From one of South Korea's most revered science fiction writers, 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.
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 it’s here that lies the key—a trove of personal data left by LK’s former CEO, of dire consequence to 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 …
From one of South Korea's most revered science fiction writers, 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.
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 it’s here that lies the key—a trove of personal data left by LK’s former CEO, of dire consequence to 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 his power-hungry son; and a violent officer from LK’s Security Division, Rex Tamaki—all caught in a labyrinth of fake identities, neuro-implant “Worms,” and old political grievances held by the Patusan Liberation Front, the army of island natives determined to protect their sovereignty.
Conceived by Djuna as a low-budget science fiction film, with literary references as wide-ranging as Joseph Conrad and the Marquis de Sade, The Counterweight is part cyberpunk, part hardboiled detective fiction, and part parable of Korea’s neocolonial ambition and its rippling effects.
Counterweight is a nearish-future scifi thriller set on the island of Patusan, which I have just learned today has a long literary legacy.
The plot follows an unnamed employee of the LK Corporation as he attempts to unravel a series of events revolving around the world's first space elevator, erected by LK on Patusan. I enjoyed the originality of the setting, but I found the whole thing fairly convoluted and somewhat difficult to follow.
The dystopian corporation-state future where having a literal worm implanted in your brain is a condition of employment is becoming all too plausible at this point.
