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Fiction

A finite jest

Chi Ta-wei’s dystopic novel
by •
April 2022, no. 441

The Membranes: A novel by Chi Ta-wei, translated by Ari Larissa Heinrich

Columbia University Press, US$17 pb, 160 pp

Fiction

A finite jest

Chi Ta-wei’s dystopic novel
by •
April 2022, no. 441
Chi Ta-wei at the 2015 ‘Les Utopiales’ international festival of science fiction in Nantes (photograph by Yves Tennevin, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

It is 2100, and the states of the world have divvied up the ocean floor, constructing domed cities in which humanity, such as it is, survives. The earth’s irradiated, unliveable surface is the haunt of adventure tourists and archaeologists, the battleground of military androids watched on screens by the humans at the bottom of the sea.

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Josh Stenberg

Josh Stenberg is an Associate Professor in Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney. He holds a Discovery Early Career Research Award from the Australian Research Council, and is a translator and author of fiction and poetry. (photograph by H. Romero)

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