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Bae Myung-hoon (author), Stella Kim (translator), Launch Something!, Honford Star, 2023. 368 pgs.
Telling us he was inspired by the “ridiculous heatwave in the summer of 2018”, Bae Myung-hoon sets the parameters of Launch Something! in Chapter 1. A second sun has appeared in the sky. And even more curious: a piece, or a slice, is missing, giving it the appearance of a pizza or Pac-Man. But as the quirky novelty of this image wears off, the stifling heat it radiates down to Earth only intensifies. As Earth becomes uninhabitable, the Korean Air Force is left with little choice but to consider resettlement on Mars.
The heatwave, so vividly described, launches the reader into the disorienting and stifling haze that endures throughout the novel. Here we meet Un Jonghyun, an intelligence analyst, who steps out of a car into a mysterious “expanse”, somewhere between a training field and plaza, and immediately begins to “sweat like a pig”:
[His] jacket was thick and unbreathable, and, underneath, his sweat-sodden shirt stuck to his skin. He held up a folder to shield his face from the sun—the Republic of Korea Space Force logo on the front sparkled in the sunlight. It sparkled twice. Just as it was impossible to cover the sky with your hands, it was impossible to escape from the rays of two suns with just a single folder.
This opening sets the tone for the remainder of the novel, characters and environment in a symbiotic relationship. In the intense heat, they move slower, dazed, while the descriptions of place are shaped by their disoriented gazes.
At the same time, the level of precision in such descriptions reflects the painstaking attention to detail characteristic of the Space Force that anchors the story. From the narrator documenting the number of flashes of sunlight on the folder, or the meticulous placing of stationary in a pencil case, to the mechanics of eye contact—“the angle and direction of gazes shifting left to right”, Bae represents an intense and disconcerting scrutiny.
The macro-story is also intricately plotted, each development unfolding like the origami Pac-Man hovering overhead. Detailed character biographies at the beginning tell us that Bae wants us to take Launch Something! seriously and read into his character’s movements and motivations as carefully as they are written. His dialogue is layered with social manipulations and powerplays, for example in the following exchange between Kim Mugyong and Chief Gu, whom Mugyong has reminded to “give straight answers”. He demands:
“Last autumn, you launched a rocket using the Space Force’s budget, is it true?”
“Yes, we successfully launched a rocket,” Gu Yemin answered.
… “It is a weaponised satellite, is it not?”
“It is, sir.”
At that moment, Kim Mugyong paused for a moment. It was a signal that he was going to land a punch that he’d been building up to. He stared at the impeccable face of the chief of staff…
After the pause, he asked, “And who is the satellite the enemy of?”
As if the question wasn’t at all a difficult one to answer, Gu Yemin promptly replied, “It is no one’s enemy.”
When a complex ethical debate ensues, the irony of Mugyong’s statement that “everyone here must always represent the public and give straight answers” is foregrounded. In this exchange, Bae meets macro and micro-politics, leaving the reader assured that these characters, while inhabiting a sci-fi world, are relatable and complex, driven by recognisable impulses and conflicts.
Though Bae tells us that the novel was not inspired by the US Space Force that was signed into law by Donald Trump in 2019, the novel is not without explicit reference to geopolitics. After reading Tower (2009), reviewed previously in Cha, such references feel familiar. One such moment is when Woo Jeyoung philosophises:
If you knew why a certain object came to have a certain shape, you would know exactly what can be substituted or not substituted. That was how they tried to found a nation.
Here, Bae’s insightful reflections appear thinly veiled by characters who voice them. Still, they are situated well enough so as not to feel clunky, framed here by Woo Jeyoung, who we later learn is a native Martian, reflecting on the “creativity” of the settlement founders. Familiar too are flashes of satire used to critique authoritarian systems, for example, when the Chief of Staff is projected on a conference call so that her face dominates an entire wall, referred to as “God-mode”. And there’s the disdain for organisations that try to ‘manage’ human impulses out of their employees, producing “Romance Termination Reports”, and compiling lists of “Romancers” for disciplinary action. But it isn’t on the whole a humorous novel. Compared to his short story collection, Tower (2009), in Launch Something, Bae’s distinctive mode of wry political critique feels measured and muted.
While it was Bae’s sharp socio-political critique, and quick, intense vignettes, that made Tower so explosive, the writing style of Launch Something feels less fun and frantic. While this stylistic difference may in part be due to a different translator (Stella Kim, in place of Sung Ryu, who translated Tower), Launch Something is certainly slower paced, sustained by characters who feel more complex, Bae’s critique more subtle and “grown-up”.
In fact, stylistically speaking, it is Bae’s treatment of time and space, and the relationship between them, that characterises Launch Something. Choosing to have only 9 chapters in a 317-page novel is not the only reason that the work feels expansive. And yet, Bae’s imagery is so vivid, with crisp details, that the action remains close and immediate, as illustrated in the following description of a tense basketball game.
Lim Junggyu… watched Summin’s movements and tried his best to react. From left to right, and again to the left… He concentrated on her feet…, as well as her shoulders, her waist, and how she was shifting her weight.
It was right at that moment that Summin’s ponytail bounced up and leaned to the right—a familiar sight to someone who has been in a vacuum, like the shuttle between Earth and Mars… When something on one’s body moved one way, it meant the body was actually moving in the other direction.
In moments like this, the reader gets the sense that we are watching a slow-motion replay, as though the scene itself is taking place in the vacuum described. In each fragment of detail, the reader’s gaze is carefully guided, not between discrete people and actions, but between individual body parts, and fractional movements, that form the captivating whole.
Bae writes with acute attention to the space and time his characters inhabit. This unusual fragmentation and pacing contributes to the haziness that hangs over the novel, ever since the first description of the heatwave. Then, towards the end, an exchange between Young-ah and Kugyong suddenly foregrounds the thematic importance of time in the novel. As Young-ah ponders how to coordinate simultaneous broadcasts on Mars and on Earth, she says, “Oh, I meant a year by Mars time. … It’ll be more like a year and ten months in Earth time,” reminding Kugyong of relativity. Bae stylistically represents this relative experience of time. It is as though time, for the reader, is stretched. But again, this isn’t to say that the novel drags. The intensity of his descriptions of place and action commands attention. As though suspended in zero-gravity, and confined within a space craft, Bae, his characters, and the reader, have a few seconds more to observe one another astutely, focusing on details we might ordinarily overlook.
In his afterword, Bae expresses a hope that in this work, compared to his others, the reader “can find more room to breathe”. He achieves this goal. Launch Something! is not a quick read, and compared with Tower, the novel took time to feel at home in. There were moments when I wasn’t sure if there was a layer to certain exchanges that I was missing, an underlying context that, unfamiliar as I was with the operations of Space Forces and Intelligence Departments, hadn’t registered. That might be the case. But after reading the author’s note, I’m equally persuaded that this is deliberate on Bae’s part, giving his reader not only space and time, but reason to notice.
How to cite: Hamilton, Lucy. “A Novel of Space-time: Bae Myung-hoon’s Launch Something!.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 28 Jan. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/01/28/launch-something.
Lucy Hamilton is a novelist and academic from Sheffield, UK. Her debut novel, The Widening of Tolo Highway (Penguin Random House SEA, 2022), set in Hong Kong’s New Territories, is now available worldwide. She lectured in Stylistics at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, and now works at the University of Leeds. [Read all contributions by Lucy Hamilton.]