[ENGLISH] Empathy and Automation at Odds

In her second novel A Thousand Blues, author Cheon Seon-ran serves up a cautionary tale about empathy’s retreat amidst the aggressive advance of automation. Given its near-future setting and the fact that it opens from the perspective of a sentient robot, readers may be reminded of Kazuo Ishiguro’s acclaimed novel Klara and the Sun. However, A Thousand Blues predates it, having been originally published in 2020 when the author was just twenty-seven years old. Set in 2035, the novel imagines a near-future South Korea where many jobs have been replaced by robots. Yet even the machines that replace us aren’t safe from being retired—a fate faced by robot horse jockey Coli, the focus of the book’s first chapter. Horse jockeys have become entirely robotic, but unlike other jockeys, Coli is sentient—the result of a misplaced experimental chip. Coli feels no pain and is not that concerned about its own well-being after track bosses decide it is time for it to be recycled. However, the robot worries about the fate of Today, the horse it has been riding. Today was a prized racehorse, but after three years on the track, her joints have worn down to nothing and she is also due to be replaced. For a retired racehorse that no longer serves a purpose for humans, this is generally a death sentence. Coli gets a second chance at life when Yeonjae, a local high school girl interested in robotics, bargains for the damaged robot. Meanwhile, Yeonjae’s wheelchair-bound older sister Eunhye, who spends time at the stables, is also concerned about the fate of Today. Science fiction tends to marvel at technological advancement. Even if the net result is a negative one for the human race—take the apocalyptic singularity of the Skynet AI system in the Terminator franchise, for instance—the underlying science is usually described with reverence. Cheon takes a very different tack in her sci-fi drama, which concerns itself with the toll of human civilization’s advances—those to come but also those that have already come to pass. Tomorrow’s technological breakthroughs, as disquieting and unpredictable as they are, will merely be new tools for humans to mistreat other humans, as well as the flora and fauna on which we rely. That’s not to say that this story foregrounds doom and gloom. Cheon paints characters who carve out their own humanity in the face of rigid and uncaring systems, doing so within the confines of a small but specific world—a racetrack on the outskirts of Seoul and the family connected to a restaurant that feeds the racetrack’s workers and patrons. Cheon’s critique of humanity’s penchant for prizing convenience over concern comes off as observational rather than biting. One passage notes how worker safety has been sacrificed by companies more eager to invest in efficiency through robot upgrades. Yet what makes the broader commentary of the narrative so effective is its lack of sensationalism or clearly identifiable villains. Some characters are perhaps more to blame than others, like the boss of the racetrack, who makes a brief appearance late in the novel, but even he doesn’t seem driven by malice. If anything, the story exemplifies how people who want to act differently are unable to do so, bound by the rules of their respective social roles. We see this through the older characters whose youthful idealism has been eroded by their time as cogs in the human machine, like the well-meaning stable worker Minju or veterinarian Bokhui, whose job includes euthanizing retired racehorses. This generational malaise is most clearly drawn in Yeonjae and Eunhye’s mother, Bogyeong, a once-promising actress, now running a small restaurant to support her children. In the novel’s most lyrical passage, Cheon limns Bogyeong’s sorrow: “The weight of reality was such that no emotion leaked out of her. Instead, it stagnated inside her, this water that didn’t flow, that couldn’t be bailed out.” Rather than jockey for control, the five shifting perspectives of Cheon’s work complement each other, alternating between the passionate if naive idealism and jaded introspection of the humans and the childlike wonder of Coli, who, to quote Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh, marvels at “newness that was in every stale thing.” Together, these perspectives amount to a clear-sighted lament, but one not without hope—there will always be those unwilling to accept the status quo.

By Pierce Conran