The Ones Who Survive Are Real — a Review of Bora Chung’s ‘Red Sword’

Bora Chung’s “Red Sword” wastes no time plunging readers into an alien world that is both cruel and enticing, immediately challenging humanity to find a way to reclaim itself. We are first introduced to the narrator — a woman who remains nameless for most of the novel — as she recounts her budding intimacy with a lover aboard a slave ship traversing the far reaches of a galactic empire, only to witness his death shortly after they are cast onto what is dubbed the white planet. What starts as a flicker of dread from her lover’s untimely death swiftly grows into an unrelenting tension that saturates the novel from start to finish.

The narrator and her fellow prisoners have been dispatched to fight on behalf of the grey-suited functionaries of the Empire against monstrous white aliens, who the Imperialists depict as “barbaric and backward indigenous monsters.” The Empire’s reward for driving out the white aliens — freedom, if one endures long enough — hangs before the narrator and her fellow prisoners like a mirage: “She couldn’t believe everything the Imperials said. But freedom — that was a seductive word.”

Though what follows is a deadly study in trial and error. Weapons from the slain white aliens cannot simply be picked up and used in an ongoing battle, as they have engineered their technology to function only through biometric imprint. And yet, when the prisoners come to realize this, their authoritarian masters impose absurd restrictions upon them: the law of property claims dominion even over the battlefield. Aircraft and weapons, wrested from enemy hands through bravery in battle, are not the trophies of those who risked their lives to seize them, but the possessions of the Empire. It is a spectacle at once terrifying and absurd, as they are forced to confront technologically advanced aliens wielding nothing more than simple weapons like swords.

Chung’s minimalist yet evocative prose shrouds the world and its nameless narrator in quiet mystique, and the novel’s deliberate, slow-burning rhythm culminates in a devastating conclusion. Translator Anton Hur, whose devotion to Chung’s body of work sets a golden standard for all translators, introduces this world to English readers with a deft ear for the established cadences and tonal subtleties between the characters. This includes the linguistic fissures between characters — our narrator, notably, is not fluent in Imperial — heightening the sense of a world where survival demands constant negotiation, improvisation, and compromise.

The central question haunting “Red Sword” is one that has haunted both modern literature as much as it has science: what does it mean to be human when the frontiers of the possible are endlessly redrawn? Grounded in the raw immediacy of pain, pleasure, and the stubborn persistence of desire, the novel presses us to ask ourselves what underpins our sense of identity. Is it our name, our memories, our bonds with others? The suggestion that none of these may be enough is more disturbing than the absence of an answer.

The gray-suited imperial officers are not merely boorish bureaucrats but servants of an empire which sees the universe itself as its laboratory. On the white planet, experiments that would be unthinkable — or at least illegal — in Earth’s galaxy are pursued with impunity, like the attempt to implant human memories into animals. In such a world, the sanctity of life is not meant to be affirmed but systematically dismantled, forced into service of the imperial project. 

“High command had conducted their…research in secret, sending the researchers disguised as space explorers to the white planet,” Chung tells us. “None knew about this planet on their home world; the star it orbited was not even registered. When they discovered there was water on the planet, they quickly landed next to the white and opaque river and began their experiments.”

And yet nature is never wholly subdued, periodically reminding us that neither human ingenuity nor imperial ambition is the ultimate master of the universe. Periodically, the sky darkens with vast birds — creatures engineered by the Empire who maintain no loyalty to their masters. As Chung describes, in one instance, “even after there was no one to attack, the black birds didn’t leave. They tried to smash the spaceship, pecking and clawing at the hatch in particular.” 

Like the bioengineered birds, the aliens of the white planet are not innately hostile — their aggression is defensive, a mirror of the imperial violence to which they are exposed. Though we learn that they, too, once hailed from Earth, the differences between them and the people of the empire in their physiology and modes of communication make it unmistakably clear that whatever once bound the two groups has long dissolved. In a rare encounter conducted through dialogue rather than combat — with the intermediary aid of the white aliens’ translation device that “sounded like an inventor who didn’t know what language sounded like had used a machine to make consonants and vowels separately and mashed them together any which way” — the narrator tries to convey that neither she nor her fellow prisoners wishes them harm. After all, the Empire is their enemy, too. Yet the die is already cast: the stage is set for war. Despite the aliens’ prior claim to the planet, the Empire recognizes no restraint, its appetite for conquest indifferent to history, right, or reason. 

Delving further into the novel’s subsequent events would risk giving away its ending, which is best experienced firsthand rather than spoiled. The main takeaway here is that Chung has written a work that both honors and unsettles the conventions of science fiction. It demonstrates, with rare clarity, that the genre need not choose between the literary and the speculative, between aesthetic ambition and imaginative daring. “Red Sword” reminds us that science fiction can be written with the same precision of language, moral seriousness, and psychological acuity as any work of so-called literary fiction. In other words, it is nothing less than a triumph of literature.


Note from the editor:

Hey there, it’s Kate Tsurkan, editor-in-chief and the author of this book review. Literary magazines like Apofenie are able to remain up and running first and foremost thanks to the support of readers. Please consider becoming a paid member today and helping our community grow.

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