New sci-fi stories that sensitively capture the daily lives of children in the future!
Six tales whose imaginativeness shines like the stars
My Girlfriend’s Legs, the first collection of short stories for youngsters by Chung Jae Eun, who emerged by receiving a prize in the children’s literature section of the 2005 Science Technology Creative Literature Award, has been published. This volume includes six tales that have been evaluated as opening up a new frontier in juvenile sci-fi prose fiction with their sensitive depictions of everyday life in future society. Readers’ imagination will be stimulated by tales that unfold in fascinating spaces including a world experienced through 3D hologram avatars, the Earth seen from asteroids, virtual reality gardens, underwater community of Dragon Palace City, and schools in outer space. With their combination of imagination that freely moves among diverse spaces in the future world and a heartwarming perspective that perceives others without prejudice, these works will present a unique reading experience.
Storyline
‘Avatar School’: Eun-eun goes to Avatar School, where attendance is taken through 3D hologram avatars. She is concerned about Da-yeong, a transfer student. Though she wishes to help the new student to adjust well to school life, Da-yeong rejects Eun-eun’s secret note and is absent on the schoolwide sports day as well. Could the two girls become friends?
‘My Girlfriend’s Legs’: Having lost both legs in a traffic accident, Yeon wears intelligent prosthetic legs. She participates in an audition from which a single ballerina will be selected. Though she wins attention as a strong and talented contender, the girl is soon discredited and bombarded with criticism solely for being equipped with artificial legs.
‘Ttuda’s First Experience’: This story concerns Ttuda and Ppida, which are ultra-smart, fully independent, and extraterrestrial artificial intelligence robots that collect data on the Earth in outer space. Observing a human child and a mother living on the Earth through a rhinoceros beetle and a hamster, respectively, Ttuda and Ppida gradually come to have human emotions and…
‘This Marvelous Nature’: A company that develops virtual reality garden programs, e-Marvelous Nature designs customized gardens. What indeed is the difference between virtual reality gardens, which seem even more natural than the real things, and actual nature?
‘The Sky, Clouds, and Tteok-bokki’: Living in Dragon Palace City, an underwater community, Yu-ju is curious about the world outside the sea. Through accounts of the life outside from Hyeong, who used to live on land, the protagonist gradually learns about the world with the sky, clouds, and tteok-bokki (stir-fried rice cakes) and, together with friends, repairs the Duck, a vessel, and plans a dangerous journey outside the ocean.
‘The Real-name Poo System’: There is an emergency! Pieces of poo found in the septic tank throw Memory Planet School into chaos. At this school, excreting, looking at, and even talking about solid bodily waste are forbidden. As the only Earthling and therefore the only being to excrete poo, Ttong is accused as the culprit and punished and…