Barry Callaghan
All the Lonely People
Exile EditionsWith a preface by the author’s long-
time friend, celebrated writer Margaret
Atwood, All the Lonely People encap-
sulates the heart and soul of Barry
Callaghan’s lively, time-transcending
prose in a collection that draws inspira-
tion and methodology from the likes
of James Joyce’s Dubliners. Artfully
expressing the emotional rhythm by
which the inarticulate majority lives,
Callaghan moves effortlessly through
alternating memories and realities with
his signature style of tactile and visually
fanciful prose.David Carlin & Nicole Walker
The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabeti-
cal Essays on a Changing Planet
Rose Metal PressEssayists David Carlin and Nicole
Walker collaborate transcontinentally
on this collection of flash essays that
use a shotgun approach to catalog what
has been lost, what is under threat,
and what is likely to come in a future
characterized by climate warming and
instability. With entries that range from
the whimsical to the soul-wrenching,
The After-Normal is a kaleidoscopic
consideration of the forms life may take
in a climate-disrupted future.Nota Bene
Chen Qiufan
Waste Tide
Trans. Ken Liu. New York. Tor Books.
- 352 pages.
If you’ve read Ken Liu’s recent anthologies of
Chinese science fiction in translation (Invis-
ible Planets, 2018, and Broken Stars, 2019),
then you’ve read Chen Qiufan’s exquisitely
crafted, unrelentingly imaginative short sto-
ries. One of the biggest names in contempo-
rary Chinese speculative fiction, alongside
Liu Cixin, Xia Jia, and Hao Jingfang, Chen
mixes Chinese culture and history with a
fresh, forward-looking approach to issues
of robotics, artificial intelligence, and the
impact of social media and technology on
human evolution. With this growing oeuvre
of short stories in English, nearly all trans-
lated by Liu, it’s the perfect time to finally
have a Chen novel in our hands.
Unlike his tightly focused short stories,
Chen’s Waste Tide is a wide-ranging explo-
ration of the challenges and tragedies of
globalization: the proliferation of e-waste,
the migrant workers who sacrifice their
health to process that waste for very little
money, the “economic hitmen” who prey on
non-Western nations, and the environmen-
tal impact of e-waste and other trash. The
novel is itself like a complex piece of tech-
nology made up of many interlocking parts
that all rely on one another to make the
whole thing function. Waste Tide reads like
an opening salvo—a call to both Chinese
and anglophone readers to recognize that
the globe is more interconnected than they
even imagined, down to the smartphones in
their pockets and the air they breathe.
A rare example of the “sci-fi thriller”
(one could even call it “sci-fi horror”), Waste
Tide is, on the surface, the story of an Amer-
ican company negotiating with the local
government and leaders of a small Chinese
island dedicated to e-waste processing. For
the representative of TerraGreen Recycling
(in reality, the economic hitman Scott Bran-
dle), convincing Silicon Isle’s local leaders to
hand over control of the recycling process
in return for promised environmental and
quality-of-life improvements would result
in huge financial gain and power over a cru-
cial region in the East. Meanwhile, the local
(or clan) leaders attempt to manipulate the
negotiations to extract money and power for
themselves and continue their generations-
long feud. At the heart of the story are the
migrant e-waste workers who have come to
Silicon Isle from the countryside after being
promised the path to a better life. Mimi, one
such worker, represents the pain, brutality,
and spiritual desolation that are the actual
outcomes of migration to Silicon Isle.
When some hazardous e-waste is
(accidentally?) shipped from America to
the island for processing, Mimi ends up
becoming infected with a strange virus that
mutates when she is close to death. In one
of the most stunningly beautiful and haunt-
ing scenes in modern science fiction, her
spirit (or consciousness) enters the body
of a discarded mecha and melds with it,
the subsequent electrical connection ulti-
mately changing her brain chemistry. When
Mimi’s spirit jumps back into her human
body, Mimi wakes up as two people: the
traumatized waste worker and the powerfulWORLDLIT.ORG 95