literary skilled of Korean origin. However not like Hur (so far as I do know), the character can be an skilled in synthetic intelligence (AI). He donates his physique to science, to be used in pioneering “nanotherapy” work. The top purpose is to exchange our bodies, from the cells up, with “nanodroids” — a real-world Kurzweil-singularity techno-prophecy.
Additional dialogue of plot or characters would get sophisticated. Suffice it to say, many characters, or iterations of characters, endure the physique substitute course of, or derivatives of it.
Regardless of the desires of nanotechnology could have been, the undertaking will get hijacked. The evil Janus Company, from Korea, is on the heart. They, or their AI successors, need world domination. Humanity — nonaltered people are round, however are coldly known as “Redundants” — is in the best way.
The plot offers in a sure well-trodden trope of each sci-fi and mythology: man enjoying god. The ideology replaces a lot of conventional faith with the concept of everlasting life, delivered digitally. Gods are outsourced to, or outmoded by, godlike AIs. Digitally enhanced people evolve into posthuman standing. Human non secular bodily incarnations, out; technological incarnations, in.
In a world below stress from expertise, what of artwork? Hur addresses this disaster of that means with literature, which acts as a significant plot ingredient.
We see in “Towards Eternity” an attraction to the written phrase, to how writing and literature join us over area and time. “Language is like DNA,” one of many characters says, immediately stating a significant theme. On this world, humanity has been defeated. However poetry is undefeated. Poetry finds attention-grabbing methods to refuse to die.
It lives on within the novel, used to render a sci-fi model of past-life reminiscences. These visions, which learn like spiritual revelations, hang-out and encourage. They function a protection of humanity even in a posthuman future.
Hur’s novel might be learn, partly, as an allegory for reincarnation. In some ways, it bears many similarities with David Mitchell’s 2004 novel “Cloud Atlas,” which can be about reincarnation — even when it avoids saying so immediately. “Cloud Atlas” is an awe-inspiring tribute to the mysteries of life and human future. Hur’s imaginative and prescient with “Towards Eternity” is equally formidable, though it could have been simpler to try one thing tighter in scope.
“Towards Eternity” additionally embeds its literary allegory within the framing of the story: There is no such thing as a single narrator, only a vary of various narrators throughout time. Every narrator is a personality in, but additionally a author of, the story.
Every chapter is an replace in a paper pocket book handed down, beginning within the mid-Twenty first century and effectively into the longer term. Characters discover, or in any other case purchase, the pocket book, and spontaneously write updates in it. It survives via chaos and calamity.
That is the “discovered manuscript” gadget, capable of encourage throughout time.
Sadly, there are a number of inconsistencies within the execution. Hur skates across the difficulties of this framing gadget by merely ignoring them. For instance, a lot of the e-book consists of intricate dialogue sequences, that are exhausting to think about being written down in a pocket book after the occasions. With the frequent introduction of latest narrators, the story might be exhausting to maintain observe of. And the characters are inclined to all sound the identical.
Regardless of that, “Towards Eternity” isn’t a nasty novel. It’s simply that it doesn’t all the time rise to the problem it set for itself.
The long run is Korean
It’s generally stated {that a} literary translator is de facto somebody ready to jot down their very own novel. In an essay revealed in Korean in 2023, Hur confirmed as a lot about himself. He had gotten into literary translation, he wrote, with a thoughts to hold across the scene till he may publish his personal novel.
His success as a prolific translator led to “Towards Eternity” being revealed in mid-2024 by HarperVia, an imprint of HarperCollins that spotlights worldwide literature and largely offers in translated works.
Though written in English, “Towards Eternity” is infused with Koreanness. This high quality appears unironic and with out apology, even when it feels pressured.
Twenty years earlier, “Cloud Atlas” had used Korea as a central setting for certainly one of its storylines, set sooner or later. It could have been the primary main novel in English to conceptually affiliate Korea with “sci-fi futuristic.” In Korea itself, science fiction as a style was fairly marginal, underdeveloped and with out a lot respect till a development bought going within the mid-2010s.
The 1982 movie “Blade Runner,” one other work from which “Towards Eternity” appears to attract inspiration, famously featured a dystopic futurescape closely influenced by Japan. It was, partly, an interpolation of the path Asian megacities would go.
Japan could have been seen as futuristic in 1982. Korea was not. However a number of a long time later, Korea has constructed an analogous picture. Commentators usually speak about how as we speak’s Seoul can at instances have a sci-fi really feel. Among the metropolis’s showpiece areas and common feeling can draw parallels to cyberpunk.
Possibly the latest rise of curiosity in translated Korean science fiction is sensible. No matter we make of it, Hur’s Korean-infused science fiction novel is part of that development.
As for the large query of human that means threatened by technological developments? We are able to proceed hoping for the perfect. An historical aphorism involves thoughts: “Life is brief, artwork is lengthy.” Within the age of AI, we may do worse than look to literature for inspiration, a lot as among the characters in “Towards Eternity” do. Consider it as a protection of humanity.
“Towards Eternity” is out there via dbbooks.co.kr.
Peter Juhl is a researcher centered on Korean political and safety points.
