Once again, this is a book which came up in the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast, in an episode with Annalee Newitz. When two of the person’s whose book recommendations I appreciate and even more if it is a sci-fi book, I have to read it.

What is it about

Cyberpunk gold setup in a dump.

A bit short a summary but an accurate one.

The story starts kind of classic: we follow two americans as they come to an e-waste processing island/city in China (based on the Nan’ao Island, nearby where Chen Qiufan was born?) while they try to negotiate the implantation of a recycling facility there. And between triad rivalries, military project parts ending there and so on, the story takes a very different turn. Young girl piloting a meca included.

There’s more than that, of course, from neo-colonialism, corporate greed, omnipresent internet and surveillance, cyborgification…

Final word

Heavily recommended. The story is great, the characters too (you can’t really hate the numerous assholes).

Chen Qiufan wrote the book in Chinese and I read the translation by Ken Liu. His notes on how rich modern chinese speaking is and how it was reflected in the writing, mixing different topolects was hard to transcribe in English and so on was also very interested and reminded me of my time in another part of Guangdong having to deal daily with 3 different languages.

A last word on the book itself: I purchased the British edition by Head of Zeus, and I like the metallic blue ink used on the cover.